price: £ 21.99
Developer: Ace team
Publisher: Good Shepherd Entertainment
platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Version review: PC
The eternal cylinder is without any doubt that I have played the most strange game this year. This is a sport in which you play an emotional trunk, which is hunted by giant mouth and hybrid car people, while all are tirelessly followed by a giant planet-core cylinder. It is an attractive experience, as well as a combination of incredible art with the subjects of attractive and terrible, ecological disaster. This is not a great game, but even in its weakest moment, it is never less than breathtaking.
I have mentioned that emotional trunk, in fact called a trabham, a squat Little Alien that was born in a world that is gradually crushed by an invincible cylinder in the dust that spreads across the horizon all the way. I am not sure how it works geometrically, although it is much below the line of logical obstacles that the eternal cylinder jumps with gay abandonment.
Your broad goal is to survive, but the eternal cylinder is not structured like other survival games. The omnipotence of the cylinder on a whole axis of the world forces the game to a more linear mode than the most survival in the most linear mode, you continuously move because the cylinders pursue you, crush trees and structures and the ground is under its immense bulk.
Well, not continuously. Small bubbles of the sanctuary can be found in towers, which prevent the progression of the cylinder as long as you live within the effect of their blue color. Not only do these towers provide relief for Trebum, they also provide opportunities to find and develop. Using your tights, Trebum can suck a variety of food items, storing them in your stomach. Some provide health, while others provide energy used to escape from the cylinder. But some of these items will be the reason for mutation of Trabham, making them long legs to jump, or fur to keep them warm in the cold areas of the world. Even there is a mutation that converts the trabhems into a cube, which helps solve some riddles, it is also very funny.
This is not just your trabum which benefits from these mutations. As you proceed through the world, your Trebum will face other Trebham that may include the right conditions in your family. Some you can take them from the egg by putting them in the incubation flower, while others should be revived with a magic crystal, or by providing the right resources to get out of your bubbles.
There are practical reasons to do this – there are some routes through the world that require at least three trabums to unlock them, while you will also accept another trebum control if your group leader is killed. But mainly you do not want these cute small aliens to squash the paste by the cylinder. Your Trebham partner is cruel of more emerging moments of the game. For example, my early Trebum was killed by a hunter within the first half an hour of the game, and it was not much later that I was able to revive it at a Trebum pilgrimage site, felt like a special moment.
It is a sport full of clever ideas, although some of them are more fun in theory than behavior. Playing as these developed organisms is not as fun as it seems initially. A major problem is that traibham is not satisfactory to control especially. Getting better jumping legs is only fun if it looks good to start jumping, and lots of mutations suffer from low fingers. The communal side of the game is equally simple. Beyond the opening of odd doors and serving as additional life, your partner Trebham does not do much in the game of moment by moment.
Nevertheless, when it is mechanically short, the eternal cylinder is protected from its composition and storytelling from Tedium. The broad story of Trebum’s visit is given by some spectacular statement, which gradually reveals the complex and surprisingly emotional history of this flexible and adaptable foreign caste. Meanwhile, the next tower progress usually triggers a unique event that makes the game feel fresh, such as a huge snake descending from the sky, or something from the back of the cylinder.
The world is completely complicated in itself. The planet on which the game takes place resembles a collaborative art project between Salvador and Hieonomous Bosch, a real Dreamscape where something strange is happening in every corner of the frame. Flying snott monstors are snails that can cut themselves and then snap together like a bear-mall. You will look like a huge pink rock, only for this, for this suddenly to be openly divided openly, revealing rows of human teeth. And yet nothing seems random here, color-palette and careful landscaping seems to be consistent and reliable to this fundamentally impossible world.
Then, of course, the cylinder itself, possibly the most terrible opponents since the zenomorf of alien separation. When it grinds in motion, its entire length shines to a inferior orange, which brightens the entire horizon in a curvature hell. It is easy to decrease frightening, starts slow and then suddenly intensifies, its thunder becomes a deaf thunder because it is with your small foreign tribe. You can almost feel its heat from your screen because it brightens the back of your trabums, the camera is moving uncontrollably because you do strict scuffle to protect the next tower. This is a frightening, mesmerized event, as well as impossible to see and it is impossible to see it away.
It is a shame that the inherent systems of eternal cylinders do not operate at the same level as their art and storytelling, because otherwise you must be looking at a stone-tender work. However, the eternal cylinder remains a smart, unique and great experience, while its unforgettable prismatic enemy will bother your bad dreams for the coming weeks.
