The Two Tribes people have some clear things. An is that RIVE is your last game: it considered a «gift of farewell» for those that have followed his work, because close its doors after more than fifteen years doing of all. Another is that the video game industry is moving in a direction that they, and perhaps others in your situation, cannot cope. A third is that destroying objects on the stage keeps the combo.
Two Tribes has been from the beginning with the melancholy floating on their games. The first Toki Tori, for Game Boy Color, was released in 2001, when the laptop already had left step almost definitely Game Boy Advance and the majority of its audience was elsewhere. Was Capcom who ended up distributing the game, almost like a rescue; its ambitious Three Tribes, for Game Boy Advance, not had that luck and ended up losing is in the limbo. Three Tribes was «a game of action and puzzle game designed for all the ages.» (…) «It world of the game is designed to be as open as is possible, motivating to the player to find their own solutions instead of force you to them». We are between 2004 and 2005.
The following years are defined by the titles of their games: SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab, Garfield’s to Tale of Two Kitties, Monkeyball Minigolf. It is the time of something you should eat: between commissions and chapus, arrived to make Rubik s World Puzzle, the Rubik’s cube game. The digital stores made Two Tribes renaciera: Auto-publishing led them to repeat it with Toki Tori, and changed the orders for the ports, more worthy because they sound more selective. Then took Toki Tori 2, a surprising game «for all them ages» in which the world «is designed to be as open as is possible, motivating to the player to find their own solutions instead of force you towards them»: to the end, seems if one remembers Three Tribes, the circle is closes.
However, «when Toki Tori 2 finished taking much more time of the expected and to the not get them sales that needed, basically sank to all it company with it», remember their founders in the same connected in which warned, in 2014 (few months after the launch of Toki Tori 2), of that Two Tribes B.V. (Besloten vennootschap, them SL Dutch) closed its doors. Two Tribes Publishing B.V., the company sister licenses owner and responsible for the management of the business, remained standing; After forming a new team (the bankruptcy of 2014 ended with everyone on the street), began to work in RIVE.
I’d like to be able to speak of RIVE as a Phoenix instead of as a Swan that gives its last song, anticipating his own death. I am pleased, moreover, that have decided to put an end to the study with a game as well, it reminds us that, as much as the gaming industry has changed and increasingly harder to be Two Tribes in this world, destroying objects on the stage keeps the combo. There are traditions that have meaning.
Rive are a type trapped on a space station that moves in a jumping and equipped vehicle to kill. There is the insolent option to eliminate without delay the characters, robots that swarm the ship, to speed up the process and go directly into action, especially appropriate in a game RIVE like: said the keep the combo breaking things because in the background this is an arcade shooter in which points count, the multiplier is not high forever and is interesting to scratch seconds where it is possible to finish the level with a score high. It is not a complex system of scores taking into account too many things: basic thing is to maintain the multiplier to the maximum, to eliminate enemies with precision (a touch can remove little life, but breaks the combo) and learn to calculate our rhythm of destruction to optimize the entire process.
The complexity comes by the design of levels, that simulates the feeling of be exploring to the flee of the go from left to right, perfectly valid in many examples of the genre. Not is Ghost 1.0, by mention one that I can get to remember, because your map is well divided in levels, designed to be played of way individual, with his challenge specific and its personality. Apart from the second game, wherever jump and when, know the roads, learn how to force the game to be given rush; later added the function of sabotage by enemies they will catch up on our side, support that the game often forced to accept to overcome some areas. As a good many arcades, just becoming a sort of fast-paced puzzle game that requires, to play well, to properly fit parts and not just to know where to aim. It is well designed, on purpose; It gives reason to become familiar with its mechanics and its scoring system, and has, to where I could play, all positioned to give shape to an arcade that has something of the intelligence of Toki Tori, but with a radically different tone.
Not help that my first hours with RIVE have been positive to the feeling of be firing is of a study with good ideas and a form of do especially neutral is less bittersweet. Despite the situation, RIVE is a festive and funny game: hilarious non, comic, but more sympathetic than others, and that launches winks as if they were kissing. It is a type of game that seems timeless, because it gives the feeling of well-made shooting arcade won’t never overrun. It is a farewell in conditions: Finally, I like to have Two Tribes clearly have to finish up, and that while the rest of the industry thinks in where to go tomorrow they simply have decided to go their way, the make a good game. There are just history, and each one to his house.
RIVE is published in Windows and PS4 on 13 October.
