Ego Force

Level two of Eclypse Games' Ego Force

I’m just going to jump in here. Although this game has just two levels, and in many senses seems more like a tech demo, it’s one of the more advanced games to come out of the Game-Maker scene. It’s a forced-scrolling space shooter, that alternates between side-scrolling and top-down stages. It contains animated menus and titles, original music, and several neat tricks.

Though you can pull a few tricks, fundamentally Game-Maker is designed for top-down adventure games. Most of the fun in developing with the package is to make Game-Maker do what it doesn’t want to do. Thus you will see many noble attempts at jumping physics and textless role-playing games and action games so frantic that the engine can barely keep up. What I’ve only seen a few of are space shooters. Of those, Ego Force gets it most right. The ship’s idle animation forces it perpetually forward; monsters move in Gradius-inspired patterns, space junk and obstacles drift into the frame, demanding attention. The ship moves quickly and cleanly. The design is both sleek and gritty.

The selection screen from Ego Force

One throwaway, yet profound, detail comes right at the start. After hitting “Play”, you are thrown into an in-engine selection screen. You can choose three options: a practice mode, and two ostensible difficulty settings. That’s unusual enough. But to the left is a window, depicting the hero ship on a speedy elevator. the elevator platform is still in the center of the frame, while the background zooms past, using several layers of apparent parallax scrolling.

It’s a trick. It’s a very clever trick of the background tiles, and one I have seen repeated at least three times — once in another Eclypse game, and twice elsewhere.

Downloads

• Ego Force