Continuity (video game)
Continuity is a 2009 Puzzle Platformer game made by Elias Holmlid, Dmitri Kurteanu, Guy Lima, Jr., and Stefan Mikaelsson for a student project. It won the Best Student Game award at the 2010 Independent Games Festival.
As with many Flash games, it's a Platform Game with a twist, and the twist here is that each level is made up of several 'screens' which form a sliding block puzzle, and the player can move these screens around to enable their character to move onto screens they otherwise couldn't reach. In short, it's a platform game where spatial continuity is not constant and must be manipulated to solve each level.
It could also be thought of as Portal in reverse: instead of creating portals to make discontinuities in space, you're changing the very structure of the space through which you travel.
The goal of each level is to collect all the keys and open the exit door.
It can be played here.
A sequel, Continuity 2: The Continuation, was released in 2011 for iPhone and iPad.
- Bottomless Pit: if there is a hole in the bottom of the screen, and it is not continuous with a screen underneath it, the player character will die when they fall into it.
- Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: if you die, you just get sent back to the beginning of the level or to the last key you found. Sometimes this is actually easier than trying to find your way back to that screen.
- Fifteen Puzzle
- Flip Screen Scrolling: the game is made of individual screens and therefore plays in the style of a flip screen platformer, although the scrolling between screens is continuous.
- Gravity Master: In the sequel, you can do this simply by rotating your iPhone or other handheld device. As if you weren't disoriented enough already.
- Invisible Wall: If you try to move onto a screen which is not continuous with the one you're on, you just hit an invisible wall (or possibly the 'edge' of your current screen).
- Lock and Key Puzzle
- The Maze: some levels are this.
- Meaningful Name: the player character can only move from one screen to another if the sides of the screens match up with each other - that is, they have continuity with each other.
- Spikes of Doom: Quite a few in the sequel. Good thing you can walk on the ceiling.
- Variable Mix: the game's music becomes distant and mellow when you zoom out to view the level as a sliding block puzzle, and more intense when you zoom in to do the running and platforming.
- Wrap Around: you can create wrap-around space by moving the screens as you play.
- X Meets Y: Platform Game meets Sliding Block Puzzle. It's literally a Puzzle Platformer!