[mechanical voice] ro. to. po.

August 20, 2016 6:51 PM

You are a stick figure. In 3D. On squares. Don't fall down.
posted by slater (21 comments total)

Sweet.
posted by vrakatar at 7:09 PM on August 20, 2016

INCREDIBLY TENSE NOW
posted by kiltedtaco at 7:20 PM on August 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Is this the new election thread
posted by beerperson at 7:24 PM on August 20, 2016 [26 favorites]

Sunbather the game.
posted by gucci mane at 7:57 PM on August 20, 2016

Thanks, quite nice.
posted by tummy_rub at 8:03 PM on August 20, 2016

Intense. I killed lots of figures. They will be forever in my conscience.
posted by greenhornet at 8:05 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

This was intensely stress-causing for me. I think it was the plunging guy -- an abstract marble wouldn't have been nearly as bad to watch plunge to its death.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:31 PM on August 20, 2016

There is no true "down" in the game universe so presumably the stick figures aren't dying, they're just falling for eternity through silent infinite space, gradually losing all sense of time and meaning, their minds slowly unraveling over the years until there is nothing left but desperate longing for the sweet release of death. So no worries!
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:33 PM on August 20, 2016 [32 favorites]

I'm pedaling backwards.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:52 PM on August 20, 2016

There was an old PlayStation game almost exactly like this... you controlled a glass sphere, and the maze was set against a cloud backdrop, and some of the squares were special and did different actions. I spent a LONG time playing it as a kid. I think it was a free game or included with something else. Anyone else remember it?
posted by miyabo at 9:03 PM on August 20, 2016

Kula World. The wife was addicted to it. Rollaway in the US IIRC.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 9:56 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is way better than the last game Metafilter got me addicted to.



damn kittens...
posted by saul wright at 9:59 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yes, wow, heart rate up, focused, and this is strangely intuitively fantastic.........
posted by pt68 at 10:50 PM on August 20, 2016

It's a really good brain puzzler, but I've never been able to latch onto 3D games where if I fail, I fall into an empty void. It doesn't open up any kind of existential dread or anything, I just don't like it.

For some reason, I start asking questions about why I'm doing this thing, why the void is here, who is making me do it, does my character enjoy this, does he/she care, have they known anything else or is this it, am I a copy of a copy, and I have to say that I just don't really care for the feeling of all these questions coming up and not being able to answer them.

Give me something to latch onto and maybe that changes. Guy falls for a bit, hits the bottom, grassy field waving in the breeze. Oh look, there's a little building to the west. Walks over there, it's a pub, filled with his clones. But now we have to figure out what they're going to talk about, how the pub got there and why, and what they're going to do next.

So much more interesting than walking on some shapes.

For some reason, this only happens with 3D games, though. No problem with Mario falling to his death. Except in Mario 64, but then he just got kicked out of the painting. See, that's how you solve a plunge into a vague abyss.
posted by doctorfrog at 11:56 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

And now my ancient addiction to 3D Tetris comes back to haunt me...
posted by arzakh at 5:28 AM on August 21, 2016

Control interpreter needs more work. I managed to figure out that the swipe needs to go the opposite way to what you expect, but 7 times in 10 a vertical swipe up caused my little guy to backtrack left and die instead of going towards the top of the screen. That's not right.
posted by Autumn Leaf at 5:48 AM on August 21, 2016

Neat! The painting mechanic reminds me a lot of Zen Bound, if you want a similar puzzle game without the stress.

If the little guy could just stop walking it would be so, so much simpler.
posted by Nelson at 7:58 AM on August 21, 2016

I like this.
posted by cashman at 8:07 AM on August 21, 2016

Fun! Wish my gimbles went further
posted by Vitamaster at 8:49 AM on August 21, 2016

Control interpreter needs more work. I managed to figure out that the swipe needs to go the opposite way to what you expect, but 7 times in 10 a vertical swipe up caused my little guy to backtrack left and die instead of going towards the top of the screen. That's not right

The problem is that it has not always reoriented the controls in line with player expectation, I think. There are times when the orientation the screen is most sensibly interpreted as representing does not match the orientation assigned to the controls.

Usually the wrong direction swipes happen when trying to input a series of rapid direction changes in three dimensions, as far as I can see. It does seem to get easier to predict with practice.

I like the fact that there is a degree of generalisable learning. Certain approaches to particular situations can be applied and varied in order to get past the next part of the puzzle, meaning that you sometimes get intuitive runs where you're learning and immediately applying techniques just fast enough to keep up with yourself.

That said, I suck. It's fun though.
posted by howfar at 4:40 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Stop... stop walking over the edge of the square, little guy! I'm sorry I apparently have no spatial awareness or sense of direction or whatever it is that has me leading you over the edge into oblivion over and over again.

I'm sorry.

Okay, so once more.
posted by RainyJay at 9:15 AM on August 23, 2016