Every once in a while you’ll stumble across a game title that’s difficult to decipher. Games like Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel and Lineage II: The Chaotic Throne – The 1st Throne: Kamael. And with the recent release of Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match, we have yet another game to add to the list of long-named and confusing games.

Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match is a Japanese anime fighter, developed by Examu. The game was originally released in Japan to arcades in 2011, and later made available on the PS3 through Japanese developer Aquaplus.  Now, developer Atlus USA has localized Aquapazza and released it in North America on the Playstation Network or in select retailers for $29.99.

Before we get into the meat of the game though, let’s break the uber-confusing title down. The first word Aquapazza is Italian and means “crazy water” in English (more on that later). Aquaplus is the game’s publisher in Japan. And Dream Match refers to the 26 characters in the game which are plucked from previous Aquaplus games (Mostly visual novels.)

So now that we’ve de-coded the game’s title, we can move onto the heart of the game: its fighting mechanics. A:ADM lets you select two fighters before a battle; a primary fighter and a support character, both of which of split into separate categories. The primary fighter takes care of the main battle. However, they can call in the support character to show up briefly and dole up some quick damage. Support characters can never take damage; think of them as almost another attack in your arsenal. Matching up the right support characters with primary characters is an important skill to learn   (there’s no use pairing up a quick/combo support character with a primary fighter that is slower and focuses on grappling).

Another interesting system that Examu introduced is something called “emotion”. You gain emotion by attacking, chaining combos and being offensive. Higher emotion leads to more effective attacks and special abilities. If you’re too defensive, block often and hardly engage, you’ll lose emotion which leads to taking more damage. It’s a smart system that promotes attacking and punishes being too offensive, and it’s something that other fighters might be able to learn from.

A:ADM’s  controls are as tight and responsive as you could wish for in a fighting game. It’s easy to execute the combos and moves that you want, and it all looks very flashy on-screen. Playing A:ADM is a joy, but it’s some of the game’s other quirks that might scare people away.

Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match’s story, characters and dialogue might be a little strange for some North American players. The character roster, unsurprisingly, is littered with scantily clad female fighters. The writing, both pre-fight and post-fight is bizarre and almost seems like it sometimes got lost in translation (Although I’m pretty sure this isn’t true because Atlus USA seems to know what they’re doing). And then there’s the story.

The story starts off with an evil witch brewing some “crazy water” (aquapazza) to make all of the world’s “hot boys” like her, and it escalates in weirdness from there. If you’re not familiar with the Aquaplus universe though, you’re going to have problems understanding what’s going on story-wise.  It doesn’t come as a surprise, but it is disappointing that players might have to motivate themselves to slog through the convoluted story.

Fortunately, A:ADM has other fleshed-out modes to compensate for its mediocre campaign. The online mode is where the game will get its long-term legs, and it works well. It was a little difficult to get a match at first, but as the game was out longer getting fights was easier and easier.

The game also includes a very straight forward versus mode and a very useful training mode, which is equipped with a “record” option and damage input information. It’s a shame that the main story wasn’t as fleshed out as the game’s other modes.

Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match is a very good fighting game. Its mechanics, unique systems and gorgeous graphics make it a joy to play. It might, however, have a problem appealing to North American audiences. Many players will have a hard time finding anything to grasp on to or relate to. The characters and story will be foreign to most players.

If you’re looking for a good fighting romp, Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match is a very good option at $29.99 on the Playstation Network. However, if you’re diving into the story, be prepared to have no idea of what’s going on.

This review is based on a review copy of the PSN retail version of Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match, developed by Examu and published in North America by Atlus USA.

In recent years video games have tried to emulate this narrative freedom of choice, with minimal degrees of success. 2007’s BioShock, for instance, presented the player with a limited amount of binary decisions that lead to one of just two endings. While games like Heavy Rain and Mass Effect provided the player with the illusion of having to make several meaningful choices, the games’ stories arguably funneled into the same direction.

Refreshingly, the narrative deficiencies that plague most video games are absent, and frequently taunted, in the recently released indie game The Stanley Parable.

Originally wheeled out in 2011 as a mod for the Source Engine, The Stanley Parable was polished up, had new story elements added, and was submitted to Steam Greenlight last year as a standalone game. The result is a clever, experimental and rare piece of interactive fiction that serves as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on modern-day video game storytelling.

As the game’s title leads on, The Stanley Parable has you playing as Stanley; an office worker tasked with the monotonous job of pressing the buttons that a mysterious computer monitor commands him to hit. As the game starts, the narrator, voiced by the capricious Kevan Brighting, sets the scene. Stanley works in an office with his co-workers. None of them are sure exactly what they’re doing, or why they’re doing it. One morning Stanley’s colleagues disappear, and he sets out to investigate

From there, the way you choose to approach things is entirely open-ended. Will you take the left or right door? Will you explore the office, or attempt to get out as fast as you can? Virtually every decision you make is accompanied by Brighting’s narration. You can comply with what he’s saying and help him build “his story”. Or, you can release your insurgent side and ignore him completely. The narrator reacts accordingly to whatever you end up doing, which makes for some genuinely funny dialogue. (Pro-tip: Make sure you go in the broom closet)

There’s no puzzle solving, combat or tricky platforming in The Stanley Parable. The gameplay is as vanilla as it comes. However, these omissions and the otherwise painfully-simple gameplay, lend themselves to the game’s structure and style. It’s all about adventure and discovery in TSP, and as your story unfolds and you discover new things, it’s really easy to forget about the game’s elementary gameplay. Road blocks like combat areas or quick, simple puzzles would dilute the experience and spoil what the game’s developer Galactic Cafe was going for.

A play through of The Stanley Parable can take anywhere from five to thirty minutes. However,  the game’s numerous endings and secrets will most likely end up forcing players to re-run through the game’s narrative channels several times.The game’s conclusions are all incredibly varied; several themes are touched upon and the Stanley’s dimensions are shattered. Some endings are straightforward, others are ludicrous. Either way, it’s worth experiencing them all.

The Stanley Parable is a clever, uncommon and dazzling piece of entertainment. If you’re after  a title with deep-seated gameplay mechanics and systems, pass The Stanley Parable over. If you’re looking for a genuinely meaningful and amusing story that adapts to your choices and that references everything from The Matrix to 1984, The Stanley Parable is unsurpassed. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure book come to life.

This review is based on a Steam retail version of The Stanley parable, developed by Galactic Cafe.

With that in mind, it’s interesting that Might and Delight’s next move isn’t making another game similar to Pid. Having been released so recently, you’d think that now would have been a good opportunity to right some of the punishing and unforgiving wrongs that some people felt plagued the game. After spending some time with the developer’s upcoming game Shelter, though, I’m both intrigued and appreciative that Might and Delight has decided to try something completely newfangled, yet reassuringly unfamiliar.

Might and Delight calls Shelter an “original emotional experience”, and while some may accuse that statement of sounding somewhat pretentious, both of those adjectives ring true.

Shelter puts you in the role of a badger responsible for watching over your litter of five cubs. You’re tasked with feeding, protecting, and safely guiding them throughout the game’s levels. You’ll have to feed them plants and frogs, all the while protecting them from threats like lurking hawks, raging fires, and swirling rivers.

The real kicker, and where the aforementioned “emotion” comes in, is that you can permanently lose a cub. Towards the end of the game’s first level, you’re faced with the first threat to your children – a hawk. Although the game has a very light tutorial, mostly focusing on controls and simple mechanics, it never mentions that one of your cubs can be killed off so quickly (which is to the game’s benefit). This omission forced me to learn the fragility of my cub’s life the hard way. As I was galloping through the field, a tactic that I thought would lead me and my children to safety, I heard a piercing scream. I panned the camera around, and soon realized I was down to four cubs. I felt a sharp jolt of disappointment as I realized what had just occurred.

Moments like these seem to be littered throughout Shelter. When you run into something that poses a danger to your children, you’ll try your damnedest to overcome that obstacle with as little damage as possible.

The segments in between the environmental dangers are a great chance to plod through the levels that Might and Delight has set up and ponder Shelter’s unique visual style. The game is built on the Unity engine, a toolset that’s popular in the independent scene and not necessarily known for its bleeding-edge visuals.

While Shelter doesn’t impress much technically, its art design is a unique departure. Mostly everything in the environment looks patterned and blocky, but it works here. Shelter’s rough-around-the-edges look compliments its simple game play and draws more focus to the relationship that you forge with your cubs.

Feeding, protecting, and guiding your cubs to safety is the thing Shelter most wants to emphasize, and it nails down these aspects perfectly. Both the act of, and feedback from your cubs is surprisingly satisfying when you are successful in parenting them.

If this satisfaction can persist throughout the game and offer a payoff in some emotional way, Shelter promises to be something worth playing – and very unique – when it’s launched on Steam (after maneuvering its way through Steam Greenlight) later this month.

This preview is based on a preview build for the PC version of Shelter developed by Might and Delight.

The puzzle-platformer genre is one that a lot of independent game developers have fallen in love with over the last few years.  From Braid to Pid to Limbo to Fez, there’s something about creating a game that involves puzzle solving on a two-dimensional plane that really appeals to independent game creators.

Independent Finnish developer Facepalm Games are the latest freewheeling game makers to release a side-scrolling, two-dimensional puzzle-platformer. Their creation: The Swapper. The result? An incredibly atmospheric puzzler that introduces a fantastically unique, yet simple game mechanic that’s all brought together by a truly one-of-a-kind art style and a stirring soundtrack.  Also, talking space rocks.

Most of The Swapper takes place on an abandoned and nearly destroyed space station called Thesus. It’s not immediately clear how things on the ship got so messed up, but text logs from former Thesus employees scattered throughout the ship, as well as the all-too-often whispering of strange space rock formations sitting on the space station, languidly, albeit clumsily, reveal the once-inhabited ship’s secrets.

Structurally, The Swapper is very Metroid in design.  Solve puzzles to collect orbs, which give you access to new teleports and areas of the space station. A limited amount of backtracking is present, particularly towards the latter end of the game, but it’s nothing that you’ll tear your hair out over.

Early in the game, players acquire the swapper – a tool that allows the creation of up to four clones and, as the name suggests, gives you the ability to swap over to any of the aforementioned clones and take full control of it. When you activate the swapping ability, time slows down, giving you the ability to swap with pinpoint precision – a feature that you’ll eventually learn to really appreciate.

All of these mechanics may seem like just a novelty at first, but as you dive deeper into some of the game’s borderline-genius puzzles, you’ll realize that the two Scandinavian university students that make up Facepalm Games have built The Swapper around an astounding core concept.

Remember that feeling in Portal when you used the portal gun for the first time and realized the possibilities it held? The Swapper has moments that rival that feeling: the first time you’re falling down a chasm to your certain death, you create a clone on the ground, swap over to it, and safely walk away as your old self hits the floor with an uncomfortable crunch behind you. Or using the swapper to create a clone above you and then swapping up to it to gain access an otherwise unreachable ledge. The Swapper is full of moments that force you to think in ways that are usually foreign to most minds, and this is particularly true for the game’s later puzzles.

Puzzles increase in complexity as the game moves along thanks to the introduction of colored light sources. Blue lights will block clones from being created in the lit up area, red lights prevent the swapping ability and purple lights render your gun useless in the illuminated area. Space ship-y elements like gravity switches and teleports are also integrated in the later rooms to complete The Swapper’s satisfying, fantastically designed, and provoking puzzle suite.

The Swapper’s art style is something that quite truly sets it apart. Instead of using traditional digital textures, Facepalm Games used handcrafted art assets and clay to form the game’s areas. This way of creating the environments doesn’t turn out as cheesy as it sounds; rather, it looks different in a subtle way that’s difficult to pinpoint.  Combine this with a touch of film grain overlay, and The Swapper visually distinguishes itself in a way that’s hard not to admire.

An inauspicious score which relies heavily on a piano is the highlight of The Swapper’s audio offerings. The game’s other sound elements are solid; the swoosh of teleports, the blast of the swapper, the crunch of bones as you (or your clones) fall to their death. Facepalm Games does a shipshape job of enhancing The Swapper’s atmosphere with a good audio base – even the voice acting is more than serviceable (which isn’t always easy to come by in an indie title).

The tour around space station Thesus clocks in at around four hours, although that number will vary depending on how well you deal with the game’s occasionally near-maddening puzzles. A download of The Swapper will set you back $14.99, a very fair price despite its brevity. If you consider the variety and imagination Facepalm Games crams into the space station Thesus’ walls, the experience is well worth the price of admission.

 The Swapper is outstanding and unique in nearly every one of its respectfully concocted departments; its puzzles’ challenge, variety, and ingenuity are among the best you can find in the genre. Its presentation delights the senses in a very dark and arcane way that you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. While structurally The Swapper doesn’t innovate, its water-tight design ensures the player always knows where they can (and can’t) go next. The only thing The Swapper doesn’t get right is the story. Although you’ll encounter a thrilling finale that forces the player to make a provoking choice, everything leading up to the climax is convoluted and delivered in an overly cryptic (and, by extension, confusing and uninteresting) way.

You should most definitely play The Swapper if you haven’t already. Languish in its marvelous puzzle design. Soak up its immersive, atmospheric presentation. But most importantly, try not to take the story too seriously. It’d spoil what’s otherwise a near-perfect puzzle platformer pièce de résistance.

This review is based on a Steam retail version of The Swapper, developed and published by Facepalm Games.