InFlux

Overview

The game begins with a meteor streaking across the sky and crashing, revealing a glowing metal ball. The player controls this as they travel through various environments on a deserted island, from beaches to forests to caves and eventually a volcano, solving puzzles in unusual artificial structures to progress. The game is designed as a relaxing experience with the focus on the puzzles and surroundings instead of plot, with no scoring and loss of progress impossible. Eventually, at the end of the game the player activates a device that appears to return the ball to the sky.

Gameplay

The aim of the game is to move the ball to the next area, which generally requires the player to use the ball to solve puzzles (either directly as the bridge between zones, or to open a pathway elsewhere). The puzzles themselves must be activated by powering them with orbs; these orbs can be found in the surrounding environment and can be collected when the ball is nearby.

The player controls the ball directly by rolling it, even able to push it uphill against gravity (although the ball will move down slopes if left alone). The ball can't 'jump', but the terrain can be used to throw it into the air to avoid dangerous ground or reach higher areas, assisted by limited in-air control; the player is able to charge and then boost the ball which dramatically increases its speed and allows greater distances to be covered. Charging also slows down time which can be used to quickly change direction or improve the ball's aim.

The player can also attract or repel certain objects in the environment, which is used to collect the orbs and often required during the puzzles. With a small number of exceptions, most of the puzzles are self-contained structures. The aim is usually to guide another ball to an area of matching color within the structure, through the use of the ball's abilities, barriers, vertical fans and buttons that may rotate part or all of the structure. While in one of these structures the island outside is hidden, and the only way to exit is to solve the puzzle, but getting into an impossible situation or failing (such as causing an object to fall outside the structure) resets it to a safe location without losing progress.

Although areas can be freely explored, the requirement to solve the puzzles in that area to progress to the next mean the overall game is linear.

Unexplained Mysteries

The game rarely if ever offers explanations for the events of the game, or how the environment came to be in its present state. The origin (and fate) of the player's ball are 'from the sky', but otherwise unknown. The island itself is uninhabited with the exception of a whale, which may have been trapped in an artificial structure underground, but displays many signs of previous habitation - apart from the more advanced glass-and-metal structures, primitive torches, campfires and huts are often present though always abandoned. (This is less of a mystery when considering the nearby active volcano.) The whale, as the sole exception to other life, is directly saved by the player on two occasions, and eventually assists them in return, finally disappearing as the player first reaches the volcano.

As the player progresses, the ball itself starts to show damage and eventually roll more erratically, and the artificial structures become less self-contained and merge with the environment. Broken fragments of structures also appear. The volcano itself, often visible throughout the game, becomes more and more active, with the final device directly inside it and causing an eruption.

PC System Requirements

Minimum

• OS: Windows XP SP3/Vista/7/8
• Processor: 2.0+ GHz processor
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: SM3-compatible video card
• DirectX: Version 9.0
• Hard Drive: 2 GB available space

Recommended

• OS: Windows XP SP3/Vista/7/8
• Processor: 2.0+ GHz multicore processor
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: ATI Radeon 3870 or higher, Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT or higher. 512MB VRAM
• Hard Drive: 2 GB available space