“Negative space is important. When I teach students to read critically I advise them to look for what the author isn’t saying just as carefully as for what he or she is.” -Aaron Belz

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In the modern world of gaming, overcrowding can be an issue. It’s one which increases in severity with each passing year. There are simply too many games and we the gamers are left with the disappointment of having too much to play, too many titles building up on our backlogs while too many new games come out, and not enough time in the day. First world problems. Of course, fewer games are not the answer. I wouldn’t advocate for a freeze on the industry, as nice as it would be to have a year’s time without any new releases to catch up on everything.

No, I think the answer is making each new game as good as it can be. With better new releases, more eye-catching releases, it’s easier to pick out which games to play between the galactic and the pedestrian. When games begin to push the envelope and stand out from the crowd, they automatically set themselves into a category above, and that’s helpful for the consumer until the market rises up to this new standard again. Then the trend must continue. We don’t want the industry to stagnate. That’s no solution, so I’m for more innovation, creativity, and quality. The whole market gets better when it’s robust, full of giants and lilliputians.

INVERSUS by Hypersect is visually arresting enough to have that immediate distinction of standing out from the crowd. I first saw it when it was announced for the Nintendo Switch (incidentally the platform I played it on) during a “Nindie” presentation lineup. I hesitate to say that many indie games can fall into a rut, developing their own dogma and traditions, but the fact is that many of them share the same superficial attributes, instantly identifiable. INVERSUS was one of the more memorable titles of that lineup.

A minimalist shooter, INVERSUS is the kind of game you can understand within a few seconds. Players take control of simple squares which are confined to opposite colored panels on a black and white grid. The objective is to shoot down other players in Versus Mode or waves of enemies in Arcade Mode. Shooting also changes the color of panels to a color your avatar can pass over, which is conversely a color your enemy can’t. Your walls are your enemy’s paths, and vice versa.

And that’s about it for the basic concept. Shots can also block other enemies shots or players can charge up their blaster for a tri-shot, but essentially you’re going attempting to trap the other player between tiles they can’t move over, pin them down and blow them to smithereens. This simplicity and the brevity of each match, as well as the fact that each board turns out differently as the panels flip, makes INVERSUS addicting and a lot of fun for competitive couch play.

“The goal was to create a unique board through the deterministic chaos of each player’s actions. Nothing is random, but the complexity of human action and reaction evolves the simple starting state into a unique puzzle every time the game is played.” -Hypersect

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.com/2017/10/04/inversus-deluxe/