The Fifth Element

"Why the ruthlessness?", I had to ask. "Why the cruelty?"

"There won't be no consequences", he said. "Everything is going to be fine."

"But people will get it eventually. They will come after me.", I feared.

"They won't have time to understand. And if they do, I will take the blame."

I didn't trust him. After all, I witnessed the very first steps of this ridiculous creature. I saw him crawling out of his cradle, and I had beholden him growing up and feeding upon it like a rat thriving on the filthiest pile of uselessness: Me.

I couldn't help but shivering, as the void around me became colder than ever. I tried to make him understand how I felt, but he didn't look. Or didn't care. Again, he turned his back on me and started to hurt, through me, his fellow creatures.

I am not sure that he knew what he was doing. Perhaps was he convinced of the goodness of his deeds. Perhaps their influence on him was too powerful. Or perhaps he didn't care either. I couldn't tell. "Why the cruelty?", I wanted to ask. "They will come after me", I feared. I tried to make him understand as hard as I could. 

So I flooded the shelters, I lit up the sky. I melted the ice and shook the ground. But his grasp on me was too strong. He was out of control. And, for him, I wasn't. I tried to make him understand, and he grinned. After all, I was only a small pebble in the void around me. 

A floating, glowing, tiny blue pebble.

Let's face the facts. Our planet is changing. We've got news from all over the world about global warming, ice cap melting, toxic muds and giant tsunamis. In Impulse, the Earth is crying. She cannot take the pain anymore, and desperately screams her heart out. She wants somebody to help her.

Will this somebody be you?

Impulse is a 2D puzzle platform game in which you, the player, control the elements. Each element - Water, Earth, Air or Fire - is a character that you can control and move through the landscapes and nature sceneries of the game.

Each element character has a specific power for interacting with the environment. For instance, Water is able to extinguish forest fires, whereas Fire is able to light them up...
This example also highlights a fundamental principle of the game: everything that the player builds with an element should be destructible by another one.

Let's take another example. If Air happens to turn a water lake into ice, then Fire can make the ice melt down. Then again, Fire could make water evaporate. Fortunately, Water would be here to refill the lake!

But sometimes, elements alone are not powerful or versatile enough to progress through the world. At this point, you, player, will be able to combine the elements with each other, in order to unleash various powerful new characters.

Of course, not all the characters will behave the same way in their environment. As it can be expected, Fire cannot go inside lakes! On the contrary, Water is pretty at ease when it comes to swimming in her element ;).

In order to make the game interesting and progressive, not all characters will be available at the beginning. You will have to make your way through the first levels before finding some. Then, you will have to learn how to use them.

The only character that will always be there is one we call "the hero".
Your goal, as a player, will be to make the hero progress from one level to another. To accomplish this task, you will need to use the elements in order to "clear" some path for the hero.

You control the hero, just like you control the elements. His power is to handle the elements: he's able to unleash and call them back on demand. If you need Water somewhere, take control of the hero, and make it spawn the Water element.

The hero is a man, just like me and you. Mostly you, actually, because you, player, are the hero in this game.

"Why the ruthlessness?", I had to ask. "Why the cruelty?"

"There won't be no consequences", he said. "Everything is going to be fine."

"But people will get it eventually. They will come after me.", I feared.

"They won't have time to understand. And if they do, I will take the blame."