By Quintin Smith on August 12th, 2010 at 11:47 am.
Sorry I started yesterday with a taxing piece of freeware. Here, let me make up for it with another morsel snatched from the groaning tables of the Indie Games blog- Solipskier is a moreish browser game that sees you earning points by navigating a skier between posts, through tunnels and over jumps. Except you don’t control the skier! Aha! No. You control the landscape, painting it into appropriate slopes with the mouse. The physics can be a little rickety, but the game makes up for it with the moments where you accidentally flick your skier into orbit or throw up a wall for him to collide with. If you want something to shoot for, I managed a score of around 10,000,000. Feel free to embarrass me, you grubby lot.
12/08/2010 at 12:06 Gabriel Knewell says:
Snow Crash eh?
I refuse to rise to the bait.
12/08/2010 at 14:58 KilgoreTrout XL says:
But the skier’s name is Hiro Protagonist.
12/08/2010 at 12:13 Ian says:
Couldn’t get above about 2 million thus far.
12/08/2010 at 13:08 Songbearer says:
Oh man this is so good. A little awkward to begin with, but once you hit your flow you won’t ever want your skiier to stop.
Which is why it’s heartbreaking when you cock it up and he plummets to a 500mph death. At least there’s no yeti!
12/08/2010 at 13:11 Shazbut says:
11 mil, but i’m sticking with this. This is one of the best browser games I’ve seen
12/08/2010 at 20:07 Shazbut says:
27 mil currently. It’s a good game because it makes you desperate for speed. When you’re going fast it’s not only easier to score, but it’s more fun. I think, a lot of games like this make you not want to go fast because it just makes it more likely that you’ll die. Here you absolutely crave it.
12/08/2010 at 20:07 Shazbut says:
The grammar and syntax was horrible there because I want to get back to the game
12/08/2010 at 13:30 LukeAllstar says:
6.7 million is my best so far, but i will try harder!
My Name on Kongregate is “Luke91″
post you Kongregate Names here so we can compare :)
12/08/2010 at 13:34 Koozer says:
Kirby’s Power Paintbrush anyone?
12/08/2010 at 14:00 Quasar says:
Am I the only one who thinks this’d be great on a touchscreen? I’d certainly buy it for my iTouch.
12/08/2010 at 14:23 JuJuCam says:
The death screen has a little mobile icon you can click on to go to the app store page…
12/08/2010 at 14:22 Peter Radiator Full Pig says:
Chopin at the death screen. Sweet.
12/08/2010 at 14:37 Serenegoose says:
Man, I suck at this game. I think I’ve got a bit over a million so far. I’m just not very good at making the guy go fast, but yet I CRAVE SPEED SO MUCH that I end up trying to make him do a jump and hitting a wall or something. I am a failure at ski-based landscaping. :(
12/08/2010 at 15:09 trjp says:
The trick is clearly making gentle direction changes – he only slows on STEEP hills and speeds-up enormously on even a slight downhill.
The ‘canabalt-like’ bad bit is that when you’re flying, stuff comes up too fast. I’m still not really ‘ready’ for jumps – they tend to kill me most often – but it’s a lovely little game.
12/08/2010 at 15:28 Berzee says:
Yeah, what also helps is to keep the landscape very slightly wobbling up and a down, because I think he speeds up on downslopes more than he slows down on upslopes.
only 9mil so far though, so I am hardly the expert on ski-based landscaping.
12/08/2010 at 16:14 LukeAllstar says:
a good trick is to not make high jumps, just stop pressing your mouse key for a second so he ‘jumps’ through the checkpoint things and you will get a nice point boost
i just do really big jumps after tunels
i got to 10m+ with this technique :)
12/08/2010 at 15:24 Devenger says:
Wonderful game. A bit annoyed that jumps aren’t given a distance indicator (they tend to stymie my best efforts by surprise).
12/08/2010 at 15:32 Berzee says:
Bwa, 17mil, I beat Quinns, I can stop. =P
12/08/2010 at 18:26 mike says:
It’s out for all iOS devices actually! iPad play is pretty dang awesome, if I say so myself :)
12/08/2010 at 23:01 jeremypeel says:
I’m so far behind you folks on the score front!
Absolutely love this though – failing and thwumping down through several screens to a death accompanined by dryly amusing ‘ski tips’ still gets guffaws from me. As others have said, the speed is really satisfying and as new-junkie Shazbut implies, highly, highly addictive.
Also, surprisingly polished and aesthetically pretty great; was really impressed when I noticed the trees sprouting violently to life as the slope pops into existence.
Gameplay takeaway for the devs on here has to be: if failing is made to be nearly as fun as succeeding, your player will spend longer enjoying your game.
13/08/2010 at 00:43 Seymour says:
Welll, I don’t think I will be going back to Cannabalt for a while, and I do love that game…
13/08/2010 at 01:22 Eric says:
22,915,727. And that’ll be all for awhile I think, though I did buy the iPhone version.
Great little game.
15/08/2010 at 12:12 fallingmagpie says:
I got 7 million. I was happy. Checked the high score page out of interest, and number one is 2,036,816,659. He has played it three hundred thousand times though.
19/08/2010 at 07:26 metin2 yang says:
very cool