It’s always fun to see the smaller projects get picked up. There’s something rewarding about being able to watch the little guys win over the big companies and have their labor of love introduced to a wider audience. Puddle fits that description to a T. Made by six French students, Puddle came into its own by winning a student showcase award at the 2010 GDC Independent Games Festival.
While at first glance it’s easy to compare Puddle to other liquid physics games, Puddle manages to stand out in the crowd. To be 100% honest, I can’t find anything that seems fair to use as a direct comparison. The basic premise is familiar, guide your mass of liquid from one side of the maze to the other while trying to minimalize losses, but it manages to add a lot to that formula.
Your liquids will be used to power engines, dodge heat beams and electric currents. The physics promise to be tight and precise, forcing you to judge just how much speed you need to make that jump and if it’s worth the droplets you’d leave behind. You’ll have to guide radioactive fluid carefully through factories and even follow a sip of water through the human body by tilting the game world. Honestly, this is probably as close as I’ll ever get to reliving Body Wars, and it’s a welcome distraction from the norm.
Puddle promises to blur the line between puzzle game and platformer and offer a new challenge to gamers. You can look for it on XBLA January 25th, and PSN on January 31st. Check back later this week for our full review when we test the water. I’ll see myself out.
http://youtu.be/9d_VrScUmL4
Physics-Based Puzzle Game Hits Xbox LIVE® Arcade on January 25th and Playstation® Network on January 31st in North America
Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today unveiled new screenshots and North American launch dates for Puddle, coming to Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft on January 25th and PlayStation®Network for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system on January 31st. The new screenshots feature peeks at the variety of courses available for play. Players must dodge heat beams and rays of electric current, handle a blob of radioactive fluid with care, guide a virtual puddle of rocket fuel through a hand drawn blueprint, follow a sip of water as it makes its way through a human body, and much more!
What began as a student project that won a Student Showcase prize at Independent Gaming Festival at the Game Developer’s Conference 2010, is now a full-fledged downloadable game like nothing players have experienced before. In Puddle, gamers guide puddles of fluid through a variety of novel, themed environments (the human body, a garden, a foundry, and more). But to do so, they must tilt the environment, balancing each fluid’s unique properties with the environmental factors of gravity, friction, and each course’s obstacles. With players never being able to see the entire level from the start, Puddle will offer plenty of unexpected twists, keeping players alert and ready for the next challenge waiting for them around the corner. Puddle initially began as a project from six students from the French videogame school ENJMIN, and was ultimately picked up and developed by Neko Entertainment.
For more information on Puddle, including new screenshots, please go to www.konami.com/download