Canabalt

Canabalt is one of the better flash games I’ve been playing lately.  It’s so retro and well realised that it deserves a place on this blog.

It’s also a difficult game to categorise, as it doesn’t really fit any normal ‘genre’.  Let me sum up the game in a few words:
It’s like if Michael Jackson was the Bionic Man in a game of Mirror’s Edge drawn by the people behind Flashback.

If that didn’t make the slightest sense to you, then here’s the long explanation.

You are an unnamed man, probably just an office worker, who is at work in one of the top storeys of a large building.  During work, giant robots land in the city and start destroying it.  The aim of the game is to outrun the destruction of the city in the subsequent war.  Your character looks handdrawn using pixel art, and is therefore faceless, but the one person I thought he looked like was Michael Jackson, (if MJ was a collection of pixels in a black and white world, no pun intended).

The game is played using just one button- this is X, C, or the spacebar, depending on your preference alone.  This is your ‘jump’ button.  The arrow keys and mouse buttons do nothing, as evidenced by the pause screen, which appears whenever you click off the game.  Anyone who played ‘City Jumper’ – I think that’s what it’s called – when they were a bit younger will get the gist of the game; run across the rooftops, avoid obstacles.

As you’re running, you increase speed dramatically, until you’re at the point where a single step can take you across three buildings.  This is why I figured the main character must be some morph of the Bionic Man.  No office worker can run at 50mph or jump four storeys, and I don’t think adrenaline is capable of enhancing the body’s efficiency that much.  When you need to decrease speed, all you have to do is hit any square obstacle on the rooftops.  This appears to halve your speed and allow you to take a little more time in reacting to jumps.

Alongside the small square obstacles that you come across scattered throughout the buildings, those which only take a small jump to get past, such as air conditioning units or crates, you will also face timed jumps where you must leap through a glass window into an office corridor and usually smash another immediately after, you will face bombs dropping out of the sky and smashing into buildings, you must face buildings falling down while you are running across them, and all well over the national speed limit.

It’s an excellent game with which to improve your reflexes, although that’s not a scientifically proven statement.  I like the gameplay very much, especially looking at the background when you get a chance and seeing giant robots moving through your destroyed city.  It’s not very often you can do that, of course, because when you do you probably smack into a wall and fall to your death.

As for sound, well.  The music is suitably tense to begin with – you’re running through an office building that’s shaking and rumbling, and all you hear on the music is repeating synths and low strings to suggest the oncoming horror, like in a typical slasher movie.  If you time it right, the second you begin running at a proper speed the action music will come in.  It would fit perfectly in a science fiction/action movie such as Blade Runner.  The music itself is fast paced but doesn’t kill the tension, as it is on a loop that brings it perfectly back to the tense strings, which when you’re running through a city and you can see the giant robots in the background turning on search lights and things, is the perfect complement.

Also with the sound, when the music isn’t up to full on synth action, you can hear your character’s footsteps, every single one, as he runs across the rooftops and it changes to a metal tap when he runs across the top of a crane.  It’s these little details that make the game that much better.

In terms of graphics, it’s realised in a very retro, pixel art style.  The character is faceless so no one person can identify with him and make the rest of the players feel less empathy.  The reason why I mentioned Flashback earlier in the review is that it really does remind me of the same art style – the character’s movement is realistic because it was based off a moving person.  The way the character rolls when he drops from a higher height is a nice touch, or the way he ‘mario jumps’ into the air and then flails his arms trying to get more distance before hitting the ground.  The screen shaking when spaceships hurtle by in the background is a great way of making the game feel more dangerous without actually adding to the risk factor.  But my favourite part is when you smash a window and roll on a building covered in birds – they all appear to randomly fly away, as a scared flock, in no set direction.

(For this and all future games I’m also going to implement a more specific scoring system, in the following areas: Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, Story.  Although as Yahtzee says, I don’t think the player’s opinion of a game can be fully explained numerically.)

Graphics: 10/10.  For what it is, the retro type of game, the graphic style is perfectly pulled off and needs no changes.
Sound: 8/10.  I thought the soundtrack was excellent but I would like to say that there could be a little variation, and there should be a separate button to mute the sound effects and the music rather than having it all or having nothing.
Gameplay: 9/10.  Again, for what it is, the single button gameplay works in context, but hitting a wall and ‘tumbling to your death’ when you definitely hit the window immediately below it is very annoying, especially when you’re on the verge of beating your highscore.  It’s good to know that the track is randomly generated though, as it stops people from simply learning a jumping pattern.
Story: 6/10.  Here is where we hit a snag.  I know, I know, the concept of a story doesn’t seem particularly important when it’s simply a high score beating game, for improving reflexes, but it could do with a backstory at the very least.  We don’t know why the robots are here or why they are destroying the city, we don’t know where he’s running to, we don’t even know who he is!  An opening cutscene of a news report explaining some things might be good, and easily skippable for people who have played before.  An ending for the game might be nice to open up a sequel – Canabalt 2: In the Country – where you have escaped the city and must navigate the countryside to a safehouse.

All in all, a good game.  If you haven’t played the game and would like to, the creator’s site (free of ads and so forth) is here:
http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/

If you’d like to play the game in (almost) full screen (and believe me, it makes the experience that much nicer), go here:
http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/mega/

This is Ninja Duck, signing off.  Enjoy the game, there’s more to come.

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~ by ninjaduckie on September 11, 2009.