Grow, baby, grow!

Phyta expands the concept of games as art. That was the sentence that has been bouncing around in my head in the days since I played it. It's just such a beautiful game, and yes, I use the word game pretty lightly.

The concept is simple. You control a black sun which coaxes dark vines to grow in a certain direction. Your goal as you move through the five short levels is to capture orange bugs with your vines. As you progress through the levels, your sun gets bigger and the plant yields more vines for you to capture with. Also, with the progression come stronger bugs, some of which can chew through your thinner vines. Phyta has no ending which seems like an odd choice, but I would love to see some sort of continuation or sequel come out.

This game is absolutely gorgeous and set to a light acoustic guitar track which loops slightly too frequently, but doesn't take away from Phyta at all.


tl;dr

Concept: A work of art that you can play. Capture the bugs with your vines.
Controls: Mouse and button only. Easy enough.
Sound: Light acoustic guitar which is great, but needed to be longer to avoid loop annoyance.
Graphics: Just amazing. Black on white contrast.

Overall: 9/10

ESSENTIAL LINKS
http://www.cambriangames.com/current.html
http://www.cambriangames.com/Phyta.zip