Welcome to the last Friday of 2010, friend! We hope you're ready to leave the sheltering embrace of a familiar year for the cold, unfeeling waltz of uncertainty with a new one. To ease the transition, please find enclosed a care package of some of the last games 2010 will ever see. Cradle and cherish them, for they are like the last bison that roam the prairies of the internet.
From all of us here at JayisGames, we wish you a happy, healthy 2011 filled with love, good will, tolerance, and ROCK AND RAAAAWWWWLLLL!!
Time Pygmy - [Note: Some content may be mildly suggestive.] A mysterious portal sends you, a pygmy, hurtling through time from your comfortable cave to a modern house. In this bizarre puzzle-ish game made for Ludum Dare 19, you'll explore the house and make various discoveries, trying to unlock everything within the time limit. The discoveries are a bit less "making the wheel" and a bit more "basements can be comfy too", which leads to an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to the gameplay. Of course, if you're the type of person who expects logic in a game about time-travelling cave pygmies you're also probably the type of person who writes strongly worded e-mails to websites about the problems with cats consuming cheeseburgers.
Rush - Nitrome's fast-paced arcade racing game plays like an homage to both VVVVVV and Canabalt as you race for the finish across different tracks and obstacles. The idea is that you can flip your personal gravity to run on the ground or on the ceiling, and if someone else reaches a power up before you, it's gone for good. While it can be a little confusing due to the lack of tutorial and multiple screens, fans of arcade racing action will welcome the challenge. I have to tell you, freerunning would be a lot more interesting to me if it was happening on the ceiling, but probably still just as insufferable.
Spikes Tend to Kill You - Spikes are mankind's natural predator, right up there with polar bears and staircases. The wonderfully named Noxious Hamster brings us this simple but challenging platformer where you play an... uh... flaming blue square thinger who has to leap and run through a gauntlet of not merely spikes but other hazards as well. The one-hit-KO is in place, but it merely teleports you back to the start of each short screen. You'll need quick reflexes to make your way through this minimalist game. A vocabulary of creative profanity might not help, but could be soothing nonetheless.
Distance - Also for Ludum Dare 19 is this short piece of interactive art that follows a couple currently in a long distance relationship. For the most part, the only real interaction you have is choosing what they say to each other at the end of each day as they talk on the phone, although one choice towards the end will have an impact on the ending. Depending on the choice you make, the message is different and can probably be construed as optimistic or cynical. Personally, my husband and I are living proof that a couple can overcome any distance and time as long as you have a mutual, deep-seated hatred of cilantro. Food intolerance is a sorely overlooked building block for a healthy relationship. (Also: American Idol, auditions only. Hilarious!)
SHIFT: Freedom! - Friend, if thou doth hungerest for more Shift puzzle platform amusement, thou shalt sup well this eve. Previously only available as a pay title, Alt Shift has been released for all to play in your browser in celebration of the release for Shift 2 for iPhone. Choose your gender and set out to rescue your beloved from a jealous mad scientist across 80 levels and minigames. Eh... I mean... verily... and forsooth... and whatnot.
Shift: Freedom is so laggy and glitchy that some of the later levels are unplayable. I would have been very unhappy if I had paid for it.
(agh, my JIG account is locking me out D:)
Yeah, I found that Shift: Freedom didn't run as well as the classic Flash games... :P oh well.
Playing "Spikes Tend to Kill You"
Crazy tough game, but the levels are juuuust short enough to keep me trying (so far)
Currently being frustrated by the lethal level 29
Woah! Beat the Spikes game :D (with a time of 52:46, includes "sanity breaks" since I don't really care too much about high scores)
Very simple but challenging game. Appreciated the pretty smooth difficulty curve and the little statements on each level.
The flowers statement kept me going on that one level
Time Pygmy guide:
Go to rainy door (Rain is wet.)
Wait a few seconds (Hey! I can discover things! That's cool!)
Go through door (Doors can hide all my nasty secrets.)
Pick up sofa (Sofa are heavy. And soft.)
Put sofa in cellar (A cellar can be cosy too.)
Jump on setee (I like to bounce on settee… urk urk.)
Destroy picture (Broken things take less space.) (Pixel art is much more beautiful.)
Walk back and forth on carpet (I should consider adding a carpet in my cave.)
Use stairs (Stairs are so much better than ladder!)
Put TV in bathroom (If I had a TV, I would put in here.)
Pick up book (Dictionnary is heavy. Good weapon.)
Put book in bathroom (Book pages are good to clean up my private parts.)
Pick up toilet (Hey! I invented the Grenade (kids, don't do that at home)!)
Put toilet on carpet (So much comfier than a sofa.)
Pick up woman (Urk urk… Dating!)
Put woman on bed in heart bedroom (Consensual relationship.)
Put woman on bed in green bedroom (OK, this is my bed. Gimme love now.)
Put woman on settee (Can we do it on the sofa?)
Put woman next to fridge (Ooooh, ice can preserve youth of my beloved.)
Use key on locked garage door (Keys can make things explode: fuuuun.)
Jump on top kitchen shelf (Damn, I invented vertigo!)
Put frozen woman on microwave (Breaking the ice is eaaasy.)
Put woman in cellar (Cellar is good for storing females.)
Put rabbit in heart bedroom (Rabbits make things cuter.)
Put rabbit on microwave (Rabbit don't like microwaves. No no no no.)
Pick up computer (Oh, mammoths positions are on google map.)
Put computer on car (I like embedded systems.)
Destroy car (Car is weaker than mammoth.)
Stand still (Doing nothing is cool, too.)
Uh, in time pygmy, how are you GETTING the key? I can't get up there, and I can't destroy the cabinet to make the key fall down. help?
Wow, SHIFT: Freedom! really can't check collisions. It is sad.
SHIFT: Freedom!, Chapter 4, Level 2: Mindscrew. I don't know how to beat it when my little protagonist always falls through the red key, so I'm giving up.
How do you pick up the garage keys in Time Pygmy? I can't jump that far from the ledge.
Spikes Tend to Kill You was really hard, but soo good. I'd advice preparing yourself for a good .. one hour of playing, depending of your skill.
I know I'm bad at platforming, but I really can't get the key in Time Pygmy. Do I miss something obvious?
Key in time pigmy:
Grab the girl from upstairs, bring her to the kitchen and freeze her with the fridge. Then use her as s jumping stone in the key-basement to get up to the shelf.
I'm still missing like 7 bulbs and I can't think of other things to mess with. :P
I, too, cannot get the key in Time Pygmy. Any hints? Hoping power of posting will strike . . .
To get the key in Time Pygmy
After you freeze the woman by putting her by the fridge, pick her up and
put her on the second stair in the cellar so you can jump to the key
I appreciate the tradition of Shift games, but Shift:Freedom is so glitchy, I'm not sure if it even deserves a mention on JIG yet. Running W7, FF, and Chrome and it did the same things on both browsers. Let me know if anyone had any luck getting the game to run smoothly...I've really enjoyed the Shift series, up until this point.
barbara -
I hadn't noticed that
the woman in ice was the only moveable object that could be stood on top of.
Thank you!
overall, a very disappointing year for my favorite developers at nitrome. here's to hoping next year is a return to the games i love.
Shift simply isn't the same without the dark humor...
@Ezra
I also have problems in Chapter 4, puzzle 2 of SHIFT: Freedom!
My player is able to get the red key, though. But I have completed the level, and stand in front of the door, but the door does not open.
The level seems to be buggy.
I like the spikes game, but unfortunately it drops frames at a tremendous rate on my computer (which admittedly isn't the best, but generally doesn't have framerate problems on browser games), which makes it absolutely impossible.
Just beat the spikes game in 23:59! I thought I did well 'til I found out I was 873rd place xD
Brilliant game and not too frustrating.
In Rush,
What causes the time jumps/flashes that happen? Or are they something totally different?
All was fine with shift until chapter 3. Then it got super glitchy. Fun game though.
Yecch, have you tried the "minigames" in Shift? You have to use the keyboard to finish cheap cursor-based puzzles in a time limit and then the keyboard stops working. Intermittently. While the time runs out.
After 19 minutes and 48 seconds, the Spikes stopped tending to kill me. Hooray! :D
I found that reloading Shift2 would clear up the glitches -- I suspect it's got a memory leak or some other kind of progressive resource-hog bug.
For level 4-2, "Mindscrew", my solution:
All directions are given in "local" directions, as you see them.
The gray and red keys:
Jump up to the right, invert, go down the shaft, invert again, and jump to the right towards the spikes, hitting the left-arrow. Go left on this ledge, and jump down to catch the gray key. Jump left twice more, and catch the red key, then fall through to the shelf on top of a green barrier.
The green key:
Invert to the right of the green barrier, then jump down to the left, avoiding the left-arrow. Invert and retrace your initial path to the ledge with the block. Move left, and push the block until it falls, following it down. Invert again between the block and the green barrier, and push it right until it falls, again following it down. Invert into the block, and go left to activate the green key.
The block:
Invert, and catch the up-arrow, and again fall down following the block. Push the block rightward until it flips up through the up- and right-arrows. Follow it, coming down to the left (spike-side) of it, and push it rightwards until it inverts. Invert and push it leftwards until it falls into the gap. It's now in position.
Getting out:
Jump left into the enclosure, and catch the uppermost right-arrow. Jump left onto the little shelf contiguous with the block, and invert so that your head is inside the block. Jump right over the gray barrier, and down the shaft to the door, and exit.
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