Continuity is a pretty awesome Flash game. It won the Best Student Game award at 2010 Independent Games Festival and the Gameplay Innovation Award at IndieCade 2010, so it clearly has some indie cred. Sadly, it also has a huge flaw that most Flash games share—it isn’t on iOS. I’m willing to forgive that, though, because we just got an even bigger dose of awesome on iOS in Continuity 2: The Continuation [$0.99].
Continuity 2 is a mind-bending puzzle platformer. Each level is drawn on a number of sliding tiles. You can move them around to rearrange the game world as you play, but you can only connect matching edges. This part of the game is like a simple tile sliding puzzle, though there are never more than 8 tiles to contend with.
Inside the tiles, you control a little stick guy by tapping either side of the screen to walk, and swiping upward to jump. These controls are serviceable, but they don’t feel fluid. That’s okay, though—after a quick introduction to the basics, you won’t be doing a lot of platforming. Rather than moving around the level, you’ll usually be moving the level around you.
The game is divided up into 6 worlds. For the first two worlds, you’ll be playing with pretty basic puzzles. Find your way to the level’s key, then head to the door, going out of your way only to grab coins. After that, things get interesting. In world 3, you’ll learn to rotate your phone to change the level’s orientation, so you can walk on walls, fall down floors and climb on ceilings. This technique will keep you going for a while, and then you’ll discover switches that trigger gates that are often linked up on completely different tiles.
These later levels get pretty wild, but Continuity 2 is great about introducing concepts slowly enough that I never felt completely out of my depth. There’s no punishment for false starts or failed attempts. I was genuinely excited to solve a puzzle by leaping down a hole, swapping tiles for my destination part way through, rotating my phone and then flying back to yet another tile. Our forum users seem pretty impressed, too.
There are a total of 50 levels, with minimal replayability. If you collect all the coins in a level, the game tracks your completion time, and each level has a challenge time to beat. Achievements and leaderboards would probably help give Continuity 2 a little more staying power. On the flip side, the game won’t ever leave you stuck— you can play each level in a world once it unlocks, and you can unlock them without completing every level.
You really shouldn’t pass Continuity 2 up if you’re a puzzle-game fan. Screenshots don’t do it justice – the minimalistic style works beautifully in motion—and both the music and sound effects are great. It also has the rare distinction of being a game that really feels at home on iOS. The touch-screen tile sliding is great, but once the rotation comes in it seems only natural that it’s been taken off the computer screen and made portable. I’ll probably keep this one around long after I master all the challenge times, just to show people how neat iOS gaming can be.
