Planet of the Eyes

Released

Release Date: August 24, 2015

A retro-futuristic platformer game by Cococucumber, an independent Canadian studio. In Planet of the Eyes, we assume the role of a robot who crash-lands on a completely alien planet after the malfunction of an interstellar shuttle. Trying to find a way out of the situation, the protagonist explores the beautiful but also incredibly dangerous place where a myriad of logic puzzles and complicated traps await him.

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Plot
Mechanics
Technical aspects

Planet of the Eyes is a retro futuristic platformer game for PC, PS4 and XONE in which we assume the role of a lonely robot and traverse an uncharted planet. The title was developed by the independent Cococucumber which ambitiously strives to, among other things, combine video games with art. The project was created with the of Ontario Media Development Corporation, a Canadian government organization.

Plot

The plot of Planet of the Eyes was writer by Will O’Neill who previously created, among others, a critically acclaimed Actual Sunlight with RPGMaker. The story told in the game revolves around the issue of loneliness that, according to the author’s premise, can be painful even for a fully cybernetic organism.

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In the game, we assume the role of a robot who crashes in his rescue shuttle on a completely alien and uncharted planet after the crash of an interstellar shuttle. Trying to find a way out of the situation, the protagonist explores the beautiful but also incredibly dangerous place where a myriad of logic puzzles and complicated traps await him. The hero can learn invaluable information on the unknown environment as well as the genesis and the objective of his mission thanks to audiologs left by one of the survivors. It turns out that the person is the robot’s creator who had survived and escaped the place a little earlier.

Mechanics

Mechanics-wise, Planet of the Eyes somewhat resembles the cult Limbo from 2010. The character we control traverses subsequent locations on the mysterious planet, moving primarily to the right, solving puzzles prepared by the developers. They were designed to be intuitive rather than frustrating. Depending on our skills, completing the game should take from 2 to 5 hours.

The production doesn’t lack for situations in which an unsuccessful attempt at solving a puzzle or disarming a trap ends up with the protagonist dying. Despite the agony being bloodless, the developers designed over a dozen different death variants for our robot — it can be crushed, ripped apart, electrocuted, dissolved in an acid, swallowed up by lava, or even eaten alive. According to the developers, it’s worth to make every kind of mistake at least once in order to see all cleverly designed animations in which the protagonist kicks the bucket.

Technical aspects

Planet of the Eyes for PC, PS4 and XONE features minimalistic graphics. Despite the quite old-school approach, the developers put in a lot of effort into polishing the technical details. In subsequent levels, we can enjoy varied landscapes (from mountains and caves, through volcanos and forests, to various buildings of unknown civilizations) in pastel colors. The vision of the uncharted planet can be attractive thanks to its style and the atmosphere of mysteriousness that surrounds the entire universe. The artistic graphics are complemented by high-quality voicing and an original soundtrack composed by John Black, an experienced producer from the CypherAudio studio.

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