Review - Bryan Audley's Numbers

On the face of it, this game is just a really elaborate excuse to practice math problems. However, there is a more insidious side to the design of this game that is not immediately apparent. Bryan Audley’s Numbers is a recent puzzle game developed by SUNSET Games wherein the player is trapped in a labyrinth that they must escape. To do so, they must use their knowledge of mathematics.

Bryan Audley's Numbers screenshot

The entire game consists of one basic mechanic. The player opens a door to another chamber, reads the three digit code for the chamber, and if any of the three numbers are prime then the room will kill them. That’s it. You continue to travel between rooms, occasionally getting levels that only tell you some obvious mathematical fact like “all even numbers are not primes.” As such, this game is really something that one could give to a kid who is learning to factor numbers in school. Otherwise, write these few lines of code in Java and you can go forever with zero mental effort.


If that were the only thing about this game, I probably wouldn’t have done a review. Oh, and it would be a good educational tool as well. However, if anyone thinks that that premise is oddly familiar, it may very well be. Back in 1997 there was a film directed by Vincenzo Natali titled, Cube. In said film, a group was trapped in a maze where they had to escape by checking every room number for prime numbers. The thing is, the art style for the rooms in Cube and in Bryan Audley’s Numbers is identical, along with the general 3D design of the maze. What I mean to say is that Bryan Audley’s Numbers clearly plagiarized Natali’s work for their game.
Whatever you think of either the movie or the game, it is unacceptable to steal someone else's work. There is no indication that this game has any rights to make a carbon copy of the movie. Because of this alone, no one should purchase this game.

Screenshot from Vincenzo Natali's Cube film

Bryan Audley’s Numbers is, on the face of it, a decent math simulator. The gameplay is boring and stupidly repetitive. However, the fact that the developer seems to have plagiarized the entire concept from Vincenzo Natali’s Cube, down to the aesthetics of the cubes, is entirely unacceptable. The only difference is that the developer didn’t put in the time to have any character other than the player. No one should purchase a work that so clearly ripped off another artist and SUNSET Games should be ashamed of themselves.

SUNSET Games, Bryan Audley’s Numbers. Siberian Digital, Nov 17, 2017.
Cube. Directed by Vincenzo Natal. Telefilm Canada, 1997.

Video Review


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Cyclical Narrative

Image
For most people the standard narrative arc will be quite familiar. In graph form it is akin to a parabolic curve with rising action, some climax moment, and falling action. While there may be differences in form from one story to another, there is one thing that remains constant throughout every novel, movie, play, or schoolyard story: the X-axis. Narrative time remains constant as one events leads to another in a strict, predictable, and sequential order. In the world of gaming, the linear narrative arc is no longer the only means of storytelling. Gaming is capable of expressing story through a cyclical story arc. In this form of story arc a portion of the narrative is allowed to loop, potentially into infinitum, with the events within the loop having narrative significance. In this essay we will examine the aspects, necessities, and significance of a cyclical story arc. Figure 1: Linear story arc with axis. There are three things that any narrative requires in order to prese
Read more

Slick Retro Style - The Eternal Castle [Remastered]

Image
The Eternal Castle is ostensibly a remake of a game from 1987 however all evidence points to that being a clever marketing ploy by the developers ( forum post ). Instead, it is an homage to the cinematic platformer, a genre including Prince of Persia and Oddworld . The Eternal Castle dusts off digital rotoscoping technology and uses retro, four colored environments to create oddly beautiful and expressive scenes. While the gameplay is not particularly smooth, the visuals and mystique of the world kept me engaged throughout The Eternal Castle . The gameplay of The Eternal Castle leaves a lot to be desired. There was the problem of the unresponsive controls. I found that it was hard to get the character to do what you wanted them to. Attacks were slow and sometimes pressing the attack button would not do anything for no apparent reason. The character’s movement was imprecise, making it hard to jump up to the ledge you want to get to without leaping to your doom. It seems that
Read more

Vivens - The Narrative Essence of Gaming

Sections Narrative Method and Essence Gaming’s Narrative Method: Interactivity The Avatar Vivens - Lived Experience Acting the Part Routine and Habit Inter and Intra-personal Meaning The Two Forms Exemplum Vivens Habitual Vivens No two forms of art are quite the same. Novel, stagecraft, painting and every other art-form are all differentiated not only by their mediums, but also by the stories that they can tell. For instance, a play can express different themes than a novel on account of it’s use of visuals and motion. In the case of gaming, neither the narrative method nor narrative essence of the medium has yet been formally defined and so I will do what I might to illuminate both of these topics. For the medium of gaming, the narrative method of interactivity allows the audience the unique ability to access a work’s themes through a form of lived experience that we shall call vivens . Narrative Method and Essence Before we can delve into gaming we must first
Read more