Play Nitrome’s Newest Game: Fault Line
Today, Flash game outfit Nitrome released yet another inventive game, Fault Line, a puzzle-platformer unlike any I’ve ever seen. The hero is a little purple and yellow robot who looks like he just came from a Mega Man boss casting call. He runs, he jumps and oh yeah…he can fold the world in half. Like many puzzle-platformers the goal is to get from point A to point B. However in this game you have to fold the level in half to do it. Scattered around the game are clickable nodes between which you can draw lines, folding the world between them. As you do, new pathways open, lasers will be redirected and other pieces of the level will shift around you.
As you’re folding the Fault Line universe you’ll find that you can create extremely interesting landscapes, which Nitrome also uses to create some very playful pre-folded levels. These levels let you set your thinking cap aside and play like Mario trapped in some weird origami hell; no puzzles, just land your jumps. These breaks from puzzle solving bring welcome relief from a mechanic that while ultimately clever may have otherwise become monotonous.
There’s still no way to go from the instructions screen straight into the game, which I’m going to continue picking on until they address it (see Bullethead and Chisel). There are a few spots during the game where simultaneously working the mouse and the keyboard was a little awkward and if you click away from the game the “camera” goes to visit the upper left corner of the level. But as per usual, Nitrome has done a great job being innovative in a space that sees at least 100 new games every day. This one too is worth a play.
Epilogue: In Good Company
Approximately two years ago, Shift and other games popularized the gravity rotation game mechanic. Then Edmund brought us Time Fcuk, which took that genre a step further. Fault Line feels like another branch in that family tree, which might also include Closure, a game that challenges you to manipulate shadows in order to find your way through each level. I can’t help but feel like these, and many other games, are all connected in some way. Whether they’ve directly inspired one another or not, it’s neat to look back at the games that stand out and try to trace connections to the games we’re playing today.
What other games do you think would fit into this family? Feel free to leave a comment.
