UK based indie studio GLPeas‘ second Xbox Live Indie Games effort has finally hit the service for purchase.  BlindGiRl is a game of colors, waves, and overcoming adversity, and is something you should definitely play.

Gameplay and Audio/Visual

In BlindGiRl you play as the eponymous youth, lost in a confusing world of darkness with only your voice and your footsteps to reveal your path.  Every stage begins with complete blackness surrounding the blind girl.  To combat the darkness, Blind Girl’s footsteps will emit sonar like radial waves of red, these waves then reflect off walls to reveal the structure of the girl’s surroundings. A button also causes the girl to sing, emitting green waves that function similarly to the red.  The goal of each stage is to reach a musical note which adds to the duration of the song, thereby increasing the range revealed by your song.  Later levels introduce blocks that break when presented with a certain wave, helpful paths and checkmarks that only show up when in the presence of the proper wave, as well as mysterious eyeballs that are attracted to noises of a particular type and can “catch” the blind girl, ending the stage.

Due to the theme of the game, the audio and visuals both play an extremely important role in gameplay.  While the art is admittedly crude and simplistic, it still adds to the charm of the visual aesthetic.  That said, the art is actually much less important than the wave propagation effect which makes up the actual gameplay.  You will notice the interesting capitalization of the title BlindGiRl, emphasizing the B, the G and the R to match the usage of primary colors blue, green and red for the wave effects.  The colored waves slowly radiating out and bouncing off the walls and hints and other obstacles is a very interesting effect, especially when you come across the blocks which alter the speed of the waves creating a very cool effect.  I’m a bit disappointed, however, that the bulk of what you will see is only the interaction of red and green waves, since the blue wave is only visible when you either die, or use the “scream” button to exit to the stage select.  In general though, the wave visuals are a rather interesting, unique and beautiful gameplay mechanic.

The song which is formed by the collection of musical notes is also of utmost important to not only the game’s aesthetic, but its play as well.  I found the little tune to be pretty, but rather forgettable, which is actually probably for the best as it could have easily been of great detriment to the game given that you will be listening to it constantly as you navigate the levels.

The difficulty of BlindGiRl comes from learning what new obstacle you must face in each stage, so as a progressively different puzzle game, it works quite well.  They manage to do a lot of different things using only the two colored waves.  What I didn’t like, however, was the threshold on the usage of the analog stick for movement.  Often to escape the “red beasts” which are attracted to your footsteps, you must move past them by utilizing only the lightest of pressure on the analog stick so as to move extremely slowly and keep your red waves to an absolute minimum.  At times, making this happen nearly gave me cramps.  My only other gripe was at a puzzle very late in the game where the solution is only visible in the presence of a blue wave.  Unfortunately, a blue wave is only visible when you A) scream to exit a level or B) get caught by an eye beast, meaning either way you basically have to re-start a screen to figure out how to get through it.

Summary

BlindGiRl is a charming and creative effort.  I love seeing something as artistic and interesting as this on an independent games channel.  The game is available on Xbox Live Indie Games for 80 Microsoft points.  While it may not have much for replay-ability, I highly suggest spending the points, if not to support the amazing creativity of an awesome development team, then to play something wondrous and beautiful that you won’t soon forget.