Relationship has levelled Up

December 4, 2009 5:06 PM

Level Up! A sweet and oddly deep little RPG/platformer flash game that's all about grinding, stats, and broken fences.

Hint: X is up, down is interact, and c is Menu. Read the codex, trust me.

posted by The Whelk (35 comments total)

I liked it a lot until a new day started and it reset all of my stats. If I had won in the dream, would that have not happened?
posted by stresstwig at 5:29 PM on December 4, 2009

If you win in the dream you get to keep your stats, but that really required double jump. I had two stat clearings before I was able to defeat the dream being.
posted by The Whelk at 5:31 PM on December 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

Oh my god, I used to waste my life on newgrounds.com. I had completely forgotten it's name until this post. Uh oh.
posted by Corduroy at 5:41 PM on December 4, 2009

Oh, and the game world is larger than you think. Keep exploring.
posted by The Whelk at 5:41 PM on December 4, 2009

Screw you dream being!
posted by Artw at 5:55 PM on December 4, 2009

Yeah, but how do you kill evil dream man?
posted by mightygodking at 6:05 PM on December 4, 2009

You don't. See the bar at the bottom? That's how long the dream lasts. You have to survive long enough. Get as many hearts as possible (by giving the boy as many gems as possible, maxing out relationship) and max out run, jump, and HARDY. Double jump helps a lot. Just stay alive and you'll beat it.
posted by The Whelk at 6:09 PM on December 4, 2009

See the bar at the bottom? That's how long the dream lasts.

Untrue. Dark gray gems appear periodically throughout the dream (I think they have something to do with the falling boulder attack); they're kind of hard to see. Each one you collect reduces the boss' health.
posted by ixohoxi at 6:12 PM on December 4, 2009

You have to lure the shadow guy into getting hit with the boulders he summons, then he drops the dark gems which you collect. It gets harder as the battle goes on because the enemy's skills level up as he uses them, too.
posted by Nedroid at 6:25 PM on December 4, 2009

It's an interesting idea, but if you lose the fight with the nightmare guy, you lose almost everything you've gained.

Fuck that.
posted by Malor at 6:37 PM on December 4, 2009

I completed it! The game that is, not my essay about morality in Rousseau's civil society. Um, that's going to have to wait til another day.
posted by Sova at 6:43 PM on December 4, 2009 [6 favorites]

Argh. Sucks that after you've beaten him once, if you lose against him during a subsequent dream fight, you don't just lose the previous day's experience, but go back to level one in everything.

Pretty cool, but I don't think I have the patience to start over from there.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 7:20 PM on December 4, 2009

It's an interesting idea, but if you lose the fight with the nightmare guy, you lose almost everything you've gained.

Fuck that.

I kinda liked that in the whole meta-game-about-leveling-where-you-can-level-by-standing-still sense. Conceptually it's kinda neat, and the game has a built in end-it-whenever with the Computer. 100 gems and good jump skills and you can finish it before you ever meet Nightmare Guy.
posted by The Whelk at 7:28 PM on December 4, 2009

I finished it on day 3 - you can beat the nightmare without double jump or any special skills beyond maxed-out life, it just requires a lot of patience and some luck (I grabbed the last gem right before dieing.)

I also just bought all of the skills rather than try to "win" them - it's a flaw in the game that there's no big point in the gems once you max out your life, so there's no reason to spend all but the last 100 of them.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 7:33 PM on December 4, 2009

*not spend.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 7:34 PM on December 4, 2009

I think I ended the game early - the final cutscene wasn't a happy one.

Oh, and a hint for fighting the dream shadow guy: Whether you take a small hit or a big hit, you're temporarily invulnerable while you're incapacitated. So the rocks (which are very likely to kill you) can't harm you immediately after you take a low-HP firebolt. Once I figured that out I could beat the shadow without needing double jumps.
posted by ardgedee at 7:54 PM on December 4, 2009

You don't lose absolutely everything if you lose to the nightmare. You keep your Codex (and, thus, your Knowledge level). Knowledge lets you learn skills more quickly, so the more you explore, the faster you'll be at picking things up the second or third or fourth time.
posted by wanderingmind at 7:58 PM on December 4, 2009

As far as I can tell, as long as you have 100 gems in hand and a high enough jumping level to reach the computer, you can end the game. And that ought to be possible without having to interact with anybody.
posted by ardgedee at 7:58 PM on December 4, 2009

The game ends once you beat the dream being and talk to the computer. Any sooner than that, and the computer pulls up an error message.

This was way better than I expected. I was prepared for it to be some big metajoke game that wasn't actually so much fun to play, like Upgrade Unlocked or You Only Live Once. These low expectations actually lead me to have fun. It's like a smaller version of Iji that runs right in my browser. Exactly what Fixel should be all about.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:25 PM on December 4, 2009

The computer ended the game for me without my beating the dream. It rejected me the first time, but on day 3 i was leveling up quickly enough that I guess I had a buncha high stats by night time.

Dream's easy w/ full life, double jump.

If you come back to computer with 100%, it lets you play what seems like a test of their next game.
posted by damehex at 8:31 PM on December 4, 2009

I really enjoyed this game enormously. wanderingmind is right, it's not a big deal that you lose all of your abilities if you lose to the shadow, as you level up faster every day.

The reward for getting 100% of the gems is definitely worth it, by the way (and not too hard either).
posted by Rictic at 8:34 PM on December 4, 2009

Augh, there's six more gems I just can't find. Why can't the bonus for 100% be something crappy?!

Continuing the search!
posted by aubilenon at 9:45 PM on December 4, 2009

Oh, okay I forgot to get the RADAR. All set! Awesome.
posted by aubilenon at 10:05 PM on December 4, 2009

Ok, had to go back and complete. Good game. The demo was... interesting. Odd movement, but alright.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 11:54 PM on December 4, 2009

I liked the demo. I wasn't really expecting the ending, since I hadn't beaten the dream being yet. The sequel seems like it will be pretty interesting.
posted by Peztopiary at 2:31 AM on December 5, 2009

I liked the game right up to the (normal) ending, which I thought was kind of trite. I found all the gems but couldn't find the last Codex entry for 100%, gave up, annoyed.
posted by JHarris at 4:50 AM on December 5, 2009

I really enjoyed it, up until the point where I was hunting for the last 6 gems. Then I disliked it. Then I found them, finished the game, and liked it again.

subbes' Crappy Game Reviews™
posted by subbes at 1:50 PM on December 5, 2009

I couldn't figure out how to get HARDY. How is it possibly to get injured five times without landing on the ground?
posted by kenko at 2:10 PM on December 5, 2009

If you jump while taking damage, you aren't stunned and it doesn't count you as hitting the ground. I found a place with two of those little ground-crawly inky things and just jumped from one to the other five times. It was pretty easy.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:21 PM on December 5, 2009

Argh. I'm at 99.5% with two Codex entries missing (#54 and #56) and don't know what else I need to do. I've gotten all the gems, found all the postboxes, earned all the skills, did the racing thing, got hit five times in a row... what else is there?

Can somebody tell me what those missing Codex entries are so I can make a go of it?
posted by Rhaomi at 3:50 PM on December 5, 2009

This was really enjoyable - fun game, fun getting to 100%. Thanks!
posted by Zephyrial at 3:58 PM on December 5, 2009

Never mind, I stumbled across the answer. For #54, you have to approach the room where you go to end the game from the right and pay 100 gems to open the locked door (I'd always gotten into the room by double jumping up the chute below it and had forgotten about the door). For #56, talk to "The Brain" character over and over again until he talks to you about advertising in Flash games.

The reward for getting 100% was fun, but it ended abruptly a few minutes into it and dumped me back at the opening screen of the original game. Glitch? Also, is the bonus the sequel to this game? The house at the start looked a lot like the house the girl lives in, and there were statues featuring many of the game's characters.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:06 PM on December 5, 2009

Bailed out on it halfway through (was too annoyed at losing everything, yet again), but that was really fun up to that point. The dialogue in particular is great - snappy, doesn't take itself too seriously, makes The Girl a really likeable protagonist.
posted by ZsigE at 5:53 PM on December 5, 2009

I accidentally ended the game by doing the computer thing when I was at 99.5%. Thanks for the warning, game.
posted by tehloki at 1:11 AM on December 6, 2009

I think the bonus demo might actually be a prequel, judging from the ending at the Computer. It seems to get to play as the Deity that has Transcended Levels before he actually did any transcending. It will be interesting to see how the stories will be tied together.

Losing everything isn't so bad as long as you have double jump. It allows you to reach everywhere important even with a low jump level. And levels seem to max out at 5, so it's not much work to get high levels again in the search for gems. Maybe I'm just used to 16-bit inspired RPG sorts of grinding.
posted by Mister Cheese at 1:02 PM on December 6, 2009