By John Walker on June 23rd, 2009 at 9:00 pm.
Here’s a gorgeous little puzzle game to warm your cockles. Called Use Boxmen, it’s a deceptively simple Flash game, requiring a decent amount of smarts. There’s tones of Cursor*10, a lot of platform nous, and an interesting play on multiple lives to complete a level.
So each level you have to take your little boxman to reach a cube. But along the way are obstacles and challenges that require more than one character to get past. So your character can spawn a limited number of copies of himself. If he’s stood still, then the clone will be stood still. If he’s running when you hit Shift, then the clone will keep on running until he’s trapped or destroyed. Jump and spawn, and the clone will take an extra leap.
It’s so very cute, the lovely crayon-esque drawings gleefully happy as they dash about to their explodey deaths. This is accompanied by some really lovely music – the only problem being it often seems to just stop and doesn’t come back. As the thirteen levels go by the difficulty ramps up significantly, with some properly tricky puzzles to complete. Way too difficult for my tiny brain by the end. But thankfully there’s a rather splendid walkthrough on JayIsGames.
Once you’re done with it, take a look around creator Greg Sergeant’s games website to play with some of his earlier ideas.
The link to the game is missing.
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Fixed.
I’m so tired and stupid.
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that picture you’re showing is the last one I was able to get to. I could NEVER figure out how to get past that one :( Was fun up until then though.
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Hey cool, I’m the Andrew Martin mentioned in the special thanks =]
I help Greg with a lot of his actionscript-related woes. I was really impressed with what he managed to do with this game; he’s a fantastic animator but has been wrestling with actionscript since he started making flash games (basically learning how to program from scratch). The game is very cool though. Tis a well-implemented idea with some great level design =]
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Gorgeous. Level 6 is a really cute. :D
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I just discovered this game over on Armored games the other day and had a good time with it. Really liked the diifrent ways the box men could act depending on what you were doing when you created then and they way they are used. Reminded me a lot of Lemmings.
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@Serondal. Level 10 is pretty difficult. Leap frogging is your friend. At least it was in my case – I get the feeling there is more than one solution.
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Great game, and great music! I wish he’d put links to the creator’s website.
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I tried putting up a blocker at the far left side then having two leap frog guys set up (one to get him over the gap on his way to the blocker and one to get him back over) Then ran down the passage as fast as I could but still the runner got to the first switch before I could get pass the barrier. I tried to beat it for about a half an hour :P
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You’re on the right track. I had to fiddle around for quite a bit, but if you put another “frog” in instead of the blocker it slows the running dude a little bit.
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Ah, so have him bounce off the wall and come back instead of being blocked. I see, thanks! IS that the final level?
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Nope. I got stuck on the next one :D
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I scraped past that after a glitch forced him to jump against a wall 4 times and then run off to flip levers for me. Can’t remember if I managed the next level- I just remember getting thoroughly stuck on one, looking at the walkthrough and realising I wouldn’t ever have thought of that.
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I just finished playing a horrible flash game called Tinan Man where you go around collecting protesters while tanks try to run over you and shoot you O.o HORRIBLE
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I saw this the other day – got stuck on level 11 I think (the one with the poles). The level in the picture took me a while to figure out, but my solution was to run down rear the end myself, build two blockers and a running guy to run between them. I put one of the blockers on the disabled spiky wall, then went back up and did all the switch pulling myself, the last switch would explode the blocker, I could then turn it back off, and the running guy would get to the end.
Whew.
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Occasionally it has woes from being pixel perfect.
There’s an easy solution to level 10 though, which doesn’t require anything pixel perfect at all. By way of a hint: if you want a switch set right, do it yourself…
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Bah, RodeoClown, way to foil my attempts to be enigmatic…
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as everyone knows there is nothing enigmatic about a RodeoClown ;)
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The last level is so super amazingly unforgiving it burns. It’s a nice game, but the difficulty curve is kinda bad and in some levels you have to restart because of a tiny mistake.
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I got to the level where you had to fall through the spiky balls and jump/clone at the last second, and even though I watched it done on the walkthrough, I still couldn’t manage it. 12 tries later I saw screw this. If they got more difficult from there, I’m glad I didn’t bother.
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I completed it in 10 minutes. I am clearly immense.
Last bit of last level was mostly luck for me though it must be said…
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The last three levels weren’t so bad, because it was pretty clear what you’re supposed to do. It’s just a matter of getting the timing and jumping just right. Maybe there’s a better solution to the last level that I missed.
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I just beat the last level. Was very interesting and hard to DO but not to figure out. I had a really good time playing through this one. Thanks mate
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Way to go RPS. I needed to get to bed early tonight for work tomorrow.
>:|
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I thought the difficulty was ok. The pole mlevel stuck out as the worst for me because you have to set up the level (ad you can easily die while doing it) and then do something that’s very hit-and-miss at the end.
I was gald I persevered though. It’s nice to play a flash game that’s actually challenging and interesting.
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I just about finished this the other day. I say “just about” because the last level was about the fourth time when I had my strategy dead-on when I checked the walkthrough, and it was just my timing that was incorrect.
Lovely little game though.
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First comment on this site…
I just wasted an hour of worktime playing this stinking game. Finally beat it… the one with the poles was easy to figure out but took forever for me to do (the jumping thing has always been my weak point–you’d think all the sonic and mario practice would have paid off, but no…).
Thanks for the link, that was fun.
Cheers,
-Mickey
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That game was f’ing hard. The necessary precision towards the end was annoying. I gave up on the last level, ’cause my guys were flipping the switches at the wrong rates, and I asploded. =[
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how do i beat lvl 10-the race? i cant figure it out >.<
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