[Explore]

Flippy_D

YouAreGoingToExplore

WhenExploringYouWillFindThingsWorthyOfExploration

GoodLuckInYourExplorations

CLICK HERE

Woodroez

Exploration commencing.

EDIT: as an aside, it's amazing what a little music can do for the mood.

Kaseius

I think we already had a thread for this. Or it got linked somewhere. It's still awesome though, so if you haven't tried it yet, you should.

Kris_xK

I am terrified of that link.

THEPAIN73

This is the scariest OP I have ever seen.

I must investigate further.

Crazybear

Damn it! Why must you temp me at work with exploring when my job blocks all exploring and other cool things on the web. (except Penny Arcade doesn't get blocked for some reason....)

Kris_xK

Ok so thats pretty fucking awesome.

Ebz123

Does anyone know if the world you see scrolling down the title is playable?

Scotty

This is more awesome and intriguing than it has any right to be...I'm hooked.:)

n00bish

Game beaten, game owns.

DisruptedCapitalist

Oh so THIS is what makes fog of war in RTS games so much fun.

SniperGuy

This is scary as shit.

Lorahalo

Whoa, that was awesome. Flippy is also the master of mysterious OPs.

Raslin

I don't get it

gunwarrior

Neat

Fuga

this is ehhhh

QuirkyLittleTyrant

This is cool, and creeping me out.

I'm stuck in the almost-right corner of snowland, though. There doesn't look like there's anywhere else to go except through the whole damn thing again. I fail at exploring.

Ha, nevermind, figured it out.

BlueDestiny

Fuga wrote: »

this is ehhhh

Don't get me wrong, the music is nice and the art is pretty cool but it's very boring.

Food

yeah, this was posted here somewhere a while ago, but it's good. play it.

Food

BlueDestiny wrote: »

Fuga wrote: »

this is ehhhh

Don't get me wrong, the music is nice and the art is pretty cool but it's very boring.

well the music and the art are pretty much the point of the game. that + the story they tell.

QuirkyLittleTyrant

Okay, I just finished.

Huh.

Flippy_D

Fuga wrote: »

this is semiotically challenging

This game has a lot to offer you if you stop to think about why you think what you are thinking.

Archonex

So am I right in assuming that there's a story connected with all the worlds?

The game starts out with the words "There's too much noise".

The first map has depressing themes, and everything appears to have been destroyed. On the surface, there's domes, with one having been destroyed, and the lights flicker as you get further down. There's a crapton of un-navigable holes, implying the place got the crap blown out of it.

The city map seems to show a thriving city in the background, however the parts you navigate are nasty, and there's what appears to be either rotten sewage, or radioactive run-off on the west side. The map also has the lowest amount of "holes", with the ones there are there having a purpose.

The snow map starts out all magical and snowish, then shifts over to a nuclear missile silo, complete with targets lit up on a map, as you get close to beating it.

The "green" map shows what appears to be a planet-shattering explosion going off.

And the last map appears to be the internal parts of some sort of lovecraftian abomination, only with massive bloody holes gouged out of it which you use to reach the center.

The ending is the "person" surrounded by the completion indicators, followed by the words "Silence", and then a ball of light appearing on the bottom of the screen.

As far as I can tell, it tells the story of a nuclear apocalypse. Though maybe i'm looking too closely into it, or mis-reading things. I still don't know what the hell that last map is all about.

I needed anime to post.

Only real problem I have with it is that the first map I went to I left partially unexplored because I didn't know touching the thing would teleport me back. :<

El Guaco

It's amazing what can be done with some blocky pixels. I enjoyed it.

Aroduc

Food wrote: »

yeah, this was posted here somewhere a while ago, but it's good. play it.

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?p=12151674#post12151674

Noisymunk

Did I just

Help that little dude commit suicide by plunging the escape pod into the sun?:shock:

urahonky

I like the music... That's about it.

Sonork

Noisymunk wrote: »

Did I just

Help that little dude commit suicide by plunging the escape pod into the sun?:shock:

Thats what I got out of it.

tyrannus

this was boring enough to be insulting. still played it all the way through, though. odd

Fuga

well, the music is nice..

METAzraeL

I really enjoyed this.

DusT_HounD

Brilliant. The only word i can use to describe this game.

Machismo

This was on Something Awful Forums a while ago. I liked it then, I like it now. A worthwhile ending for the 20 or so minutes.

El Extremo

That was really cool. And really weird.

But mostly cool.

stigweard

Machismo wrote: »

This was on Something Awful Forums a while ago. I liked it then, I like it now. A worthwhile ending for the 20 or so minutes.

I must have missed something, it took ~5 - 7 minutes to get to the end. I uncovered 90-95% of each map.

PolloDiablo

This was trying way too hard to be artsy.

METAzraeL

Artsy? Hardly. There really isn't anything to it besides the mood and the thematic settings to tie the levels together. If you want artsy, play something like this.

mspencer

According to what I vaguely remember from A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Raph Koster, art is information that isn't neatly packaged and ready to consume -- parallels and relationships all made obvious for you. Instead it's information you have to think about to understand.

After you're done exploring I don't think this game really makes you sit and ponder for THAT long what it all means. It's barely a game in that there's very little significant opportunity for failure: you can misjudge a jump and have to do a small section over; or you can make a jump that forces you to backtrack through a large part of the level.

So based on my own limited and flawed understanding of games, I think if you have to classify this you have to call it an art game, but there's art games out there with a lot more art in them.

I'm definitely glad I spent a little time with this. It was interesting.

Edit: with the number of replies and lack of thread-lock I'm sure it's obvious to people already that this isn't a spam thread -- but I would've picked a more descriptive title.

Edit2: (silent edit in response to posts below) I too recognized the name Flippy_D and remembered his trip to the US and his amazing blog. I didn't think he was a spammer -- I thought his account was compromised and whoever using his account was a spammer. Then I clicked, saw nothing spammy in the OP, saw interesting comments, and realized there's no way it's spam. But the title was weird to me.

METAzraeL

Now we're just getting into the idea of what art is, and, while I do think there is a larger focus here on intent and "content", there isn't anything really being said at all to push it into the realm of artsy. It's a game focused on exploration as opposed to conflict, not something that questions what games are or breaks down the walls between games and other forms of art. If this is artsy, then pretty much any simple indie game would be so, and I don't believe that it really qualifies. Plus, it was made for a casual gameplay competition - it's really nothing more than a simple, pleasant experience.

cooljammer00

Is it a screamer?