A magical door in a magical forest? Who can resist that? Not me, at least – particularly when the art has the style of those Atomic Age children’s books from the US: flat, four-colour printing, a hero with a sort of Charlie Brown squiggle for a quiff, everything thick and dash and aching of mimeo-ink. Jeepers!
So yes, The Other Side is a puzzle game for smartphones with a killer sense of art. And it’s wonderful to play with, too: a game about getting characters – sometimes one, sometimes more – to the door in a level and then on to the next one.
You do this by pulling them along on conveyor belts that move them and everything else that’s on the belt with them – trees, bushes, water towers, bits of fence and chimneys. The twist is that various belts overlay each other, so you move a guy left, then get him onto a down belt, them move him down and along and…and…and… man it gets tricky fast.
The Other Side – Early Teaser Watch on YouTube
The belts are not just straight lines, basically. They take sudden right angles and form loops and whatnot. It’s a bit head-melty, but only in the description. In the hands, it all clicks even before the sound track has given a sense of the taut finely-worked mechanism that allows everything to operate, even before the brain has found words for what you’re up to.