Ah. A 3 dimensional person at last!

March 9, 2011 7:31 AM

Something has happened to the world. Everything has been flattened into 2D - except you. Now the world needs you to put things back to normal. Antimatiere is a small puzzle game where you move 2D objects around on walls and floors to solve problems. It also has a slight resemblence to Portal in that placing doors and windows punches holes through the mentioned walls, allowing you to pass between different rooms. Warning: Requires the Unity Web Player plugin to run.

(Seen on Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

posted by ymgve (35 comments total)

If it requires another plugin than flash, it should be released as desktop game not web game.
posted by zouhair at 7:33 AM on March 9, 2011 [4 favorites]

zouhair: just as a related heads up -- the next version of Flash supports hardware 3d acceleration and it looks like it's going to be possible to export from Unity to Flash:
Unity 3d Blog here. Could be a pretty huge change for web games.
posted by malphigian at 7:48 AM on March 9, 2011

Downloaded Unity plugin.
Installed Unity plugin.
Restarted Firefox.
Launched game.
"Failed to update Unity Web Player"
Uninstalled Unity plugin.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:48 AM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

At least there's a unity plugin available for your OS.
posted by DU at 7:54 AM on March 9, 2011 [4 favorites]

At least there's a unity plugin available for your OS.
Because a plate of shit for dinner is better than no plate at all?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:00 AM on March 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Here is a walkthrough video for those like me interested in the game, but not interested enough to install Unity.
posted by LVdB at 8:01 AM on March 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Ooo, that's really intriguing and fun. Sort of stole my pointer for awhile, but ESC gave me back control of my computer.
posted by steef at 8:27 AM on March 9, 2011

If it requires another plugin than flash, it should be released as desktop game not web game.

Unity is a hell of a lot better for browser gaming than Flash is and I fully support developing for it.

For what it's worth, I was able to install Unity flawlessly in Chrome.
posted by flatluigi at 8:45 AM on March 9, 2011

Yeah, stealing my pointer is not cool!
posted by afx237vi at 8:48 AM on March 9, 2011

Unity's pretty tiny, and a low hassle install. I don't know a lot about it, but from all evidence, it's better than Flash.
posted by Malor at 9:09 AM on March 9, 2011

Not installing unity, but the walkthrough video was cool. Were it on there I'd play it on the wii and reminsce about Daggorath.
posted by cashman at 9:11 AM on March 9, 2011

For a second I thought this was a Tom Friedman post.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:14 AM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

That was really fun, got stuck at the third level because there's some audio cues I couldn't figure out, but it's really interesting and well made.
posted by hellojed at 9:23 AM on March 9, 2011

I just got nailed by either a malware or phishing attempt at this address -- it has a very detailed simulation of a Windows-ish virus scanner triggering an alert, showing a scan in progress, and telling me I'm all infected. I don't know what it actually does, because I didn't click OK on the popup warning me I was infected, and immediately closed the browser window, but it was definitely badware of some kind.

If anyone else is seeing this, I'd suggest pulling the post.
posted by Malor at 9:33 AM on March 9, 2011

This Unity 3d demo always blows me away.
posted by atomicmedia at 9:36 AM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

This game makes the same mistake as all Unity games. If you don't have the plugin, instead of teasing you with screenshots or video of what you could be playing if you installed it, it just throws up a "Nothing to see here unless you've got Unity!" page.

And so, like so many other Unity games, fails to tempt me into installing the plugin.
posted by straight at 9:40 AM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

What plugins do that, straight? I didn't realize it was a standard thing for plugins to do anything but tell you you're missing them when you're missing them.
posted by flatluigi at 9:42 AM on March 9, 2011

I'm not talking about plugins, I'm talking about game makers who presumably want me to play their game but do nothing to convince me that their game is worth installing a plugin.

Any other type of game that wants you to download and install something has a web page with screenshots, videos, testimonials, interviews with the programmer's parents, etc. Every link I've ever followed to a Unity game has nothing but that "Install Unity" button.
posted by straight at 9:45 AM on March 9, 2011

Unity aside (I did install it and I played through the game even after it stole my mouse) I don't understand it. Seems like a cool idea and then it just kind of falls apart after the train level. And maybe a bit before that? Maybe that's the idea, but I felt like I found a crack in the level and fell off. And the walkthrough shows this as the right ending? Just walking down a hall way?

The parts that were fun were pretty fun though.
posted by bDiddy at 9:54 AM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Malor said: "If anyone else is seeing this, I'd suggest pulling the post."

Nope, went to Kongregate, clicked on the button to install Unity, installed it, restarted Firefox, got an error, refreshed the tab, and the game loaded.

It was a really cool game. The ending was quite abrupt, though (I actually beat it a second time around, because I thought I crashed the game at the end).

Don't expect a polished game. Conceptually it's really fun, and the atmosphere went nicely with a set of headphones (hellojed, the headphones helped me out in the part that you got stuck at). Apparently there was a Unity contest and the makers of the game won $10,000. I think part of the reason it's not very polished is the team that made the game was composed purely of non-programmers.

One thing I liked about Antimatiere was the minimalist style of the game. In some ways, it reminded me of the Manhole on the Macintosh (in term of visuals and atmosphere), and more recently, Gregory Weir's Looming (in terms of visuals, atmosphere, and a strong narrative component).

I'd say it's worth checking out.
posted by lemuring at 9:57 AM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Jeez why have a plugin architecture at all if you won't install anything but flash. I fully support a modular browser architecture.

You really want an installer for this instead of one plugin that can run every game that uses Unity ?
posted by Ad hominem at 10:00 AM on March 9, 2011

atomicmedia: "This Unity 3d demo always blows me away."

Holy crap, that was impressive. If you're skeptical about the plugin, try it out just for this at least -- it installed in about 30 seconds for me on Chrome and ran smooth as silk on my nearly-five-year-old, non-gaming laptop.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:05 AM on March 9, 2011

If anyone else is seeing this, I'd suggest pulling the post.

Unfortunately, it sounds like you're already infected with something. (I suppose it's also possible there's malware in a rotating ad there that most people aren't getting.)
posted by kmz at 10:06 AM on March 9, 2011

Malor that sounds like Scareware, and is probably related to in browser ads and not Unity.
posted by hellojed at 10:21 AM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, I decided to give this Unity thing another try...

Downloaded Unity plugin (258k).
Installed Unity plugin.
Launched Safari this time.
Launched game.
"Failed to update Unity Web Player"
~In Safari, though, I see two buttons...Details and Manually Update. The Details button tells me that it's trying to download an update to Unity but can't for some reason. Anyway, I click Manually Update and am sent to a Download page on the Unity site.
Downloaded Unity plugin update (6meg! wtf???).
Rebooted the Mac, just to make sure.
Launched Safari.
Launched game.
"Failed to update Unity Web Player"
Launched Firefox.
Launched game.
"Failed to update Unity Web Player"
Uninstalled Unity plugin. Again.

Fuck this noise.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:24 AM on March 9, 2011

Unfortunately, it sounds like you're already infected with something.

That's fairly unlikely; I'm on Win7, don't run as an administrator, am running Microsoft Security Essentials, and keep myself very well-patched. It's never impossible, but I'm a hard target.

I only got the warning when I tried to load the page with Internet Explorer; something about my Firefox setup seems to have Unity confused on Kongregate. It looks perfectly normal on Firefox, except that the game doesn't run.
posted by Malor at 10:26 AM on March 9, 2011

Jeez why have a plugin architecture at all if you won't install anything but flash. I fully support a modular browser architecture.

Plugins are great, but the burden is on the content provider to convince me that any given plugin is worth installing. I'm just saying that makers of Unity games uniformly fail to do that.
posted by straight at 10:29 AM on March 9, 2011

Against my better judgement, I caved and installed the plugin. Crashed my web browser. Even Flash doesn't do that these days in Safari.

Gotta say I can't really figure out why we need real 3D games to be playable directly inside of websites.
posted by floam at 10:40 AM on March 9, 2011

Not that anyone is actually talking about the game at this point, but:

Jung'f hc jvgu gur yhttntr? V sbhaq gjb abvfr-rzvggvat fhvgpnfrf naq chg gurz gbtrgure, naq abguvat unccrarq rkprcg gur abvfr tbg ybhqre. V jngpurq gur jnyxguebhtu naq fnj gurl qvqa'g rira obgure jvgu gur yhttntr. Vf vg whfg n erq-ureevat, be jung? Gur raqvat V sbhaq gebhtu gur znvagranapr nern jnfa'g irel fngvfslvat.

(rot-13)
posted by Captain Cardanthian! at 11:27 AM on March 9, 2011

This is pretty neat. It's a shame it won't go full-screen because capturing the mouse pointer just isn't working on my Mac - I keep on clicking outside of the game and switching to another program. Very frustrating.
posted by egypturnash at 12:42 PM on March 9, 2011

Jeez why have a plugin architecture at all if you won't install anything but flash. I fully support a modular browser architecture.

You really want an installer for this instead of one plugin that can run every game that uses Unity ?

Plugins are bad for the web-- they encourage websites to serve non-standard content, they don't integrate well with other web technologies (aren't exposed in the DOM, aren't searchable, aren't accessible), they are vectors for malware and targets for advertisers. I would have no problem installing a non-plugin unity player, or downloading a zipped game (no need for a heavyweight installer for such a small game), but I have no interest in burdening my browser with any more plugins.
posted by Pyry at 1:05 PM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Jeez why have a plugin architecture at all if you won't install anything but flash.

Good point. Let's get rid of this idiotic plugin architecture someone dreamed up so we don't have to deal with this 1997 crap anymore.
posted by enn at 1:58 PM on March 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

egypturnash: "This is pretty neat. It's a shame it won't go full-screen because capturing the mouse pointer just isn't working on my Mac - I keep on clicking outside of the game and switching to another program. Very frustrating."

If you right-click* on the game window, there's a fullscreen option -- the arrow will still appear, which is a little annoying, but it really improves the experience.

*or however you bring up a context menu on a Mac
posted by Rhaomi at 3:01 PM on March 9, 2011

I tried right-clicking on it and got nothing! In fact, when I went digging into the HTML to see if I could extract the game file, I noted that the embed tag contains disablefullscreen="true" disablecontextmenu="true" - I guess the Mac Unity plugin is respecting those choices, while the Windows plugin is not!
posted by egypturnash at 3:38 PM on March 9, 2011

It's probably a Kongregate thing; I had been using the demo apps on Unity's site at atomicmedia's suggestion and the full screen worked fine. (Also, looking at the Antimatiere game on Kongregate, it's telling me I still need to install the plugin, so I'm guessing the site has other problems, too.)
posted by Rhaomi at 4:33 PM on March 9, 2011