Mark Cooke’s G-Mixer

Feist is a game currently in development by two university students for the Mac. The game is in beta and I’ve managed to get my hands on it. If you’re anything like me the first thing you are going to fall in love with is the art style.

This is the first time I’ve seen a game use a silhouette of all objects in the foreground against a colorful background. I think it works very well and is an excellent way to both look good and keep art asset production time down. It is a two man team after all.

The gameplay needs more fleshing out. I don’t know what the author’s long term plans are for Fesit but currently the game could use more depth. The main character moves very fluidly, as does the environment, so the basis of a fun platformer is here. The character can pick up and throw objects as well as preform the requisite jump. The current lack of depth stems from not enough “gimmicks” (what Japanese game designers call special level events or objects; the word is growing on me). There isn’t yet enough variety in the types of objects the character can throw, walk on, or jump over in the beta levels.

Of course, like I said, this is a beta. The authors have a wonderful visual aesthetic and base gameplay system setup. By adding more content they would have an indie game that I would want to buy.

Here’s a video preview which includes content not in the beta. I’m excited to see what the authors come up with for the full release!

UPDATE: I just realized that this game’s art style is actually quite similar to the Sony PSP game Patapon. Feist is even more minimalistic though. Patapon’s art style was quite refreshing. I didn’t enjoy the game very much but I loved looking at it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 3:30 am and is filed under game development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.