[PC] The Manipulator

**Fuyumine** · 09-18-2009, 12:47 PM

The Manipulator isn’t your typical puzzle/platformer game. It‘s dark. It’s creepy. It’s disturbing. It feels like playing a game based on a Trent Reznor nightmare. And on top of that, it’s free. A game can’t get anymore awesome than that. Thank God for indie developers. In this case, thank God for Virtanen Games, the two-man development team behind The Manipulator.

Players will assume the role of The Manipulator, a powerful psychic with the ability to control—or manipulate—the actions of others, who must infiltrate a weapon's facility for unknown reasons. Players will have to sneak past enemies by Manipulating them (God, that sounds all kinds of wrong), using their victims to do away with other enemies—by way of gun or tranq—and solve puzzles. They're also given the choice to kill them (by pressing and holding down on the directional keys until their victim explodes, or simply manipulate them to die in more humorous ways) or "end the Manipulation peacefully" (pressing and holding up on the directional keys). The Manipulator also has the ability to read minds, which will aid players in solving puzzles such as finding keys or learning passcodes.

The game is more puzzles than platforming, though there are a few instances when the player needs to execute a perfectly timed jump in order to avoid death. But those instances don't come along very often.

The game's design is dark (literally and figuratively) and surreal, yet simplistic. You're not going to be too amazed by the level design or animations, but the dreaminess of it all makes the game look pretty to look at and foreboding at the same time. And coupled with the game's ominous, distorted background music, it was almost difficult for me to play with the lights off. It was like listening to my parents watch The Hitchhiker intro all over again. Effin' creepy.

One of the things I really like about this game is the fact that it kind of messed around with my conscience. Quite often I found myself killing off people I didn't like based on their personality traits, while letting the rest go peacefully. Despite these guys trying to kill me, I actually started to feel bad that I was practically murdering these "innocent" people based on their thoughts or beliefs. It was weird (and if you want to know, I was killing off racists).

The puzzles in The Manipulator aren't all that difficult. The game often gives you hints for what you should do next, which takes away some of the challenge. It's not very long either. Players will probably breeze through the game's twenty levels in about fifteen or twenty minutes. Considering the game is free, though, that's actually not that bad. It's definitely worth the download.

- Chris U.

**Unclesatan** · 09-18-2009, 01:17 PM

Holy shit that guy has 4 kids and he's only 22.

He must be some sort of pimp lol.

Kewl game though, I'll probably end up checking it out later.

**Fuyumine** · 09-18-2009, 01:20 PM

LOL A lot of the enemies in the game have some interesting lives, man. Like... the deeper you get into the game it appears as though the sentries are more disturbed than the last. It's awesome.