How pleasant to find this tiny little demo of a relatively unknown game in, to quote Trapdoor Inc., 'the sexy corner' (opposite Orcs Must Die!) of PAX East 2011. Warp, named for the somewhat passive-aggressive teleportation ability of the player-controlled alien, is a new title from Trapdoor being published by EA. According to Trapdoor's website, XBLA and PSN will surely have the pleasure of meeting Warp by this summer, and there are tentative plans to go for a Steam release on the PC.
Trapdoor’s booth was surprisingly hidden between Star Wars: TOR and Bethesda, but when three GN staff members had the opportunity to pick up the controller and play, PAX turned off and we warped into a little alien that, to our surprise, was prone to defying physics and blowing things up... FROM THE INSIDE!
The beginning of the demo started us out in a laboratory as an orange jelly-like alien. You are given control of the little alien and prompted to warp out of the cage you are in; the simple mechanics let you warp with the A button and move with the analog stick. The game combines a careful mix of stealth and spontaneous implosions to get through challenges, each ranging in difficulty greatly. Editor-in-Chief Steve Burke cackled as a wimpy scientist, having just witnessed his co-worker splatter against the white tile, proceeded to scream and bang against the doors; I personally loved it when the merciless guards (armed with very big machine guns and shields) blasted their allies in attempt to slay the perplexing alien. The combination of humor and challenges helps bring us into a world where, despite the appearance in gameplay, claustrophobia is definitely not an element, but that doesn't mean you'll be leaving the labyrinth easily, either.
Your primary method of killing people and passing obstacles is to warp into objects and humans; you then have the choice of warping out of it, warping into something else, or blowing it up (by moving the analog stick). When presented with a person, you need to make the choice of stunning them, or blowing them into a rainbow of blood and guts -- and we all know which one GN staff chose, my blood-thirsty pack of gamers. After going through a couple of checkpoints, you start getting harder puzzles and, although the game isn’t done yet and this was only a PAX East demo, the game showed magnificent potential and we’ll be waiting for it to come out. Warp's sense of flow is sublime; the game's use of a single primary function is phenomenal.
In the meantime, why don’t you take a look at this video of an enforcer dancing his life away at PAX East?
~Francisco "DrGong" Fantl.