Playing with Numbers in Metrico - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 13 June 2014 / 2,781 Views
As someone who works in a lab I always find working with numbers to be kind of fascinating. Trying to model complex situations with relatively simple equations takes quite a bit of patience, but when you get it to fit perfectly it's a thing of beauty. When I first heard about Metrico - a platformer that uses graphs and metrics - it sounded right up my alley. Little did I know how right I'd be.
What makes a really compelling puzzle game is when you have relatively simple rules that can be iterated in a thousand different ways, so that you can then make rooms that consistently require experimentation in order to be solved. Metrico nails this concept perfectly. As you explore you'll find that pretty much every platform you come across reacts to your actions in some way, but they all have unique rules that require testing. Some platforms might go up when you jump and then slowly come back down automatically, others will move to the left when you move left while touching the ground but not when you jump. The variety of different rulesets I saw for platforms was pretty daunting in and of itself.
The only reason that a concept like this works is because of the relatively simple controls. Your only options at the beginning of the game are jumping and restarting from a checkpoint. Both of these are used in puzzles with multiple checkpoints or certain platforms that don't get reset after restarting.
After getting introduced to both of these mechanics in the first two levels, a third mechanic of shooting a slow moving bolt with the trigger buttons is introduced. This makes things even more complicated as you have to account for enemies that can damage you as well as try to solve the puzzle for each area. It reminded me of a puzzle in Braid in which you had to kill all of the enemies in a room, but exactly how you had to do it was dictated by the rules of the puzzle.
Puzzles aren't the only ways in which Metrico uses infographics. Background objects move and change with your actions. Furthermore, in between each level you are given the choice between two doors and a pie chart presumably showing the percentage of your compatriots that chose each door. I didn't have time to find out if the door you choose makes any difference to the levels you enter next, but it would be a great addition to the game if that is the case.
Metrico is shaping up to be the kind of puzzle game that racks your brain in the best way possible. It forces you to rethink the way obstacles interact for every puzzle and even during my short demo I was presented with quite a few complicated situations. Hopefully the final product ends up being just as good when it releases on PS Vita later in the year.
