Ion Bond is a brand new game from Dundee’s Smiling Bag. Stewart Hogarth’s indie games studio, was responsible for 2013’s retro-tastic pinball-esque I am Level and the duck-based paddle-em-up Ducky Fuzz.
Ion Bond is another unique and original new title, set inside a particle accelerator. It’s based on a game created for Ludlum Dare in January, but Stewart has expanded upon the concept to create a full game. According to Mr Hogarth:
It’s about clearing chambers by colliding different types of particle together, which results in beautiful cloud particle trails and explosions.
It does have a narrative, and the narrative and the content of the game are sort of married. It’s as much a part of the design as the levels themselves. You’re a volunteer who has been selected to operate the new experimental collider, for reasons which will become apparent over the course of the game. The players are essentially playing ‘themselves’.
I’m aiming for a release sometime towards the end of May, on PC and mobile platforms.
The levels attempt to ‘boil down’ things we see in our every day lives and represent them using particles and bonds. Things which seem huge to us are happening, allegorically, on a tiny scale all around us, trillions of times a second, without us even noticing. And while the game’s mechanics are only very loosely based on science fact, its narrative attempts to remain true to the principles of theoretical physics.
Smiling Bag is promising a release in late May/early June on ‘computers’ (Windows/Linux/OSX), iOS and Android. We’ll have more information as the game progresses.
In the meantime, you can keep track of Stewart Hogarth on Twitter, or follow Ion Bond on the IndieDB site.
