Review: ilomilo

ilomilo

XBLA

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Developer: Southend Studios

Release Date: 5 January 2011

Best friends do everything together. Play-dates in the park, fishing, trips to the fair. All these things make memories that should last forever. But what happens when memories are fading and best friends begin to forget. Taking these surprising themes and mixing it with cutesy art and mind-bending puzzles, ilomilo is fun little DLG (downloadable game) for XBLA.

The strange world of ilomilo

The story of ilomilo is a touching one. Two best friends, Ilo and Milo, meet every day in the park to play. They spend their days together enjoying each others company and having fun. Every night, they return home with promises to meet the next day. However, they are forgetful and need the player's help to guide the two friends back to each other. Later adventures involve the duo visiting lakes and the sky and even a train station. Along the way, they can collect memory fragments, music and concept art, found by rescuing the adorable creatures called safkas.

Best friends meet for tea in the park

To reunite the friends, players control them both inside the levels. The stated goal is to get them face-to-face. While this is simple when it all operates on a single plane, later levels have the duo traversing the all sides of the cubist pathways. So, even if they are facing each other, if they are on different planes, it's not complete. A single button swaps you between the friends, so you can work together to solve the many traversal puzzles presented. As the levels progress, the paths go from simple layouts to vast grids that twist, turn and warp. This mind-bending puzzler does a wonderful job of disorienting the player easily. While that sounds bad, it actually helps distort the answer and make the puzzles seem harder. The sense of accomplishment when you find the solution is elating! That said, some levels get needlessly frustrating. A wrong move that leads you to repeat actions infinitely happens more and more toward the end. When you finally realize you are in Groundhog Day loop, it's easier to restart than try and work out of it.

When perspective becomes your enemy

To travel, the two move one square at a time. They can also carry one item as a backpack. These items range from single cube blocks (to fill in holes) to three-cube long bridges to catapults to portals that drop you to the underside of the cube. Using these creatively to solve the traversal puzzles means thinking outside the box (so to speak). For example, a bridge block for one could form a wall for another. Or, elevators move up and down based on how they are placed. So, for one “up and down” may mean “left to right” for the other. You can see how this leads to some amazingly complex and Escher-like puzzles. Sometimes you get to ride on a mustached sheep-man, too! These puzzles are fun, but it can be annoying if you miss your chance to board the beast or free him and you have to wait as he repeats his loop. It's not terrible, but sometimes you just miss the chance and have to sit for 45 seconds or more to proceed. It doesn't break the game, but it breaks the spell of being on a roll and disrupts the game's flow. The overall game design is one of the best I've seen. It's amazing how these worlds twist and turn and all come together in a glorious mind-bender that feels awesome to complete!

I love this dance!

Each level has collectable memory bits, music/art and three safkas to rescue. Collect enough memory bits and you unlock part of a picture (related to the world you are in) and a bit of story. These story bits are a bit darker than the light-hearted friendly romp. They tell a story that is parallel and yet totally different to Ilo and Milo. I found these unsettling at first, but their connection to the story makes for a great payoff. ilomilo continues the trend of independent games having deep/dark stories (see also: Braid). I loved trying to find all the hidden collectables along with exiting the level. Some are far out of the way and require more thought to avoid completing the level before collecting them.

The music is charming, too!

By far, the best part of this game is the presentation. The music is adorable and never grating, which is good because you'll find you self listening to it a lot as you ponder each level. The art direction is great, too! The cubes all look like cloth, the characters seem to be sewn dolls and the backdrops look like cardboard. This creates an illusion of being inside a children's book or inside a child's imagination. Special mention needs to go to your guide/tutor/friend Sebastian. He looks like Napoleon, talks about his rippling muscles and manly man-ness and rides a disgruntled looking lady bug. He also offers you extra hard puzzles with their own story if you rescue enough safkas.

Riding a mustached sheep-man

All of this is well worth getting into, but the game throws in a bonus game, too. Ilo Milo Shuffle is a fun little game where you move your heroes around a field (at the same time) to collect safkas while parts of the world shift and fall. As you get further along, the shifting speeds up and the duo have to be more careful. It's a fun diversion and provided a break from solving puzzles.

The ilomilo Shuffle bonus game

Sebastian and his ladybug mount (not a great pic)

If you are a fan of puzzle games, I cannot recommend this game more. It is superb on all fronts. Games like Portal taught us how to think outside the box, and ilomilo does the same. Using perspective to shift how you see the puzzle creates some truly maddening puzzles, but solving them is equally rewarding (as is watching the duo dance in happiness). For an XBLA game, it provides hours of entertainment at a great price. And, like all XBLA games, this one has a demo. There is no excuse not to a least try this game if you are into puzzlers. ilomilo is definitely one of my favorite DLGs of the year, and deserves to be on your Xbox if you love puzzlers. It's pitch-perfect on visuals, mechanics and presentation. Some annoyances do pop up, but these are forgotten as soon as you puzzle out how to proceed and the brilliant game design shines through.

Score: 8.5 out of 10

Bottom Line: An adorable and brain-breaking puzzler that is fun for everyone

Check it out if you like: Puzzle games, adorable things, Lost Vikings, echochrome, Portal

Downloadable Game of the Year Contender – 2011