Jim saw this over on the ever-good Indie Games blog and prodded me in its direction. It’s called Takishawa is Dead and is a short, if punishing, indie platformer with a kind of Psychonauts meets 3D Ant Attack feel to it – the latter mainly due to the manually-rotating camera and bits of how the 3D tech look. I turned from it pretty quickly – its very much in the school of platforming that digs falling to your death repeatedly – but it provided a stylish gaming wake up to the day. You can follow its development here, or download its 3Mb file here. Teeny! Teeny! Oh – and video below.
Though it’s a speed run, so don’t watch more than a few seconds to get a taste unless you want to know the solution…
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With the look of the levels, it’s a lot like echochrome on the PSP – but it doesn’t appear to share the actual awesome features, which is a bit of a shame!
gonny play, i love falling to death reeatedly
edit: not in this game
Huh, no mention of the Mondo likeness?
Trippy.
I’ll try it. :)
@Bhazor
Yeah I think Cactus has really cornered the market on TV heads. It was the first thing I thought on seeing the character.
Though I do like the style and such, there’s just not enough control to the jumping for my tastes.
Makes me want to play Mario – or N – for some truly satisfying jumpy action.
Ugh… Really, indie games have a reputation for being unplayable, embracing the weaknesses of older gaming, while instead being based on the limitations of design and hardware are actually intentional.
Nothankyouverymuch, I went ahead and watched the speed run and saw that it would have taken me hours to gain the same amount of understanding. Not that it was hard per se but that it was obfuscated with a poor scale of how far a jump was possible and what the hell you are meant to be doing (made even worse by the limited draw distance).
Christ, it’s bloody awful. Like PoP:SoT never happened.
The jump sound effect alone was enough to keep me from playing it…
Reply to Jay
Also the ending is straight out of Mondo Medicals and it uses the same font for its cryptic gibberings.
Put me down for unimpressed, bad controls, obtuse design (without any Cactus/Karoshi 2 cleverness), truly terrible camera and it manages to be both dull and infuriating. Which is quite a thing when you think about it.
The new Cactus games on the other hand? They all look both neat and clever http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTY494iujdA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPBGgR-WUSk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzXyTScLe7g&feature=channel_page
Why don’t games have proper names anymore? It’s like bands – a few years back it was all ‘The This’ and ‘The That’ (and ‘The The’, ho ho) – now indie games have to have more-cryptic-than-thou names all of sudden. Well I for one am putting my boot through the monitor and sending Kieron Gillen the bill.
No one has mentioned Bug on the Saturn. It looks a lot like Bug to me, and Bug was shit even by Saturn standards.
AAAH, annoying jump sound!
Played it for a while until it crashed. Strange that the speed runner jumped over all those pillars at the start of the vid (0:10 – 0:22) when if you rotate the camera 180 from where he had it you can jump straight to the exit.
Seems from watching the vid if I had taken the lower path (2:39) I would have got to the end… damn bugyness!
its not that bad. i like the style a lot. it would be less frustrating with more. save. points.
You could have warned me it’d do that to my screen, now everything has squashed itself into 800×600 boxes. Is there any way of making it run in a window or is it not worth it?
Psychonauts is one of my favourite games, so I’m glad you related it to Takishawa. That being said, I didn’t take any inspiration from it while making it…
Also, I agree with what jay said about the television-headed -ness. I guess that’s a cactus trademark, huh?
What an annoying piece of crap! The jumping sound is enough to make anyone stop playing.