I mean yeah, there are parts that are just lazy and dumb, like the electricty traps. why is electricity running rampant in the underworld. falling stalactites, that's new. but I am able to forgive these things because the overall design is pretty good. out of all the chunky graphics games this might be the best despite these problems and the loose flash gameplay

velf I see what you're saying. there is actually kind of a princess to save SPOILERZ and I guess it was that and the sense of progression into the underworld that kept me going. also I wondered why you were shooting dogs, spiders and snakes. that was never explained in-game but I have an idea

the end kind of justifies the rest of the game but I also didn't find it frustrating or uninteresting enough to quit

big ass this game is actually pretty forgiving in terms of trial and error. even great games like nifflas's creations are less so. I don't really like it either, and I agree it's a lazy way of preventing progress but you know what go to hell. get it

I guess I am pretty forgiving in terms of providing some sort of DEEP STORYLINE with games. I mean, look at what we've already got in terms of storyline. final fantasy and garbage like fucking Edmund. I remember that one game someone posted a while ago, where you just kept walking across the screen, getting older and collecting treasure until you die. I thought it was a pretty good game, until I saw the creators making comments about how artistic and deep it was, and it ruined it for me. in terms of art, in literature or music or anything, it's garbage. in terms of something you play for fun and it gives you a nice little 20 minute experience, it's pretty good!

yep, i played up until a little past the dog boss. i thought i had things figured out in that you just needed to go over everything, memorizing all the movements and stuff because you make a single mistake and yer out but the random aspects flub all of that up and that is pretty much why i turned it off after that because i knew i was just going to continue being frustrated trying every screen 10 times till i hit the right buttons AND the game happened to make itself possible that particular time. it's just irritating.

i wanted to delete this post but you can't do that anymore. i'm not a true gamester, i don't like this kind of game.

Reading files into my C++ forms app is currently busting my balls. All this bonkers type conversion is confusing the hell out of me and I am getting programming rage

don't insinuate I'm a gamester. I am NOT a gamester.

it's honestly a 10 minute game and how on earth were the controls sloppy? ARROW KEYS? the atmosphere was really good and i don't get your 'fake difficulty' either, the shooty monsters can shoot high or low, snakes slow down if you're in the air, disappearing platforms disappear. some of the challenges are set up to be impossibly difficult on the first try, but you respawn instantly and it's rather rewarding once you do get the timing right
when i got to the alone in the dark section i thought the game was broken though/not loading the background. that's pretty much my only complaint. oh and the bit where you're on the sand and you have to jump up on the platforms, i got wedged underneath the first one too often but i guess that's my fault

i didn't find it rewarding at all when i got through a screen because like mark said it usually comes down to getting lucky instead of properly learning from your mistakes.  i didn't find myself finding the proper time to dodge that one boss' fireballs, i only found myself respawning until he shot them a certain way (like you said, they shoot high and low, so i just respawned until enough of them were high, this wasn't learning from my mistakes this is waiting for luck which is not very cool!)

also what i mean about the controls is the jumping, the jumping just FEELS really bad to me, it's like the jumping in ghosts n goblins and we've come a long way in jumping technology since then.  i feel like i jump and then halfway through the jump i just fall directly downwards instead of anything fluid

and lastly i didn't care about the atmosphere either.  it felt like any other helldungeon i didn't feel anything special about it at all, i could have just as easily been playing dragon buster for the nes with atari graphics.  i didn't see anything special at all about this except that it was desperately trying to be a cactus game.

having played it again i think i 'got' it a little more but it's still not particularly deep or interesting. i guess the theme is you can't go back to the way things were? i dunno i feel like this game was designed in a HMM.. GOTTA MAKE PEOPLE THINK way and that bothers me a lot.

as a 15 minute experience yeah whatever, it's not a huge deal.

where did you find that/who is the kid?

Hidden content (Click to reveal)

We Belong Dead although I'm a little impressed he can even use a computer at five years old yet alone make context specific insults. I just played with trucks all day.

I should play Don't Look Back because I thought the vvvvvv demo was pretty good and Terry Cavanagh apparantly hangs around my college sometimes. I agree that these kind of games would be a lot more tolerable if they were less conscious of being A-ART though. Passage would be pretty good if you took it as kind of interesting and blackly funny but as the powerful artistic statement he apparantly intended it's kind of dumb. It's like how Tales Of Tales make really weird and offbeat games where you like walk an old woman down a path for eight minutes but then ruin it by playing it all off as what is a game............perhap life is a game

Also yeah fuck Edmund.

I think the problem is how many people have actually made a indie game with balanced difficulty and good playcontrol and basically matches an old NES game besides for like 1 or 2 jap-made indie games - I don't really follow this stuff so I don't know but it's like aren't people who are serious about MINIMALIST stuff in art like knowledgeable enough to make a good picture the traditional way they just choose not to - I don't really believe Passage guy could make Super Mario Bros. 3 if he wanted to and just felt this need to make STATEMENT instead. I give Hideo Kojima credit in that he actually knows about game design even if he chooses to be all avant-garde douche. The original Metal Gear is like in my top 5 of super-classic NES games not made by Nintendo. The Tetris guy should make some new game that's like a puzzle game but stripped down to the ESSENTIALS of what a puzzle game is and have some post-modern commentary on Russian political shit. Tetris Gear Solid

Edit: What is the overall opinion on Resident Evil 4? Because I get this sort of feel like everyone is RESIDENT EVIL SHOULD GO BACK TO ITS ROOTS while I agree an old-style Resident Evil could be amazing the level the graphics are at now I think RE4 got something right that hadn't been done for a while/not translated well to next-gen systems, like I sort of feel like the closest analog to the game is RIVER CITY RANSOM or something, because it's a shooter but it's structured like an old beat-em-up (Final Fight etc. not Street Fighter) and there's the aspect of upgrading your dude and if you're going by beat-em-up standards it's pretty VAST for one of those games while still keeping interest


this guy is the only professional game designer who seems to be an awesome person (awesome as in super-classy/doesn't take himself seriously)
 
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3169166


I mean Miyamoto etc. might be ok but I don't like the whole Pokemon/lol we're Apple now route Nintendo has taken

Edit: There need to be more indie games that are just like MEAN SPIRITED not in the Passage way that's like omg I'm totally tugging at your emotions. I mean like Total Chaos it's just these random graphics thrown together like I'm just making a game pal I'm not here to make your dream of the perfect SNES game that's like everything you loved but bigger and shinier (and with a glossy custom menu I slaved over 4 months on getting the perfect look)

Edit: btw I'm making a sequel to E.V.O. someday

Edit: Everything I said plus people need to just stop getting all epic about videogaming and just accept that by and large it's just a particularly good pastime even the stuff I got into back in the day/speculated/was eager for the sequel I acknowledge that it was just fun getting INVOLVED and it's not like earth-shattering shit what the next final fantasy will be like. But aside from the rare game it's usually just an agreeable way to spend your time

it was a late night post after a couple drinks but now I'm glad I made it

I agree the gameplay feels a little sloppy. it's probably because he made this game in flash, and this was his first time working with the program. for comparison consider Dungeon, which had a very tight, precise controls. if this is the same guy who made vvvvv, then he obviously has the ability to make games with good controls, just not in flash. also vellfire it's a kinda oldschool GM jumping system where the jump button makes you jump upwards, and then you can control the character's movement midair with the arrow keys. this in comparison to jump+arrow key resulting in a jump in that direction

rajew I just jump over the bugs while shooting in that room.

and I agree if it's "gotta make people think" then it's kinda dumb, but I'd rather take it as is and I'm not gonna go looking for this guy's opinions on his own game. the theme only fully surfaces at the end which I just think was delivered really well. like you're leading your wife(?) back up to the surface and it's been tough but you're almost there. then you arrive at the first screen with the grave and you see yourself standing there right where you started, and then both the player-you and the wife fade away. after a second thinking what did I do something wrong?? you realize this just what has been going on in his head, he's thinking about how he'd basically do anything to get his wife back including going all the way to the underworld and beating up cerberus and hades. but you can't bring back the dead it's good and it really completes the game, unlike finding some stupid treasure, getting a high score or rescuing some princess you have no reason to care about

I agree that these kind of games would be a lot more tolerable if they were less conscious of being A-ART though.

this is why i don't agree with you earlchip on the bit in the spoilers.  i feel like it was just too conscious of itself and it was trying too hard to be HEH....MADE YA THINK, HUH?  BLEW YOUR MIND, it felt really forced, i'd rather find your average princess than feel like the creator's smiling smugly at me at the end

I fucked my hands up punching a punching bag without gloves. Someone stole or hid the boxing gloves we had in the gym and I kind of wanted to make my knuckles harder anyways but yeah I prolly shouldn't do that again.

now my knuckles are swollen and I almost got block hands.

Dada, those are fantastic.

that's not fake difficulty, that's real difficulty. fake difficulty is OKAY NOW YOU NEED PERFECT TIMING. like the one i mentioned with the bats, it would have been good if there had been some sign the bats stopped spawning. after trying to do it without killing EVERY SINGLE BAT like 10 times, I tried waiting it out and after I waited what I felt was long enough I decided it was infinite spawning. seriously it was an endless stream for like 8 seconds with no sign of stopping

even after I found out they stopped eventually, it took me 5-6 more deaths to get through that room because LOL the controls are sloppy (i'd slip into the pit) or the bats came down too close to me and when I spun around to shoot them I crashed into them.

then the room with the disappearing platforms and the shooty guys was where I gave up because it just seemed too random. The bottom one would ONLY shoot when I would literally unavoidably fall onto its projectile, seemingly. Killing both of them (seemingly required) was impossible for me because its just a poorly designed room!!

/rant rant rant

man i just played back through it because i didn't know what you were talking about, the controls are really good and the bat stage is pretty darn easy. the projectiles aren't random, they shoot either high or low depending on where you are when they're firing. as far as PRETENTIOUS GAME goes it's pretty subtle too and it does what it sets out to pretty well.

this is why i don't agree with you earlchip on the bit in the spoilers.  i feel like it was just too conscious of itself and it was trying too hard to be HEH....MADE YA THINK, HUH?  BLEW YOUR MIND, it felt really forced, i'd rather find your average princess than feel like the creator's smiling smugly at me at the end

you didn't beat it how would you know!! in any case I just did not get that feeling from this game. like I said in another post, I'd rather take it as is than worry about what the creator wants me to think. if it were me and I had made this game exactly like it is, I wouldn't be smirking back at you at the end I'd be hoping you'd walk away from the game with a nice, short, complete experience. not that I never get that feeling of pretentiousness from indie crud. edmund is the worst game, and passage was good until I saw someone post all the awful stuff the creators thought about it. edmund is garbage. it's really shit it can go to hell