There you are, standing on the precipice. Your pixelated toes hang over the edge. Taking a deep breath you move forward — and fall, cursing the heavens and hoping that the louder you say "But I pressed jump!" will make a difference. Such is the fate of all characters at some point — they fall. Some games take the idea of making that perfect jump and dare you to try hard at every turn in order to make every single jump count, and every miss hurt.
Karoshi Factory (Windows, 8MB, free) - The Karoshi series has captured the minds of sadistic-minded frustrated gamers everywhere, with the objective being not to finish the game in good health, but to kill the protagonist in every single level. Karoshi Factory continues in this vein. For a different experience, check out the much shorter and more artsy Pazzon.
Jumper 3 (Windows, 8.5MB, free) - Another installment in a classic game series has also been recently released, with a new Jumper game making its debut not long ago. In this game, you are given five different characters with which to traverse the dangerous terrain. Switch between the variations based on their individual skills. While the levels are easier than the previous games, hats are included along with time trials and coin collecting to beef up replay time.
Happy Runner (Windows, 2MB, free) - It seems the effect of I Wanna Be The Guy's incredible difficulty is still being felt with games appearing every so often to challenge and frustrate with willing glee. This also incorporates a genre I love - the One Switch Game. In this painfully difficult platformer, one single button controls not only running and jumping, but also running while jumping.
Syobon Action (Windows, 3MB, free) - In this jolly Mario-styled game, you play the role of a delightfully happy cat in a delightfully happy land. Unfortunately, it is the "I Wanna Be..." in difficulty and absurdity. More linear in story, the humour comes not from dying often, but in various ways, such as huge chunks of the ground disappearing below you. "Learning by making mistakes" now has a poster child. Note: Page is in Japanese. Click the second link from the top to download.
I love me some Karoshi.
Especially since most of the levels can be solved with SOME sort of logic, twisted though it may be
I thought Karoshi was a download, not an online game, the site is asking me to download a plugin to play on Firefox ... is there a direct link to download somewhere?
Ottoman - yes there is. All Yoyogames games have a link that's on the right side of the screen, towards the bottom.
Picture here, courtesy of indiegames.com: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/images/timw/yoyodl.png
Thank you Wulfo! I can't wait to try out the new Karoshi, I've always enjoyed these games very much.
YAY! ANOTHER KAROSHI GAME! DeceasedCrab, get to work making a LP of it!
These are the kinds of games that I'd rather watch other people play than play myself, as I'm the kind of guy who believes trial-and-error to be better for puzzle games than platformers.
Weren't these games originally made to be difficult for people who have access to save states, where they could just restart before the sudden death happened whenever something went wrong? (Hence, all the ways of losing lives that just pop up out of nowhere)
I cant get level 10 on Karoshi!!!
Scratch that. It Freezes up on me when I press N which I HAVE to press!
Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows... hasn't anyone ever heard of Macintosh?
Ah, Jumper 3. While I did not play the first two iterations of the series much, the third one seems to be very well-built. It's design is superb, the interface is modern and intuitive, and the gameplay feels great.
I'd like to see a full review of it, actually.
It may be all well & good for you folks to say "Hey Mac users, just go get a Windows Emulator!" but at least for me, I'm not going to spend a lot of money just to play little games like this. As near as I can tell, the cheapest option is like $70, and then there's the cost of the Windows license!! Now I could be wrong on the price but that's all I could find, anyways. Bootcamp would slow down a MacBook way, way too much (my software-engineer husband said so, he won't install it on his machines, either) and Parallels is $80- forget it! My Mac does everything else just fine, I have no other use for Windows, so I'm surely not going to pay $80+ solely for the privilege of playing these silly little games, even if they are fun.
So it's o.k. to have mostly Windows-only games to download because of course it's your site, you can have whatever you want, and most of your readership has Windows. Just please recognize that some of use simply will never use a Windows Emulator for very good reasons (unless the price drops dramatically), so these games are off-limits for us.
Love the site- thanks-
Caya - yeah, I know. I use a Mac, too. I feel your pain.
I wish there were more Mac games available, but that's just not the case. If you are serious about playing all kinds of games being made, you simply must be more accommodating.
You might want to give CrossOver Games a try:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/
Yes, you have to pay for a license ($40) but it comes with a free trial to try it out, AND it doesn't require Windows.
The downside is that it doesn't work with every game. Still, it will expand your options.
(And I believe your husband is mistaken about BootCamp.)
I am SO stuck on level 18 of Karoshi. Any help?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaCkpbbOVVM
for those that want to see cat mario without torturing themselves,watch an awesome LPer do it instead.
In my experience, Boot Camp doesn't slow my machine down at all. Not one bit. The Windows part of my computer isn't running in any way while I'm in OSX.
The only disadvantage is that I had to partition off a section of my hard drive to hold the Windows part of my computer, but that doesn't impact speed. Just storage space.
I get that a majority of the games featured here are Windows-only and that must be frustrating for Mac owners, but man am I tired of hearing about it. I mean, I can't play Super Macventure Plus, but you don't hear me complaining about it. And you guys get a swirling beach ball while all we get is an hourglass? A swirling beach ball is so much cooler than an hourglass! You guys are the lucky ones.
Anyway, here are my thoughts about this week's downloads:
KAROSHI - The thing I liked about the first and second Karoshi was the way you had to be creative to solve a lot of the puzzles. I'm not getting that from this one, so I'm disappointed.
JUMPER 3 - Too hard. Also, it is just me, or does everyone have to wait about ten seconds after dying or finishing a level to continue on?
HAPPY RUNNER - I haven't played this one, but from the screenshot it is too hard.
SYOBON ACTION - I watched a video of part of the first level. Way too hard. Even the video was hard to watch. Much, much too hard.
If you want to play games, why would you get a Mac?
That's cool info- thanks to both of you :-)
Alex - I think the answer to that for most people (it's true at least for me) is that we don't buy our Macs with the primary purpose to play games on them.
We buy Macs to be more productive with our computers.
Games come second. ;)
That's it exactly Jay, plus Macs are better security-wise, and do better in some areas like dealing with photos/videos/music and such.
Jumper 3 was pretty good. Haven't tried the others.
Does anyone know where to find a video walkthrough for Karoshi Factory or Jumper Three?
I'm stuck on a few levels in each and a video walkthrough would probably be best in terms of timing
Coincidentally, my friends just recommended Karoshi 2 to me. Longending is lone!
Level 18 solution:
The hint is you have to move quick, and you kinda have to. First get the gun, then move the guy in the upper right hand corner onto the switch. Now have the bottom guy move the crate into the empty spot at the bottom of the screen and then move him onto the switch. Okay, you're all set up now, time to move fast.
Have the guy with the gun shoot one bullet at the deflector and then immediately have him jump on the electrified crates. One down.
Now have the bottom guy jump when the bullet is coming towards him so that the bullet passes him by and can still go through the box at the top of that section. Have the guy in the upper right run down off the crates and to the wall at the right so the bullet can hit him. Two down.
Now take the guy at the bottom of the screen and have him jump into the spike on the right. Three down.
Is it just me or does the Syobon Action game not work? I run the .exe and it opens up for a second with a black screen and then exits out.
I made it all the way to level 19 on Karoshi Factory without any help...but 19 has got me stumped. Anyone figure it out? That darn block stops the bullet!
Level 19 of Karoshi Factory:
Move the guy in the upper left to the red box on the right so he'll fall all the way to the bottom.
Move the lower guy all the way up to the blue button but don't push it yet.
Have the shooter grab the gun and then stand under the deflector so he can take the bullet.
Now have the shooter shoot the bullet, and switch to the guy on the bottom. Have him run over and jump up on the ledge next to the crate.
When the bottom guy runs over the red switch the guy on the left will fall down and the bullet will take him out. One down.
Once the bullet crosses over the red switch have the guy on the ledge jump up and push the crate left, onto the switch. Leave him up there, the bullet will take him out. Two down.
The bullet will continue back to the shooter, and the crate will open the red block for the bullet to kill the shooter. Three down.
This one requires you to move fast and accurate.
oooh mmm: I have that exact same problem...not sure what the problem is though. Anyone have any advice or possible solutions?
Thanks for the help on level 18 (although I think you got left and right confused). It turns out I was making it SO much harder for myself by not noticing that there's a massive spike, so I was somehow trying to kill the guy at the bottom with a second bullet.
Also, now I'm on level 19, and it stops me from switching character more than twice. What the hell?
Grr, I like this game, but it's not making life easy for me.
OMG what happened to Karoshi??
The first two games were simply phenomenal, every level was unique in a way and playing through it was sheer joy.
Karoshi Factory feels like a rehash of that "Platform" platformer, only you have to kill the guys instead of opening the door. It's not a bad game per se, but compared to the brilliance of the last two in the series this is very, very disappointing.
A very definite step in the wrong direction. Too bad.
I really, really wish the controls in Karoshi Factory were customizable. Having to use Z to jump and Space for switching characters... I'm more than halfway through the game and I still can't play it because I keep hitting Space to jump, like in every other platformer ever. If I could use Up or Space to jump, I'd be enjoying this much more, because I wouldn't keep switching my characters at a crucially-timed moment when one should be jumping.
*Sad*...
(Possible Karoshi 2 puzzle solution spoilers)
I miss the cool solutions to Karoshi puzzles from the previous games. Stuff like gathering ten coins then restarting to gather another ten, or pressing a button with your mouse to microwave your dude, or, my favorite, physically putting in a music CD to activate a boom box and push a safe onto your guy. Don't get me wrong, straight out puzzles like these without a cheeky solution are good and all but the unique levels from the previous games were what really made the series shine.
It's possible that this is complete coincidence, but I'm making this known here in case it's not and somebody else has the same problem.
Right after closing Karoshi for the first time, my firewall was disabled and I was presented with alerts from a fake "virus alert" software informing me that I had thousands of viruses and that I'd need to purchase software to remove them. Upon a little searching, I found that the product, "Antivirus XP 2008," is itself malware, rather than being anti-virus software. Here is a link with removal instructions:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/malware-removal/remove-antivirus-xp-2008
As I said, I don't know if my download of Karoshi from the YoYoGames site was related to my getting this virus, but it's the first thing I've downloaded in a long time, and it happened the moment I closed Karoshi for the first time, so if anybody else experiences this, please give a heads-up here.
scottique:
I've personally downloaded and played every game in the Karoshi series, and countless other games from YoYoGames, and I've never been hit by that malware or any other virus. It seems very likely to me that it is a coincidence.
As a follow-up, I ran a full scan of my computer with my normal virus protection and the program you linked to (which is apparently very good at finding and fighting Antivirus XP 2008), and my system comes up clean. I highly doubt your problem was caused by Karoshi. YoYoGames has automatic virus protection that scans every game uploaded onto the site, so downloads from there are generally safe.
Antivirus XP 2008 is a very nasty bug that can infect your computer even if you never download anything. You can get it simply by visiting an infected website. It's not easy to tell where you got it or when, since it doesn't always advertise itself immediately. It's extremely unlikely that you picked it up from Jay Is Games or YoYoGames, though, since I visit both sites all the time and I've never encountered any problems.
OK, having finished Karoshi Factory my feeling of disappointment with this game increased even further.
There's only one (1) difficult level, and that's level 18. After that one the creator seems to have lost his interest; it's not just the levels are too easy, but rather that there are multiple ways of solving them, and at least one is usually blatantly obvious. Oh, and there is a boss fight, but it's a joke.
2Dcube, are you pulling our collective leg? OK, the joke's on us, now give us the real Karoshi 3.0!
so does anyone know how to make syobon action work? I've downloaded it from numerous other sources and it still refuses to start
baba44713:
There's a contest going at YoYoGames with a "cooperation" theme. Visit 2 from last week was entered into it, too. It's likely that Jesse Venbrux used his Karoshi concept and assets to make something that would suit the contest. I think this one isn't numbered because it really isn't Karoshi 3. It's more of a side story.
40 comments and the only one who mentioned Happy Runner said it "looked" to hard.
Didn't anyone play this game?
Too few people are mentioning Jumper 3, too, which is surprising, because the game is great. And you gotta love the replayability factor - all those gold coins to collect and time medals to earn..
On the other hand, it still IS a very hardcore platform game. Not as punishing as the previous two, but still...
@Psychtronic:
Well, that makes much more sense, and prety well explains the "rushed" feel of the second half of the game.
I really liked Happy Runner. Simple, but effective!
How do you beat level 5-9 In jumper three
PLEASE ANYONE?
PLEASE.
Update