And Yet It Moves - Game Review

Pros: Clever, original and varied
Cons: None come to mind.

With a title that sounds like a line from a poem and a paper collage visual style, one might expect And Yet It Moves to be an “art” game along the lines of The Path or Every Day the Same Dream. Instead, AYIM is an indie puzzle game that puts a twist on a familiar genre, not breaking the rules of video games but simply upending and thus refreshing them.

AYIM upends the platformer genre in a very literal sense. Featuring an unnamed pencil sketch of a protagonist, this is a 2D side scroller set in an environment made up of artfully arranged paper cutouts. AYIM includes the typical running and jumping of the platforming genre, but the entire game world can be rotated; If you can no longer walk on the floor, turn the world upside down and walk on the ceiling instead.

AYIM offers a surprisingly diverse set of control schemes. You can use the Wii remote alone, play one of two remote/nunchuk combo modes or use a classic controller. By far the best control scheme is the single-remote one. You hold the remote sideways, moving via the direction keys and jumping with the “2” button. Press the “1” button and time stops; rotate the remote and the game world rotates along with it. If you walk to the end of a tree branch, you can jump in the air, rotate the world and land on the branch’s underside.

This rotating world concept has been done before, most notably in the Kororinpa games, but AYIM plays with the basic mechanics in a dozen ways. In some areas you must jump upon transient platforms that pay no attention to the time stopping mechanism; elsewhere you must carefully cause a banana to fall through a labyrinth to an ape. There are ingenious puzzles; objects must be moved with the help of creatures that only travel in opposition to gravity or black and white doppelgangers must trade places through intricate mazes. While the world moves, your avatar’s momentum increases no matter which direction he falls; let him fall too far and he will shatter. AYIM is that game that perfectly meshes a simple, intuitive basic game mechanic with almost endless variety.

AYIM seems perfectly designed for the Wii, so I was surprised to learn that it was originally released as a game for Windows, Mac and Linux. This original version is somewhat different from the Wii version in that you can only change the world’s orientation in 90 degree shifts. By allowing you to rotate the world to any degree, the Wii version feels more organic and intuitive, although in some cases it also makes the game a bit easier, particularly since the original game didn’t allow one to indefinitely stop time in order to get into the proper position.

Available on WiiWare for 1,000 points (about $10), the beautifully crafted, endlessly entertaining AYIM offers more fun and creativity than many $40 boxed game, and is a must-have for puzzle game fans. It may look like art, but it’s a lot more fun.