There are a lot of flashing lights at PAX East, and everything is designed to catch your attention. Booths come in all sizes here, and many of them include the loudest of loud speakers ever. So loud. And such headache.
It can be easy to miss the hidden gems. That’s what almost happened with me and developer Press Play, and their newly announced game Totem. I must have walked right past them on the way to the elevator about a hundred times. But boy oh boy am I so glad I stopped by to see the game. Hey, friends, Totem is some kind of magic, amazing fun.
Totem is a 2D puzzle platformer designed around controlling two pieces of, well, a totem. The pieces’ movements are mirrored and need to be coordinated to clear color-coded barriers. That’s it. It’s simple in theory, straightforward in execution, and joy-inducing as a result.
The game has both single player and co-op modes, but the focus is clearly on the latter. Nonetheless, I started my adventure with the three single-player modes on site, using them as a tutorial to learn the controls. As the levels progressed I earned new powers. In one I gained the ability to switch the color of my characters, necessary for clearing the barriers. In another I was able to jump and attach — magnetically — to the top of the screen. The levels are designed to kind of force us to use all of the tools we have, often to flip non stop at twitch-like speeds.
In one area, I had to bounce against my other half across colored obstacles, while avoiding the enemies that would travel horizontally in my way. One wrong move and I wouldn’t line up my totem pieces, resulting in one landing in the opposite colored zone. Instadeath. In a vertical fall zone, I had to maneuver left and right, flip my totems, and collect items as I dropped at breakneck speed a la Super Meat Boy. Somehow I got out of that one alive, but I have no idea how.
The platforming is very concise, from the standpoint that the controls felt extremely natural and jumping was easily predictable. That can always be a challenge for devs, but Totem nails it, and I had no trouble managing the separate pieces even on an icy alpha level the team had hidden away.
The couch co-op mode, though, is what this game was designed for. As my partner and I traversed through the PAX demo level, I often found myself yelling “ooooooh!” and “aaaaaahahahaha” and giggling. The game will often ask the players to pile on top of one another to solve puzzles, and successfully clearing even the smallest of obstacles lead to me and my partner to high-five and shout “yeah!” in support.
The mode is 100% about conversation, and if you don’t communicate with your partner the resulting effect is usually instadeath. That will happen OFTEN, as I found out. Thankfully, the game’s infinite death/rebirth mechanic and generous respawn locations never lead to anyone being upset.
It’s fun, even to fail.
Mated with big, bold, contrasting colors and a soothing tribal-infused soundtrack, Totem becomes more of party game rather than a challenging platformer. It’s exciting, it’s funny, and it shoots out rainbows of fun. Expect it this Fall for Xbox One and Xbox 360.
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