In the 17th century, after the Inquisition forced him to recant his stance that the earth moved around the Sun and not vice versa, Galileo is said to have muttered 'And yet it moves.' Meaning that it did not matter what you say or think, the fact remains.
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DeNA's game Yet It Moves - the mobile version having removed the 'And' from the original 2009 PC title - while nothing close to a treatise on solar movement, is a game I think the Viennese master would appreciate.
Yet It Moves is the precisely the kind of mobile title I always look for. Fun, but with the right amount of challenge. Fun, easy, with a playtime I can adjust to whatever my current situation. Whether I play for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, it remains an enjoyable experience that does not try my patience and whose difficulty scales up appropriately across the many levels.
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The game takes the traditional 2D platformer and - quite literally - turns it on its head. Instead of just running and jumping across a wild and varied paper-esque landscape, players can drag their finger across the screen to rotate the world, creating floors out of ceilings and opening up new paths towards the end of the level. Spinning the game-world takes a little getting used to, though as with anything, practice makes perfect. The control scheme feels so natural, so right and interactive on an iPhone screen that I can't imagine playing Yet It Moves on the PC or other platform.
There is something refreshing about the title. There is no story to follow, nor any other characters beside your unnamed little paper cut-out guy. It's the most simple foundation in gaming: move forward (or down, or up, or backwards). Anyone can pick up the game and know exactly what they need to do.
The Viennese developer Broken Rules - perhaps as close a connection to Galileo as there may be - has created a visually dazzling little puzzler. Yet It Moves is ripped - some might say literally - from the world. The game is deisgned like a paper collage, all crinkled lines and jagged edges layered on top of one another like an art school project in motion. I found myself just wandering around, noting the quality of the hand-drawn art, reveling in the world itself. This often meant I was crushed, broken or fell off the edge of the map, but it was always worth it.
Yet It Moves never punishes you for failing. When you die, whether you end up smashed under a falling rock or, the more likely one, landed on a flat surface at too great a speed, you are resurrected quickly at the last checkpoint. These points are laid out fairly frequently and designed in such a perfect way for mobile titles. Each level is cunningly divided up into puzzles, with each puzzle taking a short amount of time to complete. After solving them, you are generally rewarded with another checkpoint, allowing you to bask in your victory and go do other things.
The real fun comes in the middle set of chapters, in which you are tasked with not only moving yourself, but the objects around you. One notable level which I had a blast playing was called 'Stoned', wherein I had to avoid falling rocks by spinning the world so they would drop by the wayside. Other puzzles will have you tilting and twirling a group of bats around to remove a lizard from your path, or scooting a banana up a tree to get rid of the monkey like an old game of Marble Madness.
Yet It Moves is a rewarding and dare I say "moving" experience for your iPhone and iPad. The game itself is a bit short, with about 22 levels total. A decent length experience, but one that can hopefully be expanded on at a later date. There is a daily run 'time attack mode' for players wishing to put their high scores against one another, but little is offered outside of the main "narrative".
In a lot of way, Yet It Moves reminds me of one of my favorite mobile titles from 2014, Monument Valley. Both are visually gorgeous and task you with rearranging the game world to complete the puzzles. And both are too short. Still, the time you spend with Yet It Moves will be well spent. It turns out Galileo was wrong. The earth does not move around the sun; the earth moves around you.
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Yet It Moves was reviewed on an iPhone 5S using a code provided by the developer. You can download it on the App Store today for $2.99.
