Entwined is a tale of two souls that are hopelessly in love but can never be together. One soul is a fish, whilst the other is a bird; these two souls always co-exist throughout multiple points in time and space.
This games presentation is easily the strongest aspect. As you continuously move down the lifetimes’ seemingly endless cylinders you will absorb shimmering aspects of the location that each is set in. For example, one may be a suburban environment or a desert landscape. The variations to the levels and their puzzles are great. Each level has a rhythmic tone that is perfectly suited to the level and to each beat of the puzzles.
Entwined takes great inspiration from thatgamecompany’s Flower, taking great measure to make your experience as tranquil as possible. It certainly delivers.
In terms of graphical presentation, characters and elements are comprised primarily of squares, rectangles and a few triangles. Obviously in today’s graphical standard it doesn’t sound like much but it does an absolutely brilliant job of igniting your imagination and adding to the enormous amount of tranquility this game already boasts.
Each soul is controlled by an individual analog stick on the controller. The fish, identified by the colour orange, is on the left and the bird, blue in colour, is on the right. Your goal as a player is to simultaneously guide these two souls through various colour coded zones ranging in size and movement as you continuously travel down a cylindrical tunnel. Collecting the respective coloured orbs in between these colour coded rings brings you closer to unifying these two souls.
Each soul is only allowed to rotate in their own hemisphere, making things a lot easier than what it could have been if it were the whole 360 degrees. Don’t let that fool you though as you progress through the many lifetimes (read: levels) of the game the complexity rises and excels beyond what I initially expected. Counteractive to that though, as bad as I was at certain lifetimes, I never actually failed, I just kept delaying these two souls from becoming one.
Collecting the aforementioned orbs is the key to progression. Collect enough for both sides and you enter a fusion (fu-sion, ha!) segment. It becomes critical during this moment that you do not miss any of the colour coded zone movements as the slightest error can knock you out of the fusion and leave you looking for more orbs.
Once the fusion is complete, you are certainly in for a treat.
