PEGBRJE: Cecconoid/Eugatron and Fate Tectonics
Pixels for everyone
Cecconoid is an arcade twin stick adventure made by Triple Eh? Games, a solo indie dev formally in AAA dev from England— not going to lie, I thought the studio was a fellow Canadian thanks to the name, but I’ll take Commonwealth as the next best thing. Regardless, this is actually two titles in one technically, as players can choose if they wish to play the retro arcade exploration, or the true 80s survival arena space shooter.
Starting with the title game itself, Cecconoid is primarily a title of exploration and dying over and over. In the pure spirit of twin stick shooters, the only inputs necessary to play are two sets of joysticks (or WASD/arrows for keyboard). While movement is omnidirectional, shots can only be fired in an octo directional style regardless of how high-end the joystick is. The power ups collected are to expand on these functionalities rather than give new abilities, such as increasing speed or spread of bullets. While exploring, players will come to realize that due to the nature of the pixelated title, many objects may not be as ‘clearly explained’ — for example, it took me three runs to realize that there was a power up box at the start of the game. This I feel is completely intentional, as the game is more about understanding the new experiences by either brutally dying to them, or allowing curiousity to hope that one will not brutally die to it if it is shot. Even with the three lives that are given as standard, players will find themselves losing those constantly due to various events such as transitioning into a new zone to get shot immediately, by messing up a timing or because some of the bullets are a bit small and hard to see. That’s ok! Death is an intentional feature of the title, taking the concept of the past arcades in which death was a learning experience (while also a great way of getting quarters). I can’t say that it subverts the genre, more reinforces what people loved about the style and difficulty.
On the ‘other side of the disk’ — if we still had those, anyway — is a bonus game called Eugatron, which utilizes the Samurai-1 fighter ship from Cecconoid but places it in an arena to fight for survival. Everything remains from the original title, but instead of exploring the Equinox ship backdrop players are trying to survive against hordes of robots and explosives attempting to destroy the player. Beating the entire hoard on the level isn’t always necessary to moving on to the next level, but can reward with more power ups. It’s definitely a classic style, with the three lives remaining from before and the only goal is to see how far players get before they die.
I can definitely imagine these two titles being sudden remakes from past 80s titles, with the attention to detail in the pixel art and even in the fact that the bullets are little pixels just flying across the screen. While I can’t say that these games are my flavour due to a lack of nostalgia for the era combining with the crushing difficulty that I’m not a fan of, it definitely has its place amongst other retro titles. If you’re a fan of older arcade styles — or of great soundtracks — then try this dual title out for yourself and see how far you can get.
Oh and you can play on mobile!
Fate Tectonics is a world simulation puzzle game by Golden Gear Games, an indie duo from Toronto that has been on hiatus for a few years now. Before they were, however, they made this title where players create a world tile by tile while attempting to appease the fates that give them the powers to build and create, only to doom the world to destroy it all and create again.
Players are sent into the void to place a single temple to begin a game of Fate Tectonics, gaining access to the ability to place standard tiles and a fate to appease. Each fate has a standard tile that they will bestow upon the player, along with two other ‘special tiles’ that have other capabilities. The twist — and the basis for the puzzle aspect of the game — is that each tile grabbed is a random configuration of the different land types, with a heavy bias towards the fate’s preferred land type. Much of the game will be spent aligning the tiles correctly to avoid the ‘red fissures’ which occur when two land types are matched together incorrectly, causing instability in the surrounding area. This is usually only caused by a lack of structural integrity; each tile that is placed wants others to be around it to strengthen it, and the farther the player extends a tile path without support the more holes appear on it until it crumbles into the abyss. There are ways to add strength to tiles, the primary being through building cities on grassland tiles. Water/Forest tiles cannot be strengthened this way, and offer other possibilities. It’s almost like a tabletop puzzle game reliant on structure and patterns, like Mexican Train or Carcassonne, where much of the time is spent searching for where the piece acquired should go to benefit the entire board.
This barely scratches the surface of what players will need to worry about, such as the Fate approval bars, the doom timer, and the milestones. The Fates all have tiles they approve and disprove of, such as Barnacles disdain for every fleet placed in their waters. Placing that Fate’s tiles will alleviate this issue, but the longer they are left mad the more likely they will attempt to sabotage the map in their tantrum. These tantrums become especially devastating if they hurt tiles relating to other Fates, who will begin to spiral out of control with disapproval as cities are razed, forests are destroyed and water could be frozen. It all culminates in the player running out of time, and another fate arrives to usher in the Doom event, which has players willingly destroying their world with a variety of attacks before the entire thing sinks back into the abyss.
There is no way to stop the Doom Event (besides turning it off by playing a different mode), but there is a way to prolong each session. During a game of Fate Tectonics, players will be greeted with a few ‘milestones’ that they can achieve to add time to their next world run. There are general milestones that one can acquire based on simply playing, but each of these bonus milestones can add 1–2 minutes of time as well. These help shape the gameplay style of each Act (as the game is told as a story in acts) as players will attempt to achieve these milestones so that their next Act will be longer and acquire more Fates to juggle.
Map-creation games can appear simple at first, and suddenly spiral out of control when one isn’t paying attention, leading to a chaotic time of trying to mitigate the constant destruction caused at the hands of the unhappy Fates. How one approaches each game is completely up to them, however we all know that there’s a timer to achieve our goals and it’s always moving towards Doom. Fate Tectonics takes some getting used to at first, but quickly becomes a vibrant puzzle game that sucks you in with its constant challenge and balancing acts. The artstyle is clean and precise, making sure that no tiles ever lead to mistakes of placement, and the soundtrack is quite fun to listen to — especially when the Doom music is introduced on top to add another layer to the chaotic energy. If you’re a fan of map-based puzzles with some customization and flair, this is definitely one to try out.
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There is one caveat, however, and that is Fate Tectonics was created with Adobe Air. Not anything against Adobe Air, but since it is no longer supported I had to go digging to grab the software in order to run the game, as there is no .exe. This wasn’t really a problem for me personally, as I’ve played many games with deprecated software requirements, but for those that cannot be bothered it might be a good idea to look into the Steam version for the convenience of just ‘booting the game’. Up to you though, the game’s still fun regardless.
