Game Analysis: Elemental
I think I’ll settle into a weekly Game Analysis for now. Have to head out of town for a week, so until next week, here’s Elemental. It’s a very polished little tetris-esque game. The most puzzling technical aspect is that it’s limited to 640 x 480 resolution. That’s pretty unusual these days.
The game works hard to give you that “you are playing a polished game!” feel, which is crucial, especially during the first 5 minutes of gameplay. The menus, though simple, feel really good because of the sound effects they use. It almost sounds like you’re playing a melody as you traverse the game’s menus. Very nice!
On the other hand, the multiplayer simply didn’t work at all when I was trying the game. That was a couple weeks ago, so maybe it’s fixed now?
Read the Full Analysis of Elemental
�
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I’m one of the developers of this game. I got linked to your analysis from my artist. You’ve done a very nice job on the writeup.
I can fill in some of the technical details for you. As you guesed, those hardware specs are incorrect. The game requires a P3 (should work on a P2, but very slowly) and DirectX7. It’s entirely software rendered. This is one of the main reasons why it is 640×480. We do lots of full screen effects for a software rendered game, and keeping the framerate high at 800×600 would have not been possible on older machines. We use FMOD for sound (statically linked). The engine is custom otherwise, in fact it is the same engine we use for our Xbox games, just with everything ripped out except for the sprites. This was pretty much our only work on a casual game, so I’m glad you liked it.
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Jake, thanks for the info! I’ll update the analysis page shortly.
I noticed that Elemental spent some time in the “top ten sales” charts on some Oberon portals — hopefully that’s translated into lots of money for the company and a nice Ferrari for you.
Okay, probably not, but I do hope Gastronaut sees enough success to keep exploring the casual game scene, as you obviously have a knack for it.