When I looked at this game for the first time, I thought Wave Wave wouldn’t be too hard. The basic gist of the game is simply press-hold either the left-half or the right-half of the screen to move, and avoid hitting the walls.
Well, I was totally wrong. This game is brutally hard to complete – that’s assuming it has an ending. There so many zigs and zags that you have to be quick on your thumbs to change direction; and the screen rotates, so sometimes turning left could actually mean a right turn. It is also almost impossible to correct a little mistake due to the fast pace.
While it is difficult (and it is designed to be as frustratingly challenging), that doesn’t make it isn’t off-putting. In fact, it makes it an addicting challenge to try and get further into the game. Playing it for a couple of minutes at PAX Australia this year, I definitely found that after several failed attempts that lasted three or five seconds, I would be excited that I managed to get further into the game (though lasting just 30 seconds).
Selected by PAX Australia to be featured in its Indie Showcase, Wave Wave was developed by one man, Melbourne-based Thomas Janson. The game brings back the arcade game feel with minimalistic graphics and an 8-bit soundtrack from Parallel Processing by Danimal Cannon and Zef.
After ten months of development, the game was released in March earlier this year. However, Janson recently remade the iOS version of the game – which took another three months to do – and is showing that off at PAX. There are five difficulties, and each difficulty have six handcrafted patterns that are randomly displayed.
The new version of Wave Wave is available only on iOS, with an Android version coming in a month’s time. The previous version, however, is still available on Android (through Google Play or the Amazon App Store).