Beneath A Steel Sky: Clever

I'm working on a sci-fi adventure game at the moment, and as part of the development process I've been "researching" 1994's Beneath A Steel Sky on my iPhone.

I finished it last night, and I'd highly recommend giving it a play - it's got some great ideas. There are sections where you enter this kind of "cyberspace", where the gameplay is very similar to other sections (use item on other item) but with a software theme - you have to perform certain commands, like decrypting documents, using "passwords" to navigate a puzzle and applying a security countermeasure to a big floating eye to stop it from logging you out when you try to access a restricted area.

You also have different keycards that gain you access to different sections of a network called "LINC" - kind of like a domain, or a BBS - and you use them to open security doors, to deliver a virus into a system, etc. At one point you have to use the capabilities of one card to gain access to an area in cyberspace, and then switch to a different card/profile in order to utilise the thing found in that area.

Another novel gameplay element is the use of the main character's robot sidekick, Joey - you have to keep retrieving his circuit board and putting it into new "shells" because they keep getting destroyed by this or that, and each shell has different capabilities. You also rely on him to get into restricted areas, and to give you advice on things you pick up, though the advice would often take the form of sarcastic condescension - good to keep things spicy.

The whole game, though far from perfect in terms of logical puzzle design, struck me as rather imaginative, especially in terms of capitalising on its "cyber" themes for advancing the gameplay. I really appreciated the fact that a single item would often gain the player access to an entire section of gameplay - you didn't often come across a random item that you picked up simply because you could, and that you would use in an obscure scenario two hours' later. There were instances of that, but overall there was a sense of cohesion in the gameplay - objects in your inventory weren't just once-off novelty things that weighed down the trial-and-error gameplay, they were a gateway into a realm of puzzle-solving possibilities.

Altitude: Flies

It's been well over 2 years since my last (and first) blog post, and plenty has changed since then. I've entered the games industry, first as QA and then as Game Designer. I've played many, many computer and video games, and failed to blog about any of them. Oh, and I finished BioShock, which I'll probably get around to discussing further at some point.

But for now I'd like to catch up on the many games I've played since. The first is a deliciously polished indie title called Altitude, which I highly recommend you grab the demo for immediately - yes, even at the expense of continuing to bask in the glory of my lexical spray.

Now that you've done whatever it was you did between reading the end of that last paragraph and the beginning of this one, allow me to describe Altitude as an online arcade 2D aerial combat game, somewhat like that old gem SubSpace (or Continuum, if you played it more recently).

Essentially, Altitude is all about dog fighting. You control a plane, viewed from the side, and you fly around shooting down other planes. The simple but powerful controls allow you to speed into a fight with guns blazing, peel off, dive to avoid incoming missiles and gunfire, swerve back into attack position and come back in to finish them off. If you wish, you can glide to the periphery of a scrum and lob in mines, angling them to catch the enemy on the run, or you can just coast on over, dropping bombs on the unfortunates below.

The effort that's been put into giving players nuanced control over their plane makes this game - without the afterburning, the stalling, the gravity-assisted manoeuvres, Altitude would have nothing. The elegance of this component forms a brilliant core for the rest of the game's mechanics.

Drifting alongside the tight controls is an energy system that forces you to choose between firing your weapons and using your afterburner. The interplay between speed of movement and offensive capability is exquisite, and the player must constantly make decisions depending on the context and the desired outcome. Coupled with the fine control of your plane, this system allows you to play very well or very poorly, and with that scope comes lasting engagement. Who would've thought that a spinoff of the 2D side-scrolling shoot-em-up could yield so much depth?

Menacingly circling the delicious dog fighting are five different types of plane, each with their own weapons and handling characteristics. The Loopy, terrifying to have on your tail because of its tracking missiles, is defenceless if you manage to get behind it. The Miranda, on the other hand, can spontaneously reverse facing, affording a variety of tactical options to those able to master it. The Explodet, with floating mines that home in on you, has the profound ability to make an entire area of the map dangerous.

Each of the five planes plays completely differently, and could be likened to Team Fortress 2's classes - each has pronounced strengths and weaknesses, and succeeding with each is a matter of understanding how to exploit them. I've seen each plane type both dominate and be decimated - it's just a matter of the player's skill.

Furthering the diversity of the planes is a "perks" system, much like that popularised by the recent Call of Duty games, whereby each plane has three different perk slots: weapon, defence and energy. The latter two perks are shared between the five types, while the first is specific to each type. These choices have a significant impact on the capabilities of the build, adding further flavour to your own playing style and to the shape of the threat posed by your opposition.

Ominously hovering overhead is a healthy variety of game modes. Beyond the Free For All and Team Deathmatch modes, a few more complicated variants exist, like Plane Ball, where you have to shoot a ball into the opponent's goals, and Team Base Destruction, in which you must drop bombs on the enemy base. Every mode is entertaining for different reasons, but personally I can't go past the testicle-scraping excitement of a good round of Plane Ball, with the ball being passed from plane to plane, intercepted, left floating after a massacre and then furiously swept up again when the reinforcements arrive.

Swooping about the place like a pack of enraged parakeets is a sizeable selection of maps, most of which provide an excellent mix of open spaces and tightly bunched terrain to facilitate different styles of engagement. It can be difficult to distinguish between the parts of the map that are solid and the parts that aren't - the foreground and background - but most of the time it's obvious. Strapped to the game's underbelly is a map editor and a server executable, so you can bash out your own maps and then host them for all and sundry to enjoy.

Finally, turning Altitude into an aerial arsenal of awesomeness, is an XP system that has you gradually unlocking plane types, perks and Challenges (Achievements/Trophies) over the course of 60 levels. This gives you the opportunity to become familiar with a particular plane or blend of perks, and then before you know it another option is thrown into the mix and you're off exploring its potential on the battlefield. If ever you've been soundly thrashed and are staring at the end-of-round fail screen despondently, at least you can take solace in the fact that you've edged closer to unlocking the next toy to play with.

You can probably tell that I love Altitude. Oddly, it has me swearing and thumping the desk much more frequently than any other game I can think of. I'm not sure whether it's because I'm so worked up due to the frantic pace of the action, or because of the number of mistakes I make - which is an indication of the number of mistakes I could not make, and further evidence of the game's lengthy mastery curve - but it doesn't stop me playing for at least half an hour every day.

Besides the ambiguous solidity of some parts of the terrain, the only part of the game's design I'd like to make bullet holes in is the lack of in-game help you're offered about the different plane types and game modes. For instance, I only recently learnt that the missiles fired by Explodets can be manually detonated, turning that plane type from one I routinely avoided into one I'm keen to investigate further. Also, what effect does the Loopy's EMP shot have, exactly? Dig through the game's Wiki (http://nimblygames.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page) and you'll find out, but unless you do that it's guesswork

Complaints like that are outrageously, violently overshadowed by the number of things that Altitude's dev team have perfected. Considering the team is less than ten people, it's amazing what they've achieved.

I haven't really talked all that much about sound or visuals, because that's not really what this blog is about. Rest assured, though, it all looks quite nice, sounds quite good, and provides the necessary framework of sensory feedback for making the ingenious game mechanics come to life.

Oh yeah, and it works on Windows, Mac, Linux and through a browser. At the very, very least, play the demo, and if you like that, fork out the measly $15USD for the full version and give the devs a small chunk of your cash, and yourself access to the other four plane types.

http://altitudegame.com/download.html