Indie Hotness: Pollen Sonata Needs A Home
Pollen Sonata pits players in the role of a small piece of pollen gliding from flower to flower, navigating wind streams and changing form in a garden of reproduction. A small Danish studio has been developing the game with hopes to release a version for the Wii. The game has a collection aspect to it, as you are gathering other pieces of pollen which affect your navigation. The visual style has a painterly cell shaded look that is simple and serene. The weightless flight reminds me of the most excellent indie game Cloud, made by Jenova Chen of flOw fame.
For those of you interested in playing a prototype of the game, head on over to the official site to download it. Now you have to have Steam and Half-Life 2 installed to be able to play it. If there is anyone out there who can play the demo, please put your impressions below. The game looks fantastic and I hope it finds a publisher and a home on the Wii. The Wiimote seems like a natural fit for this title, and the system could use some really experimental games.
Check out the teaser trailer after the jump!
Danish devs come up with Pollen Sonata, need publisher [WiiFanboy]
Toots
Posted to Video Games, Videos on 1 June 2007
· Comments (1)
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I gave this game a shot, mostly because of how similar it appeared to the "Casual Gameplay" species of flash games that have been cropping up over the last few years. I will say that the game itself is a touch buggy (which is to be expected, of course) but I can easily see how, with a good makeover, could become a great wii game.
There really isn't a whole lot of complexity to the gameplay. You play as a pollen spore with little "wings" that can be shifted to better adapt to the wind. The goal is to bump into other pollen spores to form a small fleet, and once you hit the prequisite amount of spores, board your insect carrier that will escourt you to the next level. It all sounds pretty easy, but the constantly shifting wind can carry you frustratingly off course in your attempt to wrangle your pollen homies. Also, in can be difficult to find the other spores in the one level presented in the beta version: the level itself is fairly large, and the spores are... well... kinda tiny. But, as I said before, this obviously just an experiment with a new kind of gameplay, so it's difficult to be overly critical with the unrefined game mechanics.
Lastly, one of the major appeals to the game is the soft music playing in the background that seems to gain more sonic elements as you enlarge your botonic entourage. Being a big fan of the multitudinous flash games found on sites such as jayisgames.com, I really appreciated this approach to sound that you normally don't see outside of the experimental flash realm. All in all, the fifteen or twenty minutes I spent playing the game were very relaxing, and I think that the Wii would be great platform for this offbeat little distraction.