Gish

Developer: Cryptic Sea

Publisher: Chronic Logic

Year of Release: 2004

Platform: PC

Gish takes a time-tested format – the side-scrolling platformer – and injects it with a fresh approach centring around a gameplay emphasis on physics. Six years on and it’s still a unique spin on a beloved genre. Of course, we have all the cherished conventions of the side-scroller intact: time and high-scores; collectable coins and secrets; extra lives; enemies that need to be squashed; and the prototypical plot-line of guy-chasing-kidnapped-girl. Gish does not revolutionise the genre; it refreshes it. It grants it a creative spark.

The protagonist is a blob of tar. From the beginning you have three powers: stickiness; slipperiness; and heaviness. The first allows you to fasten to most surfaces, climb against gravity, hang upside down or cling to moving objects so to avoid being flung off by inertia. The second enables the gamer to slide down narrow passages and decreases friction when attempting to gather up speed/momentum to reach new heights. The final ability is the most prominent weapon against enemies (via crushing them). It’s also essential for breaking through blocks and shifting the balance of precarious ledges. Momentum is a strong thematic in the gameplay: jumping requires the gamer to time button presses when Gish is most compressed to achieve higher leaps; movement is necessary to break through obstacles and enemies are mostly only killed when the player smacks them from a height or with speed behind them. Physics also comes into play when interacting with the environment: using blocks as weights; maintaining balance on loose platforms or columns (or shifting them to fall a certain way to enable progress); swinging etc. It’s an accomplished focus that evades the nasty stigma of ‘gimmick’.



There are five levels but only four with seven stages – five normal stages; sixth a boss fight; seventh a bonus stage. The fifth level occludes the bonus stage as the boss fight is the game’s climax. Additionally there’s also (apparently) twenty-three hidden collection levels. I did not come across a single one. That’s possibly because I’m terrible at the game and/or they are bloody well hidden. Most likely the former. In all the game took me six hours to play through on the easiest difficulty, without discovering all the secrets and aforementioned collection stages. Even then I got stuck several times. ‘Stuck’ as in kept screwing up tricky combinations of abilities. At points Gish really does become a new synonym for RAGE!!! I can only imagine how that must intensify with the normal and hard difficulties. But when you do finally progress, having nailed the right combination, you will feel godly. As such Gish acquires that rare sensation of achievement when you beat that goddamn tough level. It’s a great feeling. Challenging game design should not be construed as negative. However the difficulty does seem to fluctuate throughout the game. You’ll be punished by one stage, but sometimes fly through the subsequent ones. This is especially true for the boss battles. The first and last bosses were the hardest. The rest I beat in a matter of seconds (and remember: I’m terrible).



Unfortunately ‘variety’ isn’t a quality Cryptic Sea’s little platform/puzzler possesses: the first three levels consist of the same sewer system environment with different coloured lighting, altered music and a slightly varying colouration for the same enemies (of which there are only two kinds in the whole game, excluding bosses). For a while I feared that would apply for the game’s entirety. Thankfully the start of the fourth level revealed that I had inexplicably ended up in an Egyptian-styled environment, complete with sandstone and hieroglyphs. You’re a blob of tar with a human girlfriend! A believable narrative is clearly not a concern here. The stages and levels do change up in terms of puzzles, especially what form of exploited physics is required to complete them, so the gripe here is mainly a cosmetic, superficial one. The characters comprise a crisp cartoony aesthetic that’s appealing in motion. Gish’s animations, in particular, are impressive when compressed, re-shaped and pinched (etc.) by the environment. He reacts to physical contact with surfaces in a completely organic and believable manner.



There’s a multiplayer mode but sadly I’m a socially-retarded monkey and couldn’t find anyone to try it out with. No bots or online support – it has to be played on the same computer – merely added to my woes. With that said, Cryptic Sea’s cool side-scrolling platform/puzzler is exactly what I’d expect from a little, bargain-priced game: inventiveness. It moves the genre forward a few steps, opposed to trying too much to jettison it into orbit. And for a super cheap $9.95USD (on Steam) you’d be an inept buffoon to not give it a go. Wanna fight?

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