I Found 2024’s Indie Game of the Year
It’s called Slider
by S4B0T4G3FIRE | August 04, 2024, 3:00 PM EDT
After earning a high finish at the 2021 Game Maker’s Toolkit Game Jam — and winning the “Student Showcase” category at the 2023 Independent Games Festival — the developers at “Boomo Studios” knew they had something special with their 2D adventure puzzle game, Slider. Convinced that the idea would succeed, they saw the game’s development to completion to ensure players would enjoy the most polished experience possible upon Slider’s full release. Having played the game all the way through, I would argue that they delivered on that promise. They haven’t won any titles yet in 2024, but I believe they checked every box: concept, world design, soundtrack, story, and difficulty.
“The Boxes”
Concept
The concept of Slider is simple at its very core. Your map starts empty, and you slowly fill it in by completing objectives. Complete an objective, and you might earn a “Slider,” the next tile on the map. Walk onto that tile, and move it around the map to explore more of the world. Keep unlocking new Sliders until the entire map is filled in. To complete a world, reorganize all the tiles like a jigsaw puzzle, thus fixing the world and providing access to the next. There are nine worlds in total, many of which are accompanied by a unique way to slide the map tiles around to organize them. Slide one tile at a time, rotate one or more tiles at a time, and slide all of the tiles at once (in “2048” fashion, if you are familiar with that once-popular numbers game). One of the world’s maps is essentially a 2x2x2 Rubik’s Cube. Good luck reorganizing that one!
World Design
Though most of the game is grayscale, the attention to design is excellent for a 2D game. This isn’t a one-way scroller like many 2D games are. You can travel wherever you want, provided you arrange the map tiles in a way that allows you to travel in a particular direction. As the game progresses, you will see that the features on one tile are designed to line up with the features of another. Sometimes, there will be mountain ranges and rivers to use for reference, and other times you will be looking for minor details like Ethernet cables. Pay close attention! Oh, and USE THE ANCHOR!
Soundtrack
Although I’m not much of a video game music connoisseur, I can say that the sound effects and music are enjoyable to a casual ear. It is the typical “Chiptune,” “8-bit” style of music standard to 2D, pixel art games. Every world has its own music, and you can even listen to specific songs on demand from the jukebox over at Bob’s Tavern in the “Shifting Seas” world. This was a very nice touch.
Story (**Spoilers**)
The world was once whole before an earthquake (cataclysm? CATaclysm?) destroyed everything and separated everyone. The game begins after those events occur, and you slowly figure out what may have happened. Along the way, you meet star-crossed lovers you need to reunite, scientists, miners, corporate bosses, explorers, archaeologists, robots, aliens, wizards, and more. You explore towns, seas, forests, factories, caves, mountains, and more. You encounter flashlights, torches, water physics, lava physics, magnet physics, conveyor belts, railroads, time travel, magic, and more. By the way, when asked to create a name at the beginning of a new save file, you are naming a cat, not yourself!
Difficulty
Slider starts off easy. Read the signs, talk to people, and you will be fine for the first few worlds. You might even stumble upon solutions accidentally. However, the learning curve is not gradual; it is exponential. Keep reading signs. Keep talking to people, making sure to scroll through their entire dialogue. If you want to play casually, you will need to use the guide. The guide is thorough and does a great job slowly introducing tips and hints before spelling out solutions if you need more help. Normally, guides suck the fun out of games, but I would argue that they almost make the game better. They help keep things moving so you are not stuck on one thing — that would otherwise take a while and potentially cause frustration — for too long. That way, the storyline maintains its charm.
If you are determined to complete the game entirely on your own, once again pay attention. Read signs. Talk to people. Explore every map tile and perimeter (small areas on the map that do not belong to a tile and stay fixed to the edges). Examine tile details to see where things line up. If you have to, open the map, look at it for a few minutes, and plan ahead. The next move is not always logical. Think! Unless you are aiming for the 1-hour speedrun achievement, there is no rush. Enjoy the game!
Improvements?
No matter how strongly video game devotees would love to advocate for a game’s perfection, no game is perfect. My criticisms of Slider are inconsequential and few and far between; they are more like quality-of-life improvements.
Map Access
You can’t traverse the world with the map open. Having to shift tiles all the time means you will almost never know where on the map you are standing. I found that I needed to open the map every few seconds, and it was disruptive. You get used to it, but a small expandable map in the corner of the screen would have been amazing.
Point-of-View
Your field of view is (approximately) one tile-sized range. While you certainly need to be this close to notice small details, it would have been nice to be able to have a variable, scroll-to-zoom option so you could see more tiles at once when traveling longer distances. Without the option to see the map at all times, it is so easy to lose sight of what exactly an objective requires. Some of the tougher worlds are only tough because you can’t see the whole picture (literally and figuratively).
Grammar
I never complain about typos in video games, but there were just a few typing errors on the signs and in the conversations that impacted my understanding of an objective and forced me to reread more than once and interpret in more than one way before finally figuring out what I was being asked to do.
If you like puzzle games, look no further. If you enjoy a challenge, look no further.
Download the Steam game here: Slider on Steam (steampowered.com)
Thank you for taking the time to read my game review of Slider! In the future, I would love to write more about games because I had a lot of fun! If you are interested in that or any of my other creations like livestreams, art, and random posts, follow me on social media! Or feel free to peruse my other blogs right here on Medium!
