Mightier
Developer: Ratloop
Nomination: Innovation Award
Platform: Windows (freeware)
Website
Description: Navigate your friendly Actionaut through a 3D platformer to pick up pieces of data. Help him by carving the platforms out of the ground using a giant laser from outer space. And by laser, I mean a pencil. And by from outer space, I mean on a piece of paper.

Adam’s Thoughts:
Mightier takes some explaining. Imagine a sheet of cookie dough spread across an overpowered air hockey table. The whole sheet is heavy enough to stay down, but cut a circle in the dough and your newly minted cookie would fly up from all the pressure beneath it. Now imagine that some of the air jets are stronger than others, so that some cookies float higher than others. Cutting the right shapes of cookies in the right places would let you create a chain of floating platforms that an inch-tall friend could hop across. Playing Mightier basically consists of that cycle: cut out some platforms and then hop across them.

On the surface, Mightier looks like a derivative 3D platformer–you hop around and collect floating MacGuffins at different heights to advance from level to level. However, the platforming is only really there to demonstrate that your level-design skills were adequate to reach the MacGuffins in the first place. The puzzles are surprisingly tricky (it turns out that terraforming is hard), but it’s very rewarding to manipulate the land itself. You can print the puzzles and scan in your sketched solutions via webcam, which offers an unprecedented level of control, but the scan mechanic finds much better use in user-generated content. You can replace most of the scenery and characters with your own art. Mightier won’t necessarily be the prettiest game you play all year (in fact it’s as ugly as you make it), but no other game is quite so much your own. Hopefully Nintendo will pick it up for the DSi, because the game might as well be hand-crafted for the upcoming handheld.

Katie’s Thoughts:
Mightier is the sort of game that I really hope inspires game designers to question they way they build games in the future. The game keeps mechanics of other platformers, (for example the “collect x of y” trope that is common to all Rare titles), but puts them together to form a game that’s unlike any I’ve ever played. Part of the game navigates as a 3D platformer, but unlike other games in that genre, you draw the platforms that you use to collect your items (called datagems). First, though, you must go about carving out the platforms. That’s where this game shows off its addictive puzzle style, as well as it’s innovative interface.

“Here at Mightier, we solve problems. We solve them with a high-powered laser fired from outer space.” These are the instructions from your boss, which should give any fan of the Meet the Engineer movie a smile. Each map has a certain number of pillars that will raise up land around it once you detach it from the surrounding dirt. This is good, as the datagems float too high off the ground to reach, even using your jetpack. The game goes on to add a few more complications (enemies to avoid, moving pillars, etc.) and builds a compelling set of puzzles.

The way you carve out the platforms is by pulling up a map of the level, hooking up your color printer, and printing it out. You then draw your solution on the page, and scan it back in. For those without that fancy technology (or who have just spent their technology budget on an amazing array of video game consoles and games), you can draw your input with the mouse on the screen (which may remind you why you want a Wacom tablet). Once you’ve designed your platforms, the high powered space laser does its thing, and it’s back to datagem collection.

It’s not just the platforms that you draw. You can draw your Actionaut, your jet pack, and even the flowers that populate the levels. If that isn’t enough for you, the game comes with a built-in level editor, allowing you to draw just about everything in the game. The idea is so simple that it’s surprising it hasn’t been done before. The game uses continue codes instead of save files, so having a scannable paper version of your work is Mightier’s version of a save game. All in all, it’s a great puzzle experience that’s lets you interact with your games in a whole new way.

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