Welcome Time Wasters!
I hope everyone had a great New Year and here’s hoping that 2019 will be even better than 2018. My year has started rough. I’ve had a nasty cold most of this week that has kept me asleep if I’m not working. It sucks and I almost didn’t get any time wasting in. Luckily for me, I started feeling a bit better on Friday so I can complete my weekly GiN duties.
My time wasting this week was with an indie game called Detiled. Detiled is a puzzle game that has players heading for an exit while the tiles below their very feet disappear. It’s actually got this neat mechanic where the tiles only disappear after the player steps off of them. That may make it seem easy enough, but the trick is that the exit only opens once all tiles are gone.
The whole concept behind Detiled is interesting to me. I know I’ve seen similar ideas in the past, but this one sticks out as a solid concept for a game. It challenges the player to think about different ways to reach the end of a level than they might normally. It also opens up the ability to complete some levels in a few different ways. This is one of those cases where the game makes the player feel clever when they complete the puzzle, which is the best reward a puzzle game can give its players.
If there’s one big problem I have with Detiled, it’s that there isn’t enough of it. The game is incredibly short and only features a few levels for players to complete. That’s a real shame, but I understand that not every game concept can get the full treatment. Still, I feel like this is one of those cases where the game deserves to be much more than what it is.
The controls in Detiled are incredibly easy to get the hand of. Players can use a keyboard or a controller. The only actions they can perform are horizontal movement and a jump. The simple nature of the controls benefits the game. It just makes it easy to jump right in to without any complex instructions needed.
Moving on to the graphics in Detiled, we have something alright, but it doesn’t standout. Like I’ve already said, this is obviously a case of an indie developer just experimenting with a game concept. As such, there isn’t a whole lot of flashy animations or anything like that. That doesn’t mean that the game looks bad. Just that it could look better.
The sound is probably the part of the game that suffers the most. There is literally no background music anywhere in the game. Instead, players can only listen to the sounds of tiles disappearing and the main character jumping. It’s a bit disappointing, but I understand why there isn’t a greater focus on the aesthetics of the game.
Overall, Detiled isn’t bad for what it is, which is more of a proof of concept than a full game. I feel like the core elements of the game have potential for use in a larger adventure and I hope the developer is planning for something along those lines. If not, I’ll just have to be satisfied with what is here. Go give the game a look if it seems interesting to you.
Detiled earns 3.5 GiN Gems out of 5!