Review by: Brandon "Guru" Cackowski-Schnell

Not since Lionel Richie exhorted us to dance on the ceiling has gravity been given the finger quite like in And Yet it Moves. No longer a slave to Newton's favorite force, the game world is flipped with the press of a button and the twist of a wrist allowing you to reach new heights, or depths depending on what you're doing and traverse an environment that starts underground and ends up in the heights of your consciousness. The game has a simple premise but it's well implemented and the game's changing visual style lets the player feel like they're taking a journey even if there's no story elements to suggest such. It's a short romp, made longer by the game's various modes but one well worth taking if only to play something unlike most puzzle and platforming offerings.

You play what appears to be a paper cutout of a man, a man with one goal, namely to make it from the beginning of a level to the strange, darkened door at the end. On the way you'll encounter other versions of yourself that act as both checkpoints and signposts as they point you on to your next checkpoint. As with most platformers, the journey is the thing, however there is no story to speak of other than the changes to the stripped down, papercraft aesthetic letting you know that you've moved from underground to the jungle and then, after a run in with a snake, a hallucinatory refuge within your own mind. What makes the game so interesting is how you go about your journey, namely pausing and rotating the game world to allow you to traverse a variety of obstacles.

Let's say you're climbing a hill and it's just a bit too steep. With a pause and a twist you're now walking along level ground. If your path is blocked by a monkey chucking rocks at you, pause and twist the world so that the rocks fall back on that mean old monkey. Just be careful how much you twist and turn as gravity is always present and the wrong twist can easily turn into a long plunge to your death.

Despite being made of paper you won't float harmlessly to the ground, instead smashing into a bunch of pieces and revisiting your last checkpoint. Luckily even long drops can be handled (sometimes) with a twist of the world as the ground you're about to slam into can be rotated into a steep curve allowing you to slide rather than splat. The puzzles ramp up in difficulty nicely with early levels focusing on avoiding tumbling rocks and rotating yourself into tight places and later levels moving on to full blown platforming around constantly disappearing ledges and some particularly devious puzzles involving moving a mirror image of yourself to safety. Along with the various environmental hazards such as boulders, monster teeth and bees the world is filled with black holes cut from the paper that spell your doom should you venture into them.