Developer: Infinite Monkey Entertainment
Publisher: Infinite Monkey Entertainment
Platform: PC
Life Goes On – Preview
Life Goes On is a comically morbid platform indie game developed by Infinite Monkeys Entertainment. In the game the player has to solve puzzles but to solve these you might have to sacrifice yourself.
From the start it’s very clear that this game will use a lot of humor. The first time you go into the game you will see a small and fun cinematic play where the logo is formed while the game’s knights sacrifice themselves. The menu shows you options to start the game from the level you were or to select a level out of the ones you’ve already completed. When choosing “select level” you will see a scroll roll open with the level on it which also serves as a menu to see how well you did in previous levels. The levels being displayed on a scroll is a detail which will not be overseen by the players.
In Life Goes On you will have to guide knights towards the Holy Grail, but the path towards the grail is filled with traps and puzzles. When a knight is not able to cross an obstacle, you might have to sacrifice that knight because everyone knows, the Holy Grail is much more important than the life of one simple knight. For example, you can sacrifice the knight by jumping on spikes and make a path for the other knight. This knight can jump on top of the dead knight’s to get across. Not only can you kill your knights by jumping on to spikes, you can also freeze them to turn them in to a block of ice to reach higher grounds or toss them in a saw blade to get certain pieces to harder to reach buttons.These buttons need to remain activated at all times so the other knights can cross the next puzzle.
The knights you sacrifice however, are not going to die completely anonymous; every knight has a unique name and a title. When sacrificing knights brutally in order to get to the Holy Grail you must not think of death as it being a setback, it is the only means to success.
Life Goes On is a game where you have puzzles which are easily solved and you can go on to the next level very fast but you can also get stuck on a puzzle. When you got stuck on the same puzzle for hours however, the satisfaction of completing that level is much greater than when you complete a level which took you only five minutes.
Each level has a completely new puzzle and you will not have to solve the same part of any puzzle twice. This makes the game harder because you will have to find out how to solve these new puzzles but it makes the game more fun and less predictable. You will see the same obstacles you have to cross but you will have to solve it in a different way. The difficulty of the puzzles keeps increasing throughout the game, which means the game will stay interesting to play and might become a serious challenge.
When you reach the Holy Grail, and you complete the level you will see a list pop up where the objective is displayed. The game has set up an amount of dead knights you should have when completing the level and it also shows how many knights you have sacrificed to do so. Underneath that you can see the time it should take you to finish the level and the time it actually took you to finish the puzzles. The menu also shows you a message according to how well you did, this message can be a message to encourage you for next levels or one to show you how much of a disgrace you are.
The graphics of Life Goes On also add to the comedic element of the game. The knights have small bodies and big heads which make it almost impossible not to hit your head on the obstacles when you are sacrificing a knight. The sounds in the game also make it that bit more fun to play, together with the animation of the deaths.
Conclusion
Overall Life Goes On is a fun puzzle game with a great sense of humor in it. The puzzles are very appealing and the increasing difficulty keeps it an interesting game. Be prepared to use your troops to reach the objective, sacrifices may be needed! It is also worth mentioning that for a preview build, the game shows no bugs whatsoever, which shows the developers treat their game with great care.
Life Goes On is planned to release during the Spring of 2014.
Life Goes On - Preview,
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