Lithium Leaf

Link: http://www.mazapan.se/games/Swarm.php

Swarm is a racing game with swarming behaviour created by team Mazapan for the Swedish Game Awards. The team is made up of: Kian Bashiri, Henrik Nåmark and Carl-Johan Sevedang. The in-game music was done by Callecuttar (Gorillala).

Swarm is a mobile game. I have a pretty old mobile phone and I was still able to run it. So I'm pretty sure almost anyone can.

The control scheme is quite simple. 2,4,6 and 8 to move horizontaly or vertically. And 1,3,7 an 9 to move diagonally. The game plays like a race against time, you control a swarm of pixels and have to get to a checkpoint (Placeholder Graphics) before time runs out, when you get there your time is extended. As you progress through the game you will find other cool features of the game. For example forks in the read, called Design Decisions, where the route you take has an effect in the level layout and graphics of the game. These roads the game has split up into never come back together, which means that the game will have a lot of possible unique routes. The game also has more standard features that most racing games have. Such as speed-ups.

The gameplay is very fast, and you will find yourself colliding often, but it is not really penalised. The first portion of the game is used to familiarize with the pixel controls, and you are not timed. Only when you get to a certain point the coundown starts. The Beta's difficulty is hard, it was done so to make the players unable to finish the game in one go because the game is only at beta stage, and is still very short.

The graphical features of Swarm are simple. But the transtitions between graphical styles in the Design Decisions are impressive.

As for the sound. My mobile phone is, as I said, old, and couldn't manage to play any music.

Download the beta.