In addition to being an animator, illustrator, and photographer, Silence (A.K.A. Vincent Girès) is a composer of electro tracks for what he calls his Copyleft Music Project. Music from Silence’s latest album, L’autre endroit, was used for the soundtrack of Chains, an indie-puzzler featured here previously at DoSu. The particular song ridden through below, “Open Electro,” is from the self-titled album Silence. The rest of Vincent Girès’ music, as well as his visual art, can be found through his website Untitledocument.net.

Chains is a puzzle game created by independent developer 2DEngine.com, and published by Meridian4. Released in November of 2008, Chains is the first game to be built on 2DEngine.com’s proprietary cross-platform game engine AGen, which they make freely available for non-commercial development.

There is only one direct action to make in Chains: link three or more circles together. Though the means may be simple, the scope of Chains’ gameplay is anything but narrow; this is not a run-of-the-mill “match 3” game. Never mind the smooth, minimalist art style facilitated by vector graphics, or the haunting electro soundtrack; simply consider that each of Chains’ twenty levels presents for players a different objective and a different obstacle. Take, for example, stage 2, “The Gate” (pictured right), wherein the objective is to clear 200 bubbles before their collective weight becomes greater than the counter-weight keeping the gate below them closed. Compare that time-based level with something more relaxed like stage 7, “Gulliver”, where the objective is to clear 100 bubbles by creating 10 chains or less, and it becomes apparent that Chains offers something uniquely challenging from level to level.
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