Indie | Canabalt: The Perfect Platformer?
By Fraser McMillan
Today’s console platform games usually fit into one of two categories. The first is the “Mario 64, if shit” model, the corpse of which has been picked clean by kiddie film licenses at every turn for the last decade. Bright colours, collectibles abound, staple stage types et cetera. The second is every Mario game Nintendo has made since then, in that they’re actually worth playing. Bright colours, collectibles abound, staple stage types et cetera. Discounting the new wave of not-strictly-outright-platformers – LittleBigPlanet, Mirror’s Edge, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and others of note – the genre has had a hard time evolving since the mid-’90s, when the third dimension was still a big deal. To say it’s crying out for a shake-up would be an understatement, and with even the big N preparing the first direct sequel in their mascot’s career for twenty years, the format seems in dire need of a saviour.
Lucky, then, that we have Canabalt. It’s several month old news at this point, being one of the more well known indie releases of the year, but I keep returning to like a crack addict returns to, well, crack. This is because it’s a pure platformer. It readily dispenses with nonsense like player movement control and strips the age-old 2D formula down to its constituent parts. Or rather, part: only a single button is involved.
As any previous readers of my work on Resolution will have gathered, I’m one of those wanky types that bemoans our medium’s inability to live up to its artistic potential ad boredom. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate traditional or simplistic play experiences if they make a half decent fist of it. Canabalt is successful because its mechanic is so compelling in that uniquely old-school way.
Simplicity is the keyword here. Since the NES days, the genre has been buried under increasing layers of complexity, surrounding the joys of jumping with various power-ups, interactive objects and enemies. Canabalt contains four or five hazards, but it’s always player versus environment and not the other way around, and thanks to the randomly generated stages it never becomes an excercise in repetitive rote learning that so many can fall foul of. This is arguably its biggest strength, because if structured the same way each time, the thrill would be lost. It’s not a difficult on a moment to moment level, and meticulously designed stages have their home in brutally punishing titles like Trials 2 in which a masterful and precise command of a handful of mechanics is necessary. Canabalt still requires skill, and it’s possible to improve by adjusting to its , which again speaks to
Another of the most important pieces of the puzzle is Canabalt’s premise. There’s a nondescript guy at the left hand side of the screen and he is running away. From what or whom, we can’t be sure, but he’s sure as hell not going to stop. That’s it. He clearly exists in a hostile realm, with smoking or crumbling buildings and zooming ships forming the backdrop to his “daring escape” – is it an alien invasion, the Third World War, a natural disaster? We don’t need to know. It’s a refreshing approach to narrative, and an apt, bullshit-free and obvious visual way to establish the requisite motivation for what you’re doing in a matter of seconds.
Each element of the design is streamlined, but in the best possible way. Sound effects of glass shattering or a crashing airbourne device are appropriate and add an extra impact to the chaotic but clean graphical style. The brooding, pumping music is, again, absolutely spot on, managing to feel both sinister and rhythmically tied to the character’s motion like some kind of apocalyptic workout tune. Canabalt’s visual design is blocky and retro as most of Adam Atomic’s games are wont to be, but it highjacks something of a halfway-horse between what are ostensibly its two biggest influences in Blade Runner and Mirror’s Edge in this and nearly all other aspects.
Jumping is flexible in that a held button press means a longer jump, but as the humble protagonist gains speed and therefore momentum, the timing of these needs to be adjusted. In all honesty, Canabalt captures why we play platformers in the first place, providing an instantly gratifying, infinitely replayable, challenging, vital and uncompromised experience. The atmosphere that is created with a few sprites and a single song is fantastic, and perfectly suits the mechanic without ever getting in its way. In other words, it’s the perfect platformer. Congratulations Adam and Danny, you’ve won the genre. If you haven’t already, go play right now.
