Alto’s Odyssey is a nice mobile game available on both Android and iOS. It is the finalist of 2019 Independent Game Festival under excellence of visual art and excellence of audio.
The game is about an endless sandboarding adventure. The background is a beautiful and ever-changing natural landscape. The player has to jump to cross the obstacles and cliffs along the way. It is designed to be enjoyed by returning player and newcomers alike.
The next adventure awaits
Link to the game: http://www.altosodyssey.com
Lens 1: Essential Experience
The essential experience of Odyssey is to expand and build upon the feelings of being alone to an adventure in nature. Besides, it also encourages the player to step out of their comfort zone to explore the beyond of the world. This kind of experience is achieved by the fluid physics-based actions of the sandboarding, procedurally changed backgrounds, dynamic lighting and weather effects, and the beautiful background audio.
Lens 2 & 3: Suprise & Fun
Odyssey surprises player along the way with various natural phenomena and wildlife. The player has to jump. During the jump, the player can enjoy the fluid physics-based action in the air. Besides, the player can also control the body to land fluidly and successfully.
Lens 4: Curiosity
Odyssey offers the player with a small screen into a much bigger world, through the endless sandhill and procedurally changed backgrounds. The game tries and boils down the essence of immersion. It wants to offer a place where the player can escape.
Lens 5: Endogenous Value
Along the way, the player can collect coins for a higher point. The coins are placed creatively to encourage the players to jump and control the body accordingly. Sometimes it also leads players to a second way to do sandboarding rather than on the sandhill.
Mechanics:
The procedure of Odyssey is quite simple. As the player is on an endless sandboarding adventure, player just need to tap to jump over the obstacles or cliff and hold to control the body before landing. There will be several goals for player to accomplish at each level. The game is over when the player fail to jump over the obstacle or cliff. With the collected coins, the player can buy some special packages to help recover from the death or delay the timer and so on. The game is easy to learn but difficult to master.
Aesthetics:
Odyssey has built a beautiful polygon wild world. The world is expanding endlessly through a small window. Environments is changing accordingly. The background audio matches the action of player, which helps the player to be immersed inside the wild world and control the actions better. It has received critical acclaim as a “piece of interactive art”.
Story:
Odyssey is mainly about adventure. While the world is expanding procedurally through the small window, the player is encouraged to explore and continue this endless adventure.
Technology:
Odessey is designed in Unity 3D, and then taps into Metal 2 for iOS. The game is now available on both Android and iOS. Besides, the game is well achieved with a silky 60 frame-per-second. Metal 2 allows much more access to the GPU compared with OpenGL. During the game, the view never stutters or shakes.
