MSOIDS is a version of Asteroids with garish hand-scribbled art. Apparently made in four hours by messing about in MS paint and adding the results to a simple vector thinger, it makes an exceptionally tricky, eye-wincing version of the game. The madly scribbled explosions make it a special kind of bastard to get a hi-score at, but hey, you can press spacebar for new colour schemes.
Far more interesting, and developed in a mere seventy two hours by the same folk, is the nightmarish and crude puzzle FPS Mondo Medicals. The levels are “impossible” in that Escher way, and are a challenge to get past without becoming disorientated. Backtracking and going against intuition is key to defeating these spatial puzzles. (Why don’t more games have spatial puzzles. And why aren’t there more pure-puzzle FPS games? Eternal questions.) There’s also an alarming pixellated horror theme, with a TV-faced man yelling about cancer, and some screaming maw thing motionless in a room. It’s… unique.
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Wow, you guys really trawl the depths of Indie gemes for us don’t you? I can’t imagine the shit you must play that *aren’t* worth a post :)
There is some amount of shit.
Now THAT’s what I call linear gaming @ the first Mondo level. You guessed it, I’m stuck. At the first level.
Psst, the clue is in my post.
“Backtracking and going against intuition is key to defeating these spatial puzzles.”
Must.. have.. Portal..
(Apparently it’ll be unlocked at Midnight PST on Oct 10th, though it’s not clear precisely /which/ midnight they’re referring to…)
Apparently Amazon aren’t unlocking my copy of the Orange Box before October 25th.
Wow – Mondo is very very strange – I like the counter intuitive puzzles.
btw the MSOIDS link goes to Mondo – prolly because it does that on the developers site too.
http://www.willhostforfood.com/users/dorkman/msoids.zip
Oops, that was me being a sleepy spaz. Fixed.
Finally completed Mondo. The ending was, well, I couldn’t say I don’t know what was coming.
How do you do the push against walls level. There is the two arrows room, that seems the key…
> Why don’t more games have spatial puzzles. And why aren’t there more
> pure-puzzle FPS games? Eternal questions.
It’s on my huge list of “games to write before I die”. :)
One of the problems with writing a first-person puzzle game is that you get a very “closed” view of the world. Third-person gives you a better sense of the world around you.
On the other hand, first-person means not having to model and animate the main character, which is incentive enough for indie/hobbyist game developers like myself. :)
It’s interesting, as some of the first filled-3D games were COMPLETELY puzzle games. The Freespace games – Driller, Castle Master, etc – were pure puzzlers.
KG
It’s not a puzzler, but talking of early 3D games, something reminded me of Micronaut One on the Spectrum the other day:
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/43/mnaut.htm
Very impressive race/shoot em up. Gotta love this quote from the review:
“The loading screen is a letdown – but the rest is fantastic”