We spotlight a Toronto game every month & members get it free. For August, we’ve got the classic N, where ninjas and Robarts Library-esque architecture collide. Usually in limb-tearing explosions.  N++ is the final installment of the legacy and a decade in the making, is on PS4 now.

N 2.0 And The Art Of Dying

N is kinetic necromancy, making you hit replay after every wayward leap. Walljump, dodge missles, fall into a pit of spiked bombs. Die. Soar above the mines, land onto a moving platform — no, miss. Die.

Even the start screen of N promises game over. It loads scenes of the Ninja sprinting through various maps, dying before beating any of them. It’s like a minimalist’s Valhalla, a showcase of the glorious deaths of your fallen brethren; a reminder that you will join their ranks soon.

The puzzle-platformer by Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns of Metanet Software is a breeze to pick up. You’re a stick figure Ninja collecting gold in grey rooms brimming with things that will kill you. You have to hit a switch to open the door that ends the level upon entry. Sounds simple, but there’s a reason it’s been popular enough to warrant updates for more than a decade and countless user-created maps.

In the heyday of Newgrounds and flash games, I played the original N. It was one of those Internet things that kids just knew about, like where to torrent music or 1337speak. Maybe N is why Dark Souls and other punishing platformers  have been so successful. Kids weaned on N like the slow win, the gradual victory earned from persistent failures.

It also helps that N is so finessed. With monochrome scenery, as well as just directional keys and jumping for controls, focus is reduced. Instead of wasting time marvelling at intricate graphics or scratching their heads at complex storylines, players zone into the little details in motion, becoming adept at the subtle shifts in jumps to change trajectory.

With that adeptness comes relishing the physics Metanet Software implemented. There’s a thrill in the ease of legs picking up speed, the dragging slide of heels slowing down. It’s exhilarating to just run, to bound across danger without planning ahead. Although chances are if you do that, you’ll hit a mine and explode.

After all, that’s the price of recklessness: your limbs exploding, the smack of your body parts against walls, watching the room’s robots ignore your demise and crushing the bits of yourself still whole into smaller bits. It’s also the price of hesitation, of hovering in the air for too long, of forgetting to look behind. You pay a lot for not paying attention. Two-player mode is easier, since only one player has to reach the door to clear the level, but your friend’s corpse lingers, their detached limbs flying past your attached ones, until you avenge or join them.

Many throw around the word unforgiving when describing N, but the game’s far from it. Instead of thrusting you into every level, it pauses until you press jump. This gives players time to assess, plan, and catch a breather from the last deathtrap. There’s a timer, but it can be replenished with gold. Restarts after death load instantaneously, not giving you any time to mope.

The rooms themselves aren’t hostile. Nothing in them possesses sentience or target you out of malice for your gold-swiping ways. The platforms will bob if you jump on them, and the motion sensors will slam into your body, but it’s nothing personal really. Just physics. And like city landscapes, with their harsh unyielding towers and concrete panoramic view, the grey rooms aren’t meant to be dismantled. Only weaved through without colliding into something that’ll kill you.

None of the obstacles or collisions in N seem unfair. Nothing glitches or can be attributed to faulty controls. Every map has a logical path to winning, every fluid twist of the body entirely up to the player. Unlike games where you lose a day’s worth of progress after missing a savepoint, losing doesn’t suck. Dying in N just elicits a wince and another attempt.

I start each level of N expecting to die. It doesn’t bother me too much, since in N, death is just the beginning. Until it’s death again.

 

N 2.0 is available for free here. N++, the faster younger and more attractive sibling to N 2.0 (which still has a killer personality, if you ask me), is out now. Check out the trailer for N++ if you need an eyeful of incredible graphics before grabbing it up.