N [official site], as I discovered this morning, is still a hole I'm more than happy to fall down. Along with Spelunky and ADOM, it's one of the few games that has a permanent place on my hard drive. If you haven't played it, you should go and do that right now. It's free. Caution is advised, however, because N might consume you. It's hard as nails but every time you die, you'll recognise the error that lead to your doom.
N++ [official site] is a double-plus super upgraded version of the game, originally released on PS4. Despite some hitches in the porting process, it's coming to PC.
N is one of the best games I've ever played, its brutal simplicity and elegance a towering monument of minimalist design. N++ is the biggest version of the game, with 2360 levels and six hours of glorious music. The music is important. Listen to it.
N++ Launch Trailer Watch on YouTube
The PS4 release last year was not the grand success developers Metanet had hoped it would be. Raigan Burns, one of the three-person team, took to Neogaf to express his frustration following the release.
"Possibly we were also a bit idealistic, we figured that everyone would be able to see that N++ was something special, a game with a very high level of craftpersonship put into it; we figured that with only 3 people, we would rather put all our energy into making the game exceptional and hope that this would make it stand out and attract attention, but sadly a lot of people seem to be dismissing it as "essentially N+"."
One of the team left after the release, which delayed the port but a month of work has now been completed and N++ will arrive in a few months, along with all of the "planned post-launch update stuff".
"The good news: we've found a new programmer, and they've been working on porting N++ to Steam for the past month or so. There are still a few more months of work -- we want to add all of the planned post-launch-update stuff that got put on hold when our team imploded -- but we will definitely be bringing N++ to Steam. We're still looking at other platforms too."
It's been a long wait but it'll all be worthwhile in the end. In fact, it's already been worthwhile because when I spotted the news this morning I played N for the first time this year. It continues to fascinate me.
