Find Me
Find Me is a vaguely Limbo-looking (read: gray scale) 2d puzzle platformer mostly lacking the puzzle part. Taking place shortly after the lady you play as doesn’t look up from her phone in time to not get hit by a car, you control her spirit through basic 2d platformer stages where you must avoid any source of light as touching any of it for more than a second will cause you to poof.
This is actually a pretty neat mechanical idea for a 2d platformer, it does a good job of having the threats more seamlessly blend into the environment (a flickering street light on a street makes a ton of sense) while shifting things to a more timing-based challenge. The problem is that… execution-wise it all feels very middling. It’s not one of those platformers where moving and jumping around is pleasant on its own, which is why I guess it describes itself as a puzzle platformer. The thing is there really isn’t much that I would describe as a puzzle (you see a switch, hit it and a light in your way turns off) so it feels like the game is missing a hook somewhere. The graphics aren’t bad but aren’t that striking, it controls okay, the level design makes no real mistakes and at times offers a couple different paths to take but I can’t see anyone remembering any of it once they are past it. It… basically exists.
I feel bad as I’ve written more about worse games and this one isn’t really bad, it’s just that aside from a neat initial concept it’s rather unremarkable. It apparently won a 2017 Girls Makes Games thing that was judged by Tim Shafer and the former wrestler AJ Lee (among others) and that’s an odd enough pair that I’d love to know their shared judging criteria.
Hot Heat Reset (demo)
Since I didn’t really have much to say about that game I’ll mention this upcoming game’s demo I also tried this week. Hot Heat Reset is described as a maze action game (I guess like Pac-Man) that has a “press one of four directions and go flying in that direction until you hit something solid” control scheme. You basically have to grab every tiny blue collectible thing in a stage, which opens the exit of said maze. It’s a fairly standard concept but it feels a bit different so far in the demo.
I think the biggest thing that sticks out is that it feels very quick. You fly across the stage so fast that if your fingers are fast enough you can blaze through a series of turns in about a second flat. The game only requires you to do so once or twice in the demo (or perhaps I was missing an easier path) but even if you don’t have to push the pace and instead take your time it gives the game a very snappy dynamic feel. It’s probably best to not go too fast too soon though as despite describing itself as a maze action game it is much more puzzle adjacent as you sometimes need to figure out the right series of moves to make to grab a certain blue thing or make your way into a given pathway.
It also has a button that let’s you place a block in any adjacent square that isn’t a wall or block that also happens to explode a second later and will kill you if you are still nearby. Even with the presence of a tutorial the demo doesn’t really put you in any situations where this seemed necessary or even helpful. This may simply be the consequence of the demo being the first 10 or so stages but I couldn’t really get a feel for how this mechanic would play out in the game proper. These opening stages do have existing blocks that are set to explode a second after you touch them that do a fine job of spurring you forward.
Anyways as a demo I can’t say for sure that the final game will be good or not, but at the very least it feels good. The graphics are simplish but very clean and striking, the controls are quick and responsive, and while what is included feels a bit basic (again, first 10 levels) I can see how it could potentially develop into something rather swell. I’m just gonna end by including the store page video as it gives a better feel for how quick it can play than anything I could write.