Geon: Emotions Final Hands-On

Earlier today, during a visit to the UK headquarters of Eidos, we had an opportunity to meet with representatives of Strawdog Studios and take them on with the game the developer has spent the last year or so working on. Geon: Emotions was originally conceived and prototyped as a PSP game, but now it's headed to Xbox Live Arcade and recently had its release date brought forward, to September 19. Yes, you read that correctly--at the time of writing, that's tomorrow.

Strawdog describes Geon as an "arcade-style collect-em-'up," or, depending on whom you talk to, as "Pac-Man on acid." Based on our time with the game today, we would describe Geon as an enjoyable, fast-paced multiplayer game that proves once and for all that cubes are every bit as versatile as spheres where video games are concerned. That'll make sense by the time you reach the end of this preview. Maybe.

The pellets are pretty much where the similarities to Pac-Man stop.

All eight of the playable characters in Geon are cubes, and each represents a different emotion. The names on the roster, then, include Rage, Fear, Envy, Rapture, Bliss, Melancholy, Courage, and Passion. In terms of gameplay, the only real difference among the cubes is that each of them has a "favorite" power-up that's more powerful when they use it. If you're playing as Rage, for example, your "jump bash" attacks are more effective than your opponents', and if playing as Courage, your shield power-up will make you completely immune to said attacks.

Your objective in Geon is to score goals, but before you can do that you need to move through whichever of the 40 mazelike levels you're playing on to collect "E-Mote pellets" (just think of them as Pac-Man dots) until your cube is full and starts to glow. Once you're full, you simply head to the opposition goal area and move over the top of it to deposit them. If any of that makes sense to you, you're probably thinking that Geon sounds simplistic; but while it's certainly not a difficult game to pick up, you'd be wrong.

Not only are many of Geon's grid-based level designs quite elaborate, but while you're playing, your opponent will also be going about his or her business on the underside of the transparent playing area. The only time you really need to travel to your opponent's side of the level is to reach the goal there or to steal power-ups, since you can't collect each other's pellets. As we alluded to earlier, power-ups play a quite significant part in the proceedings, and while their incredibly varied nature can be a bit daunting at first, none of them require you to do much more than push a button.

In addition to shield power-ups and the aforementioned jump bash (which you use to make your opponents drop pellets as they pass beneath you), there are power-ups that let you move faster, collect pellets more quickly using a vortex, and even leave a snakelike trail in your wake that's harmful to your opponent. The ability to make your side of the level opaque to your opponent is another interesting one, and things get really crazy if you choose to merge two powerballs (the large pellets that contain power-ups) into one "mega-powerball." Mega-powerballs give you the ability to spawn enemies on your opponent's side of the map, and although you don't get any say in what type of enemies they are, you're not likely to be disappointed. Some enemies sweep across the level and are very difficult to avoid, some fire projectiles, and some leave trails of radiation behind them as they move around--and those are just the ones that we remember seeing today.

With mega-powerballs you can spawn enemies like these on your opponent's side of the level.

Geon will boast a number of different gameplay modes that support up to four players, either online or in split-screen. Single-player games against bots will be necessary to unlock most of the 40 levels, duels will pit two players against each other, Team Geon is a two-on-two team-based game, and Last Man Standing will see up to four players attempting to score goals more quickly than their opponents in order to avoid being eliminated.

Geon: Emotions will be released on Xbox Live Arcade on September 19 and on the PC sometime in the not-too-distant future. We look forward to bringing you a full review of Geon: Emotions on the Xbox 360 soon.