<p dir="ltr">When John (also known as King Friday) Kopp told me that my appointment for Midnight City would be in a bus outside of the Washington State Convention Center I should have known that the new independent publishing company would be providing a different appointment experience than any of their counterparts at PAX Prime. As I walk out of the out of the Expo and step into a quiet tunnel that runs under the building, I come face to face with a luxury bus, something akin to what low level in which rockstars would tour the continental United States. I slowly approach the bus and see a man who is instantly recognizable due to his unique facial hair, more fitted for the rockstar aspect of the bus than the games inside of it. This man is Casey Lynch who spent nearly two years as the IGN Editor-in-Chief. In June, Lynch announced he was leaving IGN and teaming up with Doug Kennedy, the former President and CEO of Reverb Communications and Reverb Publishing, to create Midnight City, a new independent video game publisher.</p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">I introduce myself to Lynch who greets me with a smile, then ducks inside the bus, reemerging to ask me if I want to see <em>Slender: The Arrival</em> running on the Oculus Rift. I can’t get inside the bus fast enough to witness the most immersive and interesting horror experience to date.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Moving Slender to the Oculus is a perfect example of what Midnight City is doing with their publishing company. Lynch and Kennedy are looking for games that speak to the heart of the player, bringing back established ideas that have been left by the wayside. The spirit of the indie game is alive and well in Midnight City, but so is drive to make sure these independent developers are not beholden to the platform behemoths. It is this blend that makes Midnight City so intriguing.</span></p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Slender: The Arrival on Oculus Rift</strong></span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">When I finally get my hands on the Oculus Rift, I excitedly pull the device over my head. It fits like a ski mask, snug, but not tight, it is a surprisingly light machine. Shaking my head back and forth, the device doesn’t slide around or shift in place. My qualm with the Oculus has always been that it would be difficult to adapt to, something that could only appeal to the hardcore player. What impresses me is the accessibility, I feel like the Oculus would be easy to use for anyone.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The Oculus allows instant immersion in the gloomy, shadowy world of <em>Slender</em>. I am in a forest, a radio tower is the only landmark ahead of me, looming above the tall grass I am wading through. There’s something unnerving about the setting of <em>The Arrival</em>, the game plays on locations that are instantly offsetting, like empty warehouses and dark forests. Attached to the radio tower, I find the first of eight pages that I have to collect in order to escape the level. Down a dirt path from the radio tower I run into a building that looks like a storage or shipping facility, I find another page, then a third shortly thereafter.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">That is when my vision begins to get distorted, static disorients me. While playing the game on a monitor, these effects might be natural or expected, but with the Oculus on my face, it completely throws me. It also means that Slender Man is closing in on me. The more pages you collect, the more the haunting character can sense your presence. I run through trees, down a ravine, I find another page, bringing my total to four. The static is getting worse as I emerge from the ravine and find a car parked in a clearing. I run to the car and find a fifth page on it. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">I return to ravine to have Slender Man appear right in front of me. I jump, I scream, I hear the developers laughing at me as I breathlessly try to escape. There’s no use. Slender Man has got me. <em>Slender: The Arrival</em> won’t be open to the public on the Oculus Rift until the system itself is out, the experience is very impressive, making a believer in not only the game, but the hardware as well. </span></p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Grapple</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">For more hands on time with the other games that Midnight City offer, I head to their press event. Again, the energy of the company seems to seep into the way that it offers its demos. Instead of a stuffy hotel room or renting a room in the convention center, Midnight City has offered their games in a luxury bus and at a bar. In a backroom, their games are set up in a semicircle that shows off their library. I head to the first available station where the platforming game <em>Grapple</em>, is flanked on either side by two members of Tuesday Society Games, the developer.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">In <em>Grapple</em> you play as a ball of ooze that has the ability to stick to other objects. I take a few second to acquaint myself with games controls, then start to get a feel for what the game is. The key mechanic in <em>Grapple</em> is the ability to shoot out an arm of goo and attach yourself to other platforms, much like Spider-Man. The game challenges you in other ways as well; there are jumps you have to make, platforms that will kill you, but mostly the grappling feels like the core mechanic.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">As I work my way through <em>Grapple</em>, the puzzles start easy, with a simple jump from one platform to the other, but get increasingly harder. The next series of platforms has me rolling around circular surfaces, experimenting with the bizarre nature of hanging upside down and having to turn the camera to keep the controls the same. Then I have to jump off a platform and grapple around a second platform that will kill me if I touch it. There are set physics at work, but it is difficult to keep reminding myself how they will affect my platforming.</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The game is a challenge, and much like the best platformers, it is a good challenge. Trial and error is key, leaving me constantly saying to the developers, “No, let me try one more time. I got this.” The game has a very <em>Sound Shapes</em> meets <em>Portal</em> vibe to it, as platforming and puzzling tug at both sides of your brain. <em>Grapple</em> feels like it has a ways to go before completion, the series of levels available gives a good taste of what the game has to offer, but there did not seem to be a fleshed out product available. That being said, I look forward to seeing more of Grapple’s development.</span></p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>The Bridge</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">While <em>Grapple</em> may be a ways from it’s final stage, the next game I played, <em>The Bridge</em>, is already available on Steam and is coming soon to the Xbox 360. The first game designed by Ty Taylor, with art from Mario Castañeda,<em> The Bridge</em> is an MC Escher piece mixed with gravity puzzles. As I approach the game, Taylor tells me how the game is a slow burn, a true puzzler that is more suited to quiet nights at home in your office or bedroom rather than a noisy bar.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">The game is simple enough. Our protagonist, whose goatee is not unlike the aforementioned Escher, needs to be guided from his starting point to a door, sometimes requiring a key or other object to get past obstacles between him and the door. The room the puzzle is contained in can be tilted left or right by pressing the bumper buttons on the controller. This can be make hard to reach places easier to get to, or get objects where your character can reach them.</p>
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<p dir="ltr">As I start to toy with the puzzles, again I am struck by another game that revolves around trial and error. If you ever mess up a puzzle, or want to start fresh, you can simply rewind time&#8211;not unlike the platformer <em>Braid</em>&#8211;to return back to a previous point. This quickly erases mistakes and makes the game a bit forgiving, encouraging experimentation. The puzzles are pretty elementary at first as I tilt the room sideway and walk to the desired door. The difficulty ramps up and I find myself trying to maneuver and reverse the pull of gravity to work my way through Taylor’s well crafted puzzles.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Taylor is right, a noisy bar is not the best place for a game like <em>The Bridge</em>. The game’s engrossing pencil shaded artwork and mind-bending gameplay is something to be enjoyed in a more solitary environment. It feels like a pure form of the puzzle game, elementary and yet, surprisingly tricky. Even as I move on to other games, I find myself stopping by <em>The Bridge</em> time and time again to see other people try and wrap their brain around the games interesting mechanics.</p>
<p> ;</p>
<p dir="ltr">This is Part One of Two covering the games from Midnight City, the next part will cover <em>Blood of the Werewolf</em> and <em>Videoball</em>.</p>

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