The delightful puzzle platformer from Press Play is a mind bending experience

Aug 15, 2014 18:08 GMT  ·  By

Project Totem is the next big title coming from independent developer Press Play, which previously released games like Max: The Curse of Brotherhood.

The story of Totem is a delightful one as it's made by two brothers who thought up of the idea while polishing Max: The Curse of Brotherhood last year. After a bit of work, they showed the project to their colleagues and the game quickly entered full production.

The result is a delightful puzzle platformer with one of the most interesting innovations in the genre.

The story premise is a simple one as Press Play doens't want to complicate things. An evil shaman destroyed the precious totem of a good shaman and the small pieces need to get back together and help their owner.

Things start with a green and a purple totem piece. The catch is that players control them at the same time. The first few levels feature completely separate tracks for each totem piece and this is definitely for the better as your mind needs some time to get used to the unique premise.

Seeing as how the task of guiding the tiny pieces requires quite a lot of mental effort, the control scheme is simple, using just two buttons. One to jump (press it quickly to double jump) and one to switch the totem pieces between them.

Slowly but surely the difficulty ramps up but, what's really important, is that it never feels unfair. You know you didn't nail the timing and try to do better after restarting from the quite common checkpoints. The game never feels unfair and thus keeps its charm.

Throughout the levels the totems acquire temporary powers, such as wings that allow them to either float to the ground, instead of falling, or to stay in place when stacked on top of the other (hence the totem theme).

What's more, besides the 24 single-player story levels, the game also has 10 cooperative levels that can be played only locally. Each player controls two totems of the same color and the amount of cooperation required is huge. Great timing and creative thinking are crucial and nailing that can be quite intense.

Throw in the great visuals with vibrant colors, not to mention the great soundtrack that custom tailored to the action on the screen, and Project Totem is looking set to deliver one of the most refreshing indie experiences of the year.

For now, Press Play is targeting a fall release of Project Totem for the Xbox One platform. You can expect to hear much more about it in the following months.