By Kieron Gillen on August 25th, 2009 at 3:45 pm.
Michael Nørskov points me in the direction of this. It stars the elephant from Achievement Unlocked and is a metagame tinged piece of platform puzzling. It’s called This Is The Only Level. And it is. But it’s an awesome level and some of the puzzle solutions worked into it are plain brilliant. Others are funny. The best are both. Saying any more would spoil ‘em. You really should play it.
You know, I could have sworn there’s been articles with both this and Fig 8 here before. Only because i have seen both these before and I only ever seem to learn about these games from this blog. Am I being mental?
The game is really fun though. Then I got stuck.
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Actually it appears to be called “This Is The Only Level”. Not havin’ much luck with the Flash game posts this week eh? :D
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I would have played it just for the elephant. The fact that game is fun is just bonus for me (I haven’t yet, at work).
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Brilliant! And I really like the music. :)
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I don’t think it’s quite as good as the brilliant Achievement Unlocked but still very good. I think that elephant might just be my favourite platforming character of all time. Commander Stryker (the star of Stryker’s Run and Codename: Droid) will always hold a special place in my heart but he was just a generic space marine with a really bad name. Where as this elephant, well simply an inexplicable blue jumping elephant isn’t it, nothing can compete with that, it’s just pure genius.
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Andrew: There’s a walkthrough link at the bottom of the page.
Schadenfreude: Fixed. And never.
KG
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“This Is The Only Level. And there is.”
Well, almost fixed. =D
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11:10 and 134 deaths, mostly on the fiddly mouse control level where a flick left meant a stream of elephants flying from entrance into spikes.
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you mean i played something BEFORE it was on RPS? Boy is my finger on the pulse.
Some of them were annoying (just waiting around is not a puzzle ‘solution’, some were clever or funny, and the zoomed one was great.
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14:12:75
Deaths: 89
Nice :)
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I thought the “Credit Page” is the last screen.
Because, well, This Is The Only Level…
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10:57.90 and 69…
Very good. More like this please.
And @Persus-9, re. Codename Droid – did you ever get an end sequence when you finished the game or did it just hang for you too?
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For more similar (and plenty different too) check out the author’s website, http://jmtb02.com/games/
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I got to 30 and couldn’t be bothered trying to find the inevitable hidden levels after it.
There are hidden levels after it, right?
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11:19:92.5 Deaths:37
Easier than Achivement Unlocked at least.
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I found the refresh one frustrating, partly because I use firefox and its actually reload – very confusing!
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12:01:92.5
Deaths: 73
Most of the ideas were okay, but Achievement Unlocked was way better. I still love all those little meta games. Give me more!
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11:15 and deaths:100
Funnnnnn :)
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I think this is the last Armor Games game I’ll play. The level of condescension they present is just revolting.
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@MacBeth: Codename: Droid never hung for me but that might well be because I was very young and very rubbish the last time I played it in anger so I never got anywhere near the end.
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9:28
Deaths 59
It’s certainly imaginative, and the music is ace!
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meh.
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9:07
63 deaths
Quite fun.
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Love it.
A concept game that is actually fun.
Now there is a new concept.
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Every stage name gives you a hint that’s usually big enough to help you figure out how to beat it no matter how arcane the level appears.
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12:25:82.5
Deaths: 80
Fun!
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Took me just shy of 15 minutes, a nicely diverting wee game that.
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Very fun game and great music.
10:13
58 deaths
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Yeah, that’s the one I got to as well
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Elephant is sufficiently popular to spawn: Run Elephan Run
@DK: You should give them a chance. Most of their other games are not meta-gamey at all. They also can end up being as derivative as anyone else. Worth looking at are Llama Adventure (because Llama’s are awesome. And from Peru.) and Silent Conversation (which I find interesting if quickly boring)
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Gah. Had to cheat on the Credit Page level. I knew what to do, but couldn’t figure out where the credits were.
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Click on the credits button on the main menu.
It unlocks the next level
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I love this, and Achievement Unlocked, to little bits.
11:43:02.5 / 107. AU I only got to 92% (missing “Get Off Your Seats”, 72–75 [the colours, although since found how], or 77/78 [programmer credits, contra]; 99 is presumably automatic on 100% completion), before trying reloading on that (which I played first) to see if that was one. It reset them all instead. Boo.
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If you want more metagames you could play Turn Based Battle: http://armorgames.com/play/4305/turn-based-battle
It’s a JRPG parody (a pretty good one, I thought).
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Very, very good. Better than all the meta-games so far, because it offers quite inventive stuff each time around.
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I loved the story in the Achievements game where someone refused to look at the walkthrough, even though there was an achievement for doing so.
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Got to the first bouncing level, and got fed up with my ham-fisted ineptness.
Fun idea, though.
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8:52, 38 deaths. Music was ace.
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About 9 minutes with about 40 deaths, but I had to use the walkthrough once. Sadly I noticed the stage names in the stage after the one I had cheated in.
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08:51:82.5
Deaths: 40
This was fun. ^_^
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I think the deaths it shows you at the final screen are only counted from the Time to Refresh stage
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9:03:50 WITH (ahem, caps still on) 34 deaths. That was great fun! I love these commentary within gameplay games. Well done.
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@medwards
Oh wow that first bit of Run Elephant Run is hard. But once you get the hang of it everything clicks.
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11:04, 56 deaths
Just as enjoyable as the last. Love that little elephant.
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Achievement Unlocked was not fun at all. Interesting from a game as a comment on aspects of gaming, but that’s it. So I’m going to give this one a pass. And even if it’s a good try-not-to-die platformer, I’d rather play knytt stories.
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A pretty decent way to spend seven minutes. Some of the puzzles, like the Credits one, were clever.
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Run Elephant Run was actually the first game starring the elephant. The Turn-Based Battle game that someone posted here is really good though, and made by the same guy who made Upgrade Complete.
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The odd thing about this game is that there were definitely three or four levels where I just… played normally, without noticing the special mechanic for that stage. Did anyone else find this a little odd?
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@aoanla – me too. I couldn’t tell what the special mechanics were for a few levels.
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I say, how turribly inventive.
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5:37:.5
40 faults
get raped
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