Puzzle Games #23

E-Motion a.k.a. Sphericule, a.k.a. The Game of Harmony (1990)
By: The Assembly Line Genre: Puzzle Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Amiga First Day Score: ???,???
Also Available For: Game Boy, PC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum

You know how sometimes there are games you kept seeing screenshots of and kept seeing good review scores of, but they just didn't seem appealing? E-Motion is one of those games for me. It was pretty heavily advertised in its day and the few magazines I bought had pretty decent opinions of it. It just didn't look interesting to me so I never gave it a try. Then, however, many moons after its original release, I happened upon it on an Amiga and found that it's actually not bad. Imagine that! I can kind of still see why I wasn't enticed by it in its day though. Colourful it may be but it's still just screens of different coloured spheres. How much fun could that be? As it turned out, I'm not sure 'fun' is the most appropriate word for the game.

It's definitely not a boring plop fest either though. It takes the form of a single-screen puzzle game with the objective of clearing all the coloured globes from each screen. There's no backstory but you are apparently in control of a small spherical spacecraft, although the game's blurb mentions that playing the game 'allows you to manipulate nature' amongst various other strange notions which, along with all the Einstein references (his likeness is used on the promotional material as well as on the title screen, and the 'E' of the title stands for Einstein), has always made me assume the 'globes' in the game are actually atoms, so if that's true it must be a very small spacecraft. But anyway, that's all you have to do - clear each screen of all the colourful thingies, whatever they are. Sounds simple, right?

Yes it does, and I suppose it is, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy. Eliminating the globes is done by bumping them with your little 'spacecraft' so that two of the same colour touch, at which point they will disappear. Touching globes of differing colours, however, will create smaller globes or 'pods' which will become new globes if left alone for long. There is no gravity and the globes have momentum so the harder you hit one, the further and faster it will travel. The stages also use screen wrap meaning if you or a globe go off one side of the screen, you/it will reappear on the other side. So basically, how well you do at the game depends on how accurately you can bump the globes around. There is of course a catch though.

Right from the start of each stage the globes are pulsing or vibrating, and they will vibrate faster and faster until... kaboom! Yes that's right, for if they are atoms, they must be highly unstable ones! This basically means there's a time limit and it's a pretty strict one. You can survive exploding globes by way of your energy meter but not many. Things are made somewhat more complicated by the fact that some of the globes are attached by lengths of elastic, and not often globes of the same colour either. Some stages even have your craft attached to a globe by elastic. Oof! Many stages also have floaty obstructions of various shapes that inevitably interfere with your attempts to unite the various coloured spheres too.

Happily, the pods that are created by knocking unmatching globes together will replenish your energy if you can get them in time, but it's a mighty challenging game in any case. There are some 50 stages to get through including some bonus rounds, and secret bonuses to discover. Plenty to keep you busy, in other words. The audio/visuals could be better though. The colours are crisp and the stages provide a great demonstration of the Amiga's palette but that's about it, and the sound consists only of a few effects and no music at all. I suppose that's not the point of a game like this though, and the stage designs and accurate physics are a real test for your grey matter. I just wish there wasn't a time limit. E-Motion might well be the relaxing stress/tension reliever that it's creators apparently wanted it to be then.

RKS Score: 7/10

Gameplay Video: here's a video of the whole game being played by one of the talented fellows at World of Longplays (check out their great channel here). Oh, and don't watch if you want to avoid spoilers!