Strange World: Castaway – Developer Summary:

Strange World: Castaway is a puzzle-platform game, where the most important thing is vibe. In SW: C you are taking control over agile alien, which has got some special abilities. He can slide on the walls, he can double jump, regenerate health by eating strange flying goos etc. Your main task is to find way out from caves and collect all missing parts from your spaceship.

What We Think:

You’re an alien whose spaceship has crashed and you need to wander the planet looking for the parts to put it back together again. A simple premise for a simple game. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Keeping things simple can let the gameplay shine more brightly.

As first efforts go, Strange World: Castaway is good. It’s your standard platformer, but with some nice level design. There is a lot of vertical movement, particularly wall climbing. The artwork is going for a low-res old-school look, but is so crude that it reminded me of the worst shareware games of the early 90’s. The Backgrounds and tilesets are also too spartan. The music fits the theme of the game very well. It’s light with a hint of mystery.

For free it’s easily worth playing through this, relatively short, game. The tiny team at Pure Indie Games should be commended for their work. Strange World: Castaway shows the kernels of quality design. If they gather a few talented individuals to the team, particularly an artist or two, they should be making games worthy of wide release in no time.

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