Domino Man (Arcade)

There is a nervous energy surrounding the act of setting up a line of dominoes. The entire point of the domino line is for it to eventually fall, but placing one a little bit off balance can lead to a premature toppling of the line that requires you to start over form the first tile. Keeping people away from the fragile display is key as well, one of the main reasons large domino setups feel impressive ending up being because it managed to happen without any incident. Domino Man aims to capture that anxious excitement of trying to build up a long line to knock down in a satisfying sequence when you’re done, but in this arcade game, it seems like the whole world is out to foil your fun.

The mustachioed everyman Domino Man has a pretty simple goal in each stage of the game he’s headlining. With what seems to be an infinite set of dominoes as tall as he is, Domino Man needs to set up a line of dominoes that extends from the left side of the screen to the right. The exact line’s shape is determined by a set of dots already placed on the ground and it’s usually not too crazy beyond maybe a loop or a good deal of bends, Domino Man automatically laying down a domino tile as soon as he stands on a dot. Once every spot has a domino on it, you’ll move onto the next screen, continuing your line with a new set of spots you need to fill. Domino Man himself moves at a decent speed so you can actually run across a few spots fairly quickly, but you’ll be lucky to place down all the dominoes you need in one sprint as soon complications will begin to emerge from all sides of the screen, all of them putting your work at risk in some form.

One persistent and deadly terror is a single bee. Flying in from the bottom, it will doggedly pursue Domino Man around as he works. Depending on how far you are into your game, the bee may buzz around at a leisurely pace or buzz right towards you quickly, The Flight of the Bumblebee even playing in place of the game’s otherwise constant use of Maple Leaf Rag when it’s close enough to nearly sting you. Domino Man can fight back though, using one of those enormous dominoes like a fly swatter to smack to his right or left. It would be helpful to be able to swat it above or below you as well, but the bee is the only thing you’ll be attacking in this manner so it’s not too hard to position yourself just right for a smack. Most of the other dangers aren’t the kind Domino Man would be as justified in smacking and as such they completely shrug it off if you do try to get violent with passersby.

Domino Man takes place across three areas, a city street, a golf course, and a construction site presented in a continuously looping set with the dots on the ground being the main changes between visits to a familiar area. Each of these areas has its own unique set of pedestrians who might cause your work trouble, people ambling about sometimes with little direction and able to knock over your current set of dominoes with a simple touch. The three areas do have different difficulties in terms of their danger, the street having people like a woman going grocery shopping who move in a fairly predictable line while the golf course has a golfer swinging his club around frantically and the construction workers over at the site are being carried around erratically by tools like jackhammers or the ladder on their shoulder they’re clearly struggling to carry. Dogs are a pretty common danger as well and they are even added into settings after your first visit to give them a new worry when you return to an otherwise familiar locale, but Domino Man needs to handle the citizenry and local strays with less violence. Luckily he’s a fairly strong individual, able to push people around and shove them away from the domino line he’s setting up. Shoving a person completely off-screen makes them disappear, sometimes to immediately be replaced by someone new, but figuring out if you want someone completely gone or if you can push them off into a corner where they can mosey around harmlessly is part of the challenge in managing them.

Much of the complications to your work will arise from these oblivious people bumbling into the dominoes you’ve set up, but there are ways around their accidental sabotage. One major way is the ability to pick up any domino you have already placed, meaning you aren’t doomed even if you put them in what clearly becomes a dangerous spot. You do not have to place the dominoes all in a consistent line as you work, so you can start somewhere along the line and set up your dominoes in greater safety. You only lose a life if the first domino that is automatically placed at the far left topples, so even just not placing a domino beside it until you’re ready to clear the level keeps you relatively safe as you work. When someone does knock into your domino line you’ll lose any it topples onto and need to replace them, but you can at least dodge a costly loss by figuring out the safer spots to place them before putting down the really risky dominoes. The domino line is actually persistent across every level you’ve been through so if it is knocked down you’ll see the falling line extend back to every stage you managed to clear beforehand, and you can even knock down the line yourself at a level’s end for a point bonus.

Domino Man is a score chasing game if simply getting the biggest line possible isn’t enough of a goal for you, but the points for knocking down a line aren’t a huge climb from simply placing the dominoes so the temptation to knock them over yourself isn’t too great. If your line is knocked over by any means you will start a new one from the current stage so you won’t get the satisfying cross-screen topple until you build up the fresh line some, but it does feel like there’s enough peril that you’ll be trying to strategize a way to keep the long lines going while not often feeling like you’re fighting against the inevitable. You do also get a cute little poem when you lose your final life, it styled in the fashion of the old “Roses are red, violets are blue” rhyming format but with phrases that vary in their level of praise based on the exact number of dominoes you managed to set up before they came falling down.

There are two more dangers to worry about and the two vary in how they contribute to the action. The Bully is presented almost as Domino Man’s main adversary, an enormous figure marching down the middle of the screen periodically in every type of level. This hulking man can’t be pushed or hurt by Domino Man in any way, but compared to the accidental dangers of the citizenry and the persistent deadly bee, his design is almost refreshing. The Bully will always walk down a straight column of space and you’ll learn to not place dominoes in the area he passes through until he’s finished his latest walk or you can simply pick up any he might bump into. While having some clear ill intent with his destruction compared to the seemingly oblivious people bumbling around, Domino Man perhaps takes things a bit too far in the cutscenes you’ll eventually see in between set rounds. Domino Man seems to desire revenge for the interruption this bully causes, humiliating him by knocking his pants down or even later disintegrating him with a sci-fi weapon in these scenes. If anything the bee feels like the one who has earned violent retribution for its endless pursuit of Domino Man, but one more factor comes into play that provides both perhaps your most dangerous foe and one that requires you to approach your task with some pep in your step.

Time is Domino Man’s greatest enemy, because if you don’t finish a stage in time, a walking alarm clock will mess with your domino line. Appearing at the start of the round and harmlessly strutting around the screen perimeter, eventually it will reach that first unmovable domino in the line and knock it over unless you are able to complete the full line in time. Domino Man probably could be enjoyable without the threat of this unusual contextualization of a time limit, the managing of all the threats to your line building a fairly frenetic but engaging activity, but an arcade game is trying to get quarters and bring in new players and Domino Man already has three lives to complete his task to boot. You can earn extra lives depending on the cabinet’s settings and a two player alternating mode exists that benefits from someone not being able to hog the cabinet as they puzzle out exactly how to play tiles, so it may be a necessary evil in making sure you aren’t overly careful in laying down your dominoes. If it had a home port this would be an interesting setting to toggle, but Domino Man also keeps you quick on your feet and reactive with the need to balance all the dangers to your line in a set amount of time so its presence isn’t really a detriment so much as a space where some flexibility would benefit different play styles.

THE VERDICT: Domino Man takes the exciting set up of a large line of falling dominoes and adds a pinch of unusual complications to keep up the high energy even during the building phase. Needing to balance actually placing the dominoes down with the constant threats to them remaining vertical keeps you running all around the screen and adjusting your tactics on the fly, there being a good amount of room for legitimate strategies but randomness in regards to which bumbling citizen might stumble in next to keep you on your toes. The three different locations having different dangers keeps renewing the freshness a bit while persistent problems like the bumblebee and timer ensure constant activity, the simple concept of lining up dominoes turned into a bit of fun arcade action thanks to the right complications.

And so, I give Domino Man for arcade machines…

A GOOD rating. While perhaps an adjustable timer might make similarities across levels a little easier to see and progress easier to make, the way Domino Man is built now does a good job of making the action feel different as you get deeper and deeper into building your massive line. The actual line may not be too visually impressive beyond its eventual size, but its layout with little swirls and bends does allow it to provide an evolving difficulty and necessitates some new approaches even when you’ve seen the citizens wandering around plenty of times previously. The consistency of The Bully is actually appreciated since having a bunch of smaller people running around at a time is usually more dangerous and complicated enough with their less predictable movement styles, but managing your line usually feels fairly possible even if it might involve a lot of running about shoving people to finally slip in the last dominoes before the clock kicks your line down. Some little control concepts could have been done better, Domino Man placing a tile automatically on a spot can make trying to snatch them up as someone strays too close a bit rough as they bump you back into the dots and you’re scrambling to move them along but also not place a tile right where they’ll immediately bump it. Smacking the bee feels a little off as well since your smack has a further reach than its appearance, but an oddity in your favor is hard to really complain about.

Domino Man’s concept does feel like it has more mileage, hence why I mused about the idea of a timer free version. If Domino Man kept pushing into new areas instead of looping the same three in order it could be a consistent challenge to continue growing by any means, but some of the kindnesses in the game’s design already like being able to pick up placed pieces or shove most anyone off screen did necessitate a hazard you can’t just accommodate with ease. For an arcade game though it is a solid execution of the concept that captures the idea of the real world activity that inspired it but throws on video game absurdity to make it more exciting. While we can dream about a more ambitious version of it, that doesn’t change that Domino Man’s work is still entertaining and a satisfyingly challenging in its current state.