On the other hand…

Back in the old days, a lot of games were done “independently”, ie. they were done by a single individual. Some had collaboration of a few people, but it was only the big titles that came from actual software companies.

These days, it’s almost all big companies like EA, Eidos, Sony, Microsoft, Square-Enix, Konami, Ubisoft etc. And while quality in the old day was very forgiving, todays gamers are used to high production values and fantastic presentation. But as the old saying goes, looks can be deceiving.

Lately, there have been some rather good independent game projects. It’s not that long ago I reviewed ScaryGirl, a really good game. And Yet It Moves was also done independently, and it was quite good too.

Today I’m checking out a game done entirely by a swede by the name of Daniel Remar. Called Iji (pronounced “I-gee”), it is in its simplest form just another platform game. They are a dime a dozen these days.

Daniel has done the game entirely by himself, only the voice acting and the music have been done by other people. The game has been made with Gamemaker, an application that makes game development a drag-n-drop job. Personally, I don’t care how Daniel did this game, but I’m glad he did.

Quoting Daniel’s own words about the game:

Iji is an action-packed strategic platform shooter with a detailed story, large levels with multiple paths, powerful bosses and lots of secrets. There are alternate gameplay events, dialogues and scenes depending on what you do, a wealth of extras and bonus features, and seven stats to upgrade through a leveling system. Iji herself has superhuman strength and abilities, and can crack Nanotechnology, use her enemies’ most devastating weapons against them, and be a pacifist or a killer – the story adapts to how you play.

As for the plot, it goes like this:

Waking up from a long coma, Iji finds herself trapped with her brother in a remote military complex. As the only remaining survivors of a local alien space-to-ground bombardment, they must find the leader of the sudden attack force, discover their motives, and what it takes to make them leave the complex and return to deep space.

Now, Iji finds out she is no longer an ordinary girl. She has been cybernetically modified, giving her abilities far beyond any normal human being. At first she is frustrated. Her brother commands her remotely from a control room, but she’s not sure she believes all he tells her – and does he tell her everything?

She soon discovers that having special abilities certainly does come in handy, because earth is under attack by an alien race. That means war, and although Iji isn’t very keen on the violence, she has no choice but to turn to it. However, things are not entirely what they seem…

First off, let me state that the game has an absolute wealth of background story. Scattered around the (intelligently designed) levels are loads of log books you can read. You don’t have to, but they present a great way to learn of the background story for the game. And the story is actually pretty good and there is a least one big surprise – at least to me.

If you look at the pictures, you might notice that while the game is far from being pretty compared to modern games, it still retains some charm in the simplistic graphics that is at least consistent in style. Some of the animation is a bit stiff, and the can’t compare with professionally created games. But I dare you to play the game, because what the game might lack in presentation, it more than makes up for in gameplay.

A bit like the Metroid series, Iji can get better weapons, upgrade her abilities, and she is fast and agile. You start out with a small amount of healt and armor. You can kick feeble doors, but your lack of strenght doesn’t allow for much else. Only the weakest of enemies can be downed with a kick from the beginning. But the kick isn’t all you have. You also have your trusty shot gun, complete with unlimited ammo. Sounds easy? It isn’t! The gun is weak and takes an age to reload! But there are ways to improve that.

As you progress through the game, you will find so-called Nano-fields. There are three type:

Blue: Recover armor, but also add to your total Nano. When you reach a certain amount of Nano, you will level up and get a “point”. Points can be spent at a Cyborg station, which will upgrade one of your stats. Leveling up does not improve any of your abilities unless you spend the points you get at the Cyborg stations.

Red: Recover both health and some armor, but don’t help you level up. These are essential to stay alive.

Green: Only recover armor. They don’t help you level up.

There are seven stats in the game, that will help you improve your abilities. They are:

Health: Makes your health bar larger.

Attack: The power of your nanoweapons attack.

Assimilate: Determines how much armor you regenerate when assimiating any kind of Nanofield, and increases ammo capacity for all Nanoweapons.

Strenght: Your physichal strength. Will make your kicks stronger, enabling you to kick down bigger doors – and opponents.

Crack: Determines how secure computer/nano systems you can crack, and how well you can combine the technologies in your Nanogun. Also used to open Security doors.

Tasen: Determines what Tasen weapons you can wield (weapons 1-4). If you try to pick up a weapon you can’t use, you’ll see a small text where the weapon is, telling you what level you need.

Komato: Determines what Komato weapons you can wield (weapons 5-8).

Apart from the above mentioned seven stats, there are two other stats that can be improved and those are Jump and Armor. Jump improves the height of you jumps, enabling you to reach higher (and previously) unreachable ground. Armor improves your armor, enabling you take take less damage. Both of these requires unique upgrades each and cannot be improved using nano-fields.

As with all other good game of this variety, it’s not always easy to choose which stat to improve. Do you choose a larger health bar – or better strenght? Or how about being able to crack that terminal… It’s all very tempting and you are going to have to settle for a few sacrifices. You won’t be able to max out everything. At least I don’t think you’re able to on the normal level. I have played through the game on normal level, but if you it to be more challenging, there’s always hard, extreme and Ultimortal. I don’t even dare think of how hard they can be. The difficulty level on normal will be fine for most, but it’s nice to see higher levels of difficulty for the hardcore players. And the subtle differences in each level are kinda nice.

The controls are easy. Cursor keys are use to run, jump and duck. You press 1-8 for selecting weapons, sometimes pressing a number twice, to select the alternate version of a weapon (which you must have made previously, combining two weapons at select combining stations!), Z make Iji kick, X makes her fire the currently equipped weapon and C is the use/crack/open button. I must admit, I don’t see why Iji can’t shoot when she ducks. A weapon is always fired better when crouching (steadier aim), but I suppose you can’t ask for too much realism.

The actual game is simply your standard platforming game. Iji runs (only one speed unfortunately, no dash button), jumps, hangs off platforms, kicks, shoots and she even gets to ride some machinery. There are a few “puzzles”, but mostly the game is pretty straight forward. It is very much adviseable to actually read the log book entries around the levels, since some of them includes very interesting information that just might help you with a certain troubling situation.

Around the bigger levels, you’ll find checkpoints. These come in handy, should you happen to die. You can also save your game, but only between levels. The game is a bit forgiving, like when you go up against a boss – and there are a few along the way – and you die, the game will give you a tip on how to defeat the boss. So you’re never really stuck.

Some bosses can seem almost impossible to defeat at first, but in true retro-style, it’s usually a matter of finding their weak spot. That’s okay though, because it’s fun looking!

I mentioned earlier, that the graphics around exactly state of the art. The sound effects are actually quite good, the bigger guns certainly has some “oomph” to them and the graphics is quite good in some situations, like with some of the larger explosions. There is also a bit of voice acting in the beginning and plenty of music all the way through the game, all of very decent quality. I did have problems with music when I played the game on my netbook (Asus eeePC 900), but otherwise it ran okay. Daniel states the game should run on any decent computer less than five years old, and while it ran mostly good on my 6 year old P4 3GHz too, some of the really big bosses made the game run slow. Like the final boss. It made the game run at like 20% speed. Granted, a lot was going on. Still a shame, though.

Luckily, most of you will probably have something much much more powerful, so it shouldn’t be a problem. The game takes a fair while to load and uncompress(?), but when it has started, loading is very snappy.

The worst thing about Iji has got to be the fact that it’s hard to let the game go. Like yesterday, when I sat till 2 am on a weekday, simply because I had to defeat the last boss. I could not go to bed with him waiting. It also only takes maybe 3-4 hours to complete the game, if you are an adequate player. But did you see that little word in the heading? It’s a freeware game. It’s free. You can’t really complain about anything. There’s even an improved soundtrack download, with bonus music – again, for free!

And as if that wasn’t enough, the game is just about a 20MB download, requires no installation and installs nothing whatsoever in your Windows directory. That is how all games should work. Want to play it on another computer, including your save games? Just copy the entire game directory to a new computer. It couldn’t be easier.

In conclusion, Iji had me hooked from the beginning, always needing to complete just one more level. It has a great story, a lot of interesting background material, plenty of good, old-fashioned run ‘n gun gameplay, some neat surprises and even sports hidden games and unlockable material. And all this for free! Daniel, you have a hit on your hands

Score: 8 out of 10

-Jacob

Trailer for the game: