I am a fan of Humble Bundle, the charitable enterprise that allows you to get a plethora of games for a cheap price that you can split between charities, game developers, and their website. The last weekly Humble Bundle pleasantly surprised me as the indie studio Cipher Prime was debuting their newest game, Intake, on it. Their approach to creating video games is creating a pleasant experience between the auditory and visual, so I was excited to see what this new addition to their collection would bring. They described it as, “the polychromatic love child of Dr. Mario and Ikagura” so I knew I had to get in on the action.
The first thing I saw was the old “Winners don’t use drugs” screen some 90’s American arcade machines had, I chuckled a bit. Next thing I know the game had completely sucked me in. It’s one of these games with no story line, complex plot, open world, or characters but manage to keep you gaming for hours on end just because it’s FUN.
Intake seems to aim at creating a retro arcade experience for a modern audience. It has simple but addictive gameplay combined with bright graphics and dubstep music to match. Now dubstep is not my cup of tea, but the music of Intake is not bad at all and you can switch from three background tracks.
The goal is to shoot as many pills as you can to prevent an overdose. As you gain milligrams of medicine you can buy powerups at the drug store that will help as the game gets progressively more and more difficult. To increase the difficulty of shooting a cascade of falling pills the pills have two different colors, and if you want to advance to the next level you have to match the color of your gun accordingly. Thankfully they made it easy by making the color switch either through the space bar or a right click.
Intake is a short but very fun addition to anyone’s gaming collection. It will be available on Steam on November 5th, so get your body ready by remembering winners don’t do drugs!
Note: This game can easily be played by colorblind gamers as it allows them to select colors they can differentiate from.