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Darby's Experience: Play Time: 73 minutes

And Yet It Moves is a 2D platformer in which you control a paper man through a paper world. The twist is you can rotate the entire world 360 degrees. This means you can send your paper man flying through the air and to his death, which will happen a lot.

This is one of those games I got really cheap, played for 5 minutes, and then exited to play something else. The rotating mechanic was hard to get used to, the sound was annoying, and nothing else really drew me into the game. When I loaded it up the second time and forced my way through it, things did get somewhat better.

It was really difficult for me to get used to rotating the world. I think the problem was I kept getting the controls confused and rotating the wrong direction. This would send that poor paper guy the wrong direction and I would have to rotate all the way around to get back to where I started. More often than not, I would get too much momentum and would watch my paper friend fall into many pieces. It’s a good thing that the checkpoints are all over the place so you never lose much progress.

The more I played, the more I got used to the controls and started to have more fun with the game. I ran into a few interesting puzzles and obstacles but most of them were separated by tons of smaller obstacles. These smaller obstacles got repetitive fast and the only reason I wanted to go through them was to get to the more interesting ones. Most of my time was spent doing tree limb jumping and after my 73 minutes playing I have no desire to do anymore of it.

If someone went through and reorganized the levels to focus more on difficulty progression and pacing this game could be really amazing. This game lacks something that other recent platformers like Limbo and Braid have. It doesn’t create the sense of awe and desire to discover. I already know what I’m going to get by playing more of And Yet It Moves. It’s going to involve a lot of tree jumping and death. Lots and lots of death.

Will I play it again? Probably not. There are much better platformers out there.
Would I recommend it to others? “Meh” is the correct response here.

Clare's Experience
Play Time: 68 minutes

And yet it sucks. I promised to play it for an hour, and after about 9 minutes I regretted this promise with every fiber of my being. I got up and did the dishes instead of playing it. I bathed the dog instead of playing it. I cleaned out my inbox instead of playing it.

Eventually, I had to finish the other 51 minutes. I had promised, after all, and Darby did say it got better. He wasn't wrong, it did improve somewhat. The first few levels were the invisible tutorial, and once I had the hang of the controls it was less like being punched in the face. Once the puzzles started, it was almost enjoyable... almost.

The game play is unique; though you move left or right, and jump, the controls get interesting when you realize that you have to rotate the world as well. For me, the rotation was counter-intuitive and clumsy. I was told to land on an incline in order to survive, but then I would die when landing on an incline.

The audio pissed my dogs off to the point of whining, and while it wasn't the worst I've ever heard, some of the sound effects were rather unpleasant. The concept and graphics were both quite unique and it's nice to see some real innovation in games.

Will I play it again? Unlikely.
Would I recommend it to others? Nope.

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