Indie Spotlight: Meds

Welcome to the Indie Spotlight! Once a week, roughly, I’m going to be grabbing a random game off of the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace and putting it through its paces. As opposed to a traditional review, I’ll write something a little shorter that will come without any score or any of that. So, we start off the first week with a little-known recent release called Meds.

Meds is another brickbreaker-style game that comes with a few interesting twists. The player is supposed to be a heavily-medicated mental patient who stumbles into an arcade after his medical transport crashes. Out of all the games in the arcade, the patient feels compelled to play Mega Break Destroyer. This is where the game really begins.

The first level starts off simple enough. The player controls the paddle at the bottom of the screen, there’s a small block/ball to hit that destroys the bigger blocks on screen, and when they’re all destroyed, the level is won and the next one begins. Of course, Meds wouldn’t be much to look at if they didn’t change up the formula a little bit. That’s where the player’s backstory actually comes into play.

On the right hand side of the screen is a bag of medication that is constantly depleting. This depicts the player’s degrading mental state. As the meds decrease, the player begins to go through withdrawal and regression, which leads to some odd features. These are mostly hallucinations that make things look crazy or feel a little more hectic. In one level, the paddle turned into a cucumber (pickle?) and the ball became an apple. These effects are randomly generated, so levels 1, 5, 17, and 50 will all be different each time they're played.

As the meds deplete further, more and more things will happen. Some of these will even result in gameplay changes. For instance, over the course of a different level, first it appeared as if the level had filled up with water. Then sea creatures began to swim across the screen, occasionally blocking the player’s view. Next came what appeared to be currents that would alter the path of the ball. This part served to keep me on my toes, as I couldn’t so easily predict where the ball was going to need to be hit.

However, these effects aren’t always amusing or game-changing in a good way. Some “hallucinations” in later levels consisted of the screen being blocked so much that it was impossible to keep track of what was going on, the ball or the paddle disappearing, and bizarre flashes of images that seem meant to cause a quick scare. Most of these just led to losing lives that wouldn’t have been lost otherwise, and while I can understand the point, it just comes across as frustrating trickery.

True to its basic inspiration, Meds also features a number of traditional power-ups. These fall from destroyed blocks in the form of pills. The pills, which serve to increase the level of medication, describe the power-ups as side effects. Multiball, ball catch, and 1 up are all featured, among others. The effects of withdrawal make it somewhat difficult to notice or keep track of the pills as they’re falling, and I found myself not really making the meds last any longer than what I started with.

When the meds run out, though, there is an interesting effect. First, the player is given momentary control of the ball. This is incredibly useful at the end of a level when there are only one or two bricks left. However, after that time runs out, the ball moves so incredibly fast that it’s almost impossible to keep up hitting it back more than once or twice. As a penalty for allowing the meds to run out, I feel that was a really good idea.

Lastly, the game actually features cheats which are unlocked after every five stages of completion. Some are helpful, some serve to start things off on a certain level, but they’re all worth using at some point or another. The first, unlocked after level five, has been my personal favorite, but you can find out its purpose for yourself. The game also features a multiplayer mode which is meant to switch up the gameplay a bit, including throwing the players from co-operative mode into a versus-style mode. I haven't been able to play through it extensively, though. On the surface, it doesn't change much from the single-player mode.

All-in-all, Meds is a well executed brick breaker clone with nice twists that serve to make it feel fresh. However, some of these twists are also frustrating enough to prohibit any long sessions. One or two plays through to game over is enough for me, but I love this kind of game, so it’s still a game I’ll keep coming back to. At 80 Microsoft Points, it’s a sound investment for anyone that is a fan of brick breaker kinds of games, but is probably worth passing on for most others.