IGF nominated puzzle game Ethereal sets March release date
Plink, plink-plonk
Pretty puzzle game Ethereal will be wiggling its way into stores on the 7th of March. The wordless game follows an indistinct blob through many colourful, chilled out levels, and it's up for a 2019 Independent Games Festival award for excellence in audio.
You'll be able to see why it was nominated from the trailer alone:
What a lovely series of dings, chimes, and even scrapes. The music’s good too – and you can listen to it on Spotify already. One of the tracks is called “Working In The Background,” which is fitting, because as far as I can tell that's when all writers turn to trusty game music playlists.
According to its description, the game features 24 maze-like levels, each of which is malleable using various mechanics that you must puzzle out in order to find the way through. All the while, the world will plink and jingle in response to your movements and interactions – and there’s no time pressure, so you can feel free to just sit back and make music if you like. Alternatively, you can really dig into find all of the "challenges and secrets" hiding among the pastel rectangles.
Ethereal will release on Steam, Humble, and itch.io on March 7th. In the meantime, you can peruse the full list of nominees, where you’re bound to find something else that takes your fancy and is already out.