The Creature (471Mb)
The Creature has been out free for over two months now, and is a platform adventure, 2D scrolling game that uses Unreal Engine 3. The environment has 3D ambience for effect, but uses 2D mechanics to avoid camera problems and to make it easier for novices to play. There great 3D effects such as moving water in waterfalls and so on. It has again been developed (most excellently!) by students.
The game’s name is perhaps a little unfortunate with its generic nature, and there are several other games with very similar names such as the Creatures trilogy, make it difficult to find on the Internet.
It is however a great and original platformer, with many unique elements. It is in some ways similar to ‘Trine’, though developed independently. The five main worlds are Ruins, Crystal, Mines, Jungle and Volcano, the last being the most difficult and dangerous! The creature is missing body parts and you have to find them from runes scattered around the worlds. He has a long tongue that can be extended and stick to surfaces to act as a rope once you find his mouth. He can later climb walls by the unique action of rotating the scenery through 90, 180 or 270 degrees. There are of course various puzzles to solve, and nothing is worse (except being killed!) than finding a closed door you can’t get through or spikes you seemingly can’t get past without being killed! Ok, getting killed is no big deal, you just restart the level!
The storyline is that the creature has been sliced into six pieces scattered across the worlds to prevent him reforming. As you find each piece you get extra abilities. Legs for instance allow him to jump. You start off with just a head and can only roll sideways or be lifted by independent ‘machines’. When you start the first level, moving blocks, you are moving across an area with illuminated 3D blocks and the 3D moving scenery combined with 2D movement for the creature works very well and looks surprisingly grand!
The initial puzzles have just the right amount of difficulty and can be solved with a bit of lateral thinking. Later puzzles may get just that little bit more difficult! Then you will also find enemies and boss enemies to contend with! There may not be too many levels but it may take you more than quite a while to get through them all and there is an enormous cave to traverse to complete the game.
It is altogether an extremely well made and beautifully crafted game, and deserves much more publicity!
This really is a great game, with excellent music and graphics as well. Definitely a keeper for me, and a game I am going to keep coming back to!
The Creature does need 1.5GB hard disk space when installed, a moderately fast PC, 2GHz CPU, at least 1GB RAM (2GB RAM recommended) and a fairly decent graphics card, which may disappoint gamers with slower PCs. (It works fine with a Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS graphics card for me.)
Please note:- when installing it will say installing even if you have some of the necessary support files already installed. It will not over-write already installed files/ features!
Download Here
Home Page Here
Videos Here
