Why don’t I hate this game? Mega Man and the frustration based platform games of that kind are among the most detested games I have ever played. The memory, precision timing and occasionally simply luck based progression just drives me mad.

As such it was with some hesitation I started playing a preview build of the Xbox Live Indie Game Chris Unarmed (an interview with the developer was featured a few weeks ago on the NGCast). My initial impressions from the screen shots and silent trailer could be summed up as ‘œthis looks like a frustrating as hell generic indie game’. When I interviewed Chris, the game’s creator, I flat out told him so. Still, I have been wrong before due to my inaccurate and presumptuous first impressions so I gave the game the benefit of the doubt.

As with all Indie Games, Chris Unarmed looks very basic and very smooth. Everything feels like a vector-based paper cut out. Pleasant, but nothing to write home about. It all just gets the job done and does it in a very orderly way. As the build I played wasn’t completed, I’m not sure how much more I can usefully say other than it’s fine.

Everything within the game world is also very simple: If there are spikes, they will kill you, if there is another creature, it will kill you. The point is simply to progress from one doorway into the level to another doorway out of the level. Extra doors leading to optional bonus rooms filled with coins can also be found. Repeat until completion. The trick comes, as the name suggests, with the fact you are totally unarmed. All you can do is avoid or trap enemies. Killing them is out of the question. Again, this keeps things very, very simple and concentrated on the actual platforming, which is Chris Unarmed‘s strongest hand.

Everything I thought I hated is here. In some areas you’re having to make three or four consecutive precision jumps off sliding walls, over lava or onto a moving platform. With each jump having an unavoidable chance of failure, inevitably there come sections where I was stuck for dozens of attempts. Why did I keep going? Two things: good checkpoints and infinite lives. The combination stops the game being nothing but a test of your mental stamina, and lets it become a repetition of small sections and a steady progression.

If you get stuck on one jump you just keep trying. There is no cost to failure apart from your own time. This means the jumps can become far more complex than I expected (see the trailer for some good examples), giving an audible sense of satisfaction upon success.

As with any good platformer, as you progress you find more and more mechanics. From ice that makes you slide and moving walls you can hold, all the way to some quite unique enemy designs.

In some Braid-ish feeling levels there are multiple copies of Chris, identical except they’re coloured Blue. They also move when you move and kill you when touched. If there is one above you on a ledge and you walk left, he walks left. Reach the edge of a ledge and he’ll fall, touch and kill you. Whilst the levels I played never got too complex (I sadly didn’t finish the whole game before moving continent; a whole other story), they did show what’s possible with the mechanic.

Chris Unarmed is one of those tough games for me to write about in the context of Negative Gamer. It’s very, very simple and as such there is very little wrong with it. It’s got that retro feel, but very little of the crap I hate with most ‘œretro’ games. The only gripe I could say to have is that with steady, simple progression, the game looses a touch of excitement. Hard jumps feel satisfying to complete, but not ‘œepic’ or the kind of thing you shout to your friend about. You just keep plodding along making steady, small steps.

I’m scraping the barrel here. It’s a fun game and I liked it.

To keep up with the game’s progress there’s a blog and a Facebook page.