vertical & rrrrrpg

By: dessgeega

On: September 25th, 2006

<img src=“http://static.flickr.com/114/252354710_313e797c8e_o.gif” width=“199” height=“175” alt=“vertical” align=right hspace=“10” vspace=“10”/>

always up to no good, alan gordon (who you may remember as the author of zi) has just released a pair of old projects onto the internets.

vertical is technically unfinished – there are no enemies or encounters. what remains is the architecture of the game, a randomly-generated tower of infinite height that the player scales with wall-jumps and a grappling hook which bears comparison to umihara kawase or turrican, depending on your background. once one becomes comfortable with the controls, the game becomes a meditative experience.

rrrrrpg, on the other hand, is a complete game. unofficially standing for “really really really random role-playing game”, but officially for nothing, rrrrrpg is a jrpg without content. all that’s left is a trio of abstract shapes roaming the countryside, fighting enemies for experience and money, and wandering back to town to buy better weapons and armor. it is the purest distillation of the jrpg.

check professor gordon’s blog for information on the upcoming zombie city survivors, as well as the zombie city games it is based on (now available for mac).

update: vertical now has a speedrun mode, accessible by pressing R.