Soliquity

(Version reviewed is Game Chill 2009 submission + Bug Fix #2)
This is an interesting concept for a puzzler. Either trying to direct liquids into a position or stop the very same thing from happening. Unfortunately in this game it just doesn't work (yet).

I'm not sure if it's due to the fact that it's so incomplete or something else but this game just doesn't work very interestingly. The main problem is really in the level design, the levels don't really provide anything interesting. Playing as a solid it's mainly all about frantically clicking around as the AI changes taps and there's very little strategic planning that would make it a nice puzzler.

Playing as a liquid is similar though there's a bit more timing going on there. Trying to position the water strength so that you can pass the blocks occasionally since the AI always changes their blocks simultaneously with the player. (while trying to conserve enough liquid to reach the objective)

But still it's not very exciting even there. There's really very little appealing in the game at the moment but I still think that the core mechanics are sound. I would suggest that in further development (if it happens) to turn the two gameplay elements into completely separate entities (so that there are specifically liquid-player levels and vice versa) because I think a lot of the level design problem is in the fact that the levels are playable from both sides. (which, of course was the theme of Game Chill)

All of the above was written and then I checked the wordcount and I didn't yet reach 300 but I don't know what else to put into this here. I could comment on the graphics, which are functional, though perhaps some stronger visual cues as to liquid depth would be helpful, though the differences in transparency work fairly well as it is. And one minor thing that annoyed me was also found in the menu. Where you selected things with Enter while all other selections in the game used the mouse. This meant I always tried to click on the menu items when changing levels before I remembered that I had to use the keyboard for that.

Now that I've written that block of text above I will have to re-summarize at the end because that's how these writings work (you read the top and then skim to the bottom). So in short this game is a good base but so far the game design falls way short of what is exciting gameplay, which leaves a subpar game. So far at least.