• Spelunky is Nascar

    This was originally published on our travelogue but I have back dated it and moved it over here where it fits in more.


    Spelunky Logo
    Originally uploaded by gerbil.llama.

    I’ve been playing Spelunky all day and just wanted to get a few thoughts out of my head.

    Most importantly: Spelunky is Nascar racing.

    At some point I was trapped in a hotel room and ended up watching the Rednecks Turning Left show. I discovered that cars break down alot in Nascar. There are all sorts of things that can go wrong in Nascar from mechanical difficulties to cars running into eachother. What is interesting is that the percentage chance of something going wrong is proportional to how hard you’re driving your car. So if you take off like a hare you’re car is going to fall apart and you’re going to lose. But if you’re slow like a turtle everyone will pass you and you’ll lose. So Nascar is the game of balancing the two goals of going fast and not breaking down. It’s fundamentaly a calculus problem. Which seems to be amusing to the human brain.

    Spelunky is almost exactly the same thing. But in Speluky speed is replaced by collecting gold.

    Fascinatingly the goal in spelunky is not to beat a set number of levels. It is to get 100,000 gold to the guy standing at the end of level 4. But you can make multiple trips to fill him up. So if you take him 50,000 the first time you play and 50,000 the 2nd time then you’re done. But you can also play through ten times and take him 10,000 gold each time.

    Spelunky is also fucking hard. Making breakdowns inevitable. So the longer you spend in the level the more likely you are to die. But the only way to get more gold is to spend longer in the level.

    So you have to do the same kind of calculus Nascar teams do. What is the optimal amount of gold to grab each time through the level? If you try to get all 100,000 in one trip then you may die hundreds of times before you make it. But if you just grab 1,000 you have to play it at least 100 times!

    This is a fantastic meta-game that gives each run purpose and meaning as every play you make is seen in the light of this risk/reward calculus.

    What would make Spelunky really awesome is if Derek explained to you that this guy who wants 100,000 gold exists instead of making you wander off to the Spelunky Wiki to figure out how the fuck to save your progress.

  • It’s Up!

    Ok this isn’t going to be a very useful post. It’s just going to be me going “wha blah ha mah gah weeeee!”

    It’s so good. Bryan Perfetto did the work and did it so well. inXile really came through on this. The iPhone version is undoubtably better than the original. I can take partial credit for some of the innovations that make it work so well on the tiny touch-screen. But only because I was in the room for some of the brain-storming. The guys at inXile really know what they’re doing.

    So, yes. I am super pleased. I think it’s the best game in the app store.

  • Mirror’s Edge


    Mirror’s Edge
    Originally uploaded by kosmokomik.

    Alright, I both procured and finished Mirror’s Edge yesterday. Despite running out of peas a couple of times trying to keep Sarah’s laptop from overheating.

    It is a very interesting game. I have none of the common complaints about the game: too short, too much combat, too much head scratching trying to figure out which way to go rather than running.

    The length felt just right. It felt like they wrung pretty much everything they could get out of the mechanics in that amount of time. More levels would have been pretty redundant. And you can always go do the hidden package/time trials thing to add another umpteen hours to your gameplay if you want more of what Mirror’s Edge is pushing.

    Combat was solid and not very hard. Making mandatory combat an acceptable way to break up the levels and add a little depth.

    Lastly, the “I can’t run everywhere because I don’t know where I’m going and I’m going to fall off a building” complaint. This I did not find. I was amazed how seldomly I got lost while running full-speed. With pain-stakingly crafted level wizzing past at one man-week a second.

    This was actually a pretty neat part of the game. It’s one part follow the red things, one part route finding, and one part “guess what the level designer was thinking”. Taken in whole your first guess is usually right. And if you’re not sure there is this briliant little “point me to where I’m supposed to be going” button.

    So you have all these little tools and clues to help you figure out which way you should be going, and after a while you’re just wizzing through the levels. But how fun is that wizzing? Probably not quite as fun as it should be.

    Remember that this is Mirror’s Edge. Expectations are high. Expectations are through the roof.

    I was utterly disapointed by it back when I played it at PAX. I thought it was going to be all “press the up button to go over obstacles, press the down button to go under them”. And so relegate itself to being a fancy game of simon says.

    Then I played it a little bit at my little cousin’s place on his M$ Box. Asside from not being able to control it worth shit because console players are too stupid to use mice; I thought it was great. It seemed deep and rewarding. Not as good as I had hoped but still richer than I had thought.

    Then I got a copy and played it through. And it _is_ just a big game of simon says. There are just more than the two buttons I thought there were. There are about four. So you run around pressing the right button to get over each given obstacle.

    So I’m going back to my original PAX stand on the game: it fails to be great because it contains none of the fluid flow of movement or delicate balance of a human being actually running and jumping.

    Which is understandable. Can I imagine how to make that game? No.

    So Mirror’s Edge isn’t _great_ for a bunch of reasons. But it _is_ really fun and definitely worth playing through. Even if purisits might rather spend four hours in front of qwop: http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html

  • Made It

    We made it across the border. No worries this time. In fact, since we got here paranoically early we are now leaving on a flight leaving a full _four hours_ earlier than the one we were booked on :)

  • Shocking news: the newlyweds are seperated!

    So soon after their wedding, the forces of evil (angry bald immigration guy) have managed to tear the couple apart. Colin was denied access at the border, and now has to hang out in Canada until they mail us our marriage certificate and he can try again.

    The forces of nature (angry big snowflakes) are trying to keep them together in the same city, but I’d rather they didn’t try so hard. Also the forces of mucus are blocking up Sarah’s airways, just to maximize the awesomeness of this whole experience.

    Weaksauce!