A Game To Relax To

One of the games announced at Sony’s press conference at this year’s E3 was a title that not only speaks in favor of the "games as art" argument, but was actually available to buy and download that very day, a rare treat.

Entwined is based on an ancient Chinese story about a fish and a bird falling in love with each other, but never being able to meet or share in each other’s world. With that idea in mind, the player must control the two souls simultaneously as they dance around each other.

The main levels of a game have the two characters on the edges of a tube that you are going through, and as you go through the level, you control each character with its respective Analog Stick in order to glide it around its half of the screen. The goal is to pick up as many bits of energy as possible, because once you reach the end of the level, the two souls finally merge and become a new creature, a dragon.

Once the pair combine, you enter an open space where you can fly and explore until you are ready to end the level and follow the pair into their next lifetime. While in the open space as a dragon, you can collect even more energy and use this space to make "light sculptures" out of the streams of energy that trail off of the dragon’s wings and body.

Entwined is supposed to modify its difficulty as you play. Since the developers found that different people got the hang of the Dual Analog Stick controls at different rates, they wanted to make sure the game could adjust how complex and difficult each level was based on how well they controlled the pair of characters. Of course, the developers also put in a bit of a reward for those that are able to master the game’s mechanics. As you collect energy, your fish and bird characters evolve. They grow a longer tail, or larger wings and the light coming off of them gets brighter and more beautiful. If you manage to fully evolve both characters before it is time to merge, then you get a special phoenix form of the dragon.

Entwined’s minimalistic visuals seem to be complemented very well by the soothing music that it uses. It seems pretty obvious that the developers at Pixelopus want Entwined to be a game you sit down with to unwind after a long day of stressful work.

Currently, the game is only out for the PS4, but there is a plan to release it for the PS3 and Vita, though a date has yet to be announced.