Video games are almost never solely about their gameplay, but the overall experience they provide. In fact, some games have gameplay that serves merely as a vehicle for providing the player with the ability to have the experience.
A perfect example of this is found in The Multi-Medium. An indie game built entirely around the idea of interdimensional travel between vastly different worlds, worlds which each have totally different art and music styles, a unique gameplay gimmick of their own, and completely different moods and themes. All while featuring platformer gameplay which most people would agree is serviceable at best. It’s not about the play mechanics. It’s about the journey.
The idea of traveling to vastly different worlds is nothing new to video games. Kingdom Hearts experimented with the idea of a protagonist who travels to wildly different worlds primarily themed after Disney movies. Super Mario Odyssey had the player travel to worlds with themes as varied as low poly giant vegetables, a ruined castle and New York City.
The thing that sets apart some “travel to different worlds” games from others is how varied the worlds are. And in the case of The Multi-Medium, what makes them varied is not just the locations themselves but their extremely different visual styles, which range from pen and ink, to charcoal, to watercolor painting to collages.
It all begins in a graphite-themed world, where an individual of indeterminate gender wearing a spacesuit tests out a machine meant to allow for interdimensional travel. The spacesuit-wearing protagonist is soon transported to a dangerous and hostile alien world with a colored pencil style.
This world introduces some basic ideas – block pushing puzzles, swinging from vines including ones held by giant birds, and puzzles involving using blocks with tubes on them to transport explosive seeds to barriers they need to destroy. It tops off with a chase sequence, the first of a handful in the game. Upon escaping a giant insect, the protagonist uses a glowing orb inside its mouth as an energy source to power their spacesuit, resulting in being transported to another world: a charcoal-drawn gothic world filled with giant hand statues, darkness that kills when entered, and another chase sequence.
While each world has the same core play mechanics of “jump” and “push/pull things,” all have their own distinct gimmick to slightly set them apart gameplay-wise. That gimmick can be things such as a grappling hook, the portals from Portal, swimming through water, walking along circles with their own gravity and then jumping to launch off in a straight line, or anything else. The gameplay is always simple, but the gimmicks keep things varied.
The controls are also super simple: if using a controller on this computer-exclusive game, you move with a stick, jump with one button, and use a different button as your “do everything else” button. This also translates to very simple keyboard/mouse controls, though the mouse does allow for more precise aiming with the grappling hook.
Puzzles in The Multi-Medium are super basic, of the “pull this lever here, then go over there and pull that one, then go back and pull the first one again” variety. Whether it’s pulling the levers to change the direction that platforms move in, opening one door that also closes another, or moving a chunk of ground from left to right or top to bottom, most of the puzzles require no thought and are quickly obvious.
The themes in the worlds are as varied as their art styles. While the worlds are always full of things that can kill you, the worlds sometimes have a peaceful or friendly feel, or can feel oppressive or hostile.
The oil pastel world looks like illustrations from a book for young children, of the “story about realistically-sized talking animals” variety. Although it still contains hazards that can kill you, it centers around gathering ingredients for dinner for a friendly frog and tadpole family. Doing so basically involves platforming and mild puzzle solving, as one would expect. But this actually has a lot of variety to it, from riding a grasshopper that jumps high, to riding a bee that fires stingers and even engages in a miniboss fight, to riding a spider that can climb walls and ceilings, to riding a stag beetle that can make quick charges that serve as jumps if aimed at an angle.
This almost friendly-feeling world has an unfriendly ending however: when you toss the ingredients in to be cooked, it produces a poisonous gas that fills the whole room, causing you to pass out and wake up in yet another world: a collage-themed world which is about to be hit by a meteor.
The game’s simple plot does have many twists besides the one just mentioned. It initially begins with the simple premise of the protagonist wanting to find a power source in order to leave the world they’re trapped in, only to end up in a different one. But eventually, that premise is built upon, and even subverted. Our unnamed gender-ambiguous spacesuit-clad dimension traveler even begins to fancy themself a fated hero and tries to act the part, but the universe has other plans. Eventually, the finale goes rather meta.
What makes The Multi-Medium what it is, is primarily its presentation. The art styles on display here are tremendously varied, as are the themes of the worlds. The musical accompaniment for each world fits the scenery and brings different moods that make the charcoal world feel gothic, the watercolor underwater world feel magical, the gouache world feel spacey, and the collage world feel chaotic. The music is even interactive, often adding or removing instruments or changing the melody in different sections of a world, or when engaging in an action such as riding a particular insect in the oil pastel world, or swimming underwater. Even the gouache world does something uniquely different from the others, making the music completely match the player’s movements.
The gameplay, on the other hand, feels mostly like a vehicle to allow the player to experience the worlds, rather than something designed to be experienced for its own sake. It is varied, but unpolished, even with its most basic and consistently-used mechanics: the jump, push/pull of objects, and climbing of walls and ropes. Jumping feels a bit floaty and off, but it’s functional. If you unpause the game by pressing the jump button, you immediately jump upon resuming. And it’s easily possible to die, respawn and then mistakenly run right into a death trap upon respawning since there’s no delay before you can control your character, and respawn points are sometimes right by death pits. There’s even a moment in a prison world where it’s possible to be shot by a guard, respawn, then have the guard quickly shoot at you again if you don’t move back out of the way.
The gameplay variety is also fairly basic, without a lot of depth for most of the gameplay gimmicks. The grappling hook used to pull yourself towards ice can be aimed with analog or mouse precision, and you can press the jump button to let go and use momentum to propel yourself forwards. That’s about as much depth as any of the gimmicks have, and even then the movement can feel slightly off. The other gimmicks are pretty simple, unpolished, and functional. With that said, the gameplay gimmicks are almost as varied as the worlds themselves. Nearly every gimmick is used only in one world. They just never develop into anything very complex or challenging, and puzzles involving the gimmicks always remain simple.
One other notable thing about the gameplay: there’s no combat in most cases except when it’s used as a gameplay gimmick for a particular world. And some worlds have plenty of hazards but no actual enemies, except when there’s a chase sequence involved. It’s a different approach from many other platformers, which feel the need to have combat, enemies and hazards used all the time.
While there’s usually no combat, there’s a fair amount of boss fights and chase sequences to mix things up. Chase sequences range from simply running and jumping to progress quickly while being chased by a large creature, to a basic stealth sequence involving hiding behind objects when a different large creature is looking your way, to dodging falling snowballs while grappling up a mountain – in that instance, you are actually the one doing the chasing, as the yeti throwing the snowballs runs from you each time you catch up.
The boss fights also have variety to them, ranging from dodging the movements and electric blasts coming from an eel and waiting for it to embed itself in the ground so you can pull out the hooks stuck in its body, to aiming and throwing a box at a giant orb when it takes breaks from shooting at you.
While the game is short, linear and simple, it does have a lot of hidden items to find, adding some additional replay value beyond revisiting its unusual experience. Some of the items contain descriptions that hint at a surprising amount of lore behind each world.
All descriptions seem to be written by the main character and reflect their observations. For example, the prison world features squares being forced into slavery by evil circles. In that world, you can find a set of blocks and block-shaped holes similar to the ones used in real life as an educational toy for babies. The description indicates that the protagonist thinks the toy was intended to teach segregation, considering the type of world it comes from.
Ultimately, The Multi-Medium is a rather short experience, which should take most players about 2-3 hours for a single playthrough. It’s also super cheap on Steam, with a really low initial price for what it is. Which is a janky, yet varied, low budget game whose budget went to the part that mattered most: the variety of art and music styles for the experience it was trying to create.
Is the trip worth taking? It costs very little to find out.
