Previews// PAX Round-Up: Master of Orion, Mekazoo and Mini Metro

Ostensibly Mekazoo is a 2D platformer, but it adopts the rotating scenery that is commonly attributed to 2.5D platform games like Nights, which has the whole world the player is leaping through rotate into another plane. Along with contrasting and colourful visuals, searing through Mekazoo is an amazing score that thumps through the player's head and offers some help in terms of timing for getting past some tricky sections.

Mekazoo concerns a group of robots that can transform into familiar creature-like forms, all of which have their own special powers.

The frog can leap and use its tongue to latch onto elements in the world, which can be used to swing from. The armadillo curls into a ball and can hurtle around slopes to the point where it can traverse vertical surfaces via the power of momentum alone. Transformations occur in a split second and in many cases the player is required to switch between forms at a rapid pace in order to complete a section in a level.

From the demo I experienced it was clear that the difficulty curve will likely spike very early on in Mekazoo, leading to some concerns over almost inhuman levels of hand-to-eye coordination. Thankfully there is a two-player co-op mode that enables players to help each other out in tight spots in a similar way to Chariot, another game I discovered while at PAX Prime last year.

I had a lot of fun playing Mekazoo and it is due to appear sometime in 2016 on Windows PC, Mac and Linux.

Mini Metro
Developer: Dinosaur Polo Club
Format(s): Windows PC, iOS and Android

When I examine a mass transit rail map that is typically diagrammitic, I've never once thought: 'ooooh, that would make a good game'. That's probably why I've never made a videogame, as I don't have the same sort of vision as Dinosaur Polo Club has. The studio has made Mini Metro, a game about rail mass transit system maps.

Wait, where are you going? Oh come on at least stick around for the description! Aren't you at least a little bit curious how this thing works? Sure you are! Mini Metro is a puzzle game that requires the player to create an efficient rail mass transit system. Oh you're off again. Look, seriously, it's difficult to put this into words without making it sound like the dullest game ever in the history of ever. But trust me when I say Mini Metro really isn't.

Mini Metro is an ingenious game that feeds off people's familiarity with mass transit maps and creates a thought exercise with them. Symbols appear on the screen and the player must link them to other symbols on the map. Trains then start to shift around the map and a network of lines organically appears before the player. As they do so hubs and bottlenecks are developed as the network grows in complexity.

To avoid failure the player must ensure there are little-to-no blockages that would cause the network to collapse in on itself due to over-congestion. It's far more difficult than one would realise and I personally found Mini Metro an incredibly challenging game to play.

Presented in the minimalist style that is found in mass transit rail maps, the purity and cleanliness actually aids the player in understanding what they need to do in order to avoid failure very clearly. I always marvel at how some developers can see beyond the need for visual splendour when it's the heart of the game that matters and not the amount of lens flare.

Mini Metro is out now on Windows PC, Mac, Linux and later this year for iOS and Android.