Aurora Trail
This game surprised me when I first saw it.
I was snooping around to see if something interesting popped out, and Aurora Trail leaped up to me with its unique puzzle mechanic.
In this game, you solve puzzles using your camera.
If the background’s colour matches the colour of the body part that was before it, the body part will get vapourized. Thus, if you want to move around without literally losing your head, you need to make sure that you don’t put your head in front of anything glowing green.
In the seven levels available, the camera is both an asset and a hazard. You obviously need the camera to look around the place so you can look around to plan your next move. But rashly rushing past corners may just cost you an arm. Thus, you need to count on corners and take care to use the edge of your screen to peek ahead.
The mechanics are rather unique, and it’s not something I have ever seen before. However, I do get annoyed when I got blindsided by a sudden bit of yellow that literally knocked my torso out from my body. Strangely enough, the dungeons sometimes have spare arms lying around. I’m not sure if this is as a demonstration of the healing mechanics, and you can pick up random body parts that aren’t restricted to just arms, or it is just restricted to arms but you need to perform actions with them for certain puzzles. The last puzzle do require you to use both arms to pick up something, so that guess isn’t exactly far-fetched.
Another source of mild annoyance is when the coloured areas are almost white, making it somewhat hard to tell what colour it’s supposed to be until my legs disappeared. I supposed they are meant to be glowing parts and the paler colours are a result of that, but I do wish they make the colours more obvious so that it’s easier to tell.
The other puzzle mechanic available is to use a body part to activate switches. You put a body part that is the same colour as the switch between it and the camera. You use it to activate moving parts and doors on the stage.
So far, the puzzle elements are all rather consistent. There are two key elements: the camera mechanic and the body parts you have. I wonder how far they can extend the mechanics on display aside from making something that is either tedious and long-winded, or extremely fiddly. At the last level it feels that the game doesn’t puzzle me as much anymore as I more-or-less understand the mechanics available.
Still, despite not being a fan of puzzle games, I am rather interested in the full release. The mechanics are interesting, and I’m really eager to see how the devs are going to expand on the puzzle elements that I’ve seen in the demo, and what new puzzle mechanics are going to be introduced.
Wait, January?
Oh, it’s coming out this month! (For the record, this was written at 4th January 2018)
Good luck, Screenhit Studios!
If any of you want to try the demo, you can get it here. It’s rather short, and it’s free anyway. Do give it a try!
