When I first went to University, I was fairly poor and ended up living in the halls of residence. The flat I was staying in was shared by five other people, and as the courses had a fairly high attrition rate those five people changed fairly regularly. One evening we were all sitting round the kitchen table smoking, drinking and eating terrible student food when we got talking about the many bottles of alcohol that were sitting on our windowsill. One in particular had caught my eye; it was an ornately carved bottle with something written in Iranian across the front, and no one knew how long it had been sitting there in the warm Essex sun. Between us, we could account for about 4 years and it had been there opened but untouched at least for all that time. Myself and one of the other guys girlfriends decided it might be a good idea to try it and, ignoring the warnings of the nursing students living in the flat, poured a couple of glasses. Now I don’t know what taking LSD is like, but I was quite ill for about three days after, suffering from some pretty weird hallucinations and violent stomach cramps. We didn’t see the guy’s girlfriend for a few months. When I was eventually brave enough to leave the security of my bathroom (a sanctuary both from the monsters dancing round the lightbulbs, and from the brown rain), I found that my flatmates had taken the sensible decision of throwing the rest of the bottle away. I never found out what it was, so it is with some joy that I have now discovered Bumpkin Brothers’ new game When Ian Fell In The Machine, as clearly they have had similar hallucinations.

When Ian Fell In The Machine actually came about following a glitch in another game being produced by the Bumpkin Brothers, and they liked it so much they made a whole game out of it. Having seen the premise, it must have been one hell of a glitch. Ian (who is a head) is rolling along one day, and is tempted onto a trapdoor in pursuit of a free sausage. He then falls into a machine, falling down passed bumpers, platforms, buzz saws and lasers until eventually he inevitably runs out of luck and gets mashed. It’s an interesting idea, if not a little bit bewildering.

Gameplay-wise, its actually pretty good fun. It’s a fall down game, meaning the game goes on and on until you run out of talent. It has tilt controls, and whilst anyone who has read anything I’ve written before knows that I’m really not a fan of tilt games, this seems to work quite well. The input is nice and smooth whilst being accurate and responsive enough to easily jump between platforms. The physics in the game are nice as well; I never thought I would ever have cause to write this, but when the head bounces off a metal bar, it makes a satisfying ‘thunk’ sound. I should imagine I’m going to appear in some sort of web filter and be NSA’d after writing that, but it’s an enjoyable experience none the less. It’s one of those games where you pick it up and play it once and think ‘this is easy’ and play through with a smug smile on your face, and then by the fourth or fifth attempt you’re gnashing your teeth and getting stressed trying to beat the damn thing.

There’s three difficulty levels, each with extra obstacles to overcome. You’ll be collecting coins as you roll through the game over and over again, and you can buy various upgrades to keep things interesting. There’s a monocle (which makes Ian’s head look rather dashing), bombs to blow away any obstacles in your path, and then the main event; the golden sausage. When Ian eats the golden sausage he suddenly dons a rather fetching hat and he is momentarily immune, everything he touches suddenly turning into gold coins. In the words of Philip J Fry – ‘It’s like that drug trip I saw in that movie while I was on that drug trip’.

On the whole, I’m really very much enjoying When Ian Fell In The Machine. Whilst it initially looked like it might just be a quick five minute wonder, I do find myself constantly picking my phone up and having another go just to try and get past the next set of lasers. Aside from anything else, it’s nice to spend some time in someone else’s bizarre vision. For sixty nine of your hard earned pennies you can get a fair amount of fun out of it as well, with more replay value than quite a few other apps I’ve picked up recently.

 

Lastly, Bumpkin Brothers – On the assumption that you also got inspiration for this after drinking some of the weird Iranian spirit you found on a windowsill, I’m pretty sure that I momentarily had super powers. Did you experience the same thing?

 

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