Fotonica – I’m in love with this game

Review: Do you remember that scene in Hackers where Dade and Kate play a Wipeout-esque game at Cyberdelia? I’m willing to bet that if game studio Santa Ragione existed before 1995, Dade would be kicking Kate’s ass playing Fotonica instead.

Fotonica has been available from Kongregate (via plug-in) for a while, but recently became available as a pay-what-you-want download for Mac and PC. The game is like a one button, wire-frame version of Mirror’s Edge that sees you running, jumping and falling in an abstract outlined world, with a duotoned look reminiscent of the geometrical abstractions from the 50s and the 3D low-poly gaming era. The key is timing and the goal is exploring, traveling flawlessly through the environment and occasionally eating pink dots, all the while gaining speed as you run along to a sensational, yet slightly subdued, original Electronica soundtrack.

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The visual aspects of the game emulate the minimalism of Fotonica’s gameplay, but at the same time they are a striking, often CMYK-primary and always interesting.

Fotonica gives you five levels to explore as well as an “endless procedurally generated” level and it has a fantastic two player split-screen mode. To keep you coming back for more, there are ten achievements to unlock as well as offline game stats and online cross-platform rankings.

Fotonica is a fantastic pick up and play game for de-stressing, or zoning out in a parallel universe during a lunch break. With that said, I experienced some horrific crashes during the “Endless” level, so if you’re playing this on your work computer, be sure to save your work before playing (ed: you’re doing what during work?).

Sometimes less is more, and with Fotonica, that’s exactly the case. I’m in love.