Gaming
'Semblance': first-ever SA game developed for Nintendo Switch drops
The release of this puzzle platformer isn't only a win for local game developers, but for gamers too - it's great fun to play, says Sylvia McKeown
Semblance is a puzzle platformer where your character and the world it inhabits is made of a playdough-like substance.
"Squish, squash and deform your character to solve puzzles in the soft, bouncy world," says the description on its website. Each time the block hits the wall or ceiling it changes shape and can interact with the environment differently.
Yet it's hard to imagine how the small square block slamming itself against a wall in the initial stages of the game could become the pink and purple squidgy world of Semblance.
Ben Myres and Kenya-born Cukia "Sugar" Kimani, founders of the SA independent gaming developer Nymakop, created Semblance as their final-year project at Wits University in 2015. "It's crazy to think that we almost didn't show the demo to our examiners, because we'd hit a glitch a few minutes before," says Kimani.
But they did show it to Judd Simantov, a game developer who worked with Sony Entertainment's Naughty Dog, the people behind Uncharted and Last of Us. Simantov loved the game and believed it would do well commercially.
It was finally released last week.
WATCH | The game trailer for Semblance..
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