The Video Game Revue

Electroplankton

Electroplankton is definitely a great experience in interactive media. It really does play a bit like a music disc--er, cart--that you direct and control rather than simply listening to. I strongly recommend playing with headphones to get maximum auditory pleasure out of it (and also avoid inconveniencing anybody who happens to be within earshot), since so much of the beauty of this game/sim is in the sounds that it makes.

My biggest fear with Electroplankton was that the appeal of it would be too short lived. I imagined it being somewhat like those Flash movies that have a musical bent and accept user input (here is a link to one of my favourites), and those tend to have a life span of no more from five to ten minutes of entertainment value. Electroplankton has ten distinct levels, so my fear was that the entertainment value would be roughly 10 * avg(5, 10) = 75 minutes before I shelved it never to be seen or heard from again. As I've already played more than two hours of Electroplankton, however, and am still eager to play more, I can say with confidence that my doubt was misplaced.

A lot of the reviews that I read for Electroplankton complained about the lack of a save feature. I agree that it's sort of a let-down; the ability to save an input stream for a particular level would definitely add to the game. However, as a musical composition device, I don't think that Electroplankton is such that one would really feel the strong need to save anything. Each level is intentionally chaotic, and although you could learn to play a coherent piece of music on it (with much practice and patience), the general experience is that you aren't fully in control of what you're doing. You aren't composing music with it so much as you are jamming.

This is definitely the true beauty of Electroplankton: it dumbs the experience of musical jamming down to the level where somebody without any training in it (such as myself) can sit down, mess around with it, and produce accidental beats and melodies that are actually quite appealing. I'm just not convinced that anybody except that most hardcore Electroplankton fanatics would ever produce something that one would want to capture for replay later. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those Electroplankton fanatics did end up plugging their DS into their computer (headphones out -> microphone in) and making fun mp3s that way--in fact, I look forward to that. For my own part, what I do with Electroplankton is entertaining only to me, and only in the heat of the moment. If I captured an hour's worth of my musical musings and burnt them to a CD, nobody would really want to listen to it--not even myself. It's far more fun to be continually engaged in the interactive experience with the live game than to just get a static copy of the output.

I really have to commend Toshio Iwai for creating such a diverse selection of levels. Electroplankton is difficult to put down because you always want to play "just one more" round of it, and by the time you've tired of the level that you were playing last, you'll be craving another level that you played a while ago. There's enough variety and depth to these levels that, as you play around with them, you discover more and more little tricks to mix things up. The printed manual, which is something that I almost never consult where video games are concerned, actually contains a lot of useful advice, such as how Nanocarp respond to sound (you can get them to assume specific formations with the right input), and what the select and/or directional buttons do for some of the levels. Being able to employ the select button to change up the audio samples available is absolutely essential to get full enjoyment out of Lumiloop, Marine-Snow, and Beatnes, for instance, and the directional keys are very useful in Tracy and Sun-Animalcule.

Of course, if you're looking for a proper "game" experience, you're likely to be let down. Electroplankton is devoid of goals to accomplish, except for perhaps the obvious goal of entertaining yourself. There's also something of a mini-game to the levels Hanenbow and Nanocarp. Hanenbow challenges you to make a series of leaves all turn deep red through interaction with the Electroplankton, and through practice with the Nanocarp, you can make them assume formations on command--not entirely unlike teaching your dogs tricks in Nintendogs, except that the Nanocarp don't actually learn over time (so far as I know.) In any case, Electroplankton is one of the most pure kind of sims, and it's not as easy to consider it as a "game" in the conventional sense as it is for The Sims, SimCity, or a traditional flight simulator.

As for multiplayer options, I haven't had the chance to try it out, but according to the manual you can link two DSes and jam together with friend with the Beatnes level. While that might be fun for a few minutes, I don't imagine it to be much more exciting than playing alone. Still, it's something.

Overall, I give Electroplankton a hearty endorsement. It's perfect if you're looking for a more passive, low-key form of interactive entertainment to veg-out to, and I think that it has a lot of lasting appeal, although you'll probably burn out on it if you play too much of it all at once. In my opinion, it's a mistake for Nintendo to not have brought this title to store shelves; I think that people would have bought it, enjoyed it, and not felt ripped off for not having got a proper "game." There are much less worthwhile ways to use a Nintendo DS than those that Electroplankton provides.

posted by Parappa @ 10:08 AM