Warp is a puzzle-action game from Trapdoor Games. You play as an alien life form captured by evil scientists. I say "evil" because as you play the demo, you come across another life form such as yourself where they've been doing – what looks like – horrific experiments. Now that we have the antagonists of the story set, let's move on to the game play.
Once you escape your bonds and receive a special crystal that allows you to warp from place to place, you are able to begin your journey to freedom. Having the ability to warp means you can jump through walls as well as into inanimate objects, machines and people. Being able to jump into objects/people is extremely important as you do not have any active means of attack. I found this to be one of the most compelling pieces to this game. Not all is defense and stealth though, warping into an object or person allows you to expand yourself until the victim can no longer support you and explodes.
This really opens up the game play as you can take many different approaches to solving the game's puzzles, including how to deal with enemies. You can stealth around the military soldiers with guns and the non-combatant scientists or you can jump into them and blow them up or my personal favorite: jump into one soldier, wait for the other soldier to investigate and right as he's about to shoot you, you warp out and the soldier kills the soldier you just occupied.
Where Warp really shines is just how fun it is to play. Jumping in and out of objects, splattering soldiers and evil scientists and outsmarting machines and puzzles make for an experience you will certainly enjoy. There are more skills other than just warping, including being able to control people and laying traps that I didn't get a chance to try yet.
Warp is by far the game I'm looking forward to the most from XBLA's House Party. Everything from the art design to the controls to the game play felt comfortable and satisfying. Stay dialed in here at Aggrogamer for more on this and all the XBLA House Party titles.
