Nitrome Reveals Flat Pack, a 3D-ish Puzzle Platformer

Nitrome has become one of the most prolific, consistently high-quality developers on mobile in recent years. While most of their games share a colorful pixel aesthetic packed with quirky characters, they’ve explored a wide variety of gameplay mechanics within their signature style. Auto-running dodger Leap Day or platformer Hop Swap; wall-smooshing faller Stretch Dungeon; sliding puzzler Green Ninja; puzzle roguelike Rust Bucket—despite featuring different goals and gameplay, each utilizes one-touch controls with fast-paced, short-burst challenges perfectly suited to mobile.

Flat Pack, their newly announced puzzle game, looks to continue this successful formula. Although the only details at this time are the video trailer Nitrome released on Twitter this morning, we’re already excited about getting our finger on this one.

Unlike the rest of their mobile catalogue, Flat Pack utilizes a 3D environment where space is key to survival. Your little orange hero (who looks a bit like a reverse Q*Bert with his nose on his head) must traverse a cube he’s trapped within by maneuvering around its six sides, finding golden box pieces. Each side is its own miniature platforming arena, with spikes to jump over or steps to use for elevation. The hero can use his head appendage as a helicopter to float for brief periods, and hopping across the entirety of a side sends him straight to the next section of the cube as it quickly turns into view. There are other cubes that bump into his current location as well, which look to be the way he can open up new paths and areas to explore.

If Nitrome’s past works are any indication, Flat Pack will be fast-paced, occasionally frustrating, but extremely hard to put down. It is currently in development with no release date in mind; we’ll share any more details as soon as they’re squared away.

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Jillian Werner

Jillian will play any game with cute characters or an isometric perspective, but her favorites are Fallout 3, Secret of Mana, and Harvest Moon. Her PC suffers from permanent cat-on-keyboard syndrome, which she blames for most deaths in Don’t Starve. She occasionally stops gaming long enough to eat waffles and rewatch Battlestar Galactica.