A Virus Named TOM

A Virus Named TOM is a fun little puzzle game that I learned about thanks to a demo listing on Steam, and subsequently picked up a while back when it was a daily deal, which gives you an idea of the power of each of those features.

The events of AVNT are set up when Doctor X, who works at MegaTech inventing several products of the future, such as the Dog of Tomorrow or the Sidewalk of Tomorrow, is fired for going too far by creating a death dealing robot that kills anyone that walks, since his sidewalks of tomorrow cured that need. Slighted, Doctor X seeks revenge, setting out to destroy the world of tomorrow. To do that, he'll need your help, since you are his latest invention - a virus named TOM.

Schematics are like the overall zones, and each section you attack is an individual level.

To accomplish the good Doctor's goals, you'll need to spread an infection through the entirety of the various products produced by MegaTech. You'll attack specific parts of the Dog of Tomorrow, or the Teleporter, and so on, by rearranging circuits so that the virus can completely infect the given section simultaneously.

At first, this is quite simple, requiring you to just rotate a few tiles that route the infection any number of ways - straight through, ninety degrees, three directions, four directions, or terminates it right there - until every tile is a nice green color. Of course, those easy levels don't last long, and pretty soon the game is throwing a variety of mechanics at you, and the various combinations those mechanics allow for, in a game that will have you scratching your head as you try and puzzle out the answers.

A simple level using the wrap around mechanic.

Those mechanics include things like a time limit in the form of an energy charge, seen at the top of the screen. It depletes over time, and you'll need to keep it as full as possible to get the highest score you can. Various types of drones complicate that objective, as they will eat you and a huge portion of your energy, so while you will respawn, your score, and your time remaining will both be cut short. Eventually you'll gain the ability to drop glitches to temporarily stop those drones, and if another drone happens to cross paths with it, they will both be destroyed, for a time. That is unless you're talking about some of the more advanced drones that are immune to glitches, which, when combined with homing drones and drones that eat up the infection and thus must be destroyed to actually start infecting tiles, results in quite a few ways the game can attempt to stifle your progress with just one or two mechanics.

There's more than just drones to AVNT, through they are probably the most worrisome mechanic, even with the ability to steal spare energy pellets off of them, since the other mechanics can't kill you. Those other mechanics include encrypted tiles, which only reveal themselves when you route the infection through them, antivirus tiles that will cause you to fail the level if you route the virus to them, and wrap around tiles that let you path the virus from one side of the board to it's corresponding opposite tile. Add them all up, and you'll see there are plenty of combinations you'll have to overcome if you want to destroy the world of tomorrow, and honestly, who wouldn't?

A not so simple level.

There is more to AVNT than just single player puzzler. That's due to the inclusion of a Co-op story mode and versus mode. Furthermore, it does support controllers (I actually stuck with an Xbox 360 controller), which is good, because you can use it with the recently launched Steam big picture mode and grab some friends, up to four, for some local co-op or versus, all while enjoying the comfort of your TV and couch, rather than trying to cram all those hands on one keyboard (that is actually an achievement though). While I prefer to play alone, I will admit that AVNT is one of the few games where I would actually like to give the multiplayer a try. Maybe I'll just have to lug my PC downstairs and hook it up to my TV, so I can invite a few friends over for territory battles.

At first I was a bit worried about AVNT. The original demo covered the first 8 or so levels, and I blew right through that. Actually, I didn't find the first three or four zones to be terribly challenging, though they did get progressively harder by including more and more new mechanics, and, upon reflection, they seem to serve as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with them prior to the endgame. It wasn't until the later zones, when those mechanics really started combining into much more difficult puzzles that my progress slowed, giving me about 5 hours of total single player gameplay, and plenty of satisfaction when I finally figured out the solution to those more difficult puzzles, as well as access to some of the best cinematic that show up as you beat each zone. Overall, I would say that AVNT is a high quality production, with good attention to detail, visible in everything from TOM's reactions when he is eaten by a drone (that happens a lot), to the quality of the music that plays in the background. I bought the game with the soundtrack for $6 (see previous sentence about the music), though I'm pretty sure I could have gotten just the game for $5. The game is more than worth it at that price, because from everything I have seen, it's a very good game. Seriously, go check out the revamped demo, or at least watch the trailer, and you'll see why I rate it so high - 8 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 8/10

Suggested Price $5+