EGLX 2019: A Fold Apart

Next up on my look back at EGLX, a concise looking platformer with no jumping involved. A Fold Apart from Lightning Rod Games is a game about long-distance relationships and the challenges of making them work. It’s a game that comes from the heart, as Mark, the man with the idea behind the game, spent a year and a country apart from his girlfriend and was inspired by the quirks and difficulties of the experience.

The heart in this game shows right from the start. The moment I had the controller in my hand and headphones on, everything from the animation to the music brought across the concept of two lovers missing each other. The demo on display at the booth was the tutorial of the game proper. It just happened to be the perfect length to get the ideas across. The core gameplay is two sides of a paper that need to be flipped and folded together to create a path between the two characters, and a set of challenges will fill a level, followed by a cutscene telling the larger story. Each level is based around a memory or experience of the two leads and is shown in a wonderful abstract style.

The really neat idea in the game is not just the flipping of the paper, but folding it, bringing the two worlds together, to allow the couple to stay strong. It’s a beautiful metaphor for both sides giving and sharing to make the relationship work. The cutscenes themselves are shown to include text messages between the two, sometimes clear, but sometimes misinterpreted. The original idea was to use letters between them to be more timeless, but Mark and the team realized that no one writes them anymore, and texts would be more understood, both as a means of talking and the ability to misinterpret the meaning of the messages.

I’m pretty sure that when I get my hands on the full game, I won’t make it to the end without crying at least a little bit. But that’s a great thing, I’ll always support a game that can pull my emotions along for the adventure. A Fold Apart will be available soon for all platforms, including Apple Arcade. For now, here’s the trailer.