The Polynomial: Space of the Music

[Codicier]

Saw this on RPS (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/10/22/neon-bible-the-polynomial-demo/):

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So awesomely psychedelic. There's a demo (http://store.steampowered.com/app/67010/) on Steam.

[Lint of Death]

Oh, there's a demo now? Excellent. I was not planning on buying it because there wasn't one when I last looked. Good to know I can check it out at least.

[MagGnome]

I noticed this game in the store today and commented on it in the Steam Weekend Deal thread. I downloaded the demo earlier. I'll try it out now.

Edit - The demo is fun, although a bit buggy. The screen kept distorting every now and then, although I wonder if that was intentional. I enjoyed flying around shooting at...things, but I wish I could have moved faster. The game kept telling me to set the difficulty to insane for "faster gameplay", so I did, but I didn't notice much of a difference, if there was any at all. I tried to import some of my own music, but the game crashed.

It's certainly a pretty game, but I'm not going to pick it up at this time.

[Lint of Death]

Depending on what screen distortions you were seeing, it might have been the game's way of warning you that you are getting your ass kicked :p

This is also officially one of my favorite demos, but not for the reasons you might expect. There is no way to learn how to play it before it drops you straight into its psychedelic universe; the instructions are partially read aloud in front of you; the text doesn't quite match the words; that same text is stationary so, if you fly around (or spin as it first advises you to do), you won't be able to read it until you fly back; you can die while reading the instructions; and, to top it off with the sweetest, most delicious layer of humor icing: as Mags said, the game constantly urges you to immediately shift the difficulty to the highest setting if you want your scores to be at all significant.

At least in the initial demo setting, the music's affect on the game felt much too minor for me to want to get the game despite how honestly pretty it is.

[MagGnome]

The screen was distorting...rolling over and such. I suppose it might have been from me taking damage, but I honestly had little idea of what was going on. :p

I never got any instructions on how to play. Did you have to turn that on somewhere?

[Lint of Death]

The screen was distorting...rolling over and such. I suppose it might have been from me taking damage, but I honestly had little idea of what was going on. :p

I never got any instructions on how to play. Did you have to turn that on somewhere?

Yeah sounds like the sort of effects that happen when you're about to die. You have a green health bar at the top of the screen that gradually drops to red as you take damage. I had to figure that all out through trial and error, the in-game instructions were by no means in-depth :p

As for instructions: when I started the demo, the instructions were in the 'level' it put me in. When my ship first spawned, a giant wall of text and pictures floated in space in front of me, some of it narrated by a voice. It was pretty cool, actually. I could fly through and around the text, and the pictures of enemies were actually enemies stuck in place that I could blow up.

[MagGnome]

That's strange. I didn't see that stuff at all!