“Like Portal, but better.“
This is the tagline that Unruly Attractions has given their game, Standpoint. It’s a quote from a young boy who played their demo at GDC, and yes, they openly admit that is a very bold statement - one that is almost impossible to fulfill. However, it was enough to get people to try the game, and there were certainly a lot of people trying this game at EGX Rezzed 2014.
Having played the demo several times, I can tell you that it is not better than Portal. At least, not yet. There’s nothing to say that this won’t change though; Unruly Attractions has just launched a Kickstarter and Greenlight campaign, and as the game is still pre-Alpha, given time who knows what Standpoint will become.
At this early stage of development, it’s impossible to say what the final product will look like, but we’re hopeful for a game which, at the very least, will be as good as Portal - though that is no easy achievement. If Standpoint keeps the same beautiful simplicity, with the same level of intrigue, Unruly Attractions may well have a winner on its hands.
As it stands, Standpoint is a 1st-person puzzle-platform game - like Portal. The difference between the two is that instead of making you think with portals, Standpoint uses a gravity switching mechanic as the solution to the challenges that the game places before you. For the most part, the simplest puzzles are solvable by clicking on a white wall to make gravity pull from that plane, similar to the Vita game Gravity Rush. If there is a head-high wall in the way, you simply walk on the roof; if you can’t run fast enough along a corridor, just change gravity and fall down at the 9.8 meters-per-second that gravity will pull you at. For the harder puzzles where there are no white walls to aid you, you can use strategically-placed power-ups to flip gravity as you see fit.
Just as Ben Kenobi once declared to his angry student that he was right from a certain point of view, Standpoint is a game where every puzzle is approachable once you find the right point of view - and once you find the right standpoint, you can fly through the puzzles at breakneck speed.
Unruly Attractions describes Standpoint like this: “The game’s five levels are based on the fives stages of grief. Instead of a real place, the game world is a manifestation of the player’s and Narrator’s emotions. As you make your way through the game, you slowly build a picture of who the Narrator is, why this place is important, and how you tie into the whole scenario.”
There aren’t many demos which we finish and immediately replay; Standpoint is one of them, and is a game which I will be keeping an eye on over the coming months. Portal is one of my favorite games of all time, so they have set the bar very high. While we can’t agree with that kid that it’s better than Portal, we can wholeheartedly tell you that Standpoint is a game worth keeping your eye on.
Nic Bunce
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