Plug Me

I often imagine the germ of an indie game begins with a simple “what if?” type of question. It’s basically the same way I keep putting myself in the hospital. “What if you tried to cook a steak using only a tesla coil?” The simpler the question, the more gimmicky the game can become. That can be problematic if the gimmick is really just a facade to cover-up that the game really isn’t all that unique or different. Take something like Default Dan, whose germ of an idea was probably “what if Mario took place in opposite land?” So in it, coins kill you and spikes help you. That sounds novel and original, until you really stop and think about it. Isn’t that just a reskin more than an actual new idea? I mean, yea, it’s wacky and my brain kept telling me to grab the coins that were now lethal, but still, all it did was paint the good things bad and the bad things good, but it’s still exactly the same type of game you’ve played before. I think of that more as a novelty rather than something meant to stand on its own. Those have a place in Indieland, but damnit, where’s the gimmicky stuff with an actual gimmick that’s new and weird and actually works?

Oh, hello Plug Me. Aren’t you a breath of fresh air.

It’s one of those rare games where you see the picture and immediately get what it’s aiming for. It’s the anti-Fez in that regard.

I’m guessing the beginnings of Plug Me was a developer asking “what if the timer on fast-paced platformer WAS itself a platform?” That had a lot of potential for suckatude, but instead, it’s really impressive. There’s been games based around short stages and an environment-based ticking clock. Volchaos for example, a game made by one of my best friends. I didn’t really like Volchaos at all, owning mostly to the control issues. But even if Volchaos hadn’t controlled like a lubricated shopping cart, you’ve played games before where there’s an instakill floor that rises up. You’ve never played a game like Plug Me before. This is owed to the level design, which cleverly is built to utilize the time bar, which drains from left to right and is always smack-dab in the middle of the screen. It can’t be jumped through, so all the strategy and puzzling has to be done in sync with the clock. And that’s what blows me away. The clock is ALWAYS the focus of the level design, without it feeling the slightest bit shoehorned. I seriously didn’t expect that at all. It was as unfathomable as my Warriors signing DeMarcus Cousins for peanuts this off-season (excuse me, I need to go play with myself a little more now). EDIT: It turns out, we should have signed Kevin Durant’s achilles tendon to an extension. It ended up playing for the Raptors in the post season.

It’s so damn inspired, never once betraying its concept. It caught me by surprise because I’m so used to concept-based indies running out of ideas before they run out of levels. Plug Me ends the very moment I started to feel like they’ve gotten everything they could out of it. While Plug Me runs the gamut of platforming tropes (spikes, spinning maces, portals, etc), the timer is always the focus. It’s a fresh take on an increasingly tired genre. Even better: Plug Me obviously fancies itself as a punisher, with a fail counter in the upper-right hand corner. But it never really felt like one of those either. And when you die you respawn super quickly, so it never feels like a slog. I died 630 times over the course of playing it, but still completed the whole shebang in under three hours. Actually, with one really, really big exception, Plug Me might be too easy for most experienced punisher fans. On my very first play-through, I never once missed any of the batteries on each-stage. Beating the game unlocks a hard mode that I have no desire to touch, but I can’t help but wonder if that should be available right from the start. I’m not an exceptionally skilled platform player. If I could breeze through Plug Me, I can’t imagine how people who eat Super Meat Boy for lunch would do with it.

I almost quit on this. It took me 141 tries and 3,279 swear words to finish it.

That mostly owes to the controls. If they had been crap, Plug Me’s fast pace and precision-platforming would have been impossible. And again, I’m used to under-the-radar platformers that nobody’s heard of controlling like shit. Plug Me has been out since April and has only 26 user reviews, so I expected the worst. But actually, the control is rock-solid, making it such a joy to play. Well, mostly. The collision-detection is fairly unforgiving and two of the boss fights take a hard left at the corner of Unfairness and Cheapness if you catch my drift. It took me 141 attempts to beat the final-final boss because the developer apparently felt the only way to feel climatic was to spam the screen with so much shit that nobody could reasonably be expected to keep track of it all. When I finally did finish, it felt more like I got lucky than I got good at it. That takes the oomph out of winning. I was so livid during the finale that I almost didn’t award Plug Me my seal of approval. But honestly, with 50 out of 52 stages/boss fights being pretty fun, it’d be hard to justify nullifying that over two crap bosses. In fact, Plug Me exceeded my expectations to such a degree that I want to shake the developer’s hand. And then slap the ever-loving shit out of him for that last boss, but still, he’ll feel the love. And my hand. Across his face.

So yea, that’s Plug Me. I don’t have a ton to say about it. It forgoes being a throw-away novelty experience and instead can stand on its own merits as an original concept. One that works quite well. I can’t imagine what else they could do with the time bar concept. All the stages in Plug Me are single-screened, so I suppose they could add scrolling. Or they could totally phone it in and do ice and fire stages like twats, but honestly, they should walk away while they’re ahead. The real question I have is why does it seem like nobody is playing Plug Me? The graphics are really good. The concept is neat. It has limited faults. I think a big problem is it looks a bit generic and has one of the worst names for a good game I’ve seen in my seven years at IGC. I kept accidentally calling the game “Plug Man” and the main villain looks a lot like Dr. Wily. Names matter, and “Plug Me” is straight up a shit name for a game like this.

Thankfully there’s no “cake is a lie” joke in the portal stages, or else I’d be getting booked for manslaughter right now.

I hope developer Havana24 doesn’t get discouraged if this doesn’t find an audience, but if it doesn’t, maybe next time you should put more than two seconds worth of thought into the name? What does the name have to do with the timer bar gimmick? Because it represents energy and you’re a dude with a plug-in for a head? That’s weak. The whole theme is. Maybe it should have been about a guy busting to take a piss. That would have got attention. But ultimately, you can best sum up how much I liked Plug Me by the fact that I bought it three times. Once for myself, and twice for friends. Including a copy for Volchaos developer Kris Steele. See Kris, THIS is how a timer-based platformer should be!

Plug Me was developed by Havana24
Point of Sale: Steam

$2.99 asked if that’s a socket in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? in the making of this review

Plug Me is Chick Approved with the shiny new Indie Gamer Chick Seal of Approval by Kevin Willingham. Hire him or something so he doesn’t feel like he wasted his time with me.

Oh and it’s ranked on the IGC Leaderboard.