Rezzed Hands-On: Ethan Meteor Hunter

Time stopping puzzle platforming at its finest.

Formed out of the ashes of Hydravision, French development team Seaven Studio are in the process of getting their first game out, the rather charming looking Ethan Meteor Hunter.  Ethan has been touched by meteorites, and it’s given him to ability to stop time and move things around using telekinesis.

Ethan Meteor Hunter is a physics based puzzle-platform game with quite a simple concept.  As you move through the levels, you pick up ‘pause’ tokens.  Each one of these you own allows you to pause time.  While time is paused, you can move certain objects around the screen to allow you to progress to the next area.  You can move and rotate objects as you see fit.  Sometimes it can be as simple as moving blocks around to create a staircase, or you can be trying to use a mouse trap as a catapult, trying to judge from how high up to drop a block to launch yourself without hitting some moving circular saws.  You have a limited number of pauses, however, but if you screw up you can reset to the previous checkpoint from simply pressing the B button.

The actual concept of the game is easy to pick up, and the levels on show are well designed and challenging without being unfair.  As you progress, certain areas will require multiple pauses and good timing in order to carry on.  For example, using a pause in mid air and moving a platform under you to avoid landing in some dangerous liquid and dying.  Each level also has several shards to collect and a par time to try and beat, giving you reasons to go back and replay the levels.

So far, Ethan: Meteor Hunter is looking like a very interesting puzzle platformer.  With a cool art style and challenging puzzles to play through, it should test even the most hardened platform expert.  It might look a bit child like to some, but it’s really fun and worth a play.

Ethan: Meteor Hunter is in development for PS3 and PC and is due for release in Summer 2013.  You can find it on Steam Greenlight and download an alpha build demo of the game here.