Platformer about a pink office worker from the creator of Cave Story

Look At Me launched a new heading in which once a week will talk about the recently released good indie games and about the people who have made them. The first issue is Pink Hour, the short game of the Japanese Pixel, the creator of the Cave Story platformer.

Pink Hour

Platformer, PC,
for free

Pink Hour is a miniature indie platform about female pink, working in the office. The heroine lost an important document and goes on a trip to find it and not to defeat her boss. Pink Hour is a preface by Kero Blaster, the first Pixel Japanese Developer for a long time. They have close mechanics and even common characters - the main character Kero Blaster works in the same office as the pink lady from Pink Hour. You can pass Pink Hour in just five minutes, but it is not as simple as it seems. The game does not forgive mistakes, there are a million ways to “die”: to stumble, face an unexpected enemy or miss a jump. Nevertheless, there is so much charm in Pink Hour that it is worth spending time on it.

“The main thing is to come up with cool characters. It can easily build a story around them, and everything else is already there, ” says a short smiling Japanese with glasses and a hoodie in the form of a frog; The Pax East exhibition is held in the background, the Japanese communicates with the journalist through the translator. He really comes up with excellent characters: bunnies, squids, seals, all cute and exceptionally memorable. Visitors to the exhibition go by, some linger with the screen that is nearby, on which a person in a green hoodie represents his new game, Kero Blaster: her main character, so it happened, is a frog.

His name is Daisuke Amaya, he is also known as Pixel, he is 36 years old; Amaya has been making games since the 90s, but so far, thanks to just one, Cave Story. In 2004, he imperceptibly-and completely free-posted it on the Internet, and the game became an underground hit. Amaid was a pioneer of an indie-wave that rose to the zero video game: he overtook his time, and now that the Indie games have become popular, the missed man entrusts. Six years after the appearance of Cave Story, large companies noticed: the game appeared in an updated form on Steam, reprinted on WII and 3DS, PSP and Xbox, and Amaya was able to engage in video games close. His new work will come out about; She already had a prologue - Pink Hour, an independent game in every sense.

“I always liked to draw and compose music, and I always loved games,” says Amaya. - In 1996, when I studied at the university, a guy named NAO lived with me in a hostel. He taught me programming. " Amaya was approaching the creation of the first game for a long time and responsibly: at first he practice on several small projects, then wrote his own music program, then another, and only in 1999 he took up Cave Story. It took him 5 years.

Cave Story, a sweet game about a man who turned out to be a mysterious cave inside, he is looking for a way out of her, simultaneously meeting her strange inhabitants. The game became one of the main indie games of the beginning of the zero, and then, with a reprint, and the new time. In the video , which Nintendo was made to the exit of the game on Wii, the modest Amaya honestly tells that he was very surprised by the success of Cave Story. He did not plan to work in the gaming industry, but fate ordered otherwise. The popularity of Cave Story allowed him to leave work from a company developing a system for printers.

Kero Blaster, and with her her “first chapter” Pink Hour, is the first full -fledged Pixel game since Cave Story. They look like the main hit of Amai in spirit: this is the same 2D action-platform with pixel graphics-the developer admits that nothing else should be expected from him. In Pink Hour, the author’s personality is felt - say, his life as a simple salarimen. This is a strange game about a pink ball, but the plot is tied to work in the office; In the same office there is a frog from Kero Blaster, it can be seen running in the background.

Even in Pink Hour, the love of the thoroughness and accuracy of Pixel is visible. According to him, he can sit on the design of any one character for hours and even days, thinking through every pixel. At the same time, Amaya works spontaneously, say, inventing the levels on the go, but then they still “align them”. One way or another, all his games work as well -rebuilt mechanisms. “The greatest joy is for me,” he says at Pax East, “to watch how people play my games and watch their reaction when they succeed, when something works as they should, when management, design, level-everything works together and works flawlessly.” Pink Hour, for all her cruelty, is played exactly like this: like a car. It is made very diligently: for example, despite the fact that the game is very short, it has two different endings.

In addition, Pink Hour is inspired by the aesthetics of the KAWA; In love for all the dear, Amaya admitted more than once: “Games are funny and fascinating differently, but for me the fun in games is inextricably linked with tenderness. I try to make everything inside the game is sweet: music, movements, sounds. ”

Now the second person helps him, but for a long time Amaya worked completely alone - he made a graphics, the game, music: “Since I do everything separately, I don’t know how the game will look when you fold everything. Sometimes I collect everything into one, I look and think: “Wow! Who did it? Oh yes, I'm. " Nowadays, every second indie game is trying to leave on pixel graphics and nostalgia, but Pixel is a veteran, he began to do this before everyone else. Due to the fact that his games are made by one person who puts a huge amount of effort in them, Amai is able to use retro aesthetics naturally, as if he was not trying to bribe anyone. To pass Pink Hour, an hour of tense attempts is required of the force, but it costs this hour. It remains to wait for what will happen to Kero Blaster.

Indie game of the week: Pink Hour