PEGBRJE: Concentric and Me and (My) Cat’s Castle
Circles. Cats. Rice?
Concentric is a circular action puzzle game made by solo indie dev ‘zerofiftyone’ — real name Ben Wilson — from the United Kingdom. Players are a simple circle existing within a ring of many circles, wishing to simply acquire a wireframe icosahedron (at least, I think it’s an icosahedron) and return back to the centre as fast as possible. If only it were always that simple, no?
The goal of Concentric is actually to fill the Energy meter on the top-right with the collection of those wireframe shapes by reaching out and touching them with the circle and returning to the centre to add the energy. Once the player returns and banks that energy, a new one will spawn and players will go out and acquire that; repeat until the energy is filled, and the time taken is then given a score. Of course it’s not that simple, for as more levels are introduced the more hazardous events occur. At first it is in the shape of arrow traps that move along the rings, causing the player to automatically lose any energy they are ‘carrying’ and return back to the centre to restart. Afterwards it starts to manipulate the rings themselves, cutting out sections so that players cannot move in certain regions or cause the arrows to bounce back at a faster time. It’s all about manipulating the player’s ability to maneuver freely, so barbed wire and an afterimage are brought in later on to cause even more issues. What this does is cause players to weigh their options; do they play fast and loose, knowing that they’ll probably get sent back to the start a bunch but be quick, or formulate a plan and execute slowly to ensure that no time is ‘wasted’ even though technically it already was?
That is the simplicity and clever execution of Concentric, something that simply wishes for players to see how fast they can execute an action and challenge themselves to go even faster. It’s a minimalistic idea made real thanks to a minimalistic aesthetic, and with 26 levels it may take a bit longer than some might expect. If you love challenging yourself on motion-based puzzles, this might be exactly what you are looking for.
Me and (My) Cat’s Castle -わたしと(わたしの)ねこのしろ- is a 2D platformer made by KAJINOYU, an indie circle in Japan producing games for Comiket. In this little title, players are… well, that’s kind of the big thing, they are ‘me’. The self, if one wishes, and their adventures with onigiri. Sort of. It’s a bit hard to explain.
Ignoring my abviously brutal attempts to explain exactly what’s going on, Me and (My) Cat’s Castle follows a 2D world sectioned into specific levels to which the goal is to reach the Cat Statue at the stage end. To accomplish this, players will be ingesting riceballs to alter their state of ‘self’ between Normal and Onigiri. Normal state allows for firing a shot out of the self which can magically turn any enemy hit in to a riceball, but can be killed by touching almost anything hostile. Onigiri state alters this, making the self larger and impervious to the touch of enemies, and changing how they interact with the self. Some may begin to completely ignore the self, or even freeze in place as if turned off by the Onigiri self. This allows for the Onigiri self to utilize these enemies as different kinds of platforms, manipulating how they move based on which state players wish to have so that they can continue traversing. To switch back to the Normal state, the self can ingest the riceball to shrink back down, which also allows for them to shoot once more and ingest another riceball. Now some hazards will forever remain deadly, such as the shots coming from certain enemies (shots are in yellow, hard to miss) and spikes so ensuring that this balance of consumption and ingestion is important in discovering exactly how to maneuver throughout the level.
It’s not easy, let me say; I know I’m really bad at platformers, but this title definitely didn’t make it easy for me. Pixel perfection isn’t necessary, but it definitely would’ve helped. Add on the really adorable aesthetic and sound design and you have a very cute platformer with a secret hidden ending. If you wish to discover it for yourself, start this up and beat every level.
