I’m not sure whether you’ve ever used oil paints, but the idea behind them is straightforward: you can move them about for a very long time. Oils take a very long time to dry, which may be really unpleasant if you’re happy with your work and want to finish it. On the other hand, the upside is fully laden with positivity. When you apply paint on the canvas, you are not committing to anything at all. You may grab a brush and just move that material around for the next several hours or days, blending, reshaping, revising, and entirely altering whatever you touch.
Nevertheless, I believe Jeff Minter and I approach coding differently. That’s part of the reason his games are initially so difficult to grasp, or more accurately, the reason I’ve found them to be so easily misinterpreted. Oh, the Tempest Space Giraffe is back? That’s actually just the way he began using the canvas, though it could have seemed that way at first. Then he began to rearrange things. Then he began rearranging that items. After that, he was revising and rearranging everything to fit his newfound satisfaction. Minter has previously stated that he does not consider his role to be the coding of a predetermined design document. If you look back at his previous games, you’ll see that they always begin with a template, usually an already-existing arcade classic, that is changed by removing all of the paint until a brand-new image appears.
I believe this to be true with Akka Arrh. Perhaps this has never applied to Akka Arrh more than it does now. According to Minter, his newest arcade creation is a tower defense game where the user assumes the role of the tower or a real-time strategy game. Moreover, it was originally intended to be an Atari design that was never entirely realized through to full production. As usual, I made a mistake when I first started playing Akka Arrh. Ah, I remarked, here is Tempest once again, but with a flip. Both the top and the bottom of the well are where you are. Of course, I had forgotten the procedure. The rewriting, the reshaping, the hard job of observing what feels good at any given time.
There is virtually no way to overestimate the benefits of operating in this manner. It takes a while for Akka Arrh to click, at least for me. This is because there isn’t a simple route in here, which is why I was searching for one. (Having said that, I do advise replacing the one-button control with a two-button model.) However, when it occurs, it does so at a whole other level. It makes a deep, subcutaneous click. Even more profound: an exhilaration I sense in my marrow and bones. There is a lot going on in this game; in fact, it has more to consider while playing than any other Minter title since Space Giraffe. And yet, its intricacy is ready to melt away to expose something that feels pure because of the way it gradually changed in Minter’s hands, eyes, and thoughts to reach this current condition. total comprehension. You get into the zone with this game.
God, there’s no way to describe this. In the center of the playing field is a ram’s head tower that you control. The playing area changes from level to level, morphing between floral forms, medieval bosses, and crosses. It also often grows different heights of platform as it progresses, giving you several levels to manage. The pods you have there, which are equivalent to your life energy, are targeted by enemies who aim to take them. Every pod gone? You are gone. But bear with me: you may eliminate a significant number of these adversaries by dropping bombs on them and then trapping them in the shockwave that emerges from the explosion site. Any of these ground adversaries that are struck by the shockwave will naturally perish and unleash further shockwaves.
Link it! The objective is to maintain the combination as it builds. This is how major points are earned! Bombs may be dropped in any number of ways, but they only reset the combination once, so use them carefully. Akka Arrh desires that you exude elegance. To produce an endless bombing wave, one must locate the ideal location, ideal time, and ideal enemy formation.
However, more. More exists. First off, a bomb will only destroy adversaries on the layer it is dropped on while there are many platform tiers in use. And then there are opponents that are not impacted by explosives – did you anticipate this coming? You may blast bullets from your revolving tower in all directions to defeat these adversaries. Did you guess right when we said that adversaries you eliminate during bombings earn you bullets? Thus, while bullets don’t reset your combination, they still need to be used sparingly since they are finite, whereas bombs are endless yet should be utilized carefully because they reset your combo.
Much magic can be made with this design. At the most basic level, there are whole stages that are meant to be solved and finished with a single bomb drop that has infinitely many cascading effects. Although everything appears chaotic, there is really choreography. That is grace. However, Akka Arrh is fantastic because it provides you with both tools and repercussions, while also acknowledging that you will occasionally act in an inelegant manner. Tools include collectible power-ups and fortunate moments where a bullet lands just where it should to spare you from certain death. Consequences such as the terrible feeling you get when you and your pods are surrounded by foes impervious to bombs and you realize you are out of ammunition, that you are completely exposed, and that it is all your own foolish fault.
Mistake. Now, let’s go a little further since the more I play, the more I believe that the core of this game is controlling fault. It’s not only about getting things done; it’s also about realizing all the potential pitfalls and dodging them. Additionally, the game continuously cues you in: if you drop another bomb to break a chain, the game will really kind of boo you. Or at least there’s an empathic grunt from the invisible crowd. Complete a stage, but only with excessive bullet spamming? Failure to hang onto enough of them will cost you. Should there be an incursion into your base, your bonus will vanish. The game is instructing you to shut off these fundamental paths to failure in order to succeed.
If you continue to play, you’ll find new twists, gimmicks, and flashes of brilliant insight that arise from the main concept. With your adversaries being like tennis players and sound effects like a ringing phone and a cat on the piano attempting to get your attention, there’s a surprising lot of Space Giraffe in this game. However, the fundamental rigor that keeps it so replayable is that everything counts in this situation. Various adversary kinds, game levels, and the condition of your varied resources must all be monitored. You also have to learn about Going Downstairs, which is what to do when enemy overrun your tower during those invasions and you have to travel down this ominous tube to clear out your base up close while shooting any foes who have come too near. The terror that comes with having to be in two places at once is both terrible and great. Despite all its flaws, Akka Arrh is an excellent approximation of what it’s like to have your bath running when the doorbell rings.
Everything is presented in a traditional Minternian style, complete with strobing Robotron colors, clever writing that is frequently useful, and sitars and chopped-up audio samples. The entire game gives the impression of being privy to a body’s inner workings, despite its digital abstraction. Basic opponents resemble spike-covered flu viruses, but the swarms of succeeding foes that swim about have an appearance similar to neuroglia. I suppose that the theme of all tower defense games is homeostasis and the immune system, but it’s difficult to avoid thinking that this furious struggle is happening under a microscope.
Is there a vocabulary for what Minter does? Naturally, his games coin their own lingo—in Space Giraffe, for example, you can race bulls and prune flowers—but after a few plays, I find myself reaching for the magnifying glass or finding it difficult to sort among the references to magpies that keep popping up. You know, Robotron again with its swarming, distinct monsters, Every Extend with its widening borders and shackles, and yes, Tempest with that core tube. Protector? Why not, given how it chops up your attention like a sushi maker and, above all, a mysterious quality that I can’t quite identify that makes you feel occasionally as though there is only one way to complete each level, that these areas are actually machines waiting for you to figure out the one correct way to operate them?
To put it all together, cor. Cor, I am aware that I am still learning the ins and outs of Akka Arrh, both in terms of playing it and figuring out what I enjoy most about it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, as it took me a long time to comprehend Space Giraffe and begin to translate and decipher the joyous silence contained within that 50 MB file. However, isn’t that a component of how these games are created? One advantage of transferring paint. Turner painted in this manner; there’s a great tale of a boy who saw him paint; for a whole morning, the canvas is simply a flurry of color, and then all of a sudden, a sailing ship with intricate rigging appears. It describes Minter as well: a blend of conjecture and increasing decisiveness; in fact, it may also describe the majority of the creative heritage to which Minter belongs. This is a digital Romantic, completely exposed, and there is almost too much to see.