qomp

Developer: Stuffed Wombat, Britt Brady, Miroko, Clovelt | Publisher: Atari | Release Date: 4 February 2021 | Genre: Adventure / Puzzle Platformer | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

There is something genius about taking one of the simplest video games ever made and asking a question nobody had apparently considered before. What if the ball in Pong got tired of being hit back and forth? That is essentially the entire premise of qomp. The little square ball escapes beyond the paddle and heads off in search of freedom, leaving the confines of Pong behind and entering a strange sequence of increasingly elaborate rooms filled with hazards, puzzles, and boss encounters. There is almost no conventional storytelling, no dialogue, and very little explanation. We are the ball. We escaped. Now we need to keep going.

What makes the idea considerably more impressive is that qomp sticks to a single-button control scheme for almost the entire experience. The ball moves automatically at a diagonal angle, bouncing from walls just as it would in Pong. Pressing the button reverses its vertical direction. That is it. There’s no stopping, no way to steer the ball freely, and no slowing down. We simply choose whether the ball travels diagonally upward or diagonally downward and let the environment determine everything else. It sounds almost impossibly basic. It is also extremely clever.

The earliest rooms simply teach players how the movement works. If we need to reach an opening near the top of the screen, we change direction at the right moment. If we need to pass through a narrow gap, we need to understand where the ball will bounce next and time our input accordingly.

Before long, spikes, moving hazards, switches, locked passages and other obstacles begin complicating what initially looked like a one-button novelty. Later sections even alter the behaviour of the ball itself, including underwater sequences where movement changes significantly. The remarkable thing is that the controls never become substantially more complicated. Instead of giving us more buttons, qomp keeps finding more things to do with the one button we already have. That makes the level design the real star of the game.

Rooms are generally compact, but they are extremely well constructed around predicting trajectories and recognising where we need to change direction. Sometimes the solution is immediately obvious but difficult to execute. Other times we need to bounce around a room for a while before understanding how to reach the exit at all. And very often the hardest thing to learn is simply not pressing the button. That sounds ridiculous until you actually play it.

Our instinct whenever the ball appears to be heading somewhere dangerous is to correct it. We see an obstacle coming, panic, press the button, and immediately realise that the original trajectory would have been perfectly safe. Dead. Retry. A few seconds later we do exactly the same thing again. There are numerous moments where qomp effectively trains us to distrust our own reflexes. Most games reward quick reactions. Here, an unnecessary reaction can be just as fatal as being too slow. That creates a very distinctive rhythm where patience becomes just as important as precision. Fortunately, deaths are rarely frustrating for long because checkpoints are extremely generous. Difficult sections generally restart quickly and without forcing players to replay large portions of a level, which is particularly important considering how often trial and error becomes part of solving a room.

The game also does an excellent job of increasing the challenge without betraying its minimalist concept. One room might introduce moving hazards. Another might require passing through a narrow opening at exactly the right angle. Another alters the physics. Another forces us to manipulate our movement around an environmental mechanic before returning to the familiar bouncing behaviour.

Eventually there are even boss fights, and they continue the same philosophy of understanding a pattern rather than suddenly turning qomp into a traditional action game. That constant stream of ideas is probably the game’s greatest strength. A concept this limited could easily have become repetitive after twenty minutes. Instead, qomp continually asks how much more can be extracted from the same fundamental interaction. The answer turns out to be: quite a lot.

There is a little of Super Meat Boy in the precision and repeated deaths, although qomp is considerably less demanding overall. There is also something vaguely reminiscent of VVVVVV in the way such a restricted movement system becomes the foundation for increasingly complex level design. But qomp really feels like its own thing. The closest comparison remains Pong, except someone apparently allowed the ball to escape and accidentally created a puzzle-platformer.

The difficulty in qomp is generally well judged. The game can become challenging, particularly in later rooms where hazards and unusual mechanics overlap, but it never feels designed purely to punish players. Most failures are easy to understand, and the compact checkpoints encourage another attempt immediately. That also means deaths often become funny rather than infuriating. Especially when we know perfectly well what went wrong. We pressed the button. When we should not have pressed the button.

The game even includes several accessibility options for players who do become stuck. These include invincibility, zooming the camera out, aim assistance and autofire, allowing much of the experience to be adjusted without changing the underlying levels.

Visually, qomp embraces the same minimalism as its controls. Most of the world uses a stark black, white and grey presentation reminiscent of Pong, with simple geometric environments and limited colour used to distinguish important objects and hazards. The ball itself remains little more than a square. Yet the game still manages to create a surprisingly strong atmosphere. Part of that comes from movement. Watching the tiny ball ricochet through increasingly strange spaces gives the journey a strange sense of loneliness, as though we really have escaped from one game and somehow travelled into another. There is no need for elaborate character models or detailed scenery. A square leaving two paddles behind is apparently enough to tell a story about freedom. The simplicity also makes the stages exceptionally readable. Hazards stand out clearly against the dark backgrounds, and because success depends heavily on judging angles and trajectories, visual clarity is far more important than graphical spectacle.

The audio works in much the same way. Rather than overwhelming the game with constant noise, sound effects emphasise movement, bouncing, impacts and deaths while the music helps give the otherwise abstract environments an unexpectedly atmospheric quality. The result is almost hypnotic at times. There is something strangely satisfying about that rhythm, particularly once players stop thinking of the controls as traditional movement and begin treating each room almost like a timing puzzle.

Controls naturally deserve special mention because there are so few of them. The one-button setup works equally well with keyboard, mouse or controller because there is effectively nothing complicated to map. This is the rare game where arguing about the superiority of keyboard and mouse versus controller becomes completely meaningless. Pick whichever button feels nicest, as that is your entire control scheme. The simplicity also makes input feel incredibly immediate. When we die, there is no question about whether we pressed the wrong key combination or failed to remember an ability. We either pressed the button at the wrong moment or pressed it when we should have done absolutely nothing. 

Progression is entirely linear, with the ball moving from one challenge to the next on its journey towards freedom. There are no hidden collectibles or secret rooms to search for; the developers explicitly state that there are no secrets. Completing the main game does unlock additional challenge stages. These extend the gameplay for anyone wanting more difficult applications of the mechanics, although completing them does not unlock anything further. That gives qomp a little extra replay value, but this remains a very short experience. But length is also one of qomp’s strengths. The game introduces an idea, explores it, combines it with something else, and then moves on before the concept becomes exhausting. There is almost no filler.

Some mechanics are interesting enough that we would happily have seen them explored for another few stages before the game moves on. qomp has a surprising number of ideas for such a tiny game, and several disappear almost as quickly as they are introduced. Still, being left wanting slightly more is preferable to wondering why the game did not end two hours earlier.