By Alec Meer on April 6th, 2009 at 8:17 pm.
There really isn’t enough passive aggression in game titles. Come on, developers – dare us. Mock us. Lure us into sampling your fine wares by snootily claiming we won’t be able to handle them. I want to see “That End Boss Is Totally Going To Smoke You”, “Bet You Can’t Beat My Mum’s Lap Time” and “If You Don’t Play This You’re Like All Dumb And Stuff.”
So this oh-so-simple platformer‘s smug/pessimistic title was an expertly effective gauntlet thrown down before me. “You Probably Won’t Make It?” Graaah! Kill you!
Rather unfortunately, its creator Jesse Venbrux wasn’t wrong. I’m rubbish, me. Or, more accurately, incredibly impatient. Can has shooting man in face now plz? You, however, like to run around town talking about how awesome you are at everything and how everyone else is stupid, so clearly you’ll want to best this and then perform 112 self-celebratory pelvic thrusts outside the town hall. Chicks totally dig a guy who can complete incredibly difficult lo-fi indie platform games, after all.
It’s short, it’s straightforward and visually it looks like a sadistic Etch-a-Sketch, but it’s platforming at its most hardcore – exact jumps, double-jumps and spike-avoidance, with each foul-up throwing you back to the start of the increasingly brutal levels. Your only assistance is a ghostly line showing the path you took last time around. Meanwhile, a traumatically-swelling mass shows the blood sprayed by all your dismembered corpses to date. It might look a serial killer playing with Windows Paintbrush, but seeing the red stain grow is curiously demoralising.
In that respect, it has something in common with a Venbrux game we’ve posted about before, Deaths, but this is a dramatically more challenging affair, almost to the point of masochism. There’s nowt that’s novel about it, but c’mon, that title – can you really resist?
Oh, and Venbrux’s current project is 21 Prototypes – in which he makes a game in just an hour, for 21 days (though it’s been on hiatus for a few weeks). An hour! Haven’t had the chance to try any yet, but his crazy plan’s bound to result in a few wee gems.
06/04/2009 at 20:18 Nick says:
I did 145 pelvic thrusts.
06/04/2009 at 20:21 Fumarole says:
No linky?
Found it: http://www.venbrux.com/blog/?p=46
06/04/2009 at 20:39 Xercies says:
You know things are bad when you can’t pass the first level…. :(
06/04/2009 at 20:52 Adrian says:
uh where can i get the game?
06/04/2009 at 20:53 Rob says:
Decided on sight that level 14 was too hard and gave up – certainly a tricky little game.
06/04/2009 at 20:59 Adrian says:
i wish there was less blood every time you die because then you could really see how often u died. the first time you bleed somewhere there is so much blood and then the next time you die there you hardly see more blood than before.
06/04/2009 at 21:13 Ralff says:
It should actually be called “You Definitely Won’t Make It.” Level 18 is literally unbeatable, unless they’ve updated it since I’ve played.
06/04/2009 at 21:24 Johann Tor says:
I like how the banner advertises a lawyer ‘concentrating in personal injury & wrongful death cases’
06/04/2009 at 21:59 Mr. Brand says:
“Your mum’s lap time?” Is she a dancer?
06/04/2009 at 22:02 El Stevo says:
On level 10 you can skip all the hard stuff and jump straight to the platform.
06/04/2009 at 22:19 TBSliver says:
Yea… got to level 18. thats the level… :S
06/04/2009 at 22:20 Marcin says:
Can’t download. Anyone got a mirror?
06/04/2009 at 22:20 TBSliver says:
Ok that link didnt work. ignore me….
06/04/2009 at 22:22 time says:
Suck it Down!
06/04/2009 at 22:30 unclelou says:
Pixel-perfect jumping, combined with floating after landing. Urgh. My life’s too short. :p
06/04/2009 at 23:24 El Stevo says:
Level 18 is intended to be impossible, so don’t waste your time trying to get past it.
06/04/2009 at 23:34 clinicallyinane says:
On a related note, what does one call a fear of jumping? The spikes. The spikes.
07/04/2009 at 01:11 hun23 says:
made it to level 4…
07/04/2009 at 01:42 noom says:
Also abandoned ship on level 14. Just a bit too mleh. Plus I noticed that even if your momentum is pretty slow moving sideways midair, if you change direction you’ll start moving at full whack. Enough to make me grumble about design faults and give up while still feeling self righteous.
07/04/2009 at 01:46 Mister Uhm says:
daz stoopid
07/04/2009 at 01:46 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Gave up at level 6.
07/04/2009 at 01:56 D says:
Couldn’t get past the “press any key” screen.
07/04/2009 at 02:05 Down Rodeo says:
My experience at this was made more interesting by the top part of the screen being cut off. One of the more interesting bugs I’ve seen with Wine… it even made the level screenshots go funky. Given that I am impressed that I got to level 3 (I hit the exit on level 2 by accident as I couldn’t see it).
07/04/2009 at 02:59 asdf says:
Also could not get past the “pree any key” screen, any solutions? The .exe stops responding any time it’s run.
07/04/2009 at 07:42 Pempt says:
Same here, stuck on “any key”. I feel irritated even before starting the game! It certainly does its job well.
07/04/2009 at 08:11 Helm says:
I gave up on level 17. Good to know 18 is unbeatable because I probably would have tried for a few hours. I somehow can’t resist these sorts of platformers.
07/04/2009 at 10:25 ylw says:
Is Level 18 actually the last level? I’ve died so many times… This game is evil incarnate.
07/04/2009 at 12:26 Duke says:
Good thing it saves your progress. By level 17 and several failed attempts the game took up more than 400mb of my ram and everything was beginning to lag. Something’s terribly wrong with the blood effect it seems.
07/04/2009 at 13:07 Hypocee says:
As noted in passing on its page, this is a sequel to the much more positive You Made It, a game that takes similar mechanics to a much more interesting place – basically The Unfinished Swan with your own blood. It’s twenty minutes of fun, it mostly avoids the frustration of these pixelcore platformers because you sometimes ‘have’ to die, and you get a souvenir at the end!
07/04/2009 at 13:32 Supraliminal says:
I made it!! (almost)
My summary:
-Press any key: I’m puzzled
-Lev. 14. Annoying, but beatable.
-Lev. 18. Impossible.
I could have tried it for ages, but then a error busted the game and I gave up. Which is a good thing, if it really is impossible.
07/04/2009 at 14:07 Kanakotka says:
It’s not that hard, especially when you have a little macro program and bind the jump key somewhere else than your up arrow, it becomes a million times easier.
07/04/2009 at 14:22 Kanakotka says:
And level 18, contrary to the belief of some in here, is certainly not impossible.
07/04/2009 at 17:29 wviperw says:
Drawing the path of your last attempt is interesting, akin to racing a ghost car, but I think a few simple changes would’ve made it more useful. It should draw the player path for the last 5 or 10 attempts and either fade out the paths over time or change colors for each new attempt. This gives a better “histogram” type effect of past failures allowing the player to adjust accordingly. Also, the death effect could be made better if you could see distinct death locations rather than large swaths of red covering entire chunks of the map and again, show the last 5 or 10 deaths.
07/04/2009 at 18:15 mar says:
Oh not impossible?
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/5724/wont.jpg
How can you get over that? Unless theres some kind windowflip trick.
07/04/2009 at 23:44 Auspex says:
More like you definitely won’t make it. The game inexplicably crashed right after I had died my umpteenth death on level 16. I was just getting the hang of it too…
On the whole, I found this less engaging than that platformer you guys mentioned a few months ago (can’t recall the name) where it goes online to collect the death locations of other recent players. And only one music track? That’s just cruel.
08/04/2009 at 02:58 mike says:
If you like this game you need to play a more polished version called Jumper. (http://www.mattmakesgames.com/games.php)
I spent literally months in college beating Jumper 1 and 2 and Redux. Incredibly addicting, and stat and time-keeping. If you only play one, play jumper 2. Be warned though, it is highly addictive.
08/04/2009 at 03:32 ClarkGable says:
There has to be a way to flip or do something to level 18. Why else would those spikes be on the top half of the screen (lining the walls)? Why else would there be a blank spot ABOVE the blank spot you’re expected to jump into? The way it is initially is certainly, 100% impossible. But there’s gotta be a tweak or something (someone wanna check the source code or something? maybe?)… ugh.
08/04/2009 at 17:23 El Stevo says:
Go to the link where you downloaded the game. Scroll down and read some of the creator’s posts in the comments. He did not intend for level 18 to be possible. There is a chance the level is possible, but the creator didn’t intend it to be so. Levels 19 and 20 don’t exist.
There is a trick to the level, which is that it’s possible to land on the edge of the platforms next to the spikes.
It’s definitely possible to land on point 1 as illustrated on the diagram, but you can’t make it past all the spikes from there. It might be possible to jump to point 2 from point 1, but there is a pixel less space to land on than at point 1.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/337/level18.png
It depends on how sensitive the collision bounds are. There’s either 2 pixels that are safe to land on at point 1 and 1 safe pixel at point 2, which would make the level possible, or there’s 1 safe pixel to land on at point 1 and 0 at point 2, which would make it impossible. I don’t care to experiment.
10/04/2009 at 08:02 MeestaNob! says:
I made it to level 5 before I wanted to kill everyone in the world. Twice.
I’m weak!
16/04/2009 at 15:44 mmmuus says:
This is probably the memory leakiest game I have ever played. On level 18 it took about 1.8GB of RAM and then the blood started disappearing.