“As much as you will undoubtedly hate Gauge, it will keep you playing until you drop!”
Gauge is described by its creator as “an experimental and minimalistic sport game”. If that is not enough to make you think ‘what the heck is that?’, then just looking at the wild aesthetic and hearing the bizarre audio track featured in the game’s trailer just might. It will also undoubtedly make you want to have a go and see if it is quite as crazy as it looks. It is.
To clear up your likely confusion, Gauge is actually a simple challenge for you, wrapped up in bright flashing colours, numerous distractions, and backed by music which can only be described as mind-blowing; and not really in the ‘awesome, I could listen to this all day!’ sense… The premise behind the game is simple; using only your space bar, you must control, you guessed it, a gauge. The challenge is to not let the gauge touch the inside or outside barriers within which it sits. The gauge will constantly decrease in size towards its inside barriers, unless you hit the space bar to push it back out. Timing is everything, but you will need more than basic rhythm to succeed here!
The game is not only about the endurance of keeping a flashing bar within a box with one finger, but it will also text your concentration and adaptation abilities far beyond the realms of any sense or normality. Flashing backgrounds, changing rules, sudden changes in pace, blatant distractions and anything else you can imagine that might take your attention away from the simple sounding task before you has been included here. The developer does not like you, and that becomes pretty clear early on. They want to see you suffer and fail as such a basic task as keeping a bar in a box defeats you. Evil is at the very heart of the bright, exciting, colourful cluster-f*ck that is Gauge!
Little can be said for the nature of the graphical and audio devices used in the game. They are horrible in an everyday sense of things, but their place as part of this game which is intrinsically designed to mess with your brain is beautiful. Even this review begins to confuse you when you try and get your head around what is going on. That feeling you probably had trying to read and understand what I just said; that is how the game will make you feel! It draws you in with a traditional silk-glove slap round the face, presents you with a challenge you simply cannot deny, and then laughs as you roll around on the floor crying for your mummy because the game was nasty to you…
There is every chance that by now, you will have realised that this game is frustrating to play. You should not confuse this with the fact that it is very fun to play. For starters, once your friends have watched you fail miserably at the game, you can pass it over to them and watch them fail miserably too! By the end of it all, you can curl up in little balls next to each other and be dribbling messes together; it really does make for a good ice breaker to bring people closer. But more seriously, yes this game is fun! It provides a fantastic challenge which will cause an uncontrollable addiction and a feeling of a need to keep trying to beat it. If the high score incentive is not enough to keep you powering through, the developer proudly informs you that there is an end to the game, and part of you will just have to try and make it there. As much as you will undoubtedly hate Gauge, it will keep you playing until you drop!
While we are on the topic, it is an important part of this review to make a very clear and informative point. This paragraph is by no means a joke. Please take notice of this warning for your own, and your friends’, health and safety. The game comes with an epilepsy warning, and while you may take a look at Steam and think that this may be another case of the developer having a mess around, it is not. Personally, I have no problem with epilepsy or any other condition along these lines, however even I found the flashing colours and other elements of the game a little overwhelming at times. If you have a condition such as epilepsy, it may be best to steer clear of this one. If you do not, I would still personally recommend taking regular breaks between play, as the game does have the potential to seriously mess you up…
If you are the sort of person who cannot resist a challenge, who likes to see how messed up a game can be, or who simply cannot help but be repeatedly put down by a bit of code combined with some flashy colours and odd noises, then Gauge is for you! Gauge certainly falls into the cheap, easy bit of fun category of games, and is something you can happily show off to your friends and compete with them playing for hours. It is not the next-gen modern masterpiece you might be used to, but it is equally as challenging, engaging and, questionably, fun to play. You will hate Gauge, but you will love Gauge. It’s not quite a modern masterpiece, but it’s something; I will let you decide what…
The Good – It is hard to say what is good here, the game is horrible to you, but given that this is its aim, I guess everything is pretty good; it is great at being one of the most evil things you are likely to play in the current gaming climate!
The Bad – A very serious epilepsy warning comes with this game, and even if you do not suffer from the condition, sustained play for long periods is not advisable. This is not so much a negative point of the build, but is a very important point to consider before purchasing and whilst playing the game.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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