By Alec Meer on November 20th, 2009 at 8:58 pm.
Confession time! I have never played a game by mad-brained indie wunderkind Jonathan ‘Cactus’ Söderström before. No idea why – despite Jim regularly giving his games an approving nod, in that stern, stoic Jim Rossignol way of his, I’ve managed to miss every single one. Dungeon, his collaboration with one Arthur ‘Mr. podunkian’ Lee (what is it with these names? I’ve gotta get me one. Call me Alec ‘Windows Sound Recorder’ Meer from now on, if you will), rather confirms my opinions from afar – that the chap is making splendid but oddball independent videogames that will please anyone who doesn’t scream “pretentious!” the second they’re faced with something even slightly artistically-minded. Not that Dungeon is necessarily artistically-minded – it has another agenda…
It’s a platformer. It’s a hard platformer. It’s a retro platformer. It’s a very short platformer. It tells a story in novel fashion. It will make you swear, a lot. It’s a bit naughty (not sex-naughty. The other naughty). I like it.
To entirely appreciate why I like it, you’ll need to play bonus mini-game Clarity after (seriously – after. Please don’t do it first) you’ve got as far as you care to. All will make sense, and you’ll either chuckle or scream when it does.
To those who finish/decipher it, please avoid spoilers of any kind. You might want to leave your number, though.
12
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42
Going to check this out though ;-)
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42
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I played Dungeon earlier on in the week. Not really surprised by what Clarity told me as I suspected that ludic hijinks and tomfoolery were afoot.
It reminds me of Jet Set Willy without the colour chart copy protection.
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10
Which explains why it was so hard to understand what was brilliant about it. But assuredly, it is brilliant. What was yours Jim? Some of those are just evil.
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Haha. Sorry Alec :) Alec “Jim” Meer.
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03. Though the first time I saw the level, I thought I had 01 until I manned up and tried it.
Interesting little concept.
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Hahah.. I had actually played the original version of this a few days ago, but Clarity really does live up to its name.. Also: Son of a bitch! Unlucky 13 – that explains a bit.
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Completed it. Played Clarity. Didn’t get it. Someone explain to me what the punchline is.
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Ok, but spoiler free. Clarity has a screen ‘E=MC2′ that explains the rule of the number. Then look at the rosetta number. For instance, I was 10, so..
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Oh yeah – as for Cactus, the guy churns out a game every few days. Here’s just the ones that he’s left unfinished:
http://www.vimeo.com/1519005
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07
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Er….01?
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I don’t get it either…is it because I played dungeonv2 instead of v1?
booo! help me help myself! tell me whatcha see
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For those who haven’t figured it out yet, and in an appropriate enough format:
Gur tnzr trarengrf n ahzore sebz 00 gb 15 onfrq ba lbhe CP, hfreanzr naq bgure enaqbz inevnoyrf. Vg gura gnxrf guna ahzore, naq nccyvrf gur rssrpg sebz gur gnoyr pbeerfcbaqvat gb vg.
Guvf pna or nf fnsr nf znxvat whzcf rnfvre, be nf pehryyl ivpvbhf nf znxvat gur irel svefg whzc vzcbffvoyr, be rira ercynpvat nyy gur ebbz anzrf jvgu zber nofgenpg gvgyrf. V tbg ‘Ab raqvat’, juvpu jnf n ovg bs n ohzzre.
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02 here, so didn’t come off that badly.
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00. I am disappoint.
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8
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13. Yep! It’s my kind of hell alright.
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Pretentious!
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“in that stern, stoic Jim Rossignol way of his”
Would the correct adverb for this be “Rossigneurial”?
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I approve of this post, and nominate Rossignuerial be enshrined next to Peggle in the RPSian lexicon.
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Not entirely convinced I got it.
13
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8, and Cactus is a horrible person.
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Interesting… 03…
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It was unplayably laggy on my system for some reason. I tried it on another computer and I couldn’t even get past the first jump. Not going to waste my time.
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*snrk*
I got 5, which explains why I was so exasperated at the total bullshit of those spikes.
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Haha, awesome.
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Oh man the game got you!
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Hahaha the first casualty
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13 :(
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Odd, I got 04 but it didn’t work. :( I still had CP’s.
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Haha, brilliant! I got lucky 7, but I have no idea what it does…
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Oh, now I realize that it actually never showed up on mine, and it stayed at normal. Bummer…
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Same for me. I was supposed to have 6 but it just stayed normal.
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Okay, sorry, but I REALLY hate this type of game. I don’t mind whether it’s pixel perfect movement or hard to handle characters, but games like these seem intentionally made to have you fail. Again, and again, and again. And then again. Feel free to remind me again when I’m in the mood to feel annoyed and frustrated.
I don’t care about the message and to be sure I didn’t play Dungeon for that long, but then again, for what I got it didn’t deserve any more, regardless of message (at the end). The flying pig game was at least rewarding in that it was the pig who could.
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*what would be an edit* I mean, games with messages are fine and often interesting. But this game’s first gameplay doesn’t reward it my attention for long enough to make it that far. They should at least make it a bit more worthwhile. Or at least bearable. Although I was surprised they had save points.
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Each to their own, I guess.
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11. Also, fucking spikes.
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That was… interesting. 02, but I didn’t even notice it.
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I got 6 and was beaten by the cake.
LOL
(it might be worth mentioning to play the original and not v2 until after clarity…)
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14!
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Lucky sonuvagun.
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06. I hate cake.
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[Naughty! I totally said "no spoilers in comments"]
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The face looks a bit like that Gesundheit monster to me, nice. :)
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Cactus’s site is down, if anyone knows of any mirrors so I could play the rest of his stuff, I’d be grateful.
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Ah, so version 2 doesn’t have the effects (unless you use debug mode).
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12
God dammit, that’s why it took forever!
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07. Ha, wouldn’t have guessed it wasn’t the default if not for Clarity.
Gave me a big guffaw at the end, so I guess I liked the game? Not sure!
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05, and I failed you Alec. Couldn’t get past Perils of Self Doubt, so I Google’d it before playing Clarity. One of the comments vaguely gave it away.
Fortunately I’m the kind of guy who can appreciate a joke even after it’s been explained. Thumbs up for pretension!
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Thanks for writing about the game. I’m glad y’all enjoy it!
Almost all my games should be online on my site now (to be sure, try the url my nick is linked to). Sorry for that.
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I love how devs actually bother to come on RPS. It tends to mark out, y’know, the good ones. Thanks for the fix. -downloads everything, ever-
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02 Cheeky buggers :P
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I got 09, but I don’t think it worked.
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03
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02. The bastard :D
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02, christ it was awful. At least I could youtube the end.
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That’s numberwang!
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I was 02.
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I played thinking “this is actually not too bad” and managed to win. So: Number 14 :)
The title of the third screen of ‘Clarity’ was a bit of a shock.
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D’OH! When he said “bugfree version” on the website, I assumed that it was the one I’d want to play. Considering that you know what aren’t bugs…maybe he should change it to a more apt name?
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04, and I am master of the first jump, thank you very much. But I never made it past the red lion before I gave up.
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I got 6.
I also beat the cake level.
doesnotcompute
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Mine was 14, so I managed to get through the entirety of Dungeon. Then I played Clarity and didn’t get it because until I read this thread I didn’t know the number it gave you corresponded to which game you played.
That was supposed to be easier? :-o
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07. Fucking spikes. I swore a lot.
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06. Yeah, managed to beat the Cake level too. After a lot of deaths and crying and timing the momentum of the run and jump just right.
But, I have to ask, is there more than one ending?
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08, though I felt a bit stupid considering how long it took me to get the ending :).
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I got 11. Hella, hella laggy, but then it all made sense.
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01
Which, let me tell you, makes for a darn short game.
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05. Which wasn’t too big a deal.
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02 haha now I understand
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Am I the only idiot who can’t jump over that first hole in the floor?
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It’s important to read Alec’s entire piece above, and do as it suggests.
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I’m just not getting the point, if there even is a point? Feeling dumb today :S
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As Vinraith says, go read Alec’s post more carefully. Said post suggests that, since you can’t get any further, you should go play Clarity. This will explain everything.
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Well in v2, I made the first jump like nothing… I wasn’t stupid, it was a bug (see changelog).
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Ooor… Clairty provides clarity :P
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The one problem I have with this as a video game is that it isn’t “hard” or “oldschool” – it’s just shit. IWBTG is hard, and its controls are very accurate. This? This feels like floating through some sort of mystical matter made of combined molasses-and-ice or something. The controls are stupidly unresponsive, and that makes the game artificially hard instead of it actually being hard and giving the player the tools to beat it.
Edit: oh, alright, the number’s in the other one. 09, then. Guess I came off easy.
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Also, don’t forget that this was a two-day experimental project. I don’t think there was any balancing, tuning or tweaking planned. Almost the opposite, in fact, as you are now aware.
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he’s Cactus, not Catcus…
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No. After I got past the lava sperms and fell straight down on the next level I’m not doing it again. I did not give up, I’m not just doing it. The controls are not worth it.
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I played it to the end. 13.
But I could swear I got 8 too.
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06 it seems. Which is odd, because I beat the cake level on my fifth try.
Unless the cake was a lie… I’ll just take my coat and leave now.
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Is it me, or does 14 take a bit of the impact awayfrom the whole thing? Ho hum.
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Did you play v2 by any chance?
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That comment was for Dorian Cornelius Jasper & pimorte BTW.
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09. Completed it twice because I was sure I had missed the point first time round.
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copy and paste this into notepad or something to read what i’m saying as it may be a spoiler!:
‘clarity’ wasn’t released until after around 24 hours or so of the game’s release, and until that point, many people had argued about x level being easier than y level, or that the game was impossible vs. how easy the game was (which is what 14 did). the best example of this is shown in the tigsource forum post. the post here SORT OF (very narrowly) misses the point, as it reveals the twist of the game (which is almost impossible to not do since ‘clarity’ was released), rather than letting the discussion take its unfortunate course.report
Interesting note to take from the first page of that forum post – you can change rosetta by running the game in compatibility mode… I get 7 in WinXP mode which is even more drastically different to the 2 I usually get than I expected. Haven’t tried other modes yet but maybe I can see some more effects. They really need to release a “choose your own rosetta” version.
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JuJuCam: they have. http://www.superfundungeonrun.com/dungeonv2.zip
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oops, that’s not what i meant; that’s the ‘bug-fixed’ version. see the end of clarity for the choose-your-own-rosetta.
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Mr. Podunkian – it’s deliberately missing the point, trust me. Or, at least, reskewing it in the light of Clarity, and not especially wanting a thread full of people bitching.
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Lucky with a 7, which made the first run through so much more interesting. Great.
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Got 06, finished it.. Is this lies?
Slippery controls + pussy == nightmare.
Out of context that actually looks quite wrong :z
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Even without slippery controls I sucked at Pussy!
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I died on pussy over a hundred times. it must have been.
Jump. Die.
Jump. Die
Jump. Die
Jump. Die
Jump. Die
Jump. Jump. Die.
Jump. Die
Jump. Jump. Die
Jump. Die
…
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04 and I beat the game. what was 04?
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I had 02. Which made the Great Bat Tango impossible.
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The game is annoying as fuck even without, er, those numbers (btw, I had 06; and 00 with XP mode)
Cool idea, bad execution.
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05, and I hate this Cactus man.
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I should have known this was a Ludum Dare 48 hour compo entry – http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-14/
I dunno why, but I find that most LD48 entries have a certain vibe about them.
It probably has something to do with sleep deprivation…
…not to mention that 99% of the devs in the LD community like their games bastard hard.
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…but the first jump wasn’t impossible. D: It was easy, even.
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4 For fucks sake. I read Alec’s post as don’t play clarity until after you finish the game, and spent ages coming back every few hours. What a huge waste of time. :/
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14 … But I played directly the v2.0 (unaware of what the corrected “bugs” were)
Now I’m probably the only one feeling sorely cheated for playing the bugfree version.
Pussy was aaarrrrghh!
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Also 1. Dammit.
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5
And the “self doubt” level seems impossible… other 5s concur?
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I concur, it did SEEM impossible. When I got over the second spike, I was genuinely taken aback. 5 made “Pussy” a right pain in the arse.
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I also had 04 T_T
The Leap of Faith screen was how far I got before trying second version and playing Clarity.
04 = No Checkpoints. Harsh.
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12 – just thought the game was unusually punishing ^_^
Did finish it though – despite the frustration towards the end!
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yeah, got stuck cause I had 10, then changed and discovered the controls were still annoying enough to make me not want to play it… kind of a practical joke of a game really.
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02.
I spent ages on the Bat level trying to jump through thinking I was just really bad at timing.
Gaaahhh.
Brilliant!
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I played the bug-free version. Then I read the TIGSource thread.
Brilliant.
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Ok I played this for about 20 seconds. I need to go to work now but could osmeone please tell me this:
What the hell button is jump?
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Z.
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Cooper love cactus
cactus make simple but fun and interesting arcade games
Ad Nauseum 2 is the pinnacle of pick up and play SHMUP games. Also it has an evil vagina on a pin up model which shoots medical paraphenalia at you as the boss
Cooper loves cactus
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Thanks pimorte
Well what a waste of 5 minutes THAT was…
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14. Fucking Cactus…
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