Game Review: Tag

Don't judge a game by it's cover... That being said, Tag is a pretty nifty game. It was made by a four student team at DigiPen Institute of technology and was included in the Indie Games Festival at the 2009 GDC. That right there is quite an accomplishment. Not to mention they had to create the engine themselves - everything was done in C++. I've programmed in C++ before... Even 2D dynamics are hard to grasp in such a stark code environment. The game is physics based with paint being the main mechanic. There are three colors, each with a different effect when you step on them. Green paint makes you jump, red paint makes you speed up, and blue paint makes you stick to a surface. It's an impressively creative idea, and they pulled it off with technical near-perfection. The visual presentation could be a little more intentional... And the actual feel of playing the game is a bit reminiscent of GoldenEye's slippery 20th century physics. But the premise is solid, and I think if you gave these kids a design team and a publisher they'd have a DLC sensation on their hands.

"It was a design choice for us to go with the art style, but even if it wasn't we really couldn't pull off a more realistic looking art style; we're mainly four programmers! We can do boxes really well, but anything apart from that is kind of not cool" says Tejeev Kohli, the engine programmer and spokesman for the team. And on the color scheme, every color in the game world is useable, not unlike Mirror's Edge, therefore the grayscale environment is implemented to clearly differentiate between interactive areas and backdrops. I'd like to say here that I was not at all a fan of Mirror's Edge... or its visual design choices. But I do agree that there is beauty in simplicity, and if they actually put some work into designing the look (or signed on an artist to do it for them) I think it could be pretty intriguing. I am sad to say that there is a token female standing in front of the 4-man team in the interview who was responsible for the cover art and 'some textures' - if she was their visual guru why didn't she speak up and get some cool stuff going? Oh well. I shouldn't judge.


YouTube video here includes game footage and an interview with the team at 5:40.

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