Posts with ‘TedLauterbach’ Tag

suteF

By: ithamore

On: January 25th, 2011

[This is a guest review by John Sandoval. To submit a guest article for TIGSource, go here.]

Edit: You might want to avoid the video if you don’t want to see any spoilers. /Edit

Nothing is as it seems in the world of suteF. Though what you see is a fairly standard puzzle-platformer (crates are pushed, ledges are climbed, and exits are ultimately reached), suteF is at its core a game that takes every opportunity to mess with the player as much as possible. A miscalculated jump can trigger cracks in reality; a single step could erase your path from existence. Entire dimensions can open up from the void. And this tension, this uncertainty, this feeling that anything can happen at any time, is what makes playing suteF an experience worth having.

The successor to creator Ted Lauterbach’s earlier work (titled Fetus), suteF places you once again in the role of an admittedly doughy little blue man named Aramas. Trapped in a hellish dimension, you must progress through five sets of levels, using your wits and Aramas’ limited skillset to solve increasingly complex puzzles and hopefully find a way out. Aramas has at his disposal three individual abilities— jumping, crate pushing, and grappling onto nearby surfaces with his trusty grappling hook. However, the game takes great delight in stripping you of any of these abilities when you least expect it, keeping you on your toes. In addition to Aramas’ inherent abilities, your greatest asset in escaping the world of suteF comes from the warped nature of the dimension itself. To put it simply, walking off one end of the screen leads you to the other; falling off the bottom of the screen loops you back to the top. Exploiting these spatial impossibilities can turn an otherwise impassable chasm into a mere few steps in the other direction. The resulting puzzles are exceptionally clever, forcing the player to make full use of all of Aramas’ paltry abilities in a multitude of ways. You’d be surprised just how much gameplay suteF ekes out of these relatively simple mechanics.

Every element in suteF is crafted to make the player feel as if the world could tear apart at any moment. From the constant screen static to sudden changes in the levels themselves, you’re never sure if what you’re playing is a glitch or the actual game. Some might call this a lack of polish—but I feel that the game is far more interesting for it.

suteF is available for download from GameJolt. It takes about one to two hours to beat; the various secret levels can double that time. All in all, it’s a very, very good game.