Games of 2009: Canabalt
The magnificent monochrome marathon.
No one sets out to make a bad game. Conversely, not enough people set out to make a really brilliant game. Sometimes, though, it happens anyway. That's Canabalt - a one-button, one-man, one-idea Flash game originally created as a fun but throwaway entry in an Experimental Gameplay Project competition. It's been my go-to game in any idle moment over the last few months, and the strange grey world that I most often see when I close my eyes and let my imagination idle.
As great things do, it went huge. Increasingly for indie webgames, there's an inevitable consequence to that - an iPhone app arriving in short-order. In a time of entrenched piracy and dramatically declining funding for PC gaming, the iPhone is fast becoming a vital way for independent developers to make money. Canabalt is excellent on the PC, most especially the gorgeous, screen-hugging high-definition version, but it's on the iPhone and iPod Touch that it really shines. It's a game that feels as though Apple designed its frighteningly prevalent gizmo specifically for it - control system and game mechanic in perfect harmony, in a way that very little else on the iPhone achieves.
It's not so much that the controls are simple - all you have to do is tap to jump - but that everything you need to do is absolutely apparent within seconds. You're in a city. The city is crumbling. You have to run. Showing it to games-snob friends in the pub, they all knew exactly what to do as soon as I passed the phone to them. Tap to jump. Run as far as you can before dying. Try again. Again. Again! Moments later, their own iPhones are out. Pause. Three more copies of Canabalt are bought and downloaded there and then. Fingers tap. Larynxes expand and contract, shaping laughter and swearing alternately. High scores are exchanged, beaten, gloated over.

Landing on my bum = done it wrong.
It's a scene simultaneously as modern as gaming gets, and a throwback to the sharing and boasting of eighties arcade and Spectrum culture. It's a game for gamers and non-gamers alike, achieving immediate intuition and reward in a way that we're supposed to believe Guitar Hero does, providing we forget about that first half hour of panicky "What do I have to do? I can't do it! I can't press buttons and strum at the same time! Can I give up?"
That said, I can't do the bloody windows for the life of me. Boxes, leaps of faith from collapsing rooftops, giant missiles, the lip of billboards: these I am master of. A timely tap and I'm over and away the obstacle, my pace increasing, my coat tails fluttering faster, the sense and noise of escape pounding in my ears, my eyes, my heart. But then there'll be a window, and I'll panic. I need to jump through it - not over or beneath it. To smash through its implacable glass surface requires entirely different timing to the rest of the game. Now? No. Now! Oh. Thud. Splat.
It's fist-on-the-table, phone-flung-across-the-room frustration, but it's also genius. It's a constant, looming terror, one that stops me from ever feeling complacent, one that ensures my infinite flight from unexplained but obvious disaster is forever urgent and compelling. It's my Nightmare Boss, the great evil I must eventually face. And when I do defeat it, when I do calculate the smooth, graceful arc that sees my jump carry straight through the window and into the corridor behind: well, then I am King Of All Heroes. I love that I have so consistently failed to improve at dealing with a window - partly my own incompetence, but partly the game's forever-randomised course ensuring I can never, ever predict a window, and thus I can never plan for it.
All I ever need to do is press one button or tap the screen once, but somehow each and every time feels different - a new adventure in athleticism. That the creator didn't quite realise what he'd made, the subtlety and diversity of it: well, I can barely believe it. He's got to be some kind of hustler. It's equally triumphant in its storytelling and sense of world - creating so much from almost nothing. Greyscale pixels, no other characters ever encountered: but constant, apocalyptic shaking and the occasional background silhouette of something vast, deadly and robotic. It tells everything it needs to. The world is ending, and all you can possibly do about it is run away.

WHO ARE THE MYSTERIOUS INVADERS?
You'll always feel like you're running to safety, but you're only ever running to your death. You can't win. The only way the game can end is with you falling off a roof, colliding with a giant explosive or thumping into the unyielding brickwork above or below a ruddy window and sliding ignominiously to messy doom. Somehow, the knowledge of this never sticks. This time. This time.
I burn to know how it ends, even though it can never end. No words, no voices, but somehow it's created a sci-fi world I feel I know, and that I want to know more about. Granted, this is at least partially because I'm nerd enough that I can be made to fall for a fictional setting with depressing ease, but it's also because Canabalt's monotone vision of a near-future apocalypse is so complete and self-contained. I can see Blade Runner, I can see Another World, I can see Transformers, I can see Mirror's Edge.
I can see that I have to run.
Check out the Editor's blog to find out more about our Games of 2009.
You may also like...
-
Digital Foundry: PS3 Skyrim Lag Fixed?
-
Who Killed Rare?
-
Retrospective: Grim Fandango
-
Mobile Controller Group Test
-
The Story Behind XBLA's Biggest Game
-
Game of the Week: SoulCalibur 5
-
Why Devs Owe You Nothing
-
Face-Off: The Darkness 2
-
App of the Day: Sir Benfro's Brilliant Balloon
-
Gotham City Impostors Review
-
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review
-
CD Projekt: Witcher 2 intro cinematic "the most expensive asset we ever created"
-
King Arthur 2 Review
-
Epic's Sweeney on graphics tech: "the limit really is in sight"
-
Mass Effect 3 FemShep trailer debuts
-
App of the Day: Superman
-
Double Fine Adventure passes Day of the Tentacle budget
-
Valve admits hackers accessed Steam transaction log
-
Blizzard legally opposes Valve's Dota trademark application
-
Skyrim gets high-res PC texture pack
-
Amnesia: The Dark Descent follow-up teased
-
Diablo 3 release date narrowed
-
Skyrim makers create dragon riding, Kinect shouts, new skill trees
-
App of the Day: Off the Leash
-
Namco Bandai to publish new Star Trek title









Comments (34) Latest comment 2 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
You vicious bastard.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Why should duration matter if the game is, by your own admission, wonderful?
Comment below viewing threshold Show
The point is probably just to keep you entertained for a few minutes.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
I'm rubbish at Canabalt. My top score so far is something like 7,000m. But I'm under no illusions that it's my fault and not the game's!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Splat -Aarrgh!!!!
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Badly needs a "how to get through windows" practice mode too. Really, what's the point of all the other jumps when it's always the windows that get you? It's like an RPG that goes from rats to dragons with nothing in between...
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
EDIT: Oh, didn't realise it was on iPhone too.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
The thing that I find really helps (especially for getting through windows) on the iPhone (I dont know if it works in the flash game) is that the longer you hold your tap down for, the higher he jumps. So a quick light tap does a little hop, while holding the tap down sends you flying. Also very handy for avoiding jumping too far onto the bombdrop roof. The long/short taps are pretty instinctual when playing - it took some analysis to figure out if it worked or not - but just goes to show how well and thoughtfully designed this game is.
God bless 'ya, indie dev scene ... such beauties you give us, on a remarkably regular basis
Comment below viewing threshold Show
I love the game though. The music and atmosphere it creates is so simple yet so brilliant.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
I think I even called it "Man and Hole" as it didn't even have an official name.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
see,i played the flash-version of this game and its pretty cewl nevertheless im reluctnt to buy it for my ipod as it is quite expensive
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
http://www.canabalt.com/
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
I love the windows, I always let out a cry of 'Yes!' when smashing through one.
I've spent the last 20 minutes trying to break 5000 metres, just did it, 5008. I'm immensely proud.
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Greatest moment: getting on to the best runs on earth with 14.8k
Just noticed that someone has managed 367k I not sure how that was done would have taken a while
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Comment below viewing threshold Show
Basically for the sake of £1.20 you're missing out on, well, what Mr Meer did a nice job of writing about.
You and your 59p brethren have absolutely no leg to stand on whatsoever. Buy it buy it buy it.