Gua-Le-Ni, or: The Horrendous Parade

Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade, is an action-puzzle casual videogame for the Apple iPad.

One of its most distinguishing traits is that the game solely takes place on the wooden desk of an old, befuddled British taxonomist. On his desk, lies a fantastic book: a bestiary populated by impossible, finely drawn animals. Not unlike all the monsters of myths and folklores, Gua-Le-Ni’s impossible beasts are combinations of parts of real animals. To understand what I mean, it might help to think of fantastic creatures like the sphinx, the Minotaur, different chimeras or even South Park’s Manbearpig.

Such animal parts can vary from two to four animal parts. Each animal part, either a head or a body part, is reproduced on a taxonomic cube that can be rotated, flipped and moved until it matches the corresponding part of the passing animal. The goal of the game is precisely that of reconstructing the animals before they reach the end of the page-screen and disappear. When a match between the paper beast and the beast represented on the upper faces of the taxonomic cubes is accomplished, points are scored.

Different game modes are present in the game's fantastic bestiary, some of which are purely focusing on mnemonic tasks, on action mechanics such as feeding and optimized manipulation of the taxonomic cubes.