going deep down
synopsis
Plasticity is a little platformer set in a not-so-distant future -around 2140, where plastic pollution brought an ecological disaster and put the humanity on the brink of existance.
A young boy remembers his mothers telling him about the beautiful island she grew up and wants to reach it, with the hope of new, better home.
Technicalities
Worldbuilding
Graphics
Ok!
Plasticity has a three-dimensional low-poly graphics with side-scrolling advancing, with basic-level animations.
It must be said that surely they’re not the fanciest out there, but in a similar fashion to other games of this kind, depicting the setting with realism or even just with high-poly graphics isn’t the core point.
Despite its semplicity, Plasticity is perfectly able to create a very detailed and understanstable environment, able convey its message.
Story
So-So
You play as a young boy on a journey through a dystopical world, destroyed by plastic pollution.
You play as a young boy in his journey from a non-better specified place to another one where his hopes could be fulfilled, passing through a town in ruin and a pile dwelling settlement on a plastic polluted body of water.
The
Lands have been flooded, towns has been submerged and pile-dwelling settlements have born. However everything is still covered in the same plastic and tracn. Wildlife and humans struggles to survive.
Game Mechanics
So-So
The core mechanics and the side-scrolling advancing create a nice and simple platformer game with some puzzle dynamics, pretty straightforward and almost purely story-driven.
So you can jump, drag or push some objects and climb ladders, fances and walls. However this shouldn’t make you think you can do big things: the side-scrolling advancing -and therefore the lack of free three-dimensional roaming, puts forced obstacles and actions in front of you.
Based on how many and which actions you do or don’t, the ending can change. For this you can play the game several times to discover them all (note: I’ve played it 4 times and I’ve just seen 2, a good and a “not-so-good” end. I honestly don’t know if there are more).
One unavoidable flaw is the controls level of stiffness, so high that is hard to ignore and that in the long run can undermine the pleasure of playing, transforming the game from amusing to frustrating.
Climbing ladders is where it get worse in my opinion, but once you get how to do it, it gets a little easier.
However the stiffness can also make harder to know if you’re in a place where you’re supposed to do something or not. It’s true that this doesn’t hinder the playability of the game in itself but can give you a different ending.
Character(s)
Ok!
The character you play is a young boy (or it seems so), running away from his home and searching for a new place after his mother’s death.
In the game there is little to no interaction and the only insight we get about
him is the monologue going on for the whole duration of the adventure.
Duration
Ok!
With the feeling of taking my time to play it, I’ve completed it in about 20 minutes. Developers say 20-40 minutes but I think it’s more optimistic than realistic (I exclude the time in which you can get stuck due to the controls or similar things).
However I’m pretty sure that with a faster-paced playing, it’s shorter than this, even half this time.
Honestly I don’t think that rushing it’s the right thing to do, for 2 main reasons: this is an university class project and rushing it means to superficially shung a months-long works and because both the message and the mechanics ask you to be attentive to what you’re watching to.
At the end of the day you would want to get the good ending and to understand the environmental message of the game!
Setting(s)
Ok!
We pass through what seems an abandoned neighborood area (despite the boy’s mother lives/lived there, so maybe it’s a hint about people actually living there), then a pile-dwelling settlement covered in trash and plastic and at the end a former beautiful and happy island that faced a similar destiny.
Ideally I’d have liked something less “polished” speaking of buildings and the few people we see, because -be as it is, it make me think of several three-dimensional game assets put together with little to no modifications.
I mean, we see a lot of trash, flies, decay and ruins around, but we also see people and buildings clean.
I know it’s not a big deal for the game itself, because putting more gunk around wouldn’t change anything, but since this is the part of review from the worldbuilding point of view, I’m pointing it out 😀
That’s also why this little consideration of mine doesn’t undermine my “Green Ok!” for this section.
Wind Turbines
Soundtrack
Ok!
The music is lovely but very subtle. It’s a background almost in the strict-sense of the word and sometimes is hard to not forget about it due to the environmental sounds.
Anyway I like it. It’s calm and neither aggressive, dreadful or sad in some way. This is a nice contrast with what our eyes witness during the gameplay.
Creatures
Ok!
The only creatures present in the game beyond humans are seagulls, seals (on Avalon Island) and cats (in the “positive end”) and are pretty much part of the background, cutscenes or -far rarer, little interactions/actions.
They do pretty much nothing other than being animals adapted to a destroyed world, so not so much to say!
Performances
So-So
None – Black Screen
So-So – Crashes
None – Frame rate
None – Freezes
So-So – Glitches
None – Lag
None – Loading Problems
The game is pretty big (~1GB) to be that short but I suppose mainly due to the graphics.
I’ve played the game 4 times in total, hunting for different endings.
I’ve experienced:
– 2 crashes, where the game simply shut down when the boy reached the island.
– a glitch, after interacting with the dog to pull the bin away from its head. The character curled on himself and lay down.
He walked, lain. He jumped, lain.
To reset it, I was forced to quit the game and restart it.
I experienced also other little problems but I don’t know if they were real issues or a byproduct of the controls stifness. For example not being able to pull away the plastic from the first seal you met on Avalon in one of my gameplays.
OVERALL COHERENCE
Ok!
The game is short and simple enough to be overall coherent with itself.
It’s easy to understand the setting and the story: the landscape are all full of degradation and disrepair, plastic, general trash, abandoned houses, cars and objects.
The pile-dwelling settlement add a little layer to understanding, letting us imagine how the water level is higher than nowadays (global warming?) and a lot of land has been submerged forcing people to a more basic/primitive existance but still with some residue technology.
However I’d like some more hints and details about what happened and what the young boy’s journey is:
What is the place we start the game from?
Does he pass his mother’s house (where we see the flashback with her sick?) for real or is it just a total flashback?
If he does pass the house, why his journey started before? When did he decide to start it?
in pills
Plasticity is a game made by USC Games Program as a class project, focusing on the plastic pollution problem, that takes around 20-30 minutes to be completed.
In my opinion the game is slightly shaky, there are often crashes and glitches, the controls are stiff to the point that the experience can become more frustrating than amusing.
At the end of the day I consider the game good anyway, similar to other little indie/free games that try to convey/to sensitize people about environment issues. SO much needed.
BUT
especially considering the importance of this mission, I think that every developing team or class that embark in such projects must do it carefully, not to trivialize or make to simplistic the experience. If this happens, most likely the meaning of it will be lost and nothing of importance will be passed down as it should be instead and players will focus only on what doesn’t work.
So, beyond all the possible technical issues and developing quality of this project already described in the review (we must remember that this is and remain a class project, nothing professional), the only two things I didn’t like too much are the game script and the message that comes with it, included the way it’s offered to the player with.
I find the script confusing, sometimes with little sense, almost rough in some points and despite it is a class project, it’s not from a high-school but from a renowned game program.
I’d have liked a little more attention, a little less rush and, moreover, I’d like to see something else sprouting (literally!) from this project in the future, even just a remake made with more experience and expertise in the hands!
Anyway I want to underline that this isn’t and shouldn’t be considered as a harsh criticism because it’s not. I know that despite it being a very short, simple and free game, I’ve dug very deep -maybe too much, and the studends involved have probably create this game with the best intentions and their best skills.
However I’m convinced that this kind of games must be aware of the messages they try to convey and for this the developing team must be even more aware of how they build it.
The risk of being too simplistic or even ending up spreading some misinformation can be high.