Eyes on DigiPen student-made game Perspective

Neon colors, soothing music, a cute little 8-bit character and platforming. There's not much more needed to draw you to "Perspective," this surprisingly fresh and exciting project coming out of DigiPen. Well, except for the ridiculously mind-bending method of gameplay that has people touting it as the next "Portal."

I'm not sure where to begin. I can't stop watching the trailer because the entire idea behind the game is so cool and interesting to me that I don't know what to talk about first.

Games that sacrifice graphics are often looked at much more harshly in the era of high definition because if the game isn't realistic or pretty to mainstream audiences it damn well better be fun or original. There are few games that have succeeded in this, but I truly think that "Perspective" might be one of those few.

He looks like a tiny little neon astronaut!

Obviously we don't know much about the game right now other than what's on the site at DigiPen for the game.

Puzzle platformers are a dying breed, but it's wonderful to see that there are some developers who can still do them well and with skill enough to excite the masses. At least on Tumblr.

Aside from having to really deliver a good product to gamers, the other uphill battle against platformers is whether or not they're long enough to satisfy someone with a playthrough. "Portal" somewhat suffers from this shortness of gameplay, and those of you who say otherwise are kidding yourselves. The game is a decent length, no doubt about it, but when you find yourself doing the game over and over again and not really interested in the time trials or special condition maps, you know the game has lost its touch.

"Perspective" may or may not be complete. If it is, then we'll really want to see if the game is long enough to be something fulfilling, or fun enough for us not to care. If it isn't complete, then there's still some time before we can pass judgement. Either way, the team has really caught the eye of a lot of people and even if it is short, they still might have something here.

It's projects like this that really emphasize one of the mottoes we have here at the Vault: Don't reinvent the wheel, put rubber on it.

"Perspective" is not trying to find a different definition of platforming. If you look at the trailer, all the basic elements are there.

What they did, their rubber on the wheel, was the addition of perspective to actually shift the platforming map for the player. This adds an entirely new level of depth to the map as the player must be aware of their three-dimensional surroundings and how those will affect that of their two-dimensional counterpart.

Games like this can actually benefit a lot from community involvement. If the game was too short, giving the code and some of the development software to the fans could lead to multiple levels and mods made by other gamers. The replayability would dramatically increase if there were new maps released all of the time.

Cerebral games that don't focus on a heavy story thrive off of creativity and the sharing of ideas.

While it's a longshot, I would definitely suggest to the developers to release a development kit for this game.

"Perspective" is slated for release sometime this Fall.

The color around the screen indicates a switch between 3D platforming and 2D.