E3′s Best of Show award has a new candidate. This game is gorgeous.
Every time I attend a new gaming media event, I am more and more impressed with the games Chillingo has to offer. This year’s E3 has been no exception, as every single game we saw from them looked and felt very polished. Despite some impressive showings from Blobster, Draw Race 2, and Roll in the Hole, Contre Jour really stood out from the crowd, much like Limbo stood out from other XBLA games last year.
I mention Limbo, because it’s impossible not to draw an instant comparison between the art styles of the two games. This is not a bad thing, as the black and white style, tilt-shift focusing, and multi-layered backgrounds served Limbo well to both the artsy and mainstream gaming crowd’s alike. Will Contre Jour set the 
same benchmarks for iOS games that Limbo set for Xbox Live Arcade titles? Who knows, but it sure looks damn good!
Contre Jour is inspired by the classic story “Le Petite Prince,” which, from what I can remember, is an imaginative story that involves imagination and artwork coming to life. In this game, you don’t have any direct control over the little eyeball creature you’re caring for. Rather, you must manipulate the environment to move it along towards the goal of each level. The primary method for accomplishing this goal is to “push” the ground up or down, forming hills or valleys for the creature to roll over. However, there are other obstacles and tools to use, such as stretchy tentacle creatures and geyser creatures that shoot the eyeball out of them.
I won’t go on with boring words from here, as the video below shows how gorgeous this game looks and sounds. As I said in the video, I really didn’t want to put this one down. With 60 levels spread across 3 unique worlds, I’m sure I’ll have plenty to keep me occupied when Contre Jour is released next month for the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone.
