Link Dump Friday
April 24, 2009
How much thought do you put into laundry detergent? I mean, really, is this one of your great concerns in life? Do you wake up in the morning and worry if you made the right decision on aisle ten in the grocery store yesterday? Should you really have gone with that off-brand stuff? Was saving a little cash really worth putting your clothes at risk? Well... was it?
Visible - Visible is the game you would have to play every day of your life if you had to mind your shadow's well-being. Oh, and if you lived in a 2D platformer. You play both the main character and his reflection below, but instead of avoiding obstacles on one side, you have to mind both. And just because the bottom is a reflection doesn't mean it's the same as the top!
Germz - A Bejeweled-style game with germs instead of jewels. EWW GROSS GERMS BLECH!!! Fortunately you're zapping the little buggers, and a few power-ups appear from time to time to really get the virii frying. The colored pencil-style visuals are great, and I kinda like the germ sound effects as well.
Guesstimation - I'm guessing this game is about making guesses. I'm also guessing you'll need to type in the number (according to your best guess) of items on each screen. Then you'll get some sort of "score" (I guess). I dunno, I guess you'll like it. I also guess it was made by Ninjakiwi.
The Line Game: Orange Edition - A stylish mouse avoider with a delicious orange flavor. Zip around each level avoiding walls, bouncing things and spinny things (which the game explicitly warns about). Best of all, at the end of each level you are rewarded with a screen full of juice!
Spinning Bubbles - A bubble-matching puzzle game that takes place in a circular arena. Slide around the orb firing colored balls at the cluster of bubbles in the center. You can play the game the normal way, or you can just sit on the side and see how long you can spin the middle structure before you get bored and go back to writing the Link Dump Friday you started half an hour ago!
Some of the stuff these programmers think up is off the hook. I'm still working on my pet cat girl game.
Visible reminds me of a video of a guy playing Mega Man X 1 and 2 with the same controller.
And I would totally play a pet cat girl game.
I guess Guesstimation isn't really that much fun.
But I might be off on this a bit.
I guess Guesstimation might be entertaining if I was Rainman. But since I'm not, I guess I'll never play it again.
Germz is cute. However, I paused my game, came back a minute later, and I had died from my temperature reaching the top, even though I was paused. Not cool.
Also, I just always buy the same brand laundry detergent.
I played Guesstimation and scored 2609. Is that good or bad? Some way of comparing your score to other players' scores would be a nice addition.
("You scored better than X% of players. Guess what X is..." :D )
Guesstimation is fun. My best score is 4682!
I love that music on the Line game, it totally reminds me of the Basement Escape series that Matseusz made, it's a little more upbeat but it's still got this cool groove to it that keeps you calm and at least I never get tired of.
Visible doesn't seem to live up to its potential. The concept is really neat, but the levels seem pretty basic (I haven't completed it, so maybe the last few are awesome). I guess with the Shift-like visual style I was expecting more puzzle-platforming elements. The difficulty doesn't seem to be in figuring the stage out, but whether or not your invisibility will last long enough or if you can jump just right to make it over the long bunch of spikes or land in the small safe spot. It's not a bad game by any means, but it didn't hold my interest for very long, as the levels became a bit of a trudge.
The temperature in Germz rises very quickly, which makes the game a little less fun for me. Timers are cool, and necessary for this genre, but this one forces you to try to level up as quickly as possible to avoid death.
I actually do put some thought into my laundry detergent. I use this brand, ECOpath by Cassiopeia:
http://www.veraloe.com.br/in/ecopath.html
Fair trade, good for the environment.
The less connected the opening paragraph of a Link Dump Friday is to the games within, the better I like it.
The sound effects are what turned me off as to Germz. They seemed a little loud in comparision to the BG music. I'd have played longer if there were seperate volume controls.
The game is undeniably cute, though. Really like the style.
I made it to level 9 of Visible, then noticed the "Play in FullScreen" option and thought it'd help me. Bad idea, it takes you back to the menu and starts you over at level 1.
Wow, both of the puzzle games in this link dump are BRUTAL! Germz is pretty fun, but its thermometer is horrendously unforgiving. But spinning bubbles is the worst - at no point during that game did I feel like I had any hope of winning. Even in Tetris I feel like I'm winning eventually. But that game was just a frantic, hopeless trek to the "you lose" screen.
On the other hand, The Line Game was ridiculously fun.
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