Glum Buster
Posted by Paul Eres Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:04:00 GMT
From almost out of nowhere, Glum Buster is released. CosMind spent about four years working on this game, with little hype—no trailers, not many previews. Only a few people even really knew about its existence, such as the IGF judges (it had been an entry) and the members of the small Game Maker community Eo (since he posted a small demo of it back in 2005 for other members there to be amazed at). But those people have been quietly looking forward to this game’s release for a long time. Accompanying its IGF entry description was a small rhyme and nothing else: “Cheer up, dear friend, or they may come. And take you where the glum is from.”
The game itself is a platformer with interesting environments, mechanics, and ideas—CosMind describes it as something from his daydreams, for ours. From the conversations I’ve had with him on the Eo forums, he has very strong and unique ideas about game design, so it’s not surprising that the game is fairly different from other platformers in its atmosphere and level designs.
I don’t want to say too much about the game because discovering it is part of the pleasure, but at the same time I want to express my enthusiasm for the game because so much care and work went into it and because it offers a unique play experience (the closest comparison is Seiklus, but comparing a game as unique as this to any other game feels wrong almost). The best moment for me was when, after the first few screen-size small stages, a large world opened up, and a grasshopper appeared that I could ride on, and I lost the ability to fly, and the sky went from its menacing red with many moons to a bright blue and a grassy castle, and I realized Glum Buster’s world was much bigger than I had ever imagined.
All I can say about this game, it doesn’t work with WINE.
nope, not working under wine. unexpected error…
It doesn’t seem to get further than allocating some 500mb of virtual memory. :(
I believe the problem is its sound .dll, which doesn’t really work under WINE. My game Immortal Defense uses that same Game Maker sound library (supersound), and because it’s such a rare library I doubt WINE knows what to do with it.
This game really shouldn’t be missed though, so if you ever get access to Windows again remember to give it a try :D
for such cases i got special folder with some stuff to check when i boot to windows… but not right now, unfortunately.
This game is superb so far. I have finished the first chapter now. It’s completely brilliant.
that will teach you using a macintosh lol
Isn’t WINE Linux, not Macintosh?
Also just completed the first chapter. This game of full of ideas and craftsmanship, I love it.
Charityware, nice neologism.
@Paul Eres: I know that WINE is available for Macintosh, along with tons of other operating systems. I believe that OS X Leopard has something called Boot Camp to run Windows apps, but I haven’t had very much experience with Mac OS.
I’ll try to play this on my machine when I get home. I’m running PC-BSD at my house (uses WINE), so I’ll see what kind of grief it gives me and I’ll see if I can help getting it to work.
I can run the game now, but the screen is black and I’m getting a bunch of rendering errors.
Whats interesting is the game seems to be one of those games people profess to be “art” yet on a technical level, its basic at best. The graphic proficiency is sublime in direction, the design of the game is excellent, its true to say its not a mainstream game at all. It presses all the right buttons, insofar as to say its not what you’d expect from a triple A title, and i like it.
It stuns and surprises me to this day the content that people can output using game maker or other such relevant tools, to show the creative output of amateur game makers.
Without sounding contrary, i want to congratulate CosMind for providing a very valid contrast to what we currently expect from gaming today.
also, i should point out, that discussion over how a game run on various unintended platforms is to be honest, pretty poor form. lets judge this games merit on its technical and artistic merits, not on the ability of its parent API’s ability to run on any specific OS?
Kudos to CosMind
Very pretty, but a bit dull. There’s a few interesting concepts, but the control is a bit floaty (yes, he’s floating, but still), and none of the puzzles were particularily interesting and the combat, if that the right word for colour changing and triangle drawing, doesn’t add much.
Try running the game in full screen mode under Wine, from what I gather, GM games work best in full screen mode when in Wine. Press the ‘resolution options’ button twice since it’s a three-way toggle, and it’ll bring you to full screen.
And CIJolly, no mention of the environments? I think that’s the best part about the game, just interacting with the varied atmospheric areas, the world of the game. The color choices, the skies and so on.
It’s good… but is it a “game”?
He calls it a game on his site, that’s good enough for me. I don’t really have much sympathy for word purists who want to use game to mean gameplay and nothing else, not even things traditionally called games which have no rules or goals, like playing games of pirates and indians or cops and robbers, or playing a game of catch.
Oh, the environments were very nice. However, no matter how one uses the words, regardless of whether it’s a game or something else, this is a piece of interactive entertainment, or interactive art, if you prefer. Thus the interactive elements have to bring something to the table. Much like Scary Girl, this product is strong on the visuals and, in my opinion, of course, weak on the interactive component. I gain no pleasure from failing to draw triangles around squids that fly off the screen. My grasshopper jumping off without me and exploding is not fun. Puppeting my balloon boy around the screen feels empty. I would rather PLAY a fun, ugly game, and LOOK at pretty pictures, than play a pretty, dull game. I can, however, see how the twinkling, chiming environments could engage someones sense of wonder.
Well, there are a lot of fun ugly games too, different tastes I guess. I’d rather play a game with bad gameplay but with interesting environments and music and story – some of my favorite games are like that (for instance, Kartia).
I don’t actually think the gameplay in this game is that bad though, there’s a good variety of interesting new ideas in it, like the windows and electric sparks in world 3. It’s nothing extremely radical for a platformer, but the gameplay elements change often enough that every new area feels fresh. It sounds like you didn’t get far enough into the game to experience how varied the gameplay is. I’ll see if I can post up a video of the game later showing off how varied some of the gameplay elements later on are.
4 years of development, quite a long time, downloading now
You’re correct, I only got to see 2 varations: A shooter I didn’t enjoy, and a platformer I didn’t enjoy. I didn’t get very far through this game. To my own detriment I did, however, get the entire way through Spore, a pretty game with a variety of gameplay types, each one not particularily engaging or well realised. In some cases I think gameplay can suffer from variety. Again, it’s just different tastes, but I would rather play a single concept executed well than a mash up of concepts done better elsewhere.
I prefer the varied style because it makes the world feel like a complex and interesting place – I don’t really like when a game just has one basic interesting mechanic and does variations on it (like in Portal).
I guess the bottom line is don’t really care much about engaging with the gameplay mechanics, I care about engaging with the world. The gameplay part of games is not typically why I play them, it always seems less interesting to me than the other parts – although there are some exceptions, like Braid, where I found the gameplay actually more interesting than the story or world (not to say those were bad, just that the gameplay was really interesting in that game).
But games like that are the exception, most of the time the gameplay is just sort of there, it’s the thing I have to get through to see more of the game’s world. I like it to the extent that it enhances the world and increases the immersion, but I don’t see it as an end in itself or a reason to play something.
@Gravious: How is discussing how one would go about running the game on an unintended OS poor form? I would discuss its technical and artistic merits if I could play it. I’m not saying that I’m pissed off that I can’t.
Maybe you don’t care because you’re probably running Windows anyway, but I would like to see more cross-platform games from indie developers. I’ve been working on my own, but I’ll need to stop procrastinating to really start into it.
I never really thought about it that way, but I find myself agreeing with Paul. While the individual gameplay elements introduced aren’t that amazing, I love the way the game is constantly mixing things up and being generally unpredictable. It’s really what makes this an experience.
The framerate dropped quite a bit for me though, which was especially annoying in the wide open areas where it happened often.
Also, I felt like some of the areas were pretty bland visually. Unlike Seiklus, where each little object and pixel in the world seems to have a unique purpose, there’s lots of repeated terrain tiles and swathes of rather plain areas in some levels. What was there was nicely done though, and it’s only like this in the areas with gravity.
Bustability: 12000 Very fun. The industrial heaven/hell was my favorite.
I’ve never played a game that I so quickly felt so much deserved to be displayed in a gallery.
I have no idea why you guys are getting so excited by this game. I’m not sure whether that’s because it genuinely doesn’t impress me or because my expectations were set too high by the hype in the forum thread.
It’s okay.
Wow, this game really does feel like something different. It might not be for everybody, but I love this kind of experimental stuff.
Based on the first level alone, I was ready to dismiss this game. Then, when I got to the second and third levels, I was done for, totally sucked in.
I will not be able to play through the second time, because I need my life back.
Played through the whole thing yesterday, and loved every minute of it. Heck, playing the game gave me the trippiest dream I’ve had in quite some time (based around the ‘windows’/electricity in world three).
Not only is it beautiful (and I’m not talking just visuals, here), I found GLum Busters really fun to play. Puzzling out the different enemies and getting their masks, collecting all the butterfly helpers, navigating the different environments. My favourite area was world 4, definitely, especially after you “absorb” the gloom and lose your ability to fly: the stained glass / silhoutte theme was really neat, the atmosphere was really vivid and the bird flying / undead puzzles were some of the most enjoyable.
I got a bustability of 22400 so far (lost my hat, dangit) and I’m working on collecting all the happy faces. (Just a heads up, there’s an item you can collect later on in the game that makes finding them a lot easier).
Then I’m going to play the whole thing through again.
(@CiJolly, did you know that you actually can control the grasshopper, even when you’re not riding it? Its motions are linked to yours).
A wonderfully different game, certain like nothing i’ve ever played and i play a lot of games.
I’m getting stuck in a red room, with a pink thingy trying to come at me from a yellow glowing spot, it’s got a locked door in the center, with invisible blocks around it, and 2 more in each corner of the room.
Hope there’s more to it than what I’ve seen so far though, interaction wise, the setting is very meticulous.
This game looks to be great! What a lovely surprise.
I’m surely taking a night this week to play straight through it.
It looks indeed very nice. If it’s comparable to Seiklus i’ll probably love it.
Reminds me of Knytt, in that it’s got a nice atmosphere but nothing else to really tie the game together. One thing that annoyed me is it continues the trend of having unintuitiveness on purpose. I don’t know where indie game makers get the idea that having players guess abstract functions through trial and error is somehow a good thing.
Particularly, if I hadn’t discovered that grasshoppers had a player-triggered super jump, I probably never would have. The grasshopper you have to spawn then control independently of the player which then has to hop the tall wall in particular is just really bad.
I generally like this sort of game, but I can’t get past the very very first part after the beginning. There’s a thing that goes “ding”, I can fly, I’ve collected some shiny things that came out of another shiny thing I stepped on, I’ve got some shooty powers that seem to only work to make the thing that goes ding turn green, and that’s about it. Oh and I can make little whooshy things in the sky. I have no idea what to do from here.
Right click to make a triangle over the thing that goes ding, after you’ve made it go ding.
Oh wow, okay.
This is a great game. For some reason, though, the little mini-tutorial never showed up the first time I played. When I started a new game, though, it explained what I needed to do to get past the first part. Weird.
Wonderful game. Figuring out what to do, how to do it, and executing what you learned was done very well. Although I can see how some people will not care for it - not knowing what to do can be frustrating for those looking to “beat” something.
(spoilers?) Played through it, pretty good. As you’d expect from a game with so much variety, it’s not all peachy, especially the amazingly bad dove flight bits. Oftentimes you must waste time waiting for things to happen, such as camera panning or slow bubble-facilitated ascension. Some of the environmental graphics don’t give a sense of depth, in that you can’t tell at a glance whether something’s collidable or just background decoration. The only time I came across an obscure (or even difficult) solution, graphics were the problem again: an underground column did not give cues that it was destructible.
Apart from those minor issues, no complaints here. It has a strong sense of adventure with only occasional dextrous challenges. The levels seem to end right when they start becoming tedious. Nice level design, high interconnectedness and complexity yet surprisingly almost no confusion. Didn’t think I’d like it but I did.
What does the pink fairy-thing do? They all seem to have some purpose except for that one…
The pink one flies toward the white butterflies that are important for puzzles and also deflects enemy projectiles. On a related note, I only found four, is there a fifth one?
After beating it, I really gotta take my complaint back about the visuals. It was really only the third level (the one with the electricity/windows) that felt like that. The later two levels are especially awesome-looking.
Alright, well, let’s be honest, this game is a piece of shit. I don’t even think the creator wants you to play it. The graphics are hideous, the game makes no attempt to try to explain how to play it and when you dick around with it enough to figure it out the gameplay isn’t even fun. There is no drive to continue playing it. It’s awful.
BTW, anyone else contributed? It’s a pity the game has been out 3 days and played probably by thousands of people yet only had 14 contributions.
I don’t know what everyone is complaining about! I didn’t find many of the problems terribly unintuitive; once you get the idea that you should try everything with all the options at your disposal, everything sorts itself out eventually. Grasshopper; no problem, see a blue thing, activate it, oh look, it moves when I do, get it over the wall. All you had to realise is that you can activate things you can’t get at, which is not that subtle! Even the destructible wall… there’s a shooty thing right next to it, and my very first thought was “I can’t go anywhere with it, perhaps I can break that column”. In fact, I thought the puzzles like that were very well designed, making the best use of the elements that are already implied in the game mechanics.
Plus, I really enjoyed the atmosphere, especially the rose world. I thought it was all very evocative, even more so than Seiklus.
my patience didn’t last until the bright blue sky came along. it definitely has a charm, but ran much too slow on a 800MHz Turion and the mechanism got hard to understand (invisible blocks with a non-redable purple blob which moves a bit when you blue it).
but, it seems like I’ve missed the mini-tutorial too. going back for that.
I love this kind of game where you explore a world and fill with wonder about the little thing you see or do. Like you were a child in a garden.
But I’m getting stuck in the level with the first grasshopper, I can ride it but I don’t understand how to finish the level. (I hate to be stuck, it brakes the dream :( )
What’s the deal with the butterflies you can find? Do they actually do anything? I’ve bumped into the lantern things but they just fly around the screen and don’t follow when I leave or anything… should I be doing something else?
Also, game IS amazing! Playing on “Dangerous” mode now…
Absolutely and totally loving this game, in every aspect.
I really can’t see why people possibly can’t like it as the puzzles / gameplay is very well executed, imo.
“Grasshopper; no problem, see a blue thing, activate it, oh look, it moves when I do, get it over the wall. All you had to realise is that you can activate things you can’t get at, which is not that subtle!”
Yeah except you have to press jump exactly when the grasshopper is jumping. Making the player figure things out by themselves is ok if things have a logical consistency, but this game has NONE. You just shoot, draw triangles, bump into things and right click randomly until something works.
Really loving this game and surprised by the amount of negativity on these comments. Many of you must have high standards.
I love the originality and visuals of this. I think the game play is a little awkward at first but it quickly becomes apparent how intuitive it actually is.
CountFractal, I shot at the butterfly and then captured them in a triangle. I think they turned into little pixels that follow you around, not sure what they do though.
Green collects the ‘grins’ for you, yellow shows you where hidden grins are, pink deflects projectiles and shows you were the white things are, and I think blue just makes the flash from right clicking a bit bigger so it’s easier to pull things toward you.
@Dustin: You don’t have to time your jumps on the grasshopper, he just hops slightly to move left or right, and super jumps when you press up. It’s really not that hard to figure out! And your summary of the controls of the game really shows how simple it is; if you come across something you don’t understand, shoot at it, draw triangles around it, touch it… and something’s sure to happen. It’s all really intuitive once you get the hang of it.
That’s something I really like about the game. Though much of it has to be figured out on your own, there’s no punishment for doing something wrong and no excessive difficulty. The various gameplay elements constantly being introduced just seems to come naturally and organically.
@olympi, you need to shoot through the rightmost wall in the cavern below (I think that was the first grasshopper).
@Maimed Fox, I realized the solution to every other puzzle almost immediately, and it looks like someone else had trouble with the column bit. In retrospect I don’t recall any other parts where you had to do something similar. It *is* a design hiccup, but not a major one.
I haven’t played the whole game yet (I think I have one world left), but I’m liking it. I don’t know about you guys, but I think the puzzles are pretty intuitive. Besides, you have a total of two, maybe three different buttons you can try to interact with things. How hard is that?
I don’t get this buzz. I think this game is terrible.
Well, this certainly isn’t for everyone! I’m glad that he finished it, but I don’t really see four years of work (or rather effort) in it.
Great game, it has a good variety of puzzles and it changes the mechanics with out explaining them which is something I likes because you have to play with it and figure out how stuff works. Other games would have just pulled you along the whole time over explaining everything acting like you would not be able to see it for yourself
I still really like this.
I have been:
It’s great!
This feels like an adventure game, except it’s from another universe where adventure game puzzles actually make sense. It’s so strange how these puzzles can be completely random, and yet be so intuitive. There are a lot of things any game designer should take away from this game.
Wonderful little game! I’d say it’s more of a combination of “Within a Deep Forest” and “Braid” than “Seiklus”. The hat collection is a great touch.
The pace is a bit slow for me, but I have the same gripe with Nifflas’s games.
I contributed $5 and might contribute more.
Great game! I’ll writing a full review of it on soitgoesrev.blogspot.com in the next couple of days.