Gunpoint, the first game made by Tom Francis, was a favourite of mine. Ever since witnessing The Wrong Trousers for the first time I’d always wanted my own pair of mechanized pantaloons, and Gunpoint delivered this non-sequitur of a fantasy like Van Dyke on a bike. But it turned out that this wasn’t the Tom Francis game that I would spend most time with, turned out that that would be a little game he released for free a couple of months ago on Steam.
Floating Point is a minimalist 2d swinging game. Imagine a Spider Man game that wasn’t Spider Man 2 that was also good. Gameplay is purely mouse driven. Lie back and click, and wherever you shall click is where the grappling hook or whatever shit that you’re using to swing around on will be launched. Then swing into a wall. I love a game with the bare minimum of controls (I’ve made more than one game where you just walk about), and the simple act of mastering these forms the core of the games appeal. Left click attaches you to something, holding left click reels you in, right click detaches you. Easy.
Swinging through infinite randomly generated levels becomes a great meditative experience, in a similar manner to games like Bejeweled or Peggle, but unlike those games which had a fairly low skill cap, Floating Point maintained and continues to maintain interest after tens of hours of play. One day I’ll be able to float through a level like a butterfly with a grappling hook. One day I’ll manage to get over 2,000,000 points. Not today though.
It is the perfect game when listening to a podcast or waiting for an email. A skill to perfect while a small part of your brain focuses on something else. Something you play for ten minutes while drafting the best way to begin a call. A way to divert your attention from an encroaching forest fire. It is the apex distraction game.
When playing a story based game like Red Dead Redemption or The Swapper I sometimes feel like I must experience each moment perfectly. I shouldn’t play this game when I feel crap or stressed, or when I’m drunk or when I’m tired, because I’ll experience a moment for the first time like that. I’ll never be able to experience it for the first time again, and forever the memory of it will be tainted by the imperfection with which I experienced it. It’ll be like when I watched the season finale of Battlestar Galactica while really wanting a piss.
I never feel like that with Floating Point. I’m never going to beat my high score when I’m playing it drunk at midnight, but I’ll still have fun. Nothing about this session will have any persistence, any effect on my future time with this game. This aspect of the game is hardly unique, I’ve already mentioned Bejeweled and Peggle, but of course there are games like Threes, Spelunky and Kerbal Space Program that also fulfill this need. But these games walk a fine line. Bejeweled doesn’t grab my attention enough to be a distraction, while Spelunky takes too much and becomes stressful if I’m not willing to devote my entire focus to it. Kerbal requires too much time investment and Threes, well I don’t really like Threes to be honest. I’m not sure why I mentioned it.
Floating Point, at least for me, is the perfect balance between cognitive difficulty and muscle memory. Not requiring too much brain power but not too little either. I may never play it in chunks of more than half an hour, but I’ll fire it up multiple times a day when I need to take my mind off something, when I need to let my subconscious figure something out, or when I need to keep my higher mind busy while listening to an audio-only format.
