My love affair with Ferry Halim’s work is well documented… and indeed, his latest creation still manages to give me that warm, fuzzy feeling. During this recent encounter, he looks as good as usual, he says all the right words… but I can’t help but feel that our last date was better.
Whichever way you look at it, his portfolio of 59 games is unmatched and unrivaled within the industry. Whilst not every game is a heart-stopper, there is no denying that the “Orisinal” touch is just that: original. He continually gets a lot of attention and echoes of his ideas are often heard in the work of his peers… mine included.
Here’s a quick look at his latest game, The Crossing.
Let’s start with the Orisinal checklist:
- Cute main character: check
- Mega-chilled, semi-classical soundtrack: check
- Beautiful visuals: check
- Simple, novel idea: check
- Uncomplicated and easy controls: check
Right, so all the regular ingredients are present. What makes this edition tick?
The game sees you looking through a sunlit, deer-filled forest and positions you with a Breakout/Arkanoid style paddle to help guide these deer across the stream in the middle of the screen.
The deer flow from left to right in a continuous bouncing procession and it is your job to repel them to safety. You use the mouse to position the paddle and the left mouse button to utilise the paddle shadow, which effectively gives you control of two paddles and/or doubles the space you can patrol.
The image above shows the the platform shadow feature in action.
The game also has a number of floral, powerup tokens that fall from the sky for you to collect with your platform. These are: extra life, double paddle length and a x3 points multiplier.
And that’s it… the game continues until you lose all five lives… and this can take quite some time… perhaps herein lies the problem.
Despite the elegance and simple game concept, it seems that it takes a little too long to get started. The animation is clearly first-class, the platform shadow concept is fun, new and simple to use, but the longevity of the challenge is lacking. Unlike Winterbells, I was quite happy with only playing once or twice… perhaps because I knew that I’d already seen everything, mastered the one required skill and nothing was left to play for except points - which is not always enough of a motivation.
Let me be clear that I’m only comparing Ferry to himself… perhaps his most difficult task in game development is matching his previous accomplishments and meeting the expectations of players and critics.
I encourage you to make up your own mind - The Crossing is definitely worth a look and please leave a note with your impressions.
Link: The Crossing
Link: The Orisinal Library
