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Metrico
Metrico is a graphic designer’s dream – a platforming experience through bar charts that features some clever puzzles.
Sony teased this unique platformer during its Gamescom press conference, but it’s really hard to get a solid concept for the game until you play it, which I was fortunate enough to do behind closed doors at Gamescom.
The game is a platformer centered on the idea of information and graphical data. The player starts each stage on a blank canvas, but as they begin to move around different graphs and charts begin to form within the environment that the player will have to navigate.
“I think that the main premise of Metrico is that we want people to think about what they’re really doing in a game,” says Digital Dreams creative director Gene Nellen. “Running, walking, jumping, or moving around or hitting or missing your shot – how everything you do affects the world around you.”
What’s cool about Metrico is how your actions tie into the environment that surrounds you. A bar graph might rise up out of the floor every time you jump, and so you might have to navigate your way to the other side of the screen while using as few jumps as possible so that the bar isn’t too high to jump over by the time you get there. Another challenge I faced was figuring out how to bypass a graph that rose to block my path every time I walked towards a doorway. The solution involved jumping towards the doorway as the graph wouldn’t rise unless I was touching the ground.
I played through the first two levels of Metrico and found that all of the game’s platforming/puzzle challenges felt new and original. It’s great to see small-time indie titles like this one make their way over to the Vita, and I look forward to charting this game’s progress until its release in 2014.
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