2005 IGF Award Winner
Reinventing the Platformer with Physics

At first glance, Gish might appear to be a classic arcade-style game, something like Sonic or Mario Brothers. First glances can be deceiving: yes, this is a sidescrolling platformer, but the actual gameplay is very different, because it's based on a physics engine. Gish, the tar ball who is the title character, needs to get momentum to get up and over objects, controls how high he jumps by compressing and extending himself, can move objects by gaining momentum and running into them, walks on walls and ceilings by making himself "sticky", and so on.

It takes one minute to know why Wik & The Fable of Souls is an award winning game. It takes ten minutes to know you want this game. What you might not know is "Wik" has a large following. There is a game home page and a forum with tips and answers to any questions you might come up with. You can download the wonderful music to play independently of the game to add to your music library. There is even a "unsupported level editor" so you can add to your game. Not only that, there are others who have already played the game and you can download the master pack that allows you to extend your play. But, those are things that you might wait to do.

Forget that punk Ecco; in Laser Dolphin, you're a dolphin with a frickin' laser strapped to your back--a lean, mean, marine fighting machine dealing death to all sorts of evil sharks, turtles, and aliens. Or to put it another way, this is an entertaining, cheerfully off-beat sidescroller with some 70-odd levels, in which level design--ringing the changes on just about every possible problem the palette of the theme and the obstacles the game includes can offer--is a major strength.

What's your goal? Well, aliens have kidnapped the Prime Minister (of what nation it isn't clear--Oceania, perhaps; we have always been at war with the aliens). And only Laser Dolphin can save the day. Okay, its thin, but sidescrollers aren't about deep emotional story-telling, anyway. Go, Laser Dolphin, go!