"Underwater ambient art to relax tense gamers"

We may lose sight of it much of the time, looking at grime covered buildings and clear cut forests. Or forget it while working in florescent-lit sterile offices speaking in artificial business speak. Or despair of it when reading about the latest atrocities abroad and the indifference and indulgences of those in power here.

But accidental as it may be, beauty and elegance exists. Or at least there are still things that we can perceive as beautiful and elegant. Not in an emotionally deep way, necessarily, just aesthetically, where line and color and sound can isolate aspects of the world that please the senses, and give us transport to a place where these shades of reality are all encompassing.

And if you don't mind wallowing in Toshio Iwai's euphonious ocean, soaking in the the electric glow of the vividly colored water and creatures, and hypnotizing yourself with the rhythmic (and a-rhythmic) chiming these creatures can create, then Electroplankton might just be the beautiful transport you're looking for.

You have ten of Iwai's plankton to choose from, and each provide a different experience. Some are almost game-like. Hanenbow come hurtling out of the water at an angle you select, bouncing of the leaves of a plant, and chiming with each strike. Almost game-like because if a leaf is hit frequently enough it will turn red, and if you can arrange it that all of the leaves simultaneously turn red, you get a yellow flower. If this doesn't sound game enough for you, there is also the Nanocarp. He chimes when touched, and reacts to sound. If you blow into the microphone in the right way, clap your hands in the right rhythm, or sing at the right pitch, Nanocarp will congregate in circles, hearts, triangles, houses and more. So, um, those are the two with goals of a sort.

For the rest, you've got freedom to make the music within the constraints each allows, with no dictum beyond those restrains as to how you should do it.

Two of the plankton let you record snippets of your voice (or whatever else you can play for the mic). Rec-Rec integrates four of your samples into one of several pre-set beats. If you time it well, and you aren't too loud, your samples fit right in, but it would be nice if you got to work with the beats in a more fundamental way as well. Volvoice takes a seven second sample and repeats it through 16 filters, chopping it up, slowing it down, distorting it, etc. and changing shape for each effect. It's a real goofy trip to play with.

Beatnes is the other silly fun plankton. In this one you get to make ever-shifting on-the-fly "remixes" of four old NES themes. I know I'm an ignorant sot for not knowing which ones they are- one is Mario Bros., one may be from Tetris, the other from Balloon Fight, perhaps? Don't know, but as they play you tap segments of the tails of the Beatness to add extra beats, and the heads and tail tips for sound effects. They all filter in in-time with the beat, so if you go tapping everywhere it may get hectic, but otherwise you can't lose.

The Lumiloop are five tire shaped plankton that each emit an ambient drone when you spin them- it's extremely mellow and dreamy. Marine-Snow are snowflake shaped plankton that each are a note on the piano or xylophone. when you strike them they change places, so it's hard to get anything steady going, but somehow it's pleasant to hear nonetheless. I've found if I concentrate on four or five of them, and track one to be the tonal center, I can get them to sound kind of like a minimalist Peter Garland track...

Tracy follows lines you make, at the speed you make them, hitting a string of notes along the way. If you get all six going at once it can get hectic- can't say I've managed to make much with this one, but their bright pastel hues against a dark blue backdrop are beautiful to watch. Luminaria is another sonicaly dense plankton. You start each of these truly "electric" plankton moving along a path of arrows that direct them around the screen (you can alter their path via the manipulation of said arrows), and they tick off a note upon passing each. A lot of concurrent sound comes out with all four traversing around, and it is insistently rhythmic, but never seemingly too confused.

The last plankton to mention, the Sun-Animalcule is perhaps my favorite. by touching the screen you create tiny sun shaped plankton that each go through a cycle of three beats, the nature of which is determined by where on the screen you place them. as they progress they grow ever larger and louder until they burst. If you are careful the sound is beautiful, if not, it can turn into a crazy chiming mess. After a while, the screen darkens and your plankton become moon shaped and make mellower sounds (as opposed to the sharp bright sounds of the suns). The whole thing, the life cycles of the plankton, and the cycling of day and night makes this almost a meditation on the passing of time if you play it long enough.

Before I wrap this prolix review up, a few miscellaneous ideas:

The upper screen magnifies a small area on the lower screen. You can ignore it entirely and it won't affect your play, but it does add to the overall presentation of the game- especially with Nanocarp and Sun-Animalcule, which are very small on the bottom screen.

This is not a game, and will turn some gamers off with it's lack of direction. There isn't a WHOLE lot to do after you've explored the different plankton's possibilities. However, this seems like the kind of game that if I couldn't play for long stretches all of the time, I could pick up and tinker with whenever I was in the mood- without ever feeling like I "finished" it- so I think it has significant replay value as an aesthetic experience you can return to whenever the mood strikes.

The sound design is first rate- I plugged my DS into my stereo, and it comes through beautifully. Some people are recording their sounds into their computers and constructing actual songs with that material, and it sounds potentially professional in quality.

So why not a 10 score? Well, I guess I'd like it if the experience with the music was a bit deeper. If you could, even temporarily, save a few minutes from each plankton and perhaps even layer multiple plankton sounds together. Of course you can do that with your computer, but it'd be nice to have some kind of in-game mixing desk.

With that reservation and my above complaint about the static beats in Rec-Rec out of the way, I do wholly recommend getting this game in whatever way you can. It is Japan-only, and will likely set you back fifty dollars, but Nintendo is hinting that this one is not coming stateside nor hitting Europe, but you won't find anything else like it, or the relaxed pleasure it can create in any other game now on the market. And how often can you say that?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/05