Remember “StarWings: Mission Command”? It was a second effort from developer RicolaVG, and a good one (far better than their first). Well, trolling two year old games today on the indie games channel, I ran into a second one from them, and it captured my interest. “Hopper” dose something, I haven’t seen before, it’s a perpetual climber, like many others in key ways, but with a unique twist.
In most constant climbers, you boost up either by hitting a target (like the air bubbles in Machiavelli’s Ascent), where in others you have to also hit an action button as you line yourself up with a platform or target. What “Hopper” does, that I haven’t seen from anything else, is that you have to hit one of several action buttons each time you line yourself up with a target. In other words, the game merges the perpetual climber with quick-time event (QTE) gameplay, adding a level of challenge to the genre. As is common with the constant climber genre, there are things to dodge as well.
Somehow this (formerly 80 Microsoft Points) game seems to have slipped under everyone’s radar, too, I couldn’t find a single gameplay video on Youtube, nor did I trip across a video review for it. It’s a shame, as it does something really interesting.
Here’s what the developer (RicolaVG) has to say about the game:
“Play as a Hopper who is a grasshopper trying to get to the top of a tree. Jump on the leaves to get higher and watch out for falling apples.”
P.S. While I didn’t find any gameplay videos, or video reviews, I did find this strangely hypnotic and artsy video using Hopper. Interesting.
Writings of Mass Deduction 