Another Indie Game Review: Albero and the Great Blue Emblem

After a bit of scouring, I found a download link for the puzzle platformer “Albero and the Great Blue Emblem” which I mentioned in yesterday’s review of “The Power”. Here are some thoughts on Chris Royer’s classic “Albero”, with some considerable spoilers.

Albero and the Great Blue Emblem– which, if you’ll pardon my informality, we’ll just call Albero from this point onward– bills itself as an “exploration-based platform RPG”, and though I wouldn’t go so far as to extend to it that last genre designation, I will freely admit that it ably taps into two of the genre’s most essential features, perhaps better than some canonical RPGs, by allowing the player to control multiple characters– each with different skill sets– who become stronger and more capable of meeting the game’s challenges as the game progresses.

The challenges in Albero, though, are more intellectual than acrobatic. The player does not develop any offensive capabilities until roughly an hour into the game play. And though there are enemies through-out, the focus doesn’t really shift to combat at that point and, indeed, one might forget he has the ability to fight back. It is, in fact, a surprisingly gentle game, and this, in turn, makes the player more contemplative and thus more responsive to puzzle-solving.

When I say puzzle-solving, I don’t mean that the game is in any way akin to Layton or Lolo; the puzzles are far more intuitive– less along the lines of a formal puzzle in which you are presented with a set of circumstances and must find a solution, more along the lines of “I know I need to get over there– wonder how I do it?”

One very good example of this exists in the first few minutes of the game play. Our hero, Albero, is unable to access the elevator that will carry him down to the next part of the game’s world; he cannot jump high enough to reach it.

Moving to the right, after navigating past some disappearing/reappearing blocks, he finds a jumping power-up next to another ledge. Even with this power-up, Albero cannot clear to this ledge to the right.

The solution, of course, is absurdly simple; the player moves left, back to the first ledge, and discovers that he can now clear it with ease. On the other side of the elevator he finds an elevator pass that gives him access to the next floor down. On that floor, he spots an elevator pass that he can’t reach and he finds a jump power-up that enables him to clear that jump to the right on the preceding floor. And there, he’ll find the first other playable character in the game, Rusty the Bowerfly, who is able to reach that other elevator pass using his hovering ability.

That’s where I’ll leave off my description of that particular chain of events– this is a review and not a walkthrough– a chain of events that illustrates quite nicely the kinds of puzzles featured in the game, the kind of thinking required to conquer them, the ways in which different elements of each challenge are layered rather than laid out for you, and the general modus operandi powering the evolving skill sets.

In most games, when you get a new character, or when that character develops a new skill, what is striking about this evolution in the player’s palette is what he can do with it– the damage he can inflict. Whereas in this game, it’s not so much about what you can do, but rather about where you can go. You’re not increasing your physical prowess, but rather your range of motion: it really is a game centered around the concept of exploration.

This general rule is apparent in the skill sets of all four protagonists: only Rusty can pass through the special bowerfly markings on certain walls; only Acacia’s ability to spew forth water enables her to move past the levers that block her path; Dark Alby is the only one able to enter pipes, while Albero himself develops the ability to cling to certain ceilings.

Often times, you’ll see an area or a goal that’s unreachable, and soon after a character will develop the ability to reach that area, which in turns allows another character to reach a different area, and so on. The dominant theme of the game is that of co-operation, and the most important action is not the utilization of the different skills but rather switching between them. The player cannot switch between his characters at any time, like he can in the heavily action-based NES platformer Little Samson, but rather only at specific points– points that in and of themselves add to the level of strategy involved.

One memorable sequence involves the introduction of Dark Alby, Albero’s clone, and the restoration of the orange sky to the town of San Verdes. The player must switch between the two Alberos as they make their way through separate sections of a cave. A number of gates bar their progress. Albero can open gates for Dark Alby by placing his “purity orb” on a pedestal; Dark Alby can do the same for Albero.

And so: Dark Alby must make his way from the switch point to a pedestal, place his orb to open one of Albero’s gates, and make his way back to the switch point; Albero then travels into the new space Dark Alby has opened for him, places his orb on a pedestal, opens a gate for Dark Alby and goes back to his switch point; Dark Alby then goes into his new area, et cetera, et cetera.

This could rapidly– and, indeed, at times, does– become tedious: a lot of switching, a lot of going back and forth. And, to be blunt, there is a whole lot of back-and-forth in Albero. For example: character hit points are increased by one point when you escort a bowerfly to the Bowerfly Fields at the second-from-topmost floor. Through-out a large portion of the game, this means finding a bowerfly, moving to the elevator, and riding up, up, up, up, up to the Bowerfly Fields, claiming your point, and going back down, down, down, down, down to where you were you at.

Granted, shortly after you’ve gained access to all four party members, the game also introduces a number of teleporters that allow you to jump from one floor to another without having to constantly ride up and down the elevator. And this addition is an empowering one, the feeling of an increase in one’s range of motion and ability to explore being tied to the previous portions of the game in which one was denied it.

Royer also finds ways to liven up the game play while still mostly keeping with the game’s non-violent ethos. One way he does this is by the inclusion, at key moments in the game play, of “Hesta the Skills Tester”. In these sections, the player must navigate through an obstacle course in a very limited period of time. The execution has to be as close as possible to flawless: the timer provided is more-or-less perfectly calibrated, giving the player just enough time and not a second more.

But he’s not called “Hesta the Time Tester”, and that’s for a very good reason: each test is intended for one specific character. It is that character’s skills– and the player’s ability to use them– that are tested, further ensuring that the player can ably control all four characters.

One rule for good game design that Royer is insightful enough to follow is “change the rules”. Adding a wrinkle or a stipulation to the game play ensures that a given level or challenge is memorable for more than just its locale. The Great Exotic Juice Tree Canopy sequence is memorable not because of its foliage, but because Albero and Dark Alby are being held captive, forcing you to navigate the potentially dangerous area alternating between Acacia and Rusty, who have no offensive abilities– though Acacia’s fire-goo comes in handy during that sequence’s concluding boss battle. The specific challenge the two of them has to face– freeing spirit blocks to form a staircase that will lead them to the top of the tree– supplements this feeling of uniqueness.

Likewise, the Slugga Labs sequence is not memorable because of its high-tech spriting and cool blue-gray vibe, but rather because the player must depend on the assistance of, and provide protection for, the computer-controlled Dark Emfly. (That’s right: an escort mission.)

These tweaks and specific challenges modify the standard rules of “typical” game play in a given game. In fact, a good maxim for game design is that a game should have no “typical” levels– that every challenge is in some way different, unique, and compelling without violating the over-all feeling of systemic coherence.

This is an important point: in Albero, the game play is varied and tweaked but still remains, at its heart, the same style of game play, with the same interface, controls, and skills– it’s just viewed through a different filter or slant. A lot of game designers try to vary the game play by adding a snowboarding stage– a stage which, in turn, has close to absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the game.

Royer does not fall into that trap. The only thing that ever feels even slightly out of place are several of the boss battles; dodge-and-shoot, while being a skill that every gamer needs to practice and develop, does not really feel indigenous to Albero. The game is much more successful with boss battles such as the one that takes place between Dark Alby and the dragon inhabiting Slugga Labs: this battle tests a specific skill possessed only by Dark Alby, and thus feels at one with the rest of the game play.

But when I say the puzzles are intuitive, I certainly don’t mean to say that they are by any means simple. Sometimes, especially late in the game, you’ll find yourself doing a whole lot of head-scratching. And, indeed, I’ve been stuck at the same spot for several months now:

So, go ahead and give the game a try, and if you get past this part, tell me how the heck to do it.

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