Welkin Road can be better described as Spiderman’s Edge (Get it, get it?). Moving past lame jokes, Welkin Road is definitely one hell of a game. It’s set up in the sky, and the only objects in view are the blocks you gotta traverse on and the orbs that you have to grapple on. And Spiderman’s Edge? Well the game is truly a perfect amalgamation of Spiderman’s web-slinging and Mirror’s Edge’s first person parkour mechanism, though it does not completely mimic either of those games. This game will also make you realize that slinging from building to building is not as easy as spidey makes it look.
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(+) Great Amalgamation of Genres |
(-) No Story |
| (+) Level Design | |
| (+) Visual and Auditory Effects | |
| (+) Atmospheric |
DETAILED REVIEW OF WELKIN ROAD
(+) Newton’s Playground
Welkin Road is an environment based puzzle solving game where you have to use momentum and other laws of “boring physics” to traverse from one point to another. The laws and knowledge of physics won’t matter however, till you follow the hints that are given for the respective puzzles. Talking about hints, the game definitely does not spoon feed you. It will tell you the basics and then expects you to apply your lousy brain when approaching each puzzle. Making a 10th grade kid play this game will definitely allow his interpretation of physics to become better. As for the game, the whole ‘in the sky’ setting makes it a lot more atmospheric than it may seem from the gameplay and to truly feel the beauty of the game you will have to play the game with ear or headphones. The sound effects truly are amazing and the lack of music will never be felt due to this very reason. There is no specific story, the game just drops in you in levels which you have to complete.
(+) Not As Simple As It *SEEMS*
Watching gameplay can make the game seem deceivingly simple and yet when you play the game you will realize that it’s not. Our faceless and bodyless character does not have any abilities out of the box other than maybe wall-running (the jury is still out on that one). The game is more simple on the outside but the involved physics make it much more complicated inside. The different colored orbs that you encounter as you play the game seem like different personalities. The red one seems impassive because it has no reaction to our grappling. Green seems benevolent and bright due to it’s nature of changing the environment to our favor when we grapple onto it. The blue one seems moody because once you grapple onto it, your stay is limited and you have to move on before it gets all moody on you. Each one tries to say something. As you move ahead you’ll notice that both the timing and precision of your movement will matter a lot when trying traverse from one part of the map to the other. The time bracket starts narrowing as you progress and puzzles start to become a bit on the hard side. Some of them took me 15-20 tries to get right. There are moments of frustration, but they are easy to get over. If you can’t solve a puzzle you can always look at the clouds below and admire their beauty (They are damn beautiful). The game does have it’s some moments. You feel a sense of triumph when a difficult puzzle is solved. I almost screamed my heart out after I solved a puzzle, post 34 tries.
(+) Joining The Dots
The game also emphasizes that you pre-plan your movement, you can’t just rush into a puzzle. You have to plan ahead and think what you will do 2 steps later. It’s like a jigsaw, you put one piece on the board, you have to figure out the rest of the neighboring ones. The level design of the game is pretty linear, but great and always keeps you on your toes both- actively and passively. The game has another mode called Speedrun and both the modes have a very intricate score system that will make you strive to beat your own score. The game should definitely be in your to play list if you love puzzles and FPS, other similar games being Portal and The Witness.
