Wow, this scene is just fantastic.
In the game, the male and female protagonists are standing back-to-back, looking at each other, their eyes filled with astonishment.
The background music kicks in at just the right moment, sending a shiver through one's soul.
In this situation, it must be a world-view-shattering experience for both the hero and the heroine, right?
Furukawa Hirozawa thought to himself.
In other words, from this point on, the perspective has shifted to that of the male protagonist.
Here it comes, here it comes.
The anti-gravity game design is here!
Seeing this, Furukawa Hirozawa couldn't help but get excited.
He even paused on this scene, then stood up, bent over, and looked at the screen upside down through his legs.
From either perspective, one's own world looks perfectly normal, while the other side is completely inverted.
The heroine, affected by [gravity], is about to fall into the endless sky. Although she has already retrieved her backpack from the wire fence, she can barely hold on, her two hands gripping the top of the fence tightly.
On the verge of falling completely, the heroine screamed desperately, "Help me!"
Although the male protagonist looked bewildered, he still climbed onto the wire fence.
As soon as he took her hand, an invisible upward pull dragged them both into the air.
When the two were suspended upside down in the sky, sunlight was cutting through between the distant mountain peaks like a sword, and where the sea of clouds met the earth, the whole scene was breathtakingly beautiful, like a dream.
Wow!
Furukawa couldn't help but exclaim.
Isn't this scene just too beautiful?
Seeing that they were about to fall, the heroine had no choice but to let go.
And so, the backpack fell from the sky, along with the flashlight inside it.
The light of the flashlight flashed once and then vanished instantly into the clouds.
After dropping the backpack, the heroine's body weight was significantly lighter than the male protagonist's, and so the two of them slowly drifted back down to the ground.
The scene reversed and returned to the male protagonist's perspective.
From the moment the male and female protagonists met, the entire game changed.
A line of white text appeared on the screen: [Act II: Aiga]
***
The male protagonist's name is Age.
To prevent Patema from "falling" into the sky, he tightly gripped her arm.
After the second act, the two of them began the game in this inverted yet tightly connected manner.
The levels that follow can be said to be quite excellent and ingenious:
Because they are influenced by each other's gravity, once the male and female protagonists are joined together, their overall weight seems to lighten significantly, allowing them to jump higher and with more lightness, giving Furukawa Hirozawa the illusion that he is on the moon.
Furthermore, midway through, the two can obtain a new backpack from other locations to collect items.
Within the game, in this new area called Aiga, some rooms may contain items from the "male protagonist's" world, as well as items from the "female protagonist's" world.
The corresponding items can increase the weight ratio within that respective world.
For example, if more items from the male protagonist's side are collected, then the characters will land on the ground, and their jump height will decrease.
The corresponding items can all increase the weight ratio in that world.
For example, if the male protagonist collects more items, the character will land more firmly on the ground, and the jump height will decrease.
And as the number of items in the female protagonist's world increases, the person will become lighter and lighter, to the point where they can even fly up into the sky...
These are all things that players need to consider for themselves, making choices in their inventory slots to facilitate passing subsequent levels.
Some of the important levels are also very interestingly designed:
For example, Hirozawa Furukawa controls two people and arrives at a broken steel bridge. Under normal circumstances, it would be difficult to jump across, but if there is a metal ceiling above, one could increase the female protagonist's weight so she can fly up and walk on the ceiling.
"This is so interesting!" Hirozawa Furukawa has been smiling the entire time. He has never played a game that is both so creative and has such visually infectious graphics.
It immerses him in this world where gravity and anti-gravity combine, using his own weight and items to play the game and collect clues.
This feeling is truly so much fun.
Games, to some extent, rely on stats, much like Diablo, where you collect equipment to improve yourself, and experience joy by combining different skills and equipment as your strength grows.
This is also an innate human instinct; who doesn't want to become stronger?
There is another type of game, which stimulates humanity's primitive desire for exploration.
This is also an innate human instinct; who wouldn't want to become stronger?
There is another type of game that stimulates the primal human desire for exploration.
Novelty.
This, too, is engraved in our DNA. Humanity can only continue to progress by constantly exploring and maintaining curiosity about new things. Therefore, when you can experience a game with a truly novel design, you will gain an unprecedented sense of joy.
Right now, Hirozawa Furukawa is feeling exactly that.
Playing up to this point, he couldn't help but secretly admire the sheer creativity of Pokeni.
He had a similar feeling when he first played Super Mario all those years ago.
It's just that later on, games became too homogeneous; all kinds of side-scrolling games emerged, branching out into many sub-genres. This was the first time Hirozawa had ever seen someone play with gravity the way Pokeni did.
This extraordinary creativity gave Hirozawa goosebumps.
***
Moreover, Pokeni integrates the game and its narrative quite ingeniously; everything you experience throughout the game feels as if it happens naturally.
You collect items in rooms, talk to NPCs to gather clues and hints, and after solving puzzles, you proceed to the next stage.
In these stages, you are required to utilize both gravity and anti-gravity.
The key to the door leading to the next stage might be in a cave high above ground, so you have to fly and enter it precisely to find it.
And there is a vertical shaft level underground: the depth between the upper and lower openings can be tens of meters, filled with various small rooms. You have to find the correct path to enter the next section of the shaft, which requires precise timing.
At the same time, while floating in the sky, you must avoid the patrolling drones; don't let them spot you, or they will shoot you down, which further tests your skills.
In short, the game is quite fun, while also placing certain demands on the player's reflexes and control. The difficulty also fluctuates across different stages.
One wrong move, and you might find yourself falling into the sky or plummeting to the ground, smashing to pieces.
It's truly addictive to play.
***
[Act 3: The Starry Sky]
After Act 2 ends, Patema and Age arrive in a vast open field.
"Patema, is the sky scary?" Age asks.
"The sky?" Patema looks puzzled.
Before this, she had lived her entire life in the underground city and had never seen the sky until now.
Coming to Aiga for the first time, she was filled with infinite fear. If not for being with him, she truly wouldn't have known what to do.
"The sky... is that what you're looking at above?" Patema asks, confused.
"Yeah." Age smiles and looks up. "That's the sky."
"Of course it's scary!" Patema says. If that is the sky, a person would just fall right into it.
"What about you, Age? Aren't you scared?" she asks, puzzled.
"Hmm... there are stars out tonight, so I guess I like it well enough." Age smiles.
"Stars?" Another word Patema has never heard before.
"Ha, you don't even know that?" The male protagonist chuckles.
"Of course I don't." Patema pouts a little, muttering, "How could I possibly know anything about this world?"
"Won't you come and look at the stars too?" the male protagonist invited.
"This... how can I do that?!" Patema felt a wave of panic inside her.
Despite this, she still carefully looked down.
On the television, the game's camera zoomed out, revealing a dynamic image:
The male and female protagonists stood in the meadow, looking like two tiny, insignificant dots.
Above their heads was the massive Milky Way.
The entire night sky was glittering with starlight, flowing slowly.
"Wow, the starry sky is truly beautiful!" the heroine Patema exclaimed.
At the same time, Hirozawa Furukawa also sighed: How beautiful.
He felt the same thing as Patema: the starry sky rendered by Pokeni.
Romantic and vast, the immense galactic sky illuminated the earth, while at the same time, it was enough to make one feel their own insignificance.
But if you looked at this picture for too long, fear would well up inside you.
That sense of terror, as if you were about to be sucked into the starry sky, made Hirozawa Furukawa quickly shake his head.
This scene was too magical; he couldn't look at it too much, or he would be sucked in.
How terrifying!
***
In Act 3, through progressing through the game, Hirozawa Furukawa collected data within the world of Aiga, gradually uncovering some useful information:
Aiga is a world where hot air balloons and aerial flight are forbidden; any attempt to fly up and explore the sky is strictly prohibited.
Furthermore, any human who harbors such thoughts is regarded as a heretic.
The male protagonist, Age, had a father who was once one of those heretics. He had led similar experiments, piloting a hot air balloon into the sky to explore.
However, he never returned from that journey.
Consequently, the rulers on the ground grew even more opposed to flight, enforcing even stricter prohibitions against such activities.
People came to harbor a fear of the sky, and no one ever mentioned such things again.
Only the male protagonist still carried a deep longing for the sky in his heart.
Whether it was the sea of clouds by day or the starry sky by night, he was fascinated by them both.
***
Only the male protagonist still harbored a yearning for the sky in his heart. Whether it was the sea of clouds during the day or the starry sky at night, both were things that fascinated him.
***
The game continues, and we arrive at Act IV. At the end of Act III, the male and female protagonists were captured by the ruler of Aiga, and the heroine was locked away.
However, she was shackled upside down from the ceiling, which looked particularly strange.
[Act IV: The Inverts]
After capturing Patema, the leader of Aiga began a lecture:
[In the past, there was an experiment on the surface.]
[Its purpose was to extract energy from gravity, a horrific experiment.]
[But the laws of the world did not allow such an experiment to exist.]
[In the end, the experiment failed, causing the gravity of all things to reverse.]
[Our ancestors were fortunate enough to survive this.]
[To ensure history would not repeat itself, we built Aiga.]
[However, even after that catastrophe, some people whose gravity had reversed still managed to survive.]
[They abandoned life on the surface and hid underground. It is truly abominable!]
[How could we allow these filthy Inverts to come to our world and contaminate Aiga?]
[We must dig them out and exterminate these rats!]
***
After providing the players with a great deal of important information during the lecture, the leader left the room, leaving Patema alone, shackled by her wrists.
***
After imparting a lot of important information to the players during the lecture, the leader left the room, leaving only Patema behind, handcuffed and locked inside.
She was just crouching on the ceiling.
Upon entering Act IV, the game became a completely new experience:
Without the male protagonist's gravitational assistance, Patema could now only move on the ceiling.
In other words, the entire world was inverted, and the producer, Mikami Shinji, clearly wasn't thinking about the players, but rather wanted to showcase the state of this world, turning the game into one that had to be played upside down.
Furukawa Hirozawa couldn't help but sigh:
Damn it~ Damn Mikami Shinji, damn Gen Urobuchi, they don't care about the players at all just to showcase the plot and story.
Because the entire game had to be played on the ceiling, whether it was running or jumping, everything was reversed.
It was incredibly counterintuitive.
So the difficulty suddenly increased quite a bit.
It was clearly so easy and simple when playing from the heroine's perspective in Act I, but after it was reversed, it was a completely different story.
After playing for a while, Furukawa Hirozawa had a sudden inspiration:
Since Patema is upside down, why don't I just play it upside down too?
So this guy found an empty space, lay down, and played the game from an inverted perspective.
And believe it or not, this made the whole game much easier on the eyes.
He had returned to a comfortable perspective.
***
Huh?
After a while, Hirozawa Furukawa blinked, suddenly realizing a problem—
I'm such an idiot!
Why do I have to play the game upside down myself?
Wouldn't it be easier if I just turned the TV upside down?
Thinking of this, Hirozawa Furukawa wanted to give his own head a hard knock.
No sooner said than done.
Hirozawa Furukawa stood up, then lifted the TV and placed it upside down.
I must say, this big color TV cost him a pretty penny, and it was actually quite heavy to move.
It must have weighed at least several dozen jin.
For a "Blanket Man" like Hirozawa Furukawa, who had spent years sitting in an office and lacked exercise, it was already quite strenuous.
***
Sure enough, once the TV was flipped upside down, it became quite easy to play the game, even while sitting.
It was just like the experience of playing in the Underground City during the first act.
However, from this perspective, the entire architectural structure of Aiga was inverted, creating a strange sense of disorientation.
As he played, Hirozawa Furukawa even had an illusion when he looked up at the ceiling—
that he was about to fly up and stand on the ceiling itself.
Hirozawa Furukawa's heart skipped a beat.
Terrifying...
This game is practically toxic; it's even affecting my own perception.
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