One of the visual styles that have a tendency to resonate for longer periods of time is hand-drawn, typically using more traditional animation techniques to really breathe life into a game. Most famously, Cuphead took this ideology to the extreme with the roots of animation and Hollow Knight created intense emotions with subtle movements and characters. These are games that became immediately timeless thanks to tight gameplay and endlessly enjoyable presentations. Another entry looking to make a mark in this regard is the upcoming Metroidvania/RPG hybrid Indivisible by Lab Zero Games, the same developers behind Skullgirls. It’s being published by 505 Games who recently put out the well-received Control.
I have been aware of Indivisible for a few years now but always just in passing as “that game that was probably happening eventually.” I wished Lab Zero Games the best during their crowd-funding campaign and didn’t think about it at all until here recently. I saw the funding hitting milestone after milestone and demos being available but I never bothered to look deeper or back the game.
Then I actually sat down to play Indivisible at PAX West following an invitation from 505 Games, where my expectations were pleasantly upended every few moments, resulting in a pure sense of enjoyment and absolute wonder.
Now granted, the area I was playing was likely a mishmash of upgrades to show the various types of gameplay on offer but I was astounded at the blend of mechanics from platforming staples to niche icons. I covered this briefly in our Best Game Awards post (where Indivisible took the gold by the way) but I cannot stress enough how cool it was to constantly learn new skills and then find ways to reach new heights.
These mechanics included things like a speed boost from Super Metroid and a pogo bounce from DuckTales on NES. I was also having a blast with the ability to launch upwards with a pole vault. This helped me find shortcuts and reach new areas. Some of the moves were pretty difficult to pull off, as it was a matter of using multiple tools together, and I could see it being troublesome for some players. However, for someone with a history with lots of platformers and Metroidvanias, I felt right at home. The movement overall just felt so smooth and complex.
During the whole demo, there was one idea I couldn’t shake, speedruns.
Speedrunning is a type of gaming that I’ve been fascinated by for many years, stemming mostly from the Games Down Quick events. For almost a year, I was the frontman for speedrunning content at Twin Galaxies, where I interviewed runners, caught up with cool trends and tools, and generally kept an eye on leaderboards. It was a lot of fun and that time has definitely infected my interview style with my classic “Have you thought about speedruns or are you working with speedrunners for development?” question that I often sprinkle into discussions.
Yes, I think Indivisible will make for an incredible speedrun, provided there are not huge roadblocks like long auto-scrolling sections, unskippable story segments, or not being able to sequence break or do RPG battle quickly. I hope to see a full speedrun mode with timer support and passing over dialogue segments.
Oh yeah, Indivisible’s main combat mechanic is a whole unique RPG system with fighting game flair and emphasis on juggling and combos. I wasn’t super aware of this when I fired up the demo, where I suddenly found myself in a battle screen similar to the Mario & Luigi games on the Game Boy Advance. It was wild to see the transition and I quickly flailed to get a grip with the mechanics. After a few fights though, I was juggling enemies into crossover combos and pulling off special moves for each character I had in the demo. It felt exciting and deep but simple enough for almost immediate foundations to set in.
Each character is tied to a face button on the controller and the player calls for attacks by tapping those buttons. Players can also access different moves by holding the left stick up or down with likely more complexity added throughout the adventure. I found timing to be a big part of finding victory both in offense and defense. There were two characters with more specific capabilities aside from my main and a quick swordsman, a healer and a dark shaman that could poison foes. Judging by the trailers, there are lots of characters to collect and fight alongside.
Characters are full of personality and are all designs that I found unique. There was also a ton of awesome women, which doesn’t happen often in games and was a delight to see. I especially loved the aforementioned shaman character, who seems hard to approach, with a creepy tone about her interests, but is likely a big sweetie underneath.
Presentation was off the charts in a lot of ways and each music track was exciting and interesting. I loved the melodies featured in the demo and I’m sure this will be a soundtrack celebrated for many years to come.
Really, the only criticism I would have on the game is the 3D backgrounds just don’t look as pleasant as the characters. I also found some of the level routing to be time-consuming, mostly if I missed a jump and landed several rows down, forcing me to take the long way around for another chance. We’ll see how these elements affect the overall experience upon launch.
Directly after playing the demo, I spoke with Mariel Cartwright, the Creative Director for Indivisible. This interview can be found in full in a special episode of the Forever Classic Podcast in which I collaborated with the guys at the ARGcast.
Cartwright first provided me with some background on the studio, specifically Skullgirls. “Skullgirls was kind of the brainchild of two people,” she explained, “Mike Z (Mike Zaimont) our Designer and Alex Ahad who was the Creative Director. Mike handled all the gameplay ideas, which carried over to Indivisible, and then Alex was involved initially in a lot of the art and concept. Together, they put together this team that we developed Skullgirls with and I was a part of that from the early days on Skullgirls; I was Lead Animator.”
“So, our philosophies as a studio, we really like tight controls and “gamey games” like fighting games and really quick and twitchy platforming type of stuff but also as a studio we’re very art-focused. We have a lot of illustrators on our team. We do anime-style art; we’re all kind of big anime fans so I think that’s kind of where our inspirations come from.”
“When you combine all of those different things, that’s where you get Lab Zero.”
I also asked Cartwright to explain how all the various platforming mechanics fell into place.
“We were trying to create a kind of Metroidvania, so we have these big expansive maps that you traverse several times. . . so you do have a lot of abilities in the game and at the point you played in the demo it’s about 8-10 hours into the game so you have a lot of abilities you’ve gotten over the course of the game up to that point. I guess when Mike and the design team were trying to think about the abilities you’d have, I think it was a lot of traversal abilities like the DuckTales bounce to get across spikes and such. We also have some attacks that affect enemies. There’s one that can stun an enemy and then you can latch onto them and use them as a platform. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff.”
There’s an interesting mix of cultural influences in Indivisible that makes it feel unique in today’s gaming market. I asked where the inspiration came from. “We pull from a lot of Southeast Asian settings and mythology,” she began. “There’s some Buddhism and Hinduism in there. It’s all very fantasy. We’re not trying to represent things directly, these are the wells we drew from.”
“We went with it because it’s not something you typically see in a lot of games. We see a lot of East Asian, a lot of Western, but Southeast Asia is not something that we see a lot of games draw inspiration from. So I think that’s kind of where we wanted to go; We wanted to show something that we don’t typically see.”
Skullgirls has an all-female cast and there were obviously a lot of prominent women in the demo I played, so I asked about representation. “Well, you might have noticed that I’m a lady,” said Cartwright with a laugh.
“I don’t know, it just makes sense. I guess my whole thing is that I just want to see different types of women. I don’t necessarily agree with, you know there’s been a trend of making strong female characters, but what that tends to be is infallible characters, flawless women and I don’t think that’s right.”
“I think women can be weird and bad and wrong and good and great and strong also, obviously. So I think when we approach our characters, we don’t think of them as a woman, so she has these qualities, it’s just that they’re characters, all different characters. We try to have either an even spread or a female leaning spread, just because we’re trying to do something that we don’t typically see but also make it realistic I guess. Everything is exaggerated, of course, but just in terms of personality and story we do want it to be grounded because, obviously, women are just as diverse as any other gender.”
Indivisible is launching on October 8th for PS4, Xbox One, and Steam initially. A Switch version is also in the works but there’s no release date as of yet. Stay up to date with Indivisible on Twitter, Facebook, and their official website.
