PEGBJRE: Shrug Island and Splinter Zone
AESTHETICALLY PLEASING FOR THE EYES. THANK YOU.
Shrug Island-The Meeting, as it is formally called, is a point-and-click puzzle narrative by Tiny Red Camel, an indie studio focusing on artistic and musical experiences (quoted from their twitter). Players are following the events of two shrugs by the name of Shri and Li as they attempt to reunite with each other after being away for a season while awakening their living island. What are shrugs, you may ask? Well, it’s time for a little backstory. In 2009, a certain Alina Constantin created a short film simply called ‘Shrug’, detailing the lives of beings that adapted to the seasonal tides of island life by being able to shapeshift into various forms and shapes. Fast forward a few years later, that same animator created two mini games in 2013 called Shrug Tides and Shrug Song. Through the next 4 years, she and Michael G. Rose would create a studio and finally add to the collection of Shrug titles, specifically this one here.
Shrug Island is, at it’s core, a game of solving integrated puzzles through a lack of communication. Players control both Shri and Li as they attempt to reunite with each other, interacting with the island and its inhabitants to effect the other and their ability to move forward. Each one of them has a special ‘ability’ to help solve puzzles, while also creating the backbone of the atmosphere of the game. Shri has the ability to shapeshift at certain points to employ musical notes in order to alter the landscape itself, as if the music is able to coax it into a different shape. Li, on the other hand, can see the world at a different time through a lens, seeing items hidden from sight in order to connect them with the missing parts of the current world. For the most part, the puzzles are not meant to be overtly difficult; which means that I most definitely tripped over 1 or 2 of them along the way. Simply missing a small piece while Li held me up for some time, which had me spinning in circles between the two wondering how on earth I could solve this. However, I will state that there is one puzzle for Shri that is a tad demanding if memory isn’t a strong point; I could have swore I had it correct, and even then I ended up ‘stiff-arming’ it to victory. Thankfully, the rest of the puzzles are relaxing and guided by the world quite nicely, thanks to the reliance on visual and audio symbiosis.
The visuals keep with the theme present in the previous iterations of Shrug titles, with curiously shaped individuals and gorgeous backdrops to accompany them. Walking locations are relatively easy to discern thanks to the emphasis on dulling the backdrops slightly to make the foreground interactable environments shine more, or have more colour. While channeling Li’s power, the curser creates a monochromatic circle, as if scrubbing away the colour to reveal the hidden drawings underneath. That which continues to have colour will most likely be something related to the puzzle one is trying to solve, and past puzzles are usually immortalized within this gray world. The music changes during this time as well to simply a melody crafted by a vocalist to signify the change, which is a nice touch. For Shri, however, music is everything thanks to the ability to shapeshift and play 5 different notes. These notes solve these puzzles, which in turn feel extremely rhythmic when trying to find the solution. For that puzzle earlier mentioned that was memory intensive, it was thanks to this musical pattern that kept my memory in check, even when the number of notes in the sequence started to go past 10 and I had to return to that which gave them to me to remember certain phrases. Unlike Li, Shri must be on certain locations to transform, which alters which form is taken; I saw a stone version, a plant and a manta ray/fish, but there may have been more. It’s a beautiful duality between art and music, with each having their focal aspect while still ensuring that the other medium is still getting some love.
Just as soon as it begins, Shrug Island completes it’s story. Even with all of my struggles and interruptions, I found myself completing the story in an hour or so (although, there may have been hidden secrets I missed). It’s a story of interconnectivity between two that have been separated by the island itself, yet move through the island together to become one again. We don’t need to be in immediate contact with others to see and feel their effects on our lives, yet we still have a nagging sense of longing to be with those we care about and love. It’s a dual message of separation with interconnectivity, and with current events projected to remain for at least a half dozen months or more, this kind of message is needed more than ever. If a small, beautiful puzzle game is what you’re looking for, given Shrug Island a try. There may be more chapters to this title in the future, who knows.
Splinter Zone is an infinite 2D cyber shooty action title by MOKKA, a solo dev out of Germany. Players play as an unidentified person with a gun stuck in some bizarre world with only a vague understanding for the need to escape. Players will run through these seemingly never ending levels, collecting experience, platforming and shooting their way to every portal in the vain attempts to escape. Which they might. Maybe.
Splinter Zone isn’t a game that takes a lot of time to understand, nor does it want to take too much time at all. Configure the controller or keyboard if need be, and get ready to survive. Players will shoot at anything that moves since it probably can injure them, and learn of the different ways that these enemies can move and injure them from ice block shooters to terrifying jumpy V’s. Players gain experience for each enemy they destroy, and every level they gain contributes a tiny drone that adds a bullet to each bullet shot, making for some serious bullet storm nonsense. However, even XP is a resource as going into the “HYPER MODE” drains it as fuel, giving movespeed and general destruction. It’s a neat little twist, although I found myself avoiding the feature due to the desire for having as many tiny drones as possible follow me around. Lot easier to shoot things with impunity that way. I’d also like to point out that while it is infinite in a way, MOKKA has specifically stated on the itch.io page that it is a set amount of levels randomly stitched together, not procedurally generated. Personally it makes sense, there’s more control and care for how the levels are designed. There’s also the arguement that procedural levels lead to them feeling too similar to each other due to their algorithmic creation, but that’s a little out of scope for this. The takeaway is that this stitching of the same few levels together in random orders is intentional.
There’s a few other tidbits within Splinter Zone that I found to be quite inviting for the game, specifically that it opens first with the Cheat Menu. Cheats are all available by default, giving players the ability to alter their experience to fit their needs. If players feel they don’t need this, they can just immediately press start game to go to the start screen and continue on their merry way, as it only shows up on booting the game (unless one navigates submenus afterwards). There’s even a feature to play the whole thing without enemies, which I didn’t try but I’m suddenly curious how boss fights work. Unlike previous titles with this amount of ‘cheating functionality’ there appear to be secrets within as well to find, which unfortunately I couldn’t locate within my allotted timeframe.
Splinter Zone is a pocket title — compact, goes fits anywhere, and can be picked up and played at any given time. It sets out a goal with a mysterious plot of escape, and gives players free reign to either look into that lore tidbit deeper or just play infinitely without repercussions. However you wish to play it, Splinter Zone will most likely allow for it. Unless you’re asking for it to be in 3D or other bizarre ‘quirky’ answers to a rhetorical question such as that. If you are looking for a title that doesn’t give quirky answers and just wants you to play and enjoy yourself while doing so, Splinter Zone is definitely there for you.
Oh also the music is jamming. If there’s a way to find that OST to add to my collection, I will find it.
