How do you feel about... TACTICAL MISDIRECTION?!!! *flashing lights* That's good. Glad to know it. Now, how do you feel about a game semi-sorta doing that with its title? And what if that title involves felines?
The Cat that Got the Milk (Windows, 30MB, free) - This game... is absolutely mad. It's easy to slap the label "cave avoider" on it, say its basic structure is like a handful of games out there, and then call it a day. But that wouldn't do justice to the artistic madness that is The Cat that Got the Milk. 18 levels that start out pretty simple, with you tapping the [up] or [down] arrow key to guide a moving dot through a maze-like passageway. Then you start encountering moving objects. Then you find circles. Then you find... well, whatever that thing is on that level. Suffice to say, it gets pretty crazy pretty quickly, and when you see the final stage, you'll probably just start crying. But, the madness of the design is half the fun, and if you ever get frustrated, just tap the [spacebar] to skip the level.
The Fourth Wall (Windows, 88MB, free) - Another fantastic project from a group of students at DigiPen, The Fourth Wall starts out as a fairly typical platform game with screen wrap elements, allowing you to move to the opposite side of the screen by stepping off the edge. But then, oh then things get very interesting. You see, after two or three levels, the screen unfreezes itself, so instead of walking around single-screen rooms, you have entire areas to explore. Problem is, there's not always a path to the exit. That's where the neat ability to freeze the screen, thus activating the screen-wrap gameplay feature, comes into play. You get to create your own wraparound scenario at the press of a button, and its more mind-warping than you might think!
Backworlds (Mac/Win, 30MB, demo) - If you can't decide between painting or playing a platform game, let Backworlds choose for you. This rather artsy-looking demo blends the two into a seamless experience that features just as much puzzle as it does jumping around. Using the mouse, you can erase the world to reveal the background behind, often revealing new paths and new platforms you can instantly utilize. You can also cover up this back world in case you need to use bits of the regular world. It's a concept that sounds awkward in writing, but when you play it, it's oh-my-stars creative and fun. Plus, the game looks like a playable painting, which never hurts! Note that this is just a demo and the game is currently seeking funding to release a final version.
Note: All games have been confirmed to run under Windows 7 and are virus-free. Mac users should try Boot Camp, Parallels, or CrossOver Games to play Windows titles, Linux users can use Wine. If you know of a great game we should feature, use the Submit link above to send it in!
Backworlds looks intriguing, but I think I must be missing something, because nothing happens. I get an opening couplet and an instruction on using the left mouse button to reveal the backworld, and I can indeed do that. But that's it; the protagonist just sleeps there on the screen, I can't move him, and nothing else happens. Am I missing some sort of obvious controls?
Love The Fourth Wall so far. Anyone know how to get past the level with the long hallway with spikes on the ceiling, that has a big lava pit and door below it?
Tahnan: You have to uncover a bit of the background, then cover it up again. So, hold the left button, draw a bit, then hold the right and make it all disappear.
I found The Fourth Wall fun, but kinda short.
@dacharya64:
If you're at the place I'm thinking of, then you freeze the screen when the lava is not visible but there is still enough room to walk below the spikes. Then use the air currents to know where the door is and unfreeze the screen when you are above it.
JohnB: huh. That's now working for me, having put the game into windowed mode. At full screen, the "hold the left mouse button" instruction never changed to the "hold the right mouse button" one. Bug, I suppose.
Actually, the last level of the cat that got the milk was actually easy.
Although, some of the levels in between were pretty hard.
All in all it is a pretty good game.
Technical Difficulties with The Fourth Wall:
It takes more than a minute to open and then I get an error message saying that my ati2dvag display driver has stopped working normally. Once it starts, it occasionally slows down to a crawl, especially if I'm running other programs.
I'm running 32-bit Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 3 on an HP Pavilion zv6000 laptop that's about 5 years old. It's got an AMD Athlon 64 processor (3500+) with 2.19 GHz and 1 GB of RAM.
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