· Game Boy AdvanceTwelve rooms: the second half is the same place, years later
From the six rooms I wrote about yesterday we've got to twelve, and the interesting part isn't the number: it's that the second half isn't a new world. It's the same facility, seen years later.
The game is split in two, and each half introduces itself with a card. The first one: "everything still works here. The doors open. The water runs. The machines wait for orders."
The first six are the facility in working order. Cubes to carry and drop onto buttons, doors that open on approach, turrets that see you and shoot, beams to break with a cube, moving platforms and lifts. They're the ones that teach the rules, one per room.
First part: clean concrete, lights on, and machines that answer to orders.
The last six are the same place, abandoned. Collapsed walls, moss and vines over the concrete, daylight coming in through the holes. It isn't a change of set dressing to show off other colours: it's the same facility, and you recognise it.
And in there are three things that don't exist in the first half:
- Glass. It stops your body but not your shots: portals go through it, you don't.
- Wall sentries. They can't be shot down: they're destroyed by throwing a cube at them.
- Control consoles. You stand on one and drive a machine you can only watch, through the glass, on the other side of the room.
Second part: the same concrete, but with ivy over it and water coming down from a broken drain.
At the end there's a closing screen, because this is still a demo and it keeps saying so. Twelve rooms and an ending are a public starting point, not a finish line: the rooms will keep growing.