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Contre Jour Is Stunning
Looking for the new iPhone app everybody will be playing a month from now? Prefer to get in on the ground floor? Contre Jour just hit the iTunes store yesterday, and it's definitely worth a look.
Like most Chillingo-published games, Contre Jour (roughly: Against the Day) offers a simple concept, with simple touch-screen controls. Unlike many Chillingo games, Contre Jour eschews the bright colors, chipper music, and familiar creatures/situations for a much more surprising and unique vision.
In Contre Jour, you play Petit, an unusual creature that looks like an eye with a little tail. Petit can't move around much on his own, but his round shape makes him ideal for pushing around. As the player, you move Petit primarily by adjusting the topography of the ground around him -- pulling up to make a hill, pulling down to make a little valley, and letting momentum do the rest. You can also attach stretchy, ropelike tentacles to Petit that lift him into the air, or even slingshot him across the screen. Things get a little more complicated from there, but suffice to say you're manipulating the environment to move him around, collect some twinkling lights, and move him on to the next puzzle stage.
As you go, you'll note the beautiful art style of the world, which is cast in sharp contrasts of black shadows and white light, as well as the unusual eye-focused creatures of the world, which strike a weird balance between cute and disturbing. Even more affecting is the contemplative, piano-heavy music score that accompanies your journey.
After playing through the first third of the game, it's an easy recommendation -- one which we suspect you'll be passing on to your friends after a few hours with the game. The strangeness of the game is enough to make it stand out from the host of other iOS titles flooding the market, but the core concepts of the game are simple to understand and fun to experiment with.
Contre Jour includes a sixty level adventure, but it's not hard to imagine more levels on the way in subsequent packs. You can pick up the game on iTunes for $0.99, or Contre Jour HD for $2.99. However, only the HD version is universal, meaning it will run on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, presuming you have iOS 3.0 or later. The lower-priced version only runs on the platform you buy it for.
Check out the trailer below to see the game in action.
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