Chains Review

Simple art matches the simple gameplay

It seems I’ve got a full plate (maybe even a platter?) of puzzle games to work my way through this week, starting off the the pleasantly simplistic Chains.

Created by Ivan and Philip Traykov, Chains is something of a tech-demonstration for the game creation platform AGen, which they’re also currently developing.  The AGen engine’s aim is to make the integration of game code and hardware simpler for developers in a 2D environment.  As an advertisement it’s surprisingly convincing too, as the vector graphics do a good job of translating the sophisticated physics engine running behind the scenes.

But don’t let this talk of tech-demo and advertisement put you off, because these are only things that are going to be interesting to aspiring developers.  What should grab everyone else’s attention is the fact that Chains is a highly enjoyable puzzler game with a friendly price tag.

The game is a traditional colour matcher, that makes use of a series of different challenges to keep the gameplay fresh.  Each level spawns coloured bubbles that have to be chained (see what they did there?) together to clear and gain score.  There are twenty scenarios all up, from simple score chases to rather complex balancing acts and speed clearings.  Where one level might ask you to complete chains of increasing length, another level might set you the goal of creating an exact score using bubbles of varying size.

"Flippers", one of the more challenging levels

There are three difficulty options, depending on your challenge preference, but for the most part there isn’t a noticeable difference level-to-level.  The hard difficulty throws another colour of bubble into the mix (which can certainly throw a spanner in the works for the speed clearance levels) but the gameplay strategy won’t really change much.  The game itself actually handles the challenge meter nicely, interspersing the high-stress levels with more thoughtful ones, which gives you the opportunity to rest after some frantic action.

There will be a certain amount of trial and error when you begin, as Chains lacks a tutorial mode, but it’s fairly simple stuff to learn.  There are a few sneaky tactics you can make use of that the game doesn’t explicitly mention.  Setting up a chain makes the link between two bubbles unbreakable, for instance, which you prove quite useful if you want to stall to shape larger chains or even divert other bubbles in play.

It’s the best type of puzzle game, simple but evolving over time.  Each level tests something subtly different to it’s predecessor, and slowly increases the difficulty to keep things interesting.  In fact the only thing that Chains lacked was a staple score attack mode, the kind that you see in almost every other puzzle game.  There are levels that you could use to test your chaining techniques, but the game could have easily included a simple “big-ass bucket” level purely for high-score seekers.

"The Stream" challenges you to keep your bubbles flowing downward

But apart from that, there’s plenty to enjoy in Chains if you’re just looking to zone out for a couple of hours.

However, I should give you a word of warning if you’re looking for a puzzle game to play on your laptop.  Make sure you have a mouse on hand to use.  Initially was playing this game with my touchpad, and even the easiest levels were presenting a real challenge because of the touchpad’s lack of accuracy.  It didn’t take me long to give up and grab the mouse off my desktop, and immediately the game handled perfectly.  I never thought I’d say it, but I found myself thinking that Chains would be the perfect game to play with a touchscreen like the iPad, as using your fingers to link up bubbles would be easily the most accurate way to build and complete chains.

The visuals are nothing amazing, simple vectors and colourful backgrounds, but they seem well suited to the game’s purposes.  There were a few levels where the background could accidentally obscure a certain bubble colour, but this occur often.  What did really stand out was the game’s soundtrack, a variety of techno/electronica from Belgian group Silence’s album L’autre Endroit.  If you’ve got a subwoofer plugged in to your computer, the massive bass breaks to some tracks really serve to heighten a given level’s urgency.  There are also some more mellow tracks to suit strategy levels too, but for someone who doesn’t listen to a lot of electronica I was certainly impressed with the audio selection.

The Verdict:

Pros: Easy to learn and highly entertaining.  Each level provides you with something new to try without breaking the colour-chaining mechanic.  Great soundtrack.

Cons: Not a lot of eye-candy for the player, as the visuals are clearly more functional than artistic.  Although the challenges are great, could have used a basic score attack mode to keep me coming back.

Overall: Chains is a compelling package.  It might be a little on the short side (all 20 levels should only take you three or four hours to complete) but it has a player-friendly price tag to match.  I’d imagine that this is one of those games that will prove popular if it ever makes it way onto mobile devices.  Either way, certainly worth a look.  3 out of 5.