It might call itself a side-scroller but where you’d typically expect WASD and the spacebar to be your friends, Odium To The Core already frustrates by claiming that it’s entirely single-button based.
The key apparently is to hold ‘up’ to have Odium do likewise and that’s it. Meanwhile traps, enemies and vividly violet bosses are hurled at you to the beat of drum, bass and electronic jungle in favor of a predominantly music-based challenge.
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The three-bearded chaps of whom Odium To The Core is the brainchild, show no inhibitions in calling their debut project rage-inducing. Which really isn’t hard to believe, given how this entire proposition of a game will also be released for iOS devices alongside Steam.
Imagining mobile players making fingernailed holes in their iPhone screens over coffee, I’m momentarily distracted by the game’s offered aspects of monochromatism and audio synchronization.
The former, drawing inspiration from the likes of Limbo, Patapon and Badlands, keeps all that can be collided with at a dark color, interactable objects at red and moving parts with bright magenta. The magenta is meant to spread before manifesting itself in the form of a level boss, a glimpse of which can be seen here.
‘The idea is to illustrate the spread of corruption through the in-game world,’ a dev-blog post reads. Meanwhile the bass is touted to be handled by one DarkACE, an audio synchronization tool developed in-house, that allows traps/gates/coins to be generated in tune with a level’s soundtrack.
Of which there are 15, levels I mean, and a narrative of which not much is told except that the goal lies in getting a very customizable Odium to a core. A look at its history however discloses that the game was originally a hate-themed animation that after many tweaks, went on to win a ‘The Sound of a Heartbeat’ themed Global Game Jam in 2013.
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Finally topping it all will be a special Nightmare Mode that with minimal checkpoints and maximum difficulty, hopes to destroy your touch reflexes. Dark-1’s Odium to The Core debuts on Steam this week, the 11th of May.
