itay-keren
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Just rolling with the apocalypse in Mushroom 11
In the aftermath of global annihilation, Mushroom 11 gives rise to a bioluminescent blob that looks like someone made radioactive jello in a murky swimming pool. It expands, contracts, squeezes and climbs through dilapidated nooks and crannies, never losing its total mass while the player prods it into motion. It's easy to play and hard to look away. The quirky growth must use its weight and mass in clever ways to advance, be it creeping through the windows of a skyscraper about to crumble, splitting itself to trigger simultaneous mechanisms, or to roll past the attacking arms of a mutated plant. The trick is to realize that your touch (or mouse-click) removes adjacent pieces of the blob, which then immediately regrow, attached elsewhere. Closer observation shows it to be a living lattice of gelatinous material, moving and shifting its weight as it grows in response to your prodding. This makes Mushroom 11 a slower, methodical game, and different from fluid manipulation games like Pixeljunk Shooter. The other trick to Mushroom 11, according to designer Itay Keren, is to teach players how to handle their blobs without resorting to text and obvious tutorials. The game is striving for subtlety, both in its story of how the earth came to ruin, and in its teaching phase.
Indie Fund backing Global Game Jam hit Mushroom 11
Mushroom 11, from 2012 NYU Global Game Jammer Itay Keren, is an experiment in mobility and art design, and it's caught the eye (and wallet) of Indie Fund. Keren won the Best Game Design award at GGJ 2012 with Mushroom 11, and has since focused on fleshing it out into a more polished, complete game. Check out some preliminary art and that wild gameplay mechanic in the above video."The design space being explored by Mushroom 11 is not something we've seen before," Indie Fund writes. "It's engaging and tactile and we're excited to support Itay and see where his design exploration leads!"Keren has previous development experience for mobile devices, but there is no word on potential platforms for Mushroom 11.
