Upgrade Complete!

By: Xander

On: July 14th, 2009

UPGRADECOMPLETE

Rock, Paper, Shotgun recently posted about an interesting little flash game entitled Upgrade Complete. It’s a simple shmup where the aim is to blast everything onscreen to hell, collect money to upgrade and keep on killing. The difference here is that you use the money to upgrade everything, and I mean everything. The main menu only has two buttons until you buy more. Like how it appears in the screenshot? That’s the final upgrade of the graphics engine. You even have to buy the music and the mute button seperately.

It’s a bizarre game that’s ultimately varied in the satisfaction the player feels from it, which I can only really equate to playing ‘Ginormo Sword’. Simply put, the game itself is pretty boring as the enemies don’t fight back at all, and the only real measure of entertainment comes from just how much you enjoy a persistent upgradable experience. There is something so curiously brilliant about the way everything slowly builds together around your gameplay. Customising your ship with lightning cannons and missle launchers as well as upgrading each one to launch volleys of firepower in seconds is quite a lot of fun even though there is no real grand goal and each level features no great challenge to overcome. It is a game that completely depends on your own involvement to turn it into something above your initial perceptions.

Something worth playing if only to discuss why the hell it’s worth playing then…

  • http://www.dreamofwinds.com/lonely/ Aquin

    It’s very satisfying… but I’m not sure it was fun.

    Or was it?

    Man, what a strange game. Reminds me a lot of Achievement Unlocked.

  • linger

    110% completion.

    This is my final form.

  • Onymous

    Meh, Achievement Unlocked was compelling as a joke, and only as a joke. Upgrade Complete, while obviously the same type of satire fails because the upgrades let you become an unstoppable wall of death which is compelling on its own and a completely different thing than the arbitrary unlock/upgrade mechanic the game set out to skewer.

  • Manpon

    Yeah, that was actually fun. I guess the joke’s on me. :)

  • Sigvatr_

    More pigshit.

  • Caio

    The Mystery Upgrade is AWESOME.

  • moi

    The final upgrade of the graphic engine looks like shit?

  • http:///www.dg-studio.blogspot.com dg-studio

    the game is like a joke. without any certain goal, people will get boring soon. And when the final upgrade is bad they will get disappointed.

  • http://www.cymonsgames.com/contact-us/ Cymon

    Played this one when it was featured on Bytejacker a few weeks back and couldn’t stop until I beat it. I don’t know if that speaks poorly of me because I’m so easily strung along by the promise of something cooler.

    I think I’m that way in real life too.

  • Anthony Flack

    Well! Here it is, the compulsion that drives every RPG game, expressed in a simple and sarcastic manner. But it STILL works. Did you complete the game? I did.

    The reason, I think, that some people see this kind of thing as a cheap trick is, well, ok because it is a cheap trick – but it is also SO DAMN EFFECTIVE. Honestly, people will play any old shit if you can trigger their OCD and get progress compulsion to kick in.

    Rock Paper Shotgun called it one of the peripheral systems of gaming, but actually I think that right now it is the core system of most mainstream games. It’s just too potent to ignore.

    Hook people into the upgrading and unlocking and they will happily grind away on your monotonous gameplay for hours.

  • AmnEn

    I know some folks will ultimately sling insults my way again for saying it, SPOILERS AHOI!

    But I didn’t like the ending vibe. It’s ultimately the very attitude I don’t like about Indiegaming and it was quite hostile without any real reason. It read a lot like an angry Programmer having a hissy fit about “ze evul gamers!” and the way they perceived another one of his games.
    If he had just made the game without it and perhaps provided a link to what essentially spawned his rant it would have been so much better. It IS kinda an interesting experiment in upgrading systems and I thought the basic idea was quite nice. Great idea, ruined by attitude hissy fit tantrum.

  • TCM

    I still can’t tell whether I had a good time with this game or not.

  • Knifen

    What I think makes this really interesting isn’t just the fact that the gameplay is stale and boring; it actually really sucks. The gameplay is completely horrible. Did that stop me from completing the game? Nope, not in the slightest. I even played the last wave 5 more times to get a fully upgraded ship…

    In this regard, the point is well-made. I completely agree with Anthony Flack. I also agree with AmnEn – the developer could’ve mentioned his obvious distaste for this kind of game mechanic in a better way.

    Another fun thing is that I didn’t notice how bad the gameplay was until wave 10 or so, the upgrade mechanic made me ignore it for the first half of the game, and once I realized it I was completely absorbed in upgrading everything anyway.

  • Nicholas Moon

    AmnEn,

    I think you took that too personally. You need to upgrade your sense of humor.

  • MisterX

    I wouldn’t even say that the game sucks. As much as I’d like to think that achievements and upgrades and the like in games are “stupid”, it probably isn’t any more than most other gameplay mechanics. Especially Shoot ’em Ups like this one often have upgrades, and while they may not be the one main feature in most of them, they are still very important. Just think about Gradius. It just is very satisfying to make the ship bigger and stronger.
    As was mentioned before that is even more true in RPGs, where it usually is the core gameplay mechanic, and the basic concept is actually very similar to achievements and upgrades in any other kind of game.

    As much as I’d like to say it’s stupid, there’s a lot more to it.

  • AmnEn

    @#13
    You seemingly didn’t get the ending.

  • Prio

    Re ending of game: Seems like the developer had a burning need to smack people in the face with his paradigm-shifting life lesson.

    But who can blame him for being a little snippy? You simply can’t allow people to go on enjoying games for the Wrong Reasons.

  • Christian

    yeah I played this as a joke but its pretty fun. i like the drag and drop upgrading – i wouldn’t mind that in a ‘real’ game. and the controls are solid

  • Anthony Flack

    Ok, so now I would just like to apologise for using the phrase “RPG game” in post #9.

  • Anthony

    I think I saw this a little while back when it was on ByteJacker. I agree with Christian though, the actual system of “building” the ship was pretty fun.

  • Julian

    I definitely think this game doesn’t mean what its designer thinks it means. Everybody I’ve talked to that played it had a good time with it. What that tells me is that what the game actually means is upgrading is something that’s inherently fun. Good job snooty designer-dude, you just proved you don’t understand what makes a game fun. It’s funny, because it would have been very easy to make the game so annoying it wasn’t fun. Becoming a powerhouse is satisfying, and the levels are so quick and give you so much to use to upgrade your ship that it doesn’t elicit the drip-feed effect that could possibly have proven his point. When it takes less than a minute to do a level and get another upgrade, the terrible gameplay never has time to sink in.

    I did like Achievement Unlocked as well. I thought it was cleverly designed, and a great example of one a way to get the most out of a confined level. Some of it was pure humor (move left to unlock one), but some of them were genuinely interesting challenges that all had to get designed around a very specific and limited level.

  • SirNiko

    It’s because you’re given lots of motivation up front that the game is fun. Every time you unlock something, you get some new music, and new button, or a new graphic to look at. Nothing is earth shattering or totally original, but it doesn’t have to be. The amount of effort required for each ‘prize’ is minimal, and the prizes are nifty enough that you want to ‘earn’ the next one. It makes sense to me.

    Everywhere I’ve looked, every website I’ve read, and every person I’ve linked this to thinks the game is a blast. They play it through to the end. That fact alone should convince you there’s something important here for game designers to consider. Namely, stringing players along with a series of small, unique rewards is a great way to keep interest. Bring them in with free t-shirts, and they’ll stay to see your magnum opus through to the end.

  • Anthony Flack

    I think we already did know that, although this game does drive home the point of just how effective a technique it is.

    The real issue is how much we should rely on manipulative techniques like this. It’s like if I was a painter, then there are a whole lot of tricks and techniques I could use to convince the majority of people that I was a reasonably good painter. But a properly good painter would know that I was using manipulative tricks and might see that as negative, or at least as nothing interesting.

    So I see this not so much as encouragement to use these techniques, but rather it makes me want to deliberately AVOID them, because they work so well and are so effective at compensating for bad design in other areas. It helps us to get away with being mediocre, and I’m not satisfied with being mediocre.

    Mind you, I’ve done the exact same thing myself, using fancy graphics to impress people. We all do it to an extent I suppose, in all kinds of ways.

    These days though, I feel like I need to strip away all the tricks, manipulations and show-off stuff. Just to see what (if anything) there actually is underneath it all; if there is actually a good designer inside me or not.

  • Dusty Spur

    Interesting enough to play through, not really fun though. This mechanic applied to a game that’s actually fun would be awesome.

    The developer is a snooty dickhead.

    And if anyone ever says “gameplay” again I am gonna choke a bitch.

    HARRY POTTER HAS SUCH GREAT BOOKREAD

  • Dusty Spur

    Oh, forgot to mention, the penultimate graphical upgrade is leagues better than the final. In fact, I’d go as far as to say the final looks like shit. The music accompanying it also decays in quality.

    A++ game design, but I guess that’s sort of the point, in a retarded way.

  • O

    I HATE A WORD

  • Flamebait

    It was mildly fun- I bothered to play through. The biggest problem was the classic UI failure present in the ship design screen. It frequently selects a piece other than the pointed one. Argh!

    By the way, gameplay gameplay gameplay gameplay. Why would you expect all of the same terms to apply to completely different media? We’ve all heard plenty of neologisms relating to games, yet none others express the same concept as “gameplay”. Invent a new one or live with it.

  • Nikica

    110% – Now I can play Wave 20 on and on and buy me the good ending.

  • Xander

    @Dustyspur:

    Bookread definitely sounds stupid, but in terms of film you have cinematography to describe exactly how things have been shot and are being viewed by the audience. You could roughly equate that to ‘movie watching’.

    Though agreed it’s pretty basic.

  • Ezuku

    I lolled at the good ending.

    But the interface was lousy, and I frequently had my ship get jammed and refuse to stop turning in one particular direction. I also thought the nice stencil style graphics were the best.

    I wish there was an option to upgrade the game developer though.

  • JoeHonkie

    I loved the hell out of that. Easy as hell, but all it did was make a point.

  • ptoing

    There might be a message, but the complete and utter lack of any kind of challenge was a letdown. Then again, I guess that’s also part of the message. IMO forgettable.

  • Bob

    I had fun, both with the game, and the upgrade system.
    I dunno, maybe it’s just because I kind of like shmups and sandbox games.

    The developer needs to make better “enlightening points” because right now, his/her “message” only really applies to crappy clones of tower defense.
    I found it to be more funny then anything, and it’s pretty creative/unique – something that can make for a good upgrade system.
    If the developer is truly a dick, he’ll come up and say “That’s what I wanted people to not think! I fooled you and made you rant!” or some wanna be meta crap which only ends in making you look like the biggest wannabe smartass loser ever, picking on the tiniest subjects to try and raise their e-peen. If people like that could admit they were scum, this wouldn’t be a problem (I’m fail scum btw).

    TL:DR version – Dev’s point sucks, the dev needs to play something other than crappy flash games, failed in trying to make a crappy game (because I certainly had a good time), and will probably fail in trying to be a meta smarty.

  • Bob

    Poo, forgot to say this.

    It differs from AU in that in AU, you were in on the joke from the start – it was a parody plain and simple.
    In this game, however, you are treated as if you were playing because you were lured in by the upgrade system, not because of the dang joke.

    I bet that the dev also probably wants you to think his enjoyable game was crap so you’d rant and blah blah blah.

    THIS is why “enlightening” points need to be removed from gaming. I want fun games, not a life lesson.
    Now if someone made a game parodying messages in games…THAT would be funny.

  • http://chaoseed.com/garden John Evans

    Anytime anyone says “STOP HAVING FUN!” I get leery.

    By the way…didn’t you guys see that Play This Thing did a piece on Upgrade Complete and Achievement Unlocked a couple of weeks ago?

  • MisterX

    I kind of “like” the idea that the developer is getting infuriated, because an earlier game of his which he thought was really good was perceived as very bad, and now he tried to make Upgrade Unlocked intentionally suck and people just love it.

  • O

    Eh, another reason that it doesn’t work on the same level as AU is that the gimmick isn’t consistently applied.

    Upgrading everything might be possible, but the game often confuses upgrading with unlocking, so upgrading everything by the game’s definition of ‘upgrading’ is impossible.

    Plus there’s at least one thing you get for free when unlocking something else: new music.

    On the other hand, AU is able to achieve exactly what it says on the can.

  • ShawnF

    Not enough tiny elephants to catch my interest.

  • Aaron Acevedo

    Really very happy to say,your post is very interesting to read.I never stop myself to say something about it.