One of the things I have noticed about the gaming industry is that programmers often have the best ideas for original game mechanics.  Unfortunately, programmers rarely have the design skills to flush these ideas out into great games.

Nodes is a very original concept created by programmer, Eggy. According to his blog, Nodes was built as a bit of an experiment with some of the programming features in Flash.  How does it stack up against other programmer-concept games?

Art-wise, it’s pretty simple;  Shiney circles, red lines, generic background texture and uninspired menus and interfaces.  It still looks better than most games developed by non-designers, but the art was developed by ShibbyMedia, so I was expecting better.

Sound-wise, there is nothing special here.  The music gets old after a few levels, and the ONE sound effect is rather long and annoying as well.

The gameplay is really all that matters though and this is a brilliant brain-teaser concept.

You have movable nodes that are all connected by lasers beams, and static nodes that star out blue.  The goal is to position the nodes so that the lasers pass through all the blue nodes, turning them red.

This is the type of thinking man’s game I typically enjoy, so when I started this game I really liked it a lot.  Then I kept winning….and winning… without any challenge.  I realize I’m a smart guy, but I’m pretty sure a chipmunk with downs could master this game.
The level design is where the lack of a designer really shows.  Each level is unique, to be sure, but none of them are really well thought out.  There are so many ways to solve each level that I found myself inventing a challenge and trying to do it with the least amount of laser lines possible. As you can see in my screenshot, even as far as level 20, I was able to easily solve the puzzles and still have extra nodes I didn’t need.

Because this WAS designed as an experiment, you really can’t expect a big production, and like I said.. the IDEA is awesome.  I hope Eggy does a second version with more challenging levels and maybe some bonuses for unused beams, so players can really test their minds and compete for high scores or something.

At the end of the day, this is really a tech demo and not a polished game.  But tech demos can still be fun, so go check it out.

[ Play Nodes ]