Binaries Review

In gaming today it seems that an original idea is an increasingly rare commodity. Game mechanics are duplicated, refined and modified to the point where many popular titles are, at their core, a rehashed mix of other people’s ideas. Such techniques are not always a bad thing; reuse of mechanics helps the player familiarise themselves with new titles and there’s a certain amount of “if it ain't broke don’t fix it” to consider, but once in awhile it’s nice to see something you haven’t seen before.

Enter indie puzzle platformer Binaries which has at its core a concept that is fresh, original and interesting. Dubbed by creator Ant Workshop as “the world’s first concentration platformer” the object of the game is simple: control two small bouncing balls, one blue and one orange, from their start point to their respective goals. The interesting part is that you have to control both of these avatars simultaneously. Move orange to the left and blue also moves left. Make blue jump and orange jumps and so on.

It’s an easy concept to grasp and the opening levels are straightforward affairs, easing you into the game as it slowly introduces new obstacles for your wee round chums to navigate. As well as platforms you’ll have to negotiate other environmental hazards like pits, spikes and projectiles, increasing in number, complexity and difficulty as you progress through the stages. Hitting any of these hazards will destroy your ball(s), and you’re sent back to the beginning of the level to try again. It’s not very challenging at first, which is a good thing because controlling two characters at the same time takes a while to get accustomed to and the difficulty soon increases.

And OH BOY does the difficulty increase. To begin with the route each ball takes is the same on both sides, but after the first few levels it changes up and you have to get each ball to the end zone via a different route. Paired with the fact that controlling both balls is already pretty hard and you’re often stuck in situations where you concentrate too much on one side of the screen and don’t notice the impending death on the other.

By a quarter of the way through I’d died hundreds of times and certain levels tested my patience to the point of frustration and very loud swearing. I don’t think I've ever uttered so many expletives at a game since Super Meat Boy. Thankfully you don’t have to progress linearly, completing a level will unlock several others, allowing you to skip troublesome sections and take an alternate route. It is fun and it’s immensely satisfying to beat a level after several (dozen) tries, but I can’t help but feel it’s a little too difficult at times. Maybe that says more about my own ability than it does the game.

With 101 levels there’s a lot of game for your money. For the completionists and masochists among you there’s the opportunity to replay levels to achieve faster times, which are ranked depending on your time to completion. A lot of my ranks are U which I’m told by the developer means unranked, but which I suspect actually stands for “U SUCK, M8.”

Visually it’s uncomplicated but well defined. Half the level is blue and half is orange and that’s all you’re getting. The graphical effects are there to tell you where to land or what to avoid and it does this well, never leaving you in confusion as to what you’re meant to be doing. It doesn't attempt to do more than needs to.

Binaries is a game with a simple nature and that’s reflected in how it is presented. Same goes for the sound design, with an electronic soundtrack and old school arcade effects. The balls make a satisfying anthropomorphic “ow” sound when they die, much like the noise you’d expect a robot to make if you kicked it in the shin, assuming it has shins.

A feature noted in the game's description is that the soundtrack alters depending on your performance. Increasing in tempo and intensity if you progress quickly, and slowing down to a calmer ambient level if you’re having difficulty, attempting not to distract you from swearing at a tiny orange ball because you were too busy paying attention to the blue one to notice that rotating spike you landed the orange on. I honestly can’t say I noticed the change, which is either because the change is very subtle or because I was doing so badly the music never changed pace.

There’s not much in the way of storytelling, but this seems purposeful rather than lacking, content not to shoehorn in a story just for the sake of it. It has a nice, clean old school style, allowing you to concentrate on the task at hand rather than attempt to dazzle you with flashy effects.

Each level is narrated by a series of floating messages on the screen, sometimes giving helpful advice but mostly handing out witty comments and hints at what lies ahead in future levels. The on screen prompts are reminiscent of indie platformer Thomas Was Alone, an obvious influence the game doesn't hide from, directly referencing Mike Bithell’s award winning title in one of the levels. In fact it wears influences on its sleeve, from the Portal-esque colour scheme to the sarcastic quips about the teleporters than appear in later stages.