Cryptic Sea EP contains post-modern puzzler Volta

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What if Tetris got sloppy and wild?

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Cryptic Sea (best known for Gish and Hockey?) just released a new set of games for Mac, Windows and Linux for a paltry $3. I haven’t gotten that deep into the collection yet, but by far the most striking entry in Cryptic Sea EP is Volta — a new take on the falling block puzzle genre. 

Most puzzle games appeal to the part of the brain that functions like a calculator, which is nice if you want to feel like the concepts of logic and order aren’t just illusions. Sadly, that part of the brain can’t help us to feel like a child taking their first ever jump on a trampoline. Volta works to bring those those two feelings together, and the tension they bring out is fantastic. It mischievously defies the cold logic that usually comes from putting blocks together by giving them a chaotic life all their own.

In life, things rarely fit together without some unpredictable, profitable, or detrimental bumps along the way. Why should things be any different in our puzzle games?


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Jonathan Holmes
Destructoid Contributor - Jonathan Holmes has been a media star since the Road Rules days, and spends his time covering oddities and indies for Destructoid, with over a decade of industry experience "Where do dreams end and reality begin? Videogames, I suppose."- Gainax, FLCL Vol. 1 "The beach, the trees, even the clouds in the sky... everything is build from little tiny pieces of stuff. Just like in a Gameboy game... a nice tight little world... and all its inhabitants... made out of little building blocks... Why can't these little pixels be the building blocks for love..? For loss... for understanding"- James Kochalka, Reinventing Everything part 1 "I wonder if James Kolchalka has played Mother 3 yet?" Jonathan Holmes