Dungeon
Posted by Paul Eres Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:17:00 GMT
Dungeon is a game by a powerful tag-team: Mr. Podunkian (of The Underside fame) and cactus (of dozens of games per year fame). To quote Zarathustra in the forums: “a horribly hard platformer with bad graphics? This is indie people”
My favorite part of the game was the room titles, which I think were a great way of adding an interesting background story to a game without dialogue. It’s a short game, took me about 10 minutes to get to the end, while playing in a window and having a conversation with two people at once (one of them Podunkian). A good indie game snack.
“Dungeon is a tragic platformer about what can happen in a castle, and how it affects people like you and me.” -cactus
EDIT: cactus has an update for us!
Sorry about the radio silence, we felt it was necessary to let this experiment live its own life for a while.
Hah. I love the first quote there.
this game sucks.
TH;CNP (too hard; cannot play)
Yep, the jump mechanic in this is just beyond me. I’m afraid I’ll have to wait for a let’s play of this.
Was hard. But not too hard.
Typically cactus.
this time I have to agree with pleb, very shitty game
I shouldn’t think it was shitty. I liked the raw mechanics behind the platforming, because they were tough and transparently so. You want to crank up the challenge on your platformer? Cap the jump and step on the gas.
It’s like, you load up Jumper or Meat Boy or something like that and look at one of the real hard levels and your heart just sinks, but here, you look at a level, think, oh I can do that, and ten tries later you’re cursing at the screen. But it’s not impossible, and it’s not unfair which are key ingredients to me.
I also liked the story telling aspects, despite the overt minimalism. Yeah, what story there is is told through the room titles, and more than a few of those titles are tongue in cheek. But there’s some pretty clever stuff done as well, and the screen shot Paul has up there is exactly one of those moments where you think, hey, that’s pretty neat.
All in all, a good ten minutes I’m glad I won’t have back.
but jumper and meat boy were good
pleb, you’re a pleb.
I’m funny, me.
finished it in 5 minutes. Its not that hard.
Most difficult Room was “Leap of Faith” because the save spot was 2 screens earlier.
I don’t get why there’s so much fuss about capped jumping. It’s the movement and hitboxes that bug me.
Yeah, I had some unfair deaths because of the hit detection, but that didn’t prevent me from completing this game. I enjoyed it and I liked the end.
Can’t clear the first jump, must have tried 100 times. I love me some cactus games, but I can’t get past that first jump, and I don’t normally suck at platformers. Is there something I’m missing?
Story telling was pretty genius. I really enjoyed this. Jumping as a bit ridiculous at times and I almost gave up.
I agree 100% with Kyle. Great atmosphere, simple mechanics, minimal elements, and creative levels. Second play was even better because I had built the skills to breeze through it. A gamepad is highly recommended.
@Gilbo, maybe you missed the text that says “Z TO JUMP”.
@Gilbo, no matter how I try, can’t get past the first jump either. -_- Loved the art though, too bad I won’t be able to discover what else the game had to offer…
Love the presentation, but that first jump ya, it’s a doozy.
Attention span wasn’t big enough to spend ten minutes mastering that first jump.
Presentation is great, room titles neat, graphics neato with music. Just ya that jump :p
The first jump is definitely the hardest in the game. The rest of it was a cakewalk in comparison.
And just out of curiosity, am I the only person here who got through the triple-spike room (“Pussy!”) on my first try? Looking at the forums, it seems like a ton of people were having trouble with it.
cactus and podunkian? what a bad combination. both do best when they’re working solo.
No one’s made a “Cave Story ripoff” quip yet? I’m shocked! Are we growing up or just forgetful?
Anyway, fun game. “A good indie game snack” sums it up perfectly.
of coarse not because unlike cave story, this game sucks
he meant how The Underside is just a cave story ripoff
Cactus of “making a crap ton of awesome, original games” fame. And Mr.Podunkian of “spending years throwing together a cave story ripoff demo” fame.
After tons of frustration and reading the forums, it looks like the reason some people can’t make the first jump is because of a bug. I followed the suggestion of a forum user and ran Dungeon in Windows 95 compatibility mode and though the game didn’t seem to run very differently, I made the jump on the first try after that. Now to see the rest of the game.
How on earth do you get over the second spike on “The Perils of Self Doubt”?
the game is not hard at all, it’s way too short, why do people bother making games this short, no it is not artful, it’s a lack of effort, please stop making 30 second long games, and I might form shorter sentences in the future.
I enjoyed the game. I did not consider it to be that difficult. The only really challenging room is “Pussy!” and even then I would have done better if I hadn’t died in the next room and been forced to start at the checkpoint.
Room titles made what would have been a short and forgettable game into a satisfying way to spend 5-10 minutes.
-SirNiko
Unfortunately I’m amongst the people who can’t make the first jump. D:
I think there’s some framerate dependent code that’s messing with the jumping for some people.
@Levi: It’s a Mini-LD game, were you expecting a 20 hour epic? (Maybe Paul should note that in the review)
how did you spell zaratustra wrong
he’s in the chat every day, you know this man
wat, zarathustra spells zarathustra wrong, zarathustra is the correct spelling of the prophet he takes his name from, and he knows that perfectly well
Oh, just figured out why the game was so hard.
I changed the exe to run in Win 95 compatability mode and now my character no longer takes 2 seconds or so to accelerate and decellerate.
Dodgy.
So can you jump over the thing in the last room? Trying to avoid specifics. :)
Yeah, but nothing interesting happens that I could see.
About a minute in I realised that this was a bad game, with a few good gimmicks. About 3 minutes in, following the 3rd repeat of a section where a missed, finely placed jump sets you back three screens I realised that the entire game is a cruel prank on the OCD nature of gamers. I then stopped playing. You don’t have to finish bad games. Just walk away. Whatever ending there is is not inherantly more meaningful because you had to suffer to reach it.
Controlling a stumbling moron is not my idea of fun.
Not hard, just pixel perfect. I liked the storytelling.
Hey guys. This game purposefully makes itself impossible for some people. Like, the game is a giant troll. Read the linked thread for details.
Haha brilliant.
I didn’t find the game all that hard (not as hard as I was led to believe, anyway).
Had that retro feel, which was kind of cool, but all in all I didn’t think it was much fun. Just a little artsy diversion, which is what I think it was intended as.
Well, I quite liked it. I didn’t have any issues at all with difficulty. I loved the way the jumping felt.
One thing…I jumped over the sword at the end, but nothing special happened. Is something meant to?
OK, seriously, at the very least if you are on Vista, put it on compatibility mode for Win 95. After getting frustrated on one screen for 15+ minutes, cursing out the controls and super acceleration at the slightest touch, while other times moving short distances like I want to, being very inconsistent, that fixed my problems, gave me normal controls, and I finished it no problem.
It’s easy if it’s running correctly for you. Especially if you’ve played IWBTG at all. =P
Hahaha, the flags are death spikes. Amazing.
Also, @Zaratus, when I use Win 95 compatibility mode the sound is different and the game has no checkpoints. It seems to run normally under Vista for me though.
Wow. People are pretty desperate to explain away why they are bad at something. Just get over it.
Hey, if you’d seen the way it was running for us, at least for me, you’d struggle too. The worst bit is that it looks like the game should be running like that.
Once on compatibility mode difficulty became easy.
I wonder if any of these random posts saying various players suck are the creators goading things on?
I don’t see what you guys are crying about. I’ve had a lot less problems with this game than, say Jumper. Yep, no music loading hitches/inconsistent frame animations/inconsistent hit boxes here.
Though to be certain the hit boxes are off. But, thank god they aren’t inconsistent like a certain series of games requiring complete precision in an imprecise engine.
That’d make the most sense, Z.
For me, the first jump is impossible (running Vista Home Premium 64-bit…yeah, I know, but it works for most things), but in compatibility modes for Win95, 98, and XP I have no problems with the gap. Unfortunately, the save point feature doesn’t work under 95/98, and the moving obstacles are much too fast under XP.
The creators of this game, probably think of themselves as true elitists, make a game thats so crappy you can’t get past the first jump, so the plebs get frustrated=> emotion , and thus the creator is a true artist. He/she made a game that generates real feelings, and critics can go on about the game criticing on certain game-mechanics….
I gotta poop ! ;)
nice music btw
good game I guess now go finish the underside
The jump thing is a bug, this game is so fucking bugged :\ prolly because it was rushed away.
actually it was programmed on purpose so each person has a unique “bug” to deal with. just check out the forum topic
Overdiscussing this crap will only motivate “artists” to make more of those time-wasting “artsy” “games”..
There should be an artsy game blog for this kind of stuff. And let’s hope this game is only trolling and does nothing harmful, like that other recent pseudo-game.
no actually cactus made it
thus no harmful stuff, just intentional bugs.
Oh and I would add, it IS a game, but not a game for us who have wasted our time. It’s a game for the author who must be laughing his ass (while smelling his own farts) looking at users who can play the “game” wonder why others find it impossible. Do we look like lab mice?
“There should be an artsy game blog for this kind of stuff.”
it’s called tigsource, get it right
this game sucks, cactus, you should take a look at those youtube videos where you tell people how to make games without sucking
what. who else could make a game in 48 hours that gets on the frontpage of tigsource, timw’s indiegames blog, and WIRED of all places? and gets more comments in those blogs and in the forums than games that have been worked on for years, like au sable? people will probably remember this game for years, and remember the tricks it used (if in fact the conspiracy theory is true). not to mention all the tigsource frontpage trolls it peeved off (its greatest accomplishment). for 2 days that’s pretty good, i’ve nothing but admiration for it.
I thought it was about independent gaming. So if it’s really about artsy crap as well, maybe you should add a sticker to warn readers when it’s not actually a game. It’s an experience that some may like, but it’s not a game. See, Fathom is making the player think he’s gonna play something else, but it’s a GAME, it has gameplay, graphics, atmosphere. This is just some social experience for a single guy, we haven’t played anything here, we’ve been played with. And not just that, it’s also technically very poor. You could as well talk about the gazillion of little flash games out there if quality doesn’t matter.
Even just for safety reasons you should flag such “games”. It won’t take long until some “artist” looking for attention will intentionally let his “game” do harmful things (without warning this time), just to laugh reading discussions.
I used to like the demomaking scene. But you know how demomakers are, and the day some anti-bill-gates asshole decided to make his demo delete Windows system files, I stopped playing demos. Sad.. but there are kinds of programmers you can’t trust (& it has nothing to do with talent). And I know I wouldn’t trust self acclaimed artists.
Ok so you now admit that making people discuss is a major quality for a “game”.
You don’t know what you’re starting.. I’ll try to avoid testing for the next few weeks, it won’t take long till some asshole makes you all discuss about how his game emptied your HD. You’ll see you’ll remember his game for a long time.
dang, if this game pisses you off, wait until it occurs to you that other games might be doing the same thing in a far more subtle way
The most insightful summation here I think comes from Dst, who says: “I realised that the entire game is a cruel prank on the OCD nature of gamers.”
You should have heard me cursing over and over again the “no pussyfooting” screen. But I’ll own up to the fact that I was the fool for wanting repetitively to beat it. And it’s a pretty clever way to employ the tragic theme.
One poster intimated the game being similar to lose/lose, but Dungeon is a little meatier and the gimmick better because it comes as a surprise. Basically, the punchline is not ruined before you play, which was the former’s drawback by design.
Would you guys really have been more satisfied if Dungeon were the generic platformer it postures as? At least this game has a funny/intriguing concept.
I think I just realized something… I’m willing to believe that the game could have intentional random bugs programmed in it…and that would make it insanely diabolical (plus that last line by cactus).
Think about it. What where the themes? Tragedy…and… …comedy. And this all has certainly been a tad comical.
@anothergol - a warning sticker would defeat what’s in my mind the game’s greatest achievement (getting tigsource trolls angry, giving them some grief in return for all the grief they’ve given others). besides, that’s assuming i was in on the joke, rather than just reviewed the game honestly. how could i have known ahead of time?
besides, why would it matter if paranoid people don’t play the games that are posted here for fear of viruses or gameplay-worshipping gamers don’t play them due to fear of games that try new things? they could always go read other sites if they want standard games, no? there’s joystiq, kotaku, rock paper shotgun, destructoid, wired’s games column (oh wait!), and a thousand others. and yes, generating interesting discussions through trying out new things is one of the values experimental games can bring.
also, assuming the conspiracy theories of this game being intentionally buggy are true (which is by no means proven), if you really needed a warning label, didn’t you see cactus’s video where he said ‘games don’t have to be fun’? or the cactus quote in this very entry? or realize that podunkian is a jerk? those could be interpreted as clues that something else is going on besides the typical way standard games play players through the stimulus/reward cycle.
I for one am both pro-Dungeon and pro-tigsource-trolling.
Greatest Quote of our time (referring to an indie game):
“Braid is beautiful… and overrated.”
Awesome!
paul why do you equate media coverage with a good game? cactus could sneeze on his keyboard and it would be on offworld in 0.2 seconds
also, buzz-word “conspiracy theory”
actually a lot of cactus games never get covered anywhere – have any of you heard of ‘arms’? it’s my favorite cactus game.
anyway, i don’t really believe in ‘good games’, i was talking only of success, not quality.
I’m wondering if there is more than one version. Mine’s 3639 KB, anyone else?
Podunkian and Cactus are both overrated, but this game is pretty cool and funny.
Eh, kind of liked it. Especially the :
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
It was / it wasn’t.. bit…
But can you avoid the dagger at the end? I hit it and the game completely restarted? I really don’t understand the end bit.
That “No Pussyfooting” screen gave me a lot of trouble too at first, with my extreme acceleration thing going on, randomly. Sometimes I’d be able to make a tiny little jump, other times I’d shoot way too far.
It actually felt like those controls were intentional, to make you have to run through the whole thing at top speed, pretty much.
Compatibility mode, making movement normal, made the game a piece of cake. That screen too, became a joke to complete.
Speaking of which, I’m so psyched about his (hopefully) next game, airpirates.
p.s. see the thread or the edit above, cactus just admitted something
Clarify… Genius. Pure genius. As expected from cactus and podunkian.
To correct another commentor, it’s not “unlike”, it’s “just like” in the sentance “just like cave story, this game sucks”
I get the tragedy now. It’s a tragedy this game had so much potential but it’s just so freaking annoying.
Sometimes ‘indie’ is used a little too much to excuse bad workmanship.
Why does it suck like cave story?
Because when you die in this game - which is often - there is an annoyingly long pause before you can play again. Why? Does it take a lot of processing to recalculate all those primitive graphics? If the game has a ten-minute playtime, five of those minutes would be the pauses.
Just like in cave story, which had annoyingly long pauses during coversations that couldn’t be skipped.
lol @ people getting trolled by the game
Clarify = Pretty damn clever, didn’t see that one coming.
Damned pussyfooting one had me going for a while.
Hah, I just decided I wasn’t having any fun and quit after about 15 tries of the same room. Then I moved on with my life.
While I don’t really “get” the fun in this kind of project, I’m pretty sure it cost me nothing but a few minutes of my time.
It looked nice, though.
I really want to know how to make the kind of music that was played in the game. Can anyone link me to a few websites (no plug ins please(unless they are for Reason 4.0)
Thank you
and if they were easy to use that would be great
Now I feel bad for using Windows 95 compatibility mode to finish the game.
I should had waited for 2v and “experience” the “game” as it was intended.
“I for one am both pro-Dungeon and pro-tigsource-trolling.”
LOL at Consumatopia. Cheers mate! :D
lol @ everyone still thinking this game is unfairly hard
Whoa, I really like this concept. Luckily it was 07 for me so I got interesting screen titles and the game was beatable. Now toying around with the other modes…
Haha, I got 06, which apparently makes the cake level impossible, but I got that jump (after many, many tries however), so, I guess it wasn’t TOO impossible XD
lol
Yeah, what Bundt just said goes for me, too.
Nope, no one is gonna put harmful code in a quality game he spent over a year on. In a game he made in 2 days, however.. Someone just looking for attention won’t spend a year on it.
Eh, I’m also curious to know what the sword jump conclusion was. My keyboard won’t let me switch modes, I can’t get any high jumps from compatibility, and my default was slippery physics…
So, I guess I’ll just wait until a non-shanked LP comes out.
It’s not about normal games vs independent games. It’s about independent games vs artsy social experiences. This is not a game, really, or maybe you have to give your own definition of a videogame.
Some devs are still making good games, it’d be sad if those started to be suspected because of some guys. The next time I see a bunch of pixels I won’t know what to think of it. It may be a good, real game like Rockboshers, or just some lame prank like this one - how would we know?
And why wasn’t there any of such artsy pieces of crap 20 years ago? Because there was no internet place where people would have discussed them. Proof that there’s just zero value as a game.
nope. But now I’m warned. Didn’t even try any of his games because they all looked like shit. So if on top of it they’re no fun, that doubles the reason. A guy releasing a game per week can’t make good games anyway. I only tried this because there was another name associated.
THIS should be something for kotaku & others to typically worry about.
ah, so anothergol, you want a site that reviews indie games which try to be like mainstream games, rather than a site that reviews all indie games, including experimental ones? i’m not sure such a site currently exists. feel free to start one. if there are enough people like you who hate experimental games, maybe it’ll even beat tigsource in popularity.
Hey guys. What were your numbers? Mine was 12.
“Indie developers are free to make whatever kind of game they want, but they better make something I enjoy, OR ELSE!!!1!”
i am a communist, and as such, i approve of this experiment
i got 11 good god my shit was so slow
14 = breeze.
@Person: I made the music in Famitracker. Google it if you want to make something similar yourself :)
if they’re like THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lFkXFqHc9E ..totally!
lol, i love you guys… and now i actually was able to complete the game \o/ sometimes even a little flaw can manage to make a game less fun or.. totally unbeatable in this case o.o
this “experiment” wasted a good hour of my time yesterday :P damn you
I was 4… No checkpoints…
I beat it the hard way >:o
What amazes me is that people are boning off about this game just because of who made it. If some random new kid came along and released this then it would be rightly slammed as an awful game.
i did not have a fun time playing this so i shall avoid future titles
, A silo
no, it doesn’t have to be an epic, but tigsource has shown more than just this game on the front page that ends up being two minutes long. Ya know what? That’s fine if you preface that it’s super short and not a traditional game. I don’t think Pathways deserved the acclaim, but at least the author says it’s short and isn’t a typical game.
This is a platformer with Atari~like graphics and a few lines thrown in for story… which don’t add up to anything. If you’re goin to bother making us jump over pits and what~not that’s fine… But this just isn’t good. Sorry. If it’s for a competition, that’s als fine, but that doesn’t mean it deserves front page. Unless they took aother week or two to flesh out the idea… or at least tell us it’s two minutes long!
Anyway, I’m sick of how the indie community is embracing these incredibly short games so much. Portal was a fantastic game despite its length compared to other retail games, but I have yet to see something that only takes a couple minutes meet the acclaim.
These posts are really entertaining after you’ve gone through Clarity.
I like to try to guess what number each person was, my favourite is 79.
These posts are also entertaining from a sociological perspective, especially for those studying subcultures populated with butthurt whiners.
Heh. I really enjoyed the experience after clarity. Ty. Just not again please.
Can’t wait for air pirates though Cactus.
“I have yet to see something that only takes a couple minutes meet the acclaim.”
Fortunately the cost to you in that case is quite minimal: only a few minutes.
I really LIKE the graphics. I don’t think they look crappy at all; I think it’s a very stylish take on a 30-year-old aesthetic.
Ugh, when did the people on the comments here get so shitty?
Guess what, there are game makers out there who do consider themselves artists. You might find them pretentious, maybe even malicious, because you’re used to interactive media being simply fun past times. Tough nuggets. After a certain point, certain sects of a medium decide to push their work in new, experimental directions. For the people concerned with the games as art debate, this is incredibly heartening and exciting. If you have no interest in the philosophy of art as it applies to games, perhaps you’d prefer playing Modern Warfare 2.
A lot of Cactus’ games are like sketches. And that’s what I love about them. Yu once compared the Poppenkast group to the Impressionist movement. Both began using tools that made their work easier to create (tubes of premixed paint, gamemaker). Both were criticised for making things that appeared to be unfinished according to the aesthetics of the period.
Even in the zero bug version of the game, it was frustratingly hard. Two thumbs down.
It’s not a good game. It’s not meant to be, yet many of you still persevered. I got 05 and couldn’t get past the floor spikes. I tried about 30 times to get past, concluding that I should have in all those tries at least once hit the right jumping point.
It’s an interesting idea to see how people react when presented with an unfinishable game whilst others have no problem. Bugs find their way into released games all the time, many are minor, a few are showstoppers but the very worst are the kind that stay hidden a prevent progress.
For it is progression, and the ultimate goal of completion that gamers prize. Many of you weren’t angered by the blocky monochromatic tileset (with bits of claret for danger), or the poor checkpoint placement, the story with little impact, or the keyboard capture code that can cause a jump to occur milliseconds later (actually, that last one might just be my hardware).
This demonstration strongly highlights the importance of how both challenge and progression are incredibly important to game design. Even though promoting one usually hinders the other. Even though it’s not a good game, we play to experience it, preferably to the end. When the challenge increases we still play, eager to beat it and we enjoy the moment we do.
But raise the difficulty to infinity by blocking progression and the enjoyment stops. Some people may have given up before this, unable to meet the demands of difficult but still completable sections. But at this point many still keep trying and they try for much longer that those who fell before. In language of games there isn’t the word impossible, at least not in the mainstream dialect.
Impossible doesn’t exist in the mainstream because as much as increasing the challenge can tap into our competitive nature, nobody likes to lose (Unless dwarves are involved). However, subverting the language of games in this fashion can be made to work. The trick is to make the act of failure part of progression. It’s done more often than you think and even in the mainstream.
^ worthy of pigscene
“And why wasn’t there any of such artsy pieces of crap 20 years ago? Because there was no internet place where people would have discussed them. Proof that there’s just zero value as a game.”
anothergol, I don’t see how that’s proof of anything except the changing of our times. Does Dungeon rely on discussion to make it an interesting experience? Yes, but it’s a form of metagaming. Naturally most players will be curious to find out what’s up with Dungeon, so the internet forums become part of the experience. I see nothing inherently wrong with that.
Why don’t you give Cactus’ other games a shot man? Screenshots don’t really do them justice. Try Psychosomnium, Decontrologic, Stench Mechanics, or if you’re looking for a challenge, Mondo Medicals. I would like to hear your thoughts on these.
Stuart knows what he’s talking about: “The trick is to make the act of failure part of progression.” I can’t help but thinking a few folks here are sour because they invested a lot of time on an “unwinnable” game, when the concept of the game is richly rewarding.
Hdarren, it’s not really fair to make a statement like that when there is plenty of negative feedback here. Also, regardless of whether your statement is true or not, I fear it may be discouraging to an artist who has given so much to this community for free.
Sometimes you have to stop and laugh at someone’s good joke, other times you stop and realize you are someone’s good joke. Sounds like this is a game that plays the players.
Mmmh no, 30 years ago people were already staring at a plain red painting, snobbishly discussing “I like how his bright red describes all the suffering in the world”. In fact, it was worse - today’s snobbish self-acclaimed art is still ugly, but shows more work.
What has changed is that tools made it possible for such snobbish artists to make & share their crap easily. Even if this crap game had been made 30 years ago, no way it would have been shared through discs or BBSes, it would have gone to the trash bin immediately.
And fine if you like to stare at such pieces of crap, but that’s spitting in the face of real artists, and (again), encouraging more of this trolling crap. I don’t wanna imagine all the harmful ways of playing with players. There should be a new “filter bad games” tab in my antivirus for this kind of thing :)
Oh and to the artist: I don’t see the point of the fake rasterizing over the image. If you want to make it realistic, learn your tools, it can end up interesting to see a realistically-modelled fake CRT with the rounded corners, color bleeding & all. But if it’s to just add a lame texture over the whole image.. meh.. although I suppose one will come up with an artsy excuse for that.
@anotherTroll
Maybe this is completely lost on you, but this ‘art’ wouldn’t have been possible 30 years ago. There was no no retro aesthetic, no Indie community, and most of all, no Internet.
cactus and podunkian set out to make a game with the theme ‘Comedy and Tragedy.’ By all accounts, it’s been a rousing success.
Also, regarding the CRT: “This game was created in two days for Mini Ludum Dare 14.”
48-fucking-hours.
I’m not going to argue whether or not the art itself is ‘pretentious’, but you, sir, need to FUCK OFF AND DIE
..you mean it was the same aesthetic, just not called “retro”?
pretty much all games were indie at that time
that’s exactly my point. The internet combined with people looking for attention made this game.
wow, “I’m indier than you because I make crap games in 5 minutes”
This is an AWESOME comment thread. And therefore the game is AWESOME. QED.
Then, by reading this thread, I must, therefore, be AWESOME!!
The length did bother me. My favourite Indie Game is 1 minute long, so to sit through several minutes was incredibly long winded.
anothergol, the reason nobody can take your comments seriously is because it sounds like you actually hate the game, as if you have something personal against it or the authors. You call it “snobbish, self-acclaimed art” but all the acclamations of it being art have come from these internet threads, not from the authors themselves. Not that there is anything bad about artists calling themselves artists, you just sound jealous by making spurious arguments like this.
”..you mean it was the same aesthetic, just not called “retro”?”
Yep. Context is everything.
After Clarity, (I was number 0 the first jump impossible), i had a good laugh.
I thought everybody was in on it.I saw posts on forum about: spikes, pussies and what not And couldn’t figure it out. very nice!
And the amount of comments proves it importance.
I’m happy for the game’s success too, but let’s not kid ourselves here. Just because something is discussed a great deal doesn’t make it important.
theres a kid down my street that could do something like this. if i ask him politely enough he might let me upload it and then make internet people even more happy for playing a kids game
yeaAA!
Whether or not he would use these exact words, Cactus trolled us. Hard and well. I for one intend to take it like a man. Well played, you S.O.B. And for those questioning Cactus’ competence as a game designer: play “Clean Asia!” The man can brew up an awesome non-art game just as well as he can a thoroughly artsy one.
@KC - I don’t understand. What exactly did Cactus do? How did he “troll” us? I can’t feel trolled until I know what’s going on!
@Huh?
Did you play the game? Did you (after playing the game) have the moment of clarity?
It seems to me (not having played Dungeon) that much of the art of this game is in the discussion it generated, rather than in the game itself. And it seems to me (having read this thread) that it’s pretty decent art.
Thanks, Cactus and Mr. Podunkian. I kind of wish I’d played this so I could have contributed to the confusion. …Really looking forward to The Underside and BDTUW!
I did play the game, both version 1 (as far as the three upright spikes) and 2 (all the way). I also played clarity, but no clarity was forthcoming.
Maybe I’m just stupid - can you explain what meaning I was supposed to get from it all?
The game is intentionally “bugged”. There’s no “meaning” per se, it was designed to generate confusion and get people like anothergol all riled up. ;)
It is simply a joke. Sometimes the only way to escape a dungeon is to press the ESCAPE key. (A funner, but less graceful, game that explored this conceit to exhaustion would be Karoshi 2.0)
I sympathize with your confusion Mr. Huh? as cactus’ efforts to provide a hint were vague and wordy: “How what happens in a castle… affects you and me” or something like that? Excuse me?
A better tagline might have been: “What happens in a dungeon… stays in a dungeon.”
did any of the negative commenters here consider that games do not have to take place solely within the application posited to be “the game”? read auntiepixelante if you’d like to know more about this, she has some really interesting thoughts on gameplay outside of the data files of the game, and she’s made a few games that take advantage of this.
the idea that a game is contained only in the game itself makes no sense anyway, it’s what happens in the brain that matters. cf. situationists international
This is getting deep O_O
haha, everything is deep if you think about it enough.
“So deep…” -Marie Forså (Swedish porn actress)
I still don’t get the joke, even after hearing it explained. So it’s a platform game with some bugs. So what? I didn’t feel trolled. I didn’t feel enlightened. I enjoyed the puzzles. When I couldn’t complete v1 I tried v2 and finished it, which is perfectly normal for a developing game. If there’s some great meaning here, cactus, it’s too obtruse for me. It just seemed like an average game.
cactus said it wasn’t intended to be a joke, just an experiment. the experiment was: what would happen if a game acted differently on different computers, easy on some, hard on others, impossible on others? it doesn’t have a “meaning” in the way you’re thinking, it was just an interesting experience
lol @ all the angry angry gamers who are personally offended that this game was not only made, but that some people somewhere actually enjoyed it. I find it pretty fun to read the comments and figure out who got what bug. It’s like we all got a different present from the creator! Then again, I got one of the better bugs - annoying sound mode.
Well, that said, I wanna say it was a very fascinating experiment. Reading this board was the best part, and I’m happy for everyone who contributed.