Funnily enough, I have tried playing it, but some obscure technical issue I can't remember forced it off into the future, when I get a computer that isn't complete crap.

@Video_Game_King: I guess the comic would make more (or any) sense if you play the game: Everywhere you go, you leave a little blue trail behind. Presumably it's blue because of all the chemicals in it. Clearly the game has layers of anti-American conspiratorial subtext behind the "boy blimp saves girl blimp" facade; we're through the looking glass here, people.

Is that a comic of I Wanna Be The Denton at the bottom?

12/05/12 - Game #11

The game:Noumenon Games' Nimbus

The source: The very first Indie Royale Bundle.

The pre-amble: More Swedish shenanigans with Nimbus, a game where you guide a ship through a series of obstacle courses. The ship has no means of self-propulsion, so players must use gravity and features of the surrounding environment to propel themselves all the way through to the exit.

The playthrough: I kind of liked Nimbus. It is slow to get started, though, with many of the early levels simply reiterating the game's core concepts of astutely manipulating the natural gravitational forces to glide through and past a myriad of spikes, trampolines, launchers, barriers and the keys that unlock them. The whole thing is presented with a very jovial and bright 16-bit manner, a deliberately retro feel that is emphasized by the dialogue-free introductory cutscene where a boy blimp (our hero) is separated from his girl blimp after she is kidnapped by a giant monster that mocks him before flying off with the boy in pursuit. You can't have a video game plot more straightforward than that.

Each stage has an equally straightforward goal, which is to simply reach the end. However, in the time I spent with the game (enough to clear the first world), I spotted a few Super Mario World-esque alternate exits and a set of collectibles that occasionally provide an additional challenge to a level. There's also the requisite time trials that connects to scoreboards both global and personalized with a player's Steam buddies. Beyond that, the game clearly still hadn't run out of things to show me, and I suspect that I'll even reach the point where I can make upgrades to the little blimp guy protagonist which will facilitate some faster times and new regions.

That said, I've already seen signs that further levels will get longer and more devious and will punish indiscretions by forcing you to repeat large swathes of what you've already seen. This issue seems to unfortunately be part and parcel of the game's central conceit in that some sections are only passable if you manage to gather a lot of momentum from the previous areas; without it there's no way you'll have the necessary speed to propel yourself over the obstacles ahead and you therefore have little recourse but to start over. The game hasn't become the super challenging hell that Super Meat Boy or Trials devolves into just yet, but when that difficulty spike shows up it'll probably kill any goodwill I have for the game. But, hey, I'm mostly speculating on a trend I'm seeing here. (Plus there's no way @Psycosis would dig a game like this unless it was bastard tough.) I'll be sure to keep with it until I reach that point, if indeed it ever comes.

The verdict: Will revisit.