I was recently looking around at some upcoming Indie Games when I had found a post for an alpha version of a 3D parkour platformer named Celaria. Since the game look interesting and it is currently free, I decided I would download it and give it a shot. I can honestly say that I’m glad I did.
Since the game is in Alpha, it just consists of you controlling a character in a first-person view trying to go from one building to the next in order to reach the checkpoint on the other side of the map. Some rooftops have pillars that are in different colors that have different effects. For example, the blue tiles slow you down a lot, while the green tiles speed your run up very fast for longer jumps.
The controls so far are really good except for a couple of small issues. I always seem to have a hard time with the wallruns, especially on steeper angles. Sometimes they would go without a hitch, while others would just act like you missed and have you drop all the way down the building. I did find out that the creators have had complaints from testers about it. While I do understand why to an extent it made me feel like it wasn’t the games fault, but my own. This is exactly what every great game should do; make you realize it’s your fault and not the game itself.
The graphics are just made up of pixels at this point in time. I’m pretty sure that they will actually model them with appropriate colors, but if they decided to keep it this way I would understand why. It starts to grow on you.
One personal thing that is bugging the crap out of me was that every level has collectibles, which I have yet to find a single one. I don’t know if this means that I suck, or if the programmer did such a good job. I know they exist, so I’ll just go with the first part.
Another thing that I did notice after somebody pointed it out was the fall speed. Players where finding it to feel very slow, and considering that this is basically a speedrun, it’s very understandable. The slow falls made me hold my breath praying that I reached the other platform and not fall to my doom. Maybe if the creators only did this on a suspenseful moment in a story mode it would work, but since the object is to race from one end to the other, it doesn’t work.
I really can’t go into much detail at the moment since the version I’m playing only has 5 levels. There are some things that I didn’t like, but for the most part I still found myself really enjoying the game. The creators have since taken feedback that alpha participants have had and made some tweaks, and I haven’t had the chance to redownload that version. It’s still very exciting and I highly recommend that if you are a fan of Mirror’s Edge, or just looking for something a little different to play, this is definitely a game that you should check out. Plus it’s currently free to download, so you have no reason to not pick it up.
http://www.indiedb.com/games/celaria/downloads/celaria-open-alpha-v3
