Gareth DAMIAN MARTIN | Jump Over the Age
@jumpovertheage.com
Writer, game designer, artist | Creator of Citizen Sleeper series + In Other Waters | editor Heterotopias | IndieCade, GDCA winner | BAFTA, IGF, DICE + Game Awards nominee | Poetics PhD | they/them |
Jumpovertheage.com
Jumpovertheage.com
Ooh I’ll keep an eye on that one!
December 8, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Ooh I’ll keep an eye on that one!
We collaborated on this piece (Tous’s words, my pics) to try to confirm its existence outside of our minds but I’m once again doubting its veracity www.heterotopiaszine.com/2017/12/13/f...
Fearful Symmetry | Echo | Heterotopias
“We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.” -Jorge Luis Borges, In Praise of…
www.heterotopiaszine.com
December 8, 2025 at 6:36 PM
We collaborated on this piece (Tous’s words, my pics) to try to confirm its existence outside of our minds but I’m once again doubting its veracity www.heterotopiaszine.com/2017/12/13/f...
I didn’t enjoy it personally—none of the design features from this thread are present in the game. It’s really something totally different.
December 8, 2025 at 3:37 PM
I didn’t enjoy it personally—none of the design features from this thread are present in the game. It’s really something totally different.
Make sure to get that crt filter on!
December 8, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Make sure to get that crt filter on!
Yeah the vibes based ending is also very cool and would totally work in a contemporary indie and even be celebrated for its sophistication 😂
December 8, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Yeah the vibes based ending is also very cool and would totally work in a contemporary indie and even be celebrated for its sophistication 😂
1000%! I love Rain World and the survival loop it adds is a really sophisticated development of the design too.
December 8, 2025 at 1:16 PM
1000%! I love Rain World and the survival loop it adds is a really sophisticated development of the design too.
Haha that is exactly me this year. Its really made me want to explore that design space in a way I haven’t felt before.
December 8, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Haha that is exactly me this year. Its really made me want to explore that design space in a way I haven’t felt before.
That’s totally true, and the art in concert with that as well! There’s an increasing abstraction in some of the tiles I love, like the weird bubbles/frogspawn. It really opens up a space for you to interpret the increasingly indeterminate architecture.
December 8, 2025 at 1:04 PM
That’s totally true, and the art in concert with that as well! There’s an increasing abstraction in some of the tiles I love, like the weird bubbles/frogspawn. It really opens up a space for you to interpret the increasingly indeterminate architecture.
Yeah I also was repulsed by the difficulty but also fascinated by it as a kid. I tried to understand and play it so many times! Was really nice to return to it as an adult and understand why it was so fascinating.
December 8, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Yeah I also was repulsed by the difficulty but also fascinated by it as a kid. I tried to understand and play it so many times! Was really nice to return to it as an adult and understand why it was so fascinating.
Oh the game boy version (on analogue pocket) the remake is a totally different game really, it shares almost none of the design.
December 8, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Oh the game boy version (on analogue pocket) the remake is a totally different game really, it shares almost none of the design.
Yeah, the weirdness is definitely the lost quality, along with the clarity of design. I do hold some hope because we have had some very interesting design ideas from Nintendo in recent years. But certainly only indies are going to come close to building on the elegant and minimal ideas of Metroid 2
December 8, 2025 at 12:13 PM
Yeah, the weirdness is definitely the lost quality, along with the clarity of design. I do hold some hope because we have had some very interesting design ideas from Nintendo in recent years. But certainly only indies are going to come close to building on the elegant and minimal ideas of Metroid 2
Yeah! Its kind of an outlier, but a very interesting design in my opinion. It could be a fun starting point, equally Super Metroid is very strong and became the formula for the series really.
December 8, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Yeah! Its kind of an outlier, but a very interesting design in my opinion. It could be a fun starting point, equally Super Metroid is very strong and became the formula for the series really.
Perhaps the game is too frustrating, too opaque. But it doesn't care. It is unwilling to sacrifice the living, mysterious, richness of its world. To give you full mastery over it. It asks you to enter its world instead, to contort yourself to its form, into a new, increasingly alien, shape. (7/7)
December 8, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Perhaps the game is too frustrating, too opaque. But it doesn't care. It is unwilling to sacrifice the living, mysterious, richness of its world. To give you full mastery over it. It asks you to enter its world instead, to contort yourself to its form, into a new, increasingly alien, shape. (7/7)
This leads to an elegant spaciousness to the game. There is no narration, no outside guidance, no map. Your tools are loosely connected to the world and the world is feels both opaque and strange. The game trusts that the number of remaining metroids in your UI is enough. (6/7)
December 8, 2025 at 11:51 AM
This leads to an elegant spaciousness to the game. There is no narration, no outside guidance, no map. Your tools are loosely connected to the world and the world is feels both opaque and strange. The game trusts that the number of remaining metroids in your UI is enough. (6/7)
Strangely, for a metroid games, Metroid 2 has something of this. There's a looseness to the upgrades, where the beams don't match doors, and you might use the space jump or the spider ball to traverse a huge cavern, the game doesn't care which. (5/7)
December 8, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Strangely, for a metroid games, Metroid 2 has something of this. There's a looseness to the upgrades, where the beams don't match doors, and you might use the space jump or the spider ball to traverse a huge cavern, the game doesn't care which. (5/7)
I think a design concept we so rarely see now is one where the tools the player are given do not match the world 1-1 in functionality. In SOTC the sword can be swung, but to no effect. It is just what you do with a sword. It's not a structure of locks and keys. (4/7)
December 8, 2025 at 11:51 AM
I think a design concept we so rarely see now is one where the tools the player are given do not match the world 1-1 in functionality. In SOTC the sword can be swung, but to no effect. It is just what you do with a sword. It's not a structure of locks and keys. (4/7)
The game also draws a clear connection between player and world. As you delve deeper you take on the qualities (crawling through tunnels, jumping in repeating arcs, adhering to walls) of the ecosystem. The ending, with its resolution between hunter and hunted, is the natural conclusion. (3/7)
December 8, 2025 at 11:51 AM
The game also draws a clear connection between player and world. As you delve deeper you take on the qualities (crawling through tunnels, jumping in repeating arcs, adhering to walls) of the ecosystem. The ending, with its resolution between hunter and hunted, is the natural conclusion. (3/7)
The clarity of progression being based on killing a number of metroids rather than upgrades. The repeating room designs that suggest a typology of architecture with its own function beyond the game's use. The large multi-sided structures within caverns whose every surface can be navigated. (2/7)
December 8, 2025 at 11:51 AM
The clarity of progression being based on killing a number of metroids rather than upgrades. The repeating room designs that suggest a typology of architecture with its own function beyond the game's use. The large multi-sided structures within caverns whose every surface can be navigated. (2/7)
The trick is always taste, and how it guides you from there, the more idiotic the starting point the better 😅
December 6, 2025 at 7:50 PM
The trick is always taste, and how it guides you from there, the more idiotic the starting point the better 😅
It won’t in its current form, but next year it might see a return—and Cycles of the Eye too 😉
December 5, 2025 at 9:57 PM
It won’t in its current form, but next year it might see a return—and Cycles of the Eye too 😉