Indie Game Spotlight -Quadrilateral Cowboy

Originally published in the May 3rd, 2018 issue of The Live Wire

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by Christopher DiBella

Game Information

Name: Quadrilateral Cowboy

Price: $20.00
Developer: Blendo Games

Release Date: July 25, 2016

Platform: Windows, Mac and Linux

Genre: Puzzle Game

Quadrilateral Cowboy is a multi-award winning first person spy/heist themed puzzle game released by Blendo Games which focuses on 20th century style hacking, with a distinctive boxy paper craft artstyle. The game’s alternate history setting means that the hacking focuses on using your 1980 DOS-styled personal laptop to code your way around physical obstacles in order to disable security systems, and complete heists for shadowy, questionable corporations. You play as an unnamed girl referred to by Blendo Games as “Poncho” in an all female gang of heisters-

WAIT! Come back!

Cowboy has the kind of premise which is going to be divisive, as some may find the idea and setting fascinating, but others will immediately be alienated by the inherent nerdiness of really writing simple code in order to hack computers. Nonetheless, Quadrilateral Cowboy is still strikingly unique and creative. While a key gameplay aspect is writing code, the game does not assume the player will know anything about coding before playing. Rather, the game does a very good job of making coding simple and easy, and finds ways to teach you how to play without taking too much time away from the fun part. For example, to disable a camera for three seconds, the player just has to find the camera’s name, place your laptop and type “ cam8.off(3)”. Blendo games seamlessly blend the tutorials into the narrative, introducing new spy gadgets and gameplay aspects one at a time inside spaces where you are free to experiment with the new aspect before proceeding to the following level, where the new aspect will be used.

Over the course of the game, you will accumulate a small arsenal of spy gadgets and programming concepts, such as an automated briefcase gun, a small robot drone you can send commands to pilot in order to use simple switches, one contact lens you can utilize like binoculars and another contact lens which has the ability to trigger computer actions by blinking your eyes. Yes, I wrote that correctly, you can remotely hack a door by blinking, provided you set it up correctly. When these aspects fall together, it feels immensely satisfying to set events in motion, and manage to set off with your stolen objective in tow. These gadget examples are a good indicator of the type of quirkiness Quadrilateral Cowboy trades in, weird enough to be interesting, but never falling to the point where these aspects feel as if the game is just trying to be random. For example, your gadgets are sold to you by a cat, but a cat who has appeared in several other Blendo games.

All of these elements combine with the puzzle design to create a very interesting beast of a game, one with fascinating puzzle design reminiscent of the first Portal game.

This is to say nothing of Cowboy’s visual presentation, which despite the simple paper-crafted visual style, has a depth and level of detail in which every single object in the game world which would reasonably have readable text can be read. There are no blurry textures on a piece of paper, or hazy cereal box covers without a title. Instead, just about every box or piece of paper on a table has something written on it, no matter how boring it may be. This visual choice works hand in hand with the game’s blocky but incredibly clean visual style to help make the setting feel remarkably believable. The game’s narrative is told without a single line of dialogue, relying instead on the way levels are framed and the details of the environment to give depth. However, the game never forces you to hit a button to examine a picture on a wall that gives the backstory of the main characters and how they met. If you are ever confused about what is going on, you can usually put the pieces together by looking around and investigating different characters apartments, what type of books they own, what they have hung on their walls, etc. The storytelling feels very much like watching through someone’s life in photographs, or single scenes from their life, putting together the pieces together and imagining how things must have occurred between the large cracks in what you see.

The average length of the game is relatively short at about seven hours for a game of its price, but the content is remarkably polished for an indie game, and there is a full suite of great community created levels available via the steam workshop.

Recommended For: Gamers with patience looking for the most unique and solidly designed puzzle game of the past five years.

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