bag-it
Latest
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Bag It!
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Charley Price and David Marino of Hidden Variable point out life's little joys with Bag it!, the grocery-bagging puzzle game that you didn't know could be fun. What's your game called and what's it about?Charley Price: Bag It! is a Tetris-style grocery-bagging puzzle game with a fragility twist.What's the coolest aspect of Bag It!?David Marino: The groceries are the coolest thing about Bag It! They started out as colored blocks and gradually grew to become pirate watermelons and flirtatious baguettes. And who doesn't like crushing aristocratic eggs?CP: One of the coolest things I love about watching people play Bag It! is how the game resonates with different players. Bag It! presents a wide variety of unique modes (from Standard to Multi-Bag to Rampage to Puzzle), which helps the game feel fresh and ensures that there's something in there for everyone.
Portabliss: Bag It! (iOS/Android)
Did you know that you can download handheld games now? That's amazingly convenient! The only inconvenient part of it is finding the right games to buy -- and that's where we come in, with our Portabliss column. In each installment, we'll tell you about a downloadable game on the iPhone, iPad, Android device, DSi, 3DS, PSP, etc. Today: Bag It!. At first I dismissed Bag It! -- a game about safely and quickly filling grocery bags -- because it seemed way too simple. Early levels give you just a few different items, including watermelons, milk, and eggs, and there's not really any problem with arranging them into grocery bags. Make sure the egg cartons don't have three watermelons on top, pretty much. After each level, gravity and physics click on and you have to rotate the phone to help the items settle without squishing one another. But playing on, I found that developer Hidden Variable Studios worked to add variety to the experience in neat ways. First, of course, you start getting more items to try to fit into your bag, like bags of chips and long, thin loaves of bread (all with little happy faces). And then, when you've seemingly mastered the art of arranging groceries so they won't crush each other, you unlock a set of levels about crushing as many items as you can. That is followed with a set of challenging puzzle levels in which you have to rearrange already-placed items without damaging a single one. It's a boastworthy achievement for a game about something as banal as filling grocery bags to be the source of surprise, but Hidden Variable managed to keep the experience fresh. And in honor of that, I'll stop here before I turn that adjective into a food joke. Bag It! is available on iTunes for iPhone for .99, with a separate "HD" version also available for .99. An Android version is on the Android Market for $1.99. We're always looking for new distractions. Want to submit your game for Portabliss consideration? You can reach us at portabliss aat joystiq dawt com.
