Games I Play #7: Endless Forms Most Beautiful

Note: I'm making a point of reviewing Locomalito's stuff whenever it gets a Linux release. I feel that this guy deserves as much coverage as possible.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a game that I meant to write about a few weeks back, but didn't. The main reason for this is that I really wanted to try out the multiplayer gameplay first. It's another game made by Locomalito, though I believe it was actually a remake of someone else's game. I don't really feel like doing research at the moment on whom that might be, though. A member of a long-dead genre(remember all of those 'Collect X trinkets before monsters kill you' arcade games?), a game like this is pretty unique in our era even amongst other old-school titles.

The Good:
Man, I really have a soft spot for this games chipper chiptunes. There's something about how they sound that like. Making them transition to a more frantic version when time is running out is a nice touch, and makes me panic quite a bit. Using only the arrow keys, it also has a very simple and responsive control scheme. As usual for Locomalito, the game also features a nice air of authenticity. The best feature in my opinion, though, are the tiny creatures that you collect. Each and every one of them is randomly generated, and the game tells you silly little tidbits about them before each level. It's a really fun touch.

The Bad:
Apparently there's only 15 levels. I'd call it short if not for the soul-crushingly steep difficulty curve. Sure, the first few levels are nothing. After that, though, each and every level starts to feel like a desperate struggle for survival. I like games that challenge me like this, but I'll bet that many people would be turned away by it. Your mileage may vary. Co-op mode was pretty annoying when playing with a large skill imbalance. My friend would quickly die when I had full lives because I had several weeks on him, and then he'd have to sit things out until it was over for me. If I could somehow toss a life or two at him, or even if lives were shared, I really wouldn't have minded. As it was, I was sad to see them sit around and watch for minutes at a time, when I'd called them over to play with me.

You can download the game for free here.