my favorite reaction i’ve seen to this game is “where are all the normal platformers??? ” idk man have you looked on steam or itch for 5 seconds?
Anyhow, I spent some time this weekend using datamined maps of Vainger to make a cleaner 1:4 scale map (like my romhack maps) and discovered a terrifying inconsistency: the screens in the starting area (Theta Sector) match the height of the game’s vertical resolution (216 pixels or 13.5 blocks), while the screens in the other areas are 8 pixels taller (224 pixels or 14 tiles).
I think perhaps the ways in which they’re different feel to me more like a remix on an idea rather than something that feels altogether brand new a lot of the time. I think my feelings on difficulty in games probably colours a lot of this too.
My experience so far has mostly been trying a game out for the first time, enjoying discovering what it is and then inevitably dying or getting a game over. When this would happen in the games I mentioned above there was usually something to them that encouraged me back to dig deeper, but with a lot of the others I felt like I already had a pretty good idea of what they were doing and where they were going with it, so I would just stop there.
Like I said as well, I think I’ve just gotten my fill with certain styles of games in general. The moment I saw an economy in Planet Zoldath I ran! I had to stop playing Campanella cuz my thumb started to hurt from trying to keep the ufo in the air… I felt like I probably could have beaten Ninpek if I stuck with it, but having to constantly scan the screen for projectiles and dart around just felt stressful rather than thrilling to me so doing that again and again felt a bit like a nightmare!
I think if this released a few years ago I probably would have been a lot more glowing about most of the games but I think I sorta know what to expect now from other similar stuff I’ve played since and so there isn’t as much left to surprise and delight me in those particular games.
It’s nice to hear this isn’t the case for everyone though! In some ways I’m glad the collection has such a diverse array of games that account for lots of different tastes. I just wish that so many of them didn’t focus so heavily on pursuing the “here’s a difficult challenge to overcome” thing and went in some weirder directions instead… I’m at least glad there were some games that did scratch that itch for me!
One thing I appreciate with there being so many games in this is that I can play one for 5 minutes and if it’s too hard I can say “well that was at least interesting” and drop it without feeling like it was a waste of money.
I will say though that the number of one-life games in this does actually annoy me. One-life action games are a decidedly modern invention compared to the vintage this is supposed to evoke.
Yeah that one life thing is a big factor in what I’m feeling too. I think having commited so much time to Spelunky and Downwell in the past especially means I’m kinda good for it now. Feel like I know what there is to expect so I’m less inclined to revisit that particular style of game… I think it may be a bit telling that the games that stood out to me weren’t primarily led in design by Derek Yu or Ojiro Fumoto (that’s if I’ve got those fictional credits decoded correctly).
convinced that the Downwell hype was an extended MK Ultra on the minds of the indie gaming public because i played a bunch of Velgress trying to get better at it and… i dunno man. just weird romhack hard difficulty. there are elements of it i like but overall i just don’t think it’s very good.
I mean going up instead of down is a fundamentally different game. I was inclined to compare it to Kid Icarus instead
Divers is the one for fans of going down. And even though it has turn-based RPG battles, I did still detect a bit of Downwell influence in there, somehow
Well, this discussion inspired me to play Velgress again, and after 40 minutes of attempts I’ve reached a weird state where I’ve got Level 1 down surprisingly well (read: I can manage the bats okay), but Level 2 is giving me a more trouble because of some of the laser block arrangements.
Level 3 I passed on my second attempt ever, but then I died just a couple screens into Level 4 from the stupidest butterfingered inputs imaginable (something something jump buffer).
The Kid Icarus comparison is very apt — upwards rachet scrolling, very Hip Tanaka-esque music, and seemingly reverse difficulty curve. I don’t think I’d have patience for this if the first stage theme weren’t as catchy as it is or if the restarts weren’t as quick as they are (the fact that the hero never actually dies is a nice touch). Knowing that speedruns of this are like 3-4 minutes also helps.
In my opinion Derek’s games (Golfaria, Devilition, Porgy) feel the thinnest and most front-loaded to me (in terms of exhausting their creativity early), and I find myself much more inspired by Eirik’s games (even the overly gamery games like Campanella 1). I will say Magic Garden is a Derek game that I do think is kind of nice (due mainly to obvious Pac Man CE inspiration), but it still feels a little lacking (where’s the Game Mode B that every Nintendo arcade port had?)
Velgress is particularly baffling to me because it feels like a more laborious version of Downwell. At least in Downwell you had the benefit of momentum as you fell so you could end up in this nice little flow state a lot of the time which made it kinda compelling to come back to. Velgress feels like slowly climbing up a crumbling staircase by comparison which… sure, why not, that’s a spin to put on it but… to what end??
Front-loaded is a good way to describe it. You kinda see all there is to the idea at the beginning and then all you’re left with is the difficulty and challenge of beating the thing.
I think it’s no coincidence that Magic Garden feels quite different from his other games in this because it’s more of a collaboration between him, John Perry and Tyriq Plummer. EDIT: I’m talking shite!! Turns out it was just a plain ol’ Derek joint. I think the Wikipedia page put me wrong on this…
I was directing a cyberpunk RPG that was eventually replaced with Magic Garden, of all things. It just felt like we had one too many RPGs, both from a variety standpoint and a workload standpoint, and with Magic Garden I wanted to add an arcade game to the collection that offered that satisfying feeling of clearing the screen, but in a unique way.
the terminal let’s you launch any game with EXEC- plus the four letter game name, but you can also launch all of the games with their number by using EXEC-UFO# or EXEC-UF## except that the Campanella games are actually titled UFO1, UFO2 and UFO3 internally so you can’t actually launch the first three chronological games using this system and you also can’t launch the secret game using EXEC-UF51 but you do get a different error message, game rules
No one says anything about Block Koala because to express an informed opinion on it, you’d have to play it for long enough to find out whether it somehow stops being boring later
Block Koala seems like the prime example of what I mean when I say a lot of these feel like predictable remixes on existing ideas… It feels like they said “let’s take Sokoban and mix it with Threes” and, rather than following that thought any further, they just made that game…
i’ve gotten to level 20ish and it’s still boring. you can make an interesting game with these mechanics, but the level design really fails this game. somehow 90% of what you’re doing feels like cleanup. like – what is any given level even trying to teach the player? it’s all mush.
in terms of the collection, though, most of these genre + twist games do work for me, because they seem to actually understand the genre. i would be surprised to hear that the block koala dev played uh any puzzlescript games in the last 10 years.
” idk man have you looked on steam or itch for 5 seconds?
