Don't Look Back is a modern retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, although there are subtle differences. For one, the mythical greek poet favored a harp over a handgun, and for another, he didn't need your platforming skills to guide him on his journey.
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maybe there's a different ending if you make it through without a single death?
Defective, I really wonder if that's even possible?
Er, Kyle, his name was "deflective". Freudian slip much?
Anyways, I don't really "get" this game, even after playing it through to the end. Maybe because I never read the original Greek myth it's allegedly based on.
The ultra-short condensed version of Orpheus and Eurydice:
Orpheus, the best musician ever, married Eurydice, who died shortly after their wedding.
Orpheus went into the underworld, to the throne of Hades himself, and played a song so sad it moved him to pity that one and only time. "Walk back out of the underworld, and Eurydice will follow. But if you look back, she will be dead forever."
Orpheus made it almost all the way out, but then looked back to see if Eurydice was there. She was, but was dragged back to the underworld then.
Orpheus was majorly bummed, and eventually got killed.
Great game. The atmosphere, the cataclysmic music, the sound effects (that ghastly sigh when you do turn back is truly eerie)... good game. And although I guess the difficulty DOES limit the audience of the game, I didn't mind it one single bit.
I also loved the ending, especially since it's very open to interpretation. Or is it?
I saw the ending and I can't interpret a darn thing.
Brilliant review Psychotronic. Time for me to rent Black Orpheus (the 1959 version) again!
Wow, great (and tough, and sad) game. Thanks, Psychotronic.
I didn't mind the difficulty. You've only got to start from the same screen, and the number of lives isn't limited.
I remember games like Double Dragon, those were frustrating :)
Great game!
I can't beat the boss. Any tips?
It's difficult, but because of the almost instant restart, it's not all that difficult. I'd guess it only took me about 20 minutes to beat.
Took me a while to figure out how to kill the first boss, but after that it was pretty obvious.
If this is a representative sample of literate games, I'd love to see some more. I liked the ambient music and the game play was interesting yet simple. The unlimited lives was a good decision and made the game much more enjoyable for me. Awesome game.
Love the atmosphere and the ending :) As much as I love Nitrome games, nothing can beat emotional games.
Sonic: Alas, I didn't see the "l".
Yes, very good game, and I was a little baffled by the ending, though now knowing the myth clears an awful lot up.
One point, I still can't get over the idea that the first boss was a very large and vicious poodle.
Kyle, I believe that's supposed to be Cerberus.
Great game! The difficulty isn't a problem because you can re-start from the screen on which you died.
I think an obvious interpretation of the ending would be
Seriously, play it first before reading on...
...that the player character ("Orpheus") wants to get "Eurydice" back from the dead, but that's just a fantasy and isn't possible...so that's why the player character and Eurydice disappear at the end but there's a guy standing watching the graves. The moral is simply, don't look back, you don't need to. (Note that the guy at the end doesn't look back at the player character and Eurydice, that's not why they disappear.)
Voted 4/5. Controls felt clunky and jumping seemed a bit slow. It seemed that many times I died when I could see death coming but the controls wouldn't allow me to avoid it.
Aaargh, this is tough, I don't usually play this kind of time everything properly, look fifty moves ahead, or have amazing reflexes to win type game, I got to a certain point by always killing everything, then when there were three of those jumping guys I just avoided them, same goes for the screen with all the bats, and the one with the snake and jumping guy, then I got stuck at the point with the two huge monsters, one on a ledge, one down below.
I gave up. How far away was I?
Interesting interpretation. I thought the difficulty was OK with the instant restart, but I agree that better controls would have helped. It was frustrating, but just slightly below my limit.
Well, I figured Cerberus, just... It looked poodle-like. Mind you, poodles can be fierce animals, believe you me.
Zeph:
You were about halfway there, just one frustrating jumping part short of the final boss. Yes, I know, this may seem confusing, but the final boss is at about the halfway point.
I love the atmosphere and the instant feedback (although that mostly means death). I also admire how the creator uses the narrowed-down graphical and sound effects consistently until the very end.
I actually didn't find the game too hard.
Hades:
You can hit him before the fight and it's easiest if you never touch the ground.
Ending:
1: it's just a way to loop back to the start. 2: he committed suicide. 3. He is now at peace, so he disappears.
I'm not really taking this 'argument' seriously, but thought it might be insightful to defend my interpretation against ganondorfs:
1. Just a way to loop back to the start? Obviously, but that doesn't say anything about why the ending is the way it is. Of all the possible ways to loop back to the start, why that one?
2. I think suicide is ruled out because there's the guy watching the grave at the end, and he doesn't die.
3. Yes, possibly.
About the end:
Wasn't it because that Orpheus, by going in the Underworld, had already died and turned into a spirit? Also, going into the Underworld would have had to put his body somewhere if the spirit was seperated, so automatically Orpheus' body was where it last was before he made the decision to go the Underworld, and by seeing his body, he realized he was dead, so they both disappeared.
I'm not saying your argument is wrong, it's just these are other possibilities. Yours seems the most likely anyway.
I just won a second time. Looking back, the hardest part was when there was a hopping demon and a snake.
List of all objects
lava, snake, bat,rope, spider,lightning, deathblock crombling platform,verticle metor, disappering platform,cerbus, hopping demon, big demon,metor, hades, eurydice
Did I miss anything?
The first part of my last post was directed to tom, not sheer cold.
I noticed that closing the window and restoring can set you back further than you would if you had died at this point. Unfortunately, I just made it through a difficult part (the one with
three screens of disappearing platforms
) and am at another difficult one (with
three islands separated by three and then two lava bullets, and then on the next screen some kind of crumbling platform that instantly killed me the only time I made it through, sending me back to the first island
), and I'd like to put the game away for a little while, but I think the restore game function would make me redo the previous three screens which I don't want to.
I also think the save point is gratuitously mean here; dying on the second screen should put you back on the
last island of the first screen.
I'll probably just watch a walkthrough so I can see this ending everyone's talking about. After at least fifteen attempts at a jump that you have to execute at exactly the right time, I'm thinking I'm one of the people this game isn't meant for.
The whole game was
a day dream of Orpheus. That is him still at the grave in the end, Lamenting over the death of his wife and the finality of death.
[Spoiler tags added. -Psychotronic]
On the third screen from the start your Orpheus jumps off a huge ledge...
Maybe he died at that point, it has to be like 50-60 feet high, relative to his height. I don't think even the best parkour jumper could pull that fall off with only bent knees at the landing. So after the suicide he makes his way into the underworld and finds her spirit.
So, who's at the grave in the end????? Mom?
[Edit: Spoiler tags added. -Jay]
I watched the ending (gave up playing, at least for now, at the same point that Zeph was stuck at), and I agree with Tom and fourstrings:
It's all a fantasy. You'd like to be able to go through heroically difficult [too difficult for me, ;-)] struggles to get your loved one back, but you can't. No matter what feats of bravery and derring-do you might be able to perform, Death won't actually give you a chance to get her back. At the end it's his fantasy self disappearing, along with her spirit.
Very nicely done and affecting.
I think if you wanted to do a straightforward adaptation of the Orpheus myth, it'd have to be a first-person game....
Did anyone try
looking back as you escorted her out? Does it do anything?
I loved this game.
Sad thing is I didn't find it all that difficult, but I thought the ending was a great twist, no matter how you interpret it.
Could people discussing the ending please do so in spoiler tags?
Matt W:
I did a LOT of looking back as I was escaping:
She disappeared into a puff of smoke every time, and it counted essentially as a death.
Very cool. And, really, not too difficult (and I play platformers VERY rarely). The hardest bit for me was the screen with four "intermittent" platforms and the two disintigrating platform pieces, since I was determined to make it work MY way :) (I ended up doing it their way.)
Has anyone tried going right at the end, instead of left?
I'm talking about when you're almost out of the cave, and you drop from above, and there are 2 falling stalactites, one to the left and one to the right. I know you can't look back, but i think it may be possible to go right, because Eurydice takes so long to fly down. I wish i had tried before i beat the game.
Great game though
Beautiful game...I really enjoyed the fusion of minimalist style and classic myth.
I still fail to see how the ending is in any way uplifting however. I see it as quite the opposite.
Kyle, that seems like a good way to handle it:
ending the game would be way too cruel, but thematically you have to do something.
As I said, really nice game and excellent concept, and thank heavens there's a walkthrough for unccoordinated folks like me!
I read I comment from the creator somewhere on the game's meaning.
He says that at least on one level he intended it to be a dream the man at the grave is having, then when he comes back to the grave at the end, he is confronted with reality and the dream dissipates.
On a separate note, did anyone else catch how the title text slants downward to the left, rather than to the right? A nice little touch on the second half's concept.
[Edit: Spoiler tags added. -Jay]
the end is very weak.
removes the musical aspect of the story and replaces it with repetitive and annoying trial-and-error gameplay. orpheus illogically fights hades and the main adversary becomes not self-doubt but obnoxious squiggles. i feel like the creator skimmed wikipedia & didn't 'get' O&E. its fine to reimagine the myth (esp. if your name is gluck) but the original theme is stronger and more interesting. all and all another weak entry in the 'gamez r art 2!' category.
I made it up to the lion-demon. I shot him twice from behind yet he always seems to get me right after. This is tough.
That ending hit me kinda hard. I saw it the same way fourstrings did.
How do you beat cerberus?
Ditto to dude69's question. I get him twice from behind and I make it jumping over him but can't seem to do it twice in a row cause I don't have enough room to turn around without him getting me.
Darn if I didn't get Cerberus right after I posted that :P
dude69 -
Aim for jumping over him at least twice. It's a matter of timing and positing on luck. One time he won't turn around to look at you right away and you can shoot him from behind for a third and final time.
That was waaay to difficult of a monster when he only needed to be shot so few times. I was about to chalk the whole thing cause I kept restarting without any understanding of what I was doing wrong.
The game's ending is very neat but by the time I got there I was so frustrated with it that it didn't have the power to move me. The game was far to hard for it's own good. I had to restart at least a hundred times and would come so close to beating a level?monster?whatever that it was infurating. When a game is relying on such a powerful story as this making it so difficult caused me to be able to relax and go with the story. I'm always willing to let myself get wrapped up in a story but this game was just too infurating to be worth it.
It had the potential to be a simple beautiful little game to lose oneself in but failed miserably trying to be something that it was not.
I'm highly dissapointed in this one.
This game just got slapped with a couple badges on Kongregate. How do they decide which game to...?
I'm stuck in a screen with 4 dissapearing/reappearing platforms and 2 dissolving platforms. It's right after the room you fall into with the snake and the little demon.
It seems impossible to time. How can you possibly climb out of it?
A ha! You have to
wait until the block has dissolved almost completely - by then the last block will be reappearing.
Just so you know the jiguest after sheer cold and before me is me. I forgot stalatites in the list.
Cerberus:
Instead of jumping over him for the first to hits, let him jump over you. For the final blow you must jump over him at the right time, and quikly turn around and shoot him in the back.
Is it strange how Diner Dash and Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble can make me doubt my awesomeness as a gamer while seeing so many frustrated responses to this remind me just how surprisingly good I am?...
Maybe it's platformers in particular I rock at.
Sonic: Believe me, I'm with you. I saw the badges and I had to let out a little growl. AFTER I already beat the game? They had to give badges AFTER?????
Sigh.
Imzadi: Have you tried Passage and Gravity at all? From the sounds of it, you might enjoy those.
And on cerberus in general, I just wanted to say, playing through again to get my Kong badges, I definitely now see a three headed dog and not a viscious attack poodle. I feel slightly more sane and normal now.
My interpretation was pretty similar to the author's.
The whole thing is a daydream. The guy dreams of having a chance to get his loved one back through heroic feats and beating death itself... but at the end of the dream he loops back to the grave and is confronted with the reality that death is inescapable and final. Still, he cannot move on and chooses escape in daydreaming, again and again..
Quite deep for a Fallout clone, really.
Very cool, trippy game. Left me with a feeling of satisfaction, but still all mysterious. I liked it.
IMO the ending would have been better if he went the route of the actual story and just got you stuck in an area where you had to look back
I'm actually not that great at games, but I found this pretty easy to get through. But too difficult to want to try again. I didn't get very frustrated because of the instant restart. After a while the final boss grated on me, but I beat it in the nick of time. And I passed most of the screens by getting lucky.
The ending inadvertently made me shiver, so I count that in its favor. I love the game, but I don't know if I'll ever feel the need to go through all that again. It was an emotional experience all-in-all for me.
r, yes I tried, you cannot turn around even if falling.
Here's what happened to me:
I played the game and, thanks to the scenery, the title and the moment I saw I had to guide a ghost back to the realm of the living, I knew this was based on the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. I was nearing the end of the game, guiding my loved one back up, when I came across a rope leading up. I was a bit over-excited I guess and missed it, jumping past it. I wanted to quickly correct my error by walking back a few feet, only to remember that, in doing so, Eurydice would vanish. I was stuck. I couldn't get it past my heart to let her vanish and just "respawn" so I could try again. Who knows if it would be the same ghost? Who could tell it's truely the person I wanted to rescue? I looked at my screen and saw Eurydice, unaware of any trouble, filled to the brim with the hope that her beloved Orpheus would save her. I didn't see any way out of this and decided to let the two figures be suspended in their hope, not knowing that there was no way out of their current situation. The game was running for days until a power outage shut down my pc and the two were thrown into the vast reaches of nothingness. At first I was sad, having been unable to bring the lovers together, but then I realised, even though they couldn't look at eachother, they disappeared together. And in a way, I was still able to save them both...
[Edit: Spoiler tags added. -Pam]
Though I said I wouldn't play it again, I did. It was much easier this time, and the ending had the same impact it had the first time. That's all signs of a great game in my book.
The full version of the original story:
Orpheus is the most tallented musician in all of Greece. He marries a beautiful woman named Eurydice. Shortly after the wedding, she dies.
Orpheus then travels to the underworld to try to get her spirit back. He knows that Cerberus is often ill-fed, so he throws scraps of meat on the ground and sneaks past.
Orpheus spends months trying to find Eurydice, but fails.
Hades hears Orpheous playing a sad song on his harp and weeps. He permits Orpheus to bring Eurydice back to the world of the mortals, on the condition that he does not look back upon her until she exits the underworld.
Orpheus agrees and she follows him out. After he exits the underworld, he is so excited, he looks back. Eurydice, however, is at the brink of the underworld, but has not exited completely, so she is taken forever. Orpheus later takes his own life
Go Latin class!
I really enjoyed the game, and thought the graphics and the orpheus/eurydice limitations on gameplay were pretty inspired. The end was simple and intriguing...
I might be more impressed with "emotional games" in general if the full vocabulary of the game designers wasn't "my girlfriend is gone. wah. death". Seriously.
Neat, I guess.
Cerberus really wasn't so hard for me - I guess that I randomly happened to use the "winning strategy" given above.
No.... the one that took longest for me was the level with the three jumping humanoids.
That sucked. If I ever had to replay the game, I think I'd simply try to run past rather than kill all three.
I didn't like that screen because they moved *randomly* - seriously, just hold right at the start of that screen. Sometimes you'll make it under the middle guy's jump, sometimes you won't. And they move way too quick for your reactions to have a chance.
Strategy for the last boss:
As you know, he deploys more and more enemies to the screen as he takes more damage. I found that these would overwhelm me, so I needed to prevent them from even appearing on the screen. Hence, you need to kill this boss as quickly as possible.
Specifics:
You need to make the first shot as you're falling down the screen when you enter. Stand on that upper platform for him to "recover" and make the second shot right about when your upper platform disappears for the first time.
You need to be standing on it again right after it reappears, to fit in the third and fourth shots before it disappears for a second time.
Then just slip in the final shot whenever you can - forget any monsters scuttling about, since they'll die with their master.
Well, another way to look at the ending is
You come back to the start right? The very first thing you need to do in the game is turn around. So assuming that IS your body at the start of the game...you get the idea.
Hmmm, interesting game. At first I didn't know what to make of the ending, but now it makes a bit more sense. The game was a bit frustrating at times, but nothing that made me give up. Pretty good, I'd say.
Wow. It was deep, and it was a deep that could be grasped and felt but not understood. Funny how something so simple can make a impact without your conscience knowing why. Good game.
i loved this game, and loved the fact that you could download an offline version.
the ending was the best it could possibly have been, in my opinion.
the challenge of the game was what kept me going to the end, although it wasn't until i turned around for the first time that i realised it was based on the Greek myth. its only about half way that you realise what the title means.
i like Misophor's interpretation, and that the developper has left so much to interpretation.
did anyone else notice the Phycological effect of using mainly right for the first half and only left on the second? it really annoyed me!
Kyle E. Moore, what's this Gravity game you mentioned? I can't locate it.
Is it just me or are there pangs of Seiklus resonating somewhere in this game? Dunno, maybe its the caves and the cool music...
ElliotM, fotz:
Kyle is talking about a game about the creative process called Gravitation, by Jason Rohrer, who is also the author of Passage. I'm not sure I would describe Rohrer's games as "literate" so much as "allegorical". They draw from life experiences, and not so much from culture or literature.
My idea of literate gaming (which I'm totally making up as I go along here) is closer to what Gregory Weir is doing these days. You might also look at Coil.
Anyone else get a double-kill on the final boss? That is, I killed him, only to get hit by a lingering fireball. Curses. I really hate it when that happens. Elation! -- wait, noooo, AGONY!
When I got to the ghost (girl) she freaked me out and when I looked back it freaked me out even more. Good (and freaky) game.
Was I the only one that found the jumping guys more than slightly creepy/ disturbing?
So sad! WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
i killed the last boss in one go, it was really easy but the dog one i found more difficult because i couldnt jump over him for the last shot lol
Realy great retro vibe! It put me in an instant 20 years back with my first comp Commodore 64 and Pitfall, the game that started it all...
Awsome athmosphere in which only minimalistic background things give emotionaly rich story.
Great gem of a game!
I really enjoyed this game! I thought it was hard, but it couldn't possibly be too hard because I managed to beat it. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice was always my favourite Greek myth growing up, although I always heard a slightly different version.
In the story I know, when Orpheus finally makes it to Hades to ask for Eurydice back, Hades is unmoved by his beautiful, sad song. But Hades' wife, Persephone, takes pity on Orpheus and begs her husband to let him have Eurydice, and Hades obliges. However, the condition is that Orpheus must trust Hades at his word, and he cannot look behind him the whole time they are traveling to the surface. With every step, Orpheus is filled with greater and greater dread, more and more certain that Hades is only playing a cruel trick on him and that his beloved will never be returned to him. Just as he is about to step foot out on the surface, he cannot bear it any longer, and he turns back, only to see Hades dragging Eurydice back down into the depths of the Underworld with him. Orpheus returns to the surface, heartbroken that he ruined his one chance to have his love returned him because of his fear and doubt, and goes into a deep mourning. When the animals of the forest come and try to cheer him, he ignores them. This makes them angry, so they tear him to pieces and throw his body out to sea. Call me morbid, but I like that version better.
So sad... My feelings immediately after finishing are
If only there were a way to keep them together. I'm not sure which interpretation I like the best; the, "the first thing you do in the game is turn round. When yourself at the end turns round to begin, you and your beloved both disappear" or the "he only dreamed of rescuing her"
So I'll come up with my own.
The character you see at the beginning and the end, standing by the grave, is NOT Orpheus. He is an ordinary man, or even boy, who has lost a loved one. He, as we all do, wishes there were a way to bring his loved one back. As he stands there in the silent graveyard, he is reminded of the Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice from his childhood/what he is currently learning in school. He lets himself imagine being the hero, adventuring deep into the Underworld to rescue his loved one from Hades' cruel grip. His grief, combined with his vivid imagination, create this entire adventure inside his mind. He starts to feel happier, as he imagines bringing his loved one to the spot just a few steps behind the grave, feels the joy of having his loved one back -
And then he stops. He remembers what happened in the ending of the original legend. His imagined self and loved one disappear with a mournful groan, just as Eurydice did in the legend, and he is plunged once more into his misey and despair.
That is why I think this game can easily be related to. It can be seen with a modern twist to it. Not a game I would play ever again, purely because of the level of difficulty - but rescuing your beloved from the Underworld wouldn't be easy, would it? - but definitely one I will think back to in the future as a meaningful experience.
The true story
What happens is that Orpheus was just recently married to Eurydice, and literally on their wedding day, she was bitten on the ankle by a snake and killed. Now all people who died went to the Underworld and Eurydice was no exception. Orpheus, who was completely distraught from losing his wife decided to go to the underworld and bribe Hades for Eurydice's life. Hades accepted, only if Orpheus did not turn back until he was completely out of the underworld (thats why you died every time you turn around). One of the things that the story got wrong was that Orpheus' travel to Hades was a quick one, he was so determined to find Eurydice that he didnt notice any of the horrible things, so really the story was kind of backwards. Orpheus turned around near the very end of the underworld to see if his love was really there, she was, but then disappeared. Orpheus was so distraught about losing his loved one once again that he exiled himself to the woods, where he was ripped limb from limb by half naked women barbarians. It gets a little gruesome there at the end,
but i really liked the game because it showed the story very well. I also found it ironic that I'm actually studying that story in my Latin class at school right now.
Player loses loved one.
Decides to rescue her by going to Hades.
(hence cerberus and devil/Hades himself)
On the condition player doesn't look back.
You arrive back at the grave only to find another person there.
This is where I interpret differently:
The grave is now yours.
The new person is grieving YOUR death, because at the very start you jump off this huge cliff.
The game is about dealing with grief and learning to let go.
Ryusui:
I had the exact same feeling. I had little to no trouble beating this game. Maybe its because the foundation for my gaming is the retro-style platformer.
Also, from reading the comments I'm starting to agree that the overall "effect" of the game can be decided by how much difficulty went into beating it. Something to keep in mind when programming.
Finally got Eurydice and just passed the snake-wall things with that one on the ground the chases you.
The game's difficulty can just be chalked up to sticky controls and I just observed that between dying and jumping, the game's priority is death. And you do that a lot which makes it frustrating.
Looking at the snake-thing that chased me back and forth, I could have easily avoided it (and crashed into the vertical ones, but that's not the point) but the game immediately freezes since the snake already 'touched' me even though I pressed the jump button half a second before.
It might be my keyboard but it happened too much to be just me as I have fast reflexes. I don't doubt that others found this easy though and that I will finish this too. It's just so damn unforgiving. :( I screamed and banged more than once here hahaha.
Beautiful game, the music really induced melancholy.
After reading the comments on the difficulty of this game, I braced myself for a rage-quit worthy experience, but I found this pretty easy...
When this game first came out, I found it extremely difficult. Having just replayed it, I found it to be surprisingly easy. Have I gotten better as a gamer, or is it just because I'd played it already? Hmm.
Anyway. I found the game to be open to interpretation, but mine is that
the man at the grave was imagining himself in the role of Orpheus, going to save his love from death. But when he completes his journey and gets back to the grave, he has to let go of the fantasy and his love.
How to pass:
Cerberus
You must hit him in the back 3 times. How to:
Best way to do it is to let him jump over you the first 2 shoot and in the third jump over him at the right time and shoot at his back. Takes time to do it
Hades:
You must hit him in the head 5 times. How to:
When you start falling, if you do the right timing, you can hit him in the head and then, when landed in the upper dissapearing platform, jump and hit him again to get an adventage
Leaving Underworld:
DONT LOOK BACK
Tip:
Best is to take some seconds to see what is happening. Once you start you cant go back, unless you die. Take your time and plan how to do it.
I can't get past the four zig zags. It's impossible.
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