Fishbane

i need help with the end of the second "quest".

You die should you land on them, which is totally expected, but you can walk through them unharmed, which is somewhat unusual for games of this type

Is it possible that the reviewer never played Prince of Persia? :o

Wow, stuck @ second screen. Then again, I haven't had my coffee yet either.

I guess I was warned, but if the solution to the fourth or fifth screen of the lava level is what I think it is, this is pretty much impossible. It's the one where you fall in from the top and land between a set of iron bars and a spike, with a red wall just past the spike, and a button over on the right.

Of course it's possible that I'm an idiot and am missing the solution.

There are some very very clever puzzles here. I felt great once I realized I could

And triple hooray for being able to walk through spikes. But the punishment factor seems too high -- your character moves pretty slow, and it takes a relatively long time for your harpoon to return to you, which can make even simple wall-climbing pretty tedious since it requires releasing the harpoon at the right height during the jump. Combine this with pixel-perfect jumping and deaths that take you back to the beginning of the screen (admittedly not that far), and you get a game where a fair amount of your time is spent redoing fairly humdrum stuff in order to set up That One Jump.

This reminded me a little of my limited experience with Braid, which also had crazy out-of-the-box solutions and precise jumps. But in Braid you don't have to replay the boring bits to get to the tricky bits. I wish this game either had solutions that were more tolerant of mildly imperfect jumping or more frequent save points; when your puzzles are designed to kill me over and over until I get the timing just right, one save point per screen isn't enough. It's a shame, because the puzzles really are very good so far.

@matt w:

This looks like a game that's going to be frustratingly fun. I can't *not* try to get all goldfish.

alex -- that's exactly what I was trying to do. Because of the pixel height of your jump, and of the wall, and the way

there seems to be absolutely no margin for error.

No problem; a developer can make a game that requires pixel perfect jumping and split second timing if they want. But for me the repetitiveness and frustration of trying to master the jumps spoils the genuine enjoyment I get from solving the puzzles. I think the block-by-block layout is a problem here, because it means they can't gradually ramp up the jump difficulty by raising the blocks a pixel at a time.

Oh, and the screen I was complaining about was in the icy cliffs section, not the lava knolls. I had been wondering where all the lava was.

The harpoon is a nice twist, but I wish it were a little easier to use. It would potentially make the game a lot less frustrating if Fishbane could jump a bit higher, so that (s)he wouldn't need to be mid-jump when releasing the harpoon all the time.

I got through the first few zones before quitting. I just don't like knowing exactly what to do, but having difficulty doing it. Still, I enjoyed it while it was easy.

How on earth do you get past the last screen of the second quest???

Ditto on feeling stupid about the last screen of the second quest.

Yeah, I'm quitting. Really fun game, but I got sick of having to do the same tasks (mundane or challenging) over and over again because there is no checkpoint between puzzles.

For the last screen on level 2:

Am I the only one whom the Fishbane sprite reminds of Bubs from Homestar Runner?

Just me then? Ok. XD

I love it! This is what a puzzle platformer should be like. Equal parts logic and timing, with one simple mechanic, some neat toys that revolve around it, and no nuisance gimmick stages. The platforming adds a new layer to everything, like playing two games at once. One is a platformer with twitchy reflex challenges with tricky jumps, the other with logical puzzle that give your brain a workout. And then you platform on the puzzles. And work out the puzzles according to the platforming. Definitely gets my 5 shrooms!

For those who are having trouble early on, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etEzB-t1k_I

For the critics: you should probably figure out the first level (after the tutorial) before writing a 300 word comment full of mistaken assumptions about how the game works. Just saying!

Phenomenal. I agree with the Braid comparison, and I'd go one further: these are the best platform puzzles in a free flash game, period. Hard, yes, but brilliant.

Not just you, joye. My first thought was, "Hey, it's Bubs Concession Stand, if he were a Big Daddy".

I agree with Matt. This game is way too frustrating. It's not because it's hard, I loved within a deep forest and finished it completely, it's that you have to get everything exactly perfect to the split second all the time for even the most basic tasks like riding on the harpoon. Games like Money Seize also required precise timing but in my opinion this is even more picky. I've finished 4 quests so far. This game really intrigues me but I'm kind of put off by how unfriendly and unforgiving it is.

May he should allow an easy medium and hard mode.

This game is easy, and too short. I finished it in like 2 minutes.

If you're having trouble riding the harpoon, here's an easy way.

Instead of firing the harpoon and then trying to jump on it, you should fire the harpoon midjump going UP and land on it the same jump. This made it tons easier for me.

Dylan: Are you sure you finished? The game doesn't end after the first golden spear. I find it hard to believe that anyone could find the last few levels "easy".

I just finished

, but apparently I'm missing 5 goldfish. I thought I got everything along the way, but I guess I missed some somewhere... Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to tell where, and I dread the thought of playing through all the earlier levels again... Although I suppose they'd seem much easier now. Some of the stuff towards the end was ridiculous, on par with Matt Thorson's games.

the last five goldfish are related to the secret of the game there'll be a hint if you watch to the end of the credits.

hard hard hard

nice nice nice

Thanks, JIGuest! All finished now :)

Finished it. Finally. Wow. That was one tough, but fun ride.

Josh, thanks for the point -- that was really helpful. I need to see if I can get any further with this.

On the other hand, null0, pah. Instead of attacking critics who write about what we don't like about the game without finishing the second level (which was, you know, the problem), maybe you should think about why this really extremely clever game only has 25 comments. Maybe it's because people don't want to do all three of:

1. Figure out a conceptually difficult solution
2. Master the timing of that solution
3. Repeat an entire screen every time they fall down on either 1 or 2

(and even if the screen I was complaining about on Frozen Cliffs wasn't like this, the puzzle at the end of the first lava screen was). The first two parts are part of the gameplay, but the third isn't. Going full-on Braid is probably impossible for a flash game, but VVVVVV, for instance, did a good job of making the save points very frequent. (Another minor complaint: I can't close the window and keep my progress within the level.)

On the other hand, this does do an excellent job of constructing ingenious puzzles using a very simple mechanism. Big kudos for that.

@matt w - Well said.

Just can't get the harpoon-riding mechanic, and not really motivated to keep trying.

Keith -- thanks. After playing Death Beach I'm a little more annoyed with being unable to save my progress within a level, especially since that seems like it'd be pretty easy to implement. The last screen is deliciously evil but it is hard. OTOH I'm still playing.

JIGuest -- for all the complaining I've done, I think it was worth it for me. The puzzles are pretty brilliant. (I think CasualDweeb's suggestion of an easy mode might be a good one; all you'd really have to do is increase jump height by a pixel or two, and maybe change the sprite so it shows how high your harpoon release will be.)