First Looks// EGX First Looks: Haunt the House, Hookball, Induction

The action in Hookball does ramp up very quickly as the player continues to hurl and punch enemies into the lake of lava. As they do so the ticking clock winds back, preventing the game from ending due to a timeout.

This clock maintains the tempo of Hookball, as the player is constantly needing to destroy creatures in order to remain airborne while feeding the lake of lava.

Eventually other enemies appear that present their own challenges to the player. Some shoot lasers out in random directions, while others have shields around them that have to be knocked away before the enemy themselves can be destroyed.

I really enjoyed Hookball. It reminded me a lot of games from the 8 bit and 16 bit era that were terribly difficult yet somehow rewarding to play. The visuals are not too far away from those games either, along with the reggae inspired tune that rumbles along as you play.

Hookball is currently available for free on iOS 6 and up devices.


Induction by Bryan Gayle

Cause and effect. These two are normally written in this order for a reason - one typically cannot have an effect without a cause. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but just bear with me for a moment on this one as I'm trying to explain the brain melting concept behind Induction.

For Induction is all about messing around with this assumption that an effect has to follow a cause by asking what if an cause followed an effect. Bryan Gayle, the developer of Induction considered this after an argument with a friend about the time paradoxes found in the Terminator films. He thought that it is possible to consider time as a fluid state and not a continuous stream that only goes in one direction. From this premise he created Induction; a game in which the player must use time to manipulate the present by constantly switching cause and effect.

Those familiar with Braid would have encountered the use of past selves before. Like Braid, Induction allows the player to move their avatar, in this case a square block, to a location which the future version of the block can then interact with. The past block can rest on switches or create bridges over which the present block can traverse. I liken it to mixing Braid with Edge, which is a pretty accurate description of what Induction actually is.

The visuals are very clean and to the point. There is a map, which the player must traverse through using the time distortion mechanics described above. Each map increases in difficulty and the combination of time teleportation and the manipulation of objects in the world become ever more convoluted.

While playing Induction I felt as if the world around me melted away and it was just me and the map. It's at that point I knew I was pretty much enamoured with Induction and I very much look forward to seeing it appear in 2015 on Windows PC, Mac and Linux.