Maze of Space

Today Petri Purho (creator of Crayon Physics Deluxe) released a nifty little game experiment called Maze of Space that has been the best thing to accompany my morning coffee since pastries in Paris. Being a total sucker for anything remotely resembling an RPG, I’m completely biased, but while the mechanics of the game are well-established and reliable, it’s the charm of the visual treatment that warms my heart. I’m actually a bit iffy on pixel art. I think it’s trendy these days and overused, but I can really appreciate the art of using a limited palette and resolution to create interesting characters and environments, much akin to my love of low-poly modeling. In addition, I love the method of making digital things look, well less digital by giving them the qualities of physical objects (realistic textures, etc.). So when I saw how Maze of Space was treating its giant-pixel artwork I was really excited to play it. For the most part, it looks great, with each pixel looking like it was made with a paintbrush instead of MS Paint. But what the screenshots don’t tell you is that this painterly style is accompanied by a headache-inducing perpetually shaking camera. I presume this is intended to give it a stop-motion animation feel, but I think it’s too much. The camera shake for some of the weapons works, but again it seems like it shakes too much. Other issues I would like to see addressed:

• Enemies can shoot diagonally but the player cannot.
• Enemies do not move.
• Hitting ESC quits the game (I was hoping to find a menu with an option to turn off the camera shaking).
• Needs a save system.
• Money doesn’t seem to have a purpose (maybe there is a store further into the maze than I have reached?).
• The only way to see the stats on inventory items is to equip them.

I am fully prepared to throw money at this game when/if it is finished (assuming I can turn the camera shake off). Download the current release at http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/mazeofspace.