Award-winning Indie Puzzle Platformer Available For Linux
VIENNA, Austria – August 6, 2010 – The award-winning puzzle platformer, And Yet It
Moves, was released for the Linux platform today. Indie studio Broken Rules brings the
award-winning downloadable PC and Mac game that will have players physically
rotating environments to overcome various obstacles and challenges to the Free
Operating System. The game won the 2007 Independent Games Festival Student
Showcase, was nominated for the 2007 EUROPRIX Top Talent Award and qualified as a
finalist during IndieCade 2008. Download the DRM-free game as RPM or Debian
package, or as a Tarball. The game will be on sale for $9.99.
And Yet It Moves is an award winning physics-based platform game where you run and
jump through a world made of paper. To aid in solving the twisted mind-bending levels,
you possess the unique ability to rotate the world at will! Walls become floors, slides
become platforms – but a harmless pile of rocks becomes a hazardous danger when
turned upside down! Explore beautifully crafted environments. Survive 17 challenging
levels full of strange creatures, traps and puzzles. Unlock bonus levels and competitive
game modes. Beat you friends’ time on the online leaderboards. Turn your world upside-
down with And Yet It Moves!
Key features of the game include:
• Advanced Platforming – Players run, jump and must rotate the world to solve
puzzles.
• A living world -Meet creatures such as bats, bees and monkeys. Discover how
they react to ever-changing gravity, and master all challenges. 17 levels set in 3
different environments bring to life a paper collage world created from colorful
shreds of cardboard.
• Speed Run mode – You can compete against the clock or previously recorded
Ghost Runs on each level, with marathon runs throughout the entire environment.
• Online high scores and shareable Ghost Runs – Go for the high score by
challenging your friends or complete strangers and polish your skills of rotation.
• Buy once, use everywhere – Once the game was bought via the Broken Rules
web shop, you can download the DRM-free software for all platforms (PC, Mac,
Linux).
Gameplay
And Yet It Moves is centered around the enhancement of players’ abilities in a 2D platformer. Its core
mechanism is the power to turn the world in 90 degrees intervals any time the user chooses to. This has
clear implications on the game environment: walls become floors, tunnels may suddenly be used as
downward slides and a stone resting on the ground may fall, becoming either a dangerous obstacle or
useful object for catapulting.
To successfully progress through a level, a player must apply the physical consequences of rotating the
world to the avatar, and to other moving objects, like stones, drops of water and branches, as well as to
living things, such as bats, monkeys and much more.
Our goal was to cater to players with a reasonably high game literacy, along with newcomers to our domain.
We carefully introduce our core mechanism, and slowly build up the challenges, so that one can improve
while playing. During our intense user testing sessions, we refined and polished that process, in order to
provide a satisfying gaming experience.
A great amount of effort was put into supporting the fresh and interesting gameplay, with many additionally
added special objects to interact with, and a large variety of puzzles distributed over 16 levels in 3
environments. It’s amazing how much there is to do when you’re able to turn the world around!
Artstyle
And Yet It Moves is notable, parallel to its polished, focused gameplay, for the unique artistic style that was
to inevitably arise. Our team lacked a specialized visual game artist, so we looked for a style we liked that
we would be able to produce. The roughness and analog feel of a world set in a paper collage provided just
what we wanted, without the necessity of 3D artists building it. Each object, plant or animal that the player
encounters is ripped out of a photo or movie image and brought to life using current realtime rendering
techniques. Every level was designed through a meticulous handmade process, including various back-
and foreground layers, making it more interesting to play through.
The same analog approach was also used for the acoustic design of And Yet It Moves. In addition to visual
finesse, the world is enriched with handmade sounds and music, all originating from our sound designer,
Christoph’s, voice.
If a player must spend a moment determining how to overcome an obstacle, the visual and acoustic beauty
offers a great deal to enjoy in the meantime.
We split up the levels into three visually and thematically distinct environments. The first few levels are set in
the winding corridors of a cave, beginning visually quietly so the player may focus on learning the
mechanisms of the game, increasingly coming to life as the player advances. Once the character is able to
escape, they find themselves in a lush forest, surrounded by canopying trees and mysterious plants and
animals, which may not be always be very welcoming.
Many challenges must be overcome within the beautiful homage to nature, until a snake bite casts the
character into a world, transformed with abstract challenges.
Without any further spoilers, we invite you to explore the visual, acoustic spectacle of gameplay for
yourself!
Online Capabilities
A great interest was shown in the high score tables of the prototype of And Yet It Moves, showing us that
even platformers can be racing games.
Therefore, we officially included the social community phenomena of Speed Runs, which accompany so
many other platform games, but which have always been carried out via YouTube, among others.
Each run through a level in And Yet It Moves will be recorded as a “Ghost” and can be submitted with its
time to the global online high scores. With the ability to download other user’s Ghosts, one is able to
compete against friends and strangers around the globe. The recorded Ghosts may be used to observe
how others play through a level, to show shortcuts to friends or to learn new tips and tricks for increasing
one’s skills.
Extra effort has been put into making the user interface as simple as possible so that the times and Ghosts
one wants to compete with can be found most easily.A player can filter the high scores to see the best
times, the times one is most likely to beat or simply the times of a specific user or location. Our vast
assortment of high scores, therefore, allows a way for players to define their own competitions, not only
trying to top those of others skillful enough to compete for the highest places.
Where is it coming from
And Yet It Moves was conceived as a game concept for a computer science course, held by the
Department for Design and Assessment of Technology at the Vienna University of Technology. Thanks to
the wisdom of our supervisors to constrict us to a 2D engine, we focused on giving a player more control
and abilities within a 2D platformer.
The prototype for And Yet It Moves was a 2007 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase Winner and
a 2007 EUROPRIX Top Talent Award Nominee.
It was additionally included in the 2007 Independent Games Showcase at E3, is an IndieCade Finalist and
was shown at IndieCade @ Open Satellite 2008. Our prototype has also made its way into the Australian
Center for Moving Images in Melbourne, where it was shown in the 2007 Best of Independent Games
Festival exhibition.
Due to the aforementioned interest in the prototype, we decided to build a full version of the game. We
strongly believe that we have created a noteworthy successor.
Team
We are a small team of four former Computer Science students from the Vienna University of Technology.
Our small size has kept us very eclectic in our work. In the true independent spirit, each of us has always
made a contribution in each area of the development of And Yet It Moves. It is important for us to
emphasize that the game design of And Yet It Moves was a team effort, which all four of us were heavily
involved in. Nonetheless, a title has been assigned to each individual, related to the main area of interest, in
order to define and clarify the responsibilities during the time of development.
And Yet It Moves will be available for download as of today, August 6th, 2010 from:
http://www.andyetitmoves.net/index.php?content=buy
To learn more about And Yet It Moves, visit the official website at:
www.andyetitmoves.net/
Official video trailer :
About Broken Rules
Broken Rules is an independent games studio based in Vienna, Austria, founded by
students of the Department for Design and Assessment of Technology at the Vienna
University of Technology. The company’s first title, And Yet It Moves, is a downloadable
PC title that was conceived as a game concept for the school program. The title went on
to win awards in game design competitions across Europe and garner industry-wide
recognition, which led the team to expand the property to the Nintendo Wii as a WiiWare
downloadable offering. Broken Rules aims to expand the audience for And Yet It Moves
while working on new game concepts for the PC and console platforms. To learn more
about Broken Rules, visit http://brokenrul.es/.
wow. bought it!
Nice. And soon Amnesia should also be finished. It’s a good month.