William and Sly

By: Derek Yu

On: July 18th, 2009

William and Sly is a new Flash platform game from Lucas Paakh. In the game you play a fox, and I have to say, the movement in this game is really graceful – it’s a joy to jump around and explore the world (which thankfully contains very large and open areas to play in), and the animation is impeccable. Having played through it in an hour or so without rushing, it feels more like the prelude to something bigger than a full game, but I was impressed by what was there.

Posted in Browser Games, Platformers | Tags: LucasPaakh

THE EDGE FROM PIZZA HUT

this snake boss thing is fucking ridiculous, you can’t judge or predict it, fucking stupid design decision ruins the whole game.
Zarion

Actually, I think it’s far more predictable than you may realize.
pgil

just reached the ending (boss is really easy once you figure it out).

You weren’t kidding about the animation. I love the little fox :)
Also, the sound effects were perfect. The thunder, rain, and birds made it feel like a perfect summer afternoon.
anothergol

There’s a boss? Mmmh. This game is technically good enough to get me interested, even if this kind of scrolling needs a refresh rate that flash can’t deliver (it gives headaches). Sadly it’s reaaaly boring. You wander in hope that something will happen, but after 20min you’ve reached the end of the map and it becomes pretty clear it’s all about collecting stuff. So if you like collecting stuff, it’s a game for you.
AmnEn

Looking good and the atmosphere feels alright but it really does seem a little repetitive to me. Towards the end I was a tad annoyed by collecting fairyflies and the closer I got to the end, the more the game started to lag for some reason.
In the end I was down to stuttering guessed 2-3 FPS which made it unplayable.

Still, it shows great promise and I hope something more evolves out of it.
Dusty Spur

Enemies need to be more obvious. Maybe it’s just me, but I never saw them until they were already up and eating all my flies. Also it is terrible design decision to give you a finite number of charges to kill them. The charges run out too fast, usually, to find anything to kill.

I rushed through thinking the runestones were only necessary for traveling and then I got to the cave and quit. The atmosphere was nice, but the setting was boring and it was too repetitive for me to bother finishing it.

All in all it held my attention for somewhere around half an hour so I guess it’s doing something right. The animations WERE really fluid and movement just felt “right”. I guess it just needs something more exciting to it.
Allen

I agree with anothergol. Something about the refresh rate wasn’t right. It hurt my eyes after awhile and gave me a headache. Can’t say I had the problem with other flash games, I believe it’s the way scrolling was implemented in this game.
Adamski

Oh piss, there goes my future plans for a fox platform game.
http://www.casualexplosion.com Uesugi

Yeah, the scrolling hurt my eyes as well. I just couldn’t focus on anything when the scrolling was active, which is almost 100% of the time, so I gave up after a minute. Looks like a good effort, just limited by the refresh rate.
Tye The Czar

Uguu~ Newgrounds allowed in an ad for Sonic X. You know. The 4Kids version! Good Dammit.
CogDissident

The scrolling made me quit midway through the boss fight, it just hurt too much to finish the game.
CT

Has alot of fun till the 1st boss. If there’s a pattern, I sure don’t see it. I’m with pizza hut: “fucking stupid design decision ruins the whole game”.

As far as scrolling, seemed fine to me, silky smooth on my system.
Camkitsune

The boss has a pattern; considering that there are three levels it appears on and a very obvious way to tell which ones it WON’T be attacking…
Of course, the only real motivations for playing and beating the game are for the achievements… The lack of a narrative really brings things down; the only motivation to keep playing is to collect stuff and explore the world. The problem with the latter is that while the characters are very pretty and fluidly animated, the backgrounds and world get repetitive towards the end.
On the other hand for a flash game, an hour’s worth of play is a good indication of success, given the limitations of the medium. It took me about 45 minutes and I was only semi-OCD on collecting stuff.
Just don’t expect a AAA title without a more complex set of game mechanics.
Captain Beefheart

Not much to comment on, really. Wasn’t horrible, but pretty dull.
Fail

Wonderful.
http://lumberingdream.com/ !CE-9

it is a neat game. I didn’t encounter framerate problems (…much; there was a bit of tearing). the visuals are gorgeous, the boss mechanic was good enough, I loved the original(ish) take on losing progress avoiding the life / health / energy ‘cliche’. more enemies and action would be welcome, though.
tmth

It was nice, had a little Knytt-like charm to it. It was just fun to run and then jump and make a long fall, then run again. Very good animation.
If only backgrounds were more diverse and lively (think strange creatures in knytt just standing there, munching on a tree). I’d rather there were no in-game text, too, especially in the form of a “there is a secret passage right here” sign.
http://blog.boogatech.com Markham

You’d have to admit that it’s a little difficult to look for patterns when you’re constantly scrambling to dodge a boss who’s mouth takes up the entire screen.
Rune

Love the game! There’s real attention to detail in the graphics and the world is nice to explore with lots of secrets. (I didn’t have framerate problems.) Since the boss can’t hurt you when you have no fireflies anyway, there’s plenty of time to study its pattern before actually engaging in “fight”. I need to play it some more though; it beat it without using the map, and I never figured out what the mentioned bridges are about.
Esquar

it’s pretty (dumb)
blah

the boss did seem kind of off, definitely not too hard to figure out the pattern, but even when you do it seems a bit “backwards”
this game seems like it would have been more suited to a shadow of the collosus style climbing boss
http://runevision.com/blog/ Rune

Actually, how DO you get the map? I have 12/13 runestones activated but William still doesn’t give the map when I see him. I got 2/3 bridges activated but actually finding the switches and bridges without a map is difficult in this big world.
Krux

I played this game yesterday, yay I did know it before TIGsource posted it.
Argh

You should be able to get the map after 2 or 3 runestones – sounds like you hit a glitch.

Finding the boss pattern is simple. The boss can’t kill you, as far as I could see, just kill the fairyflies. Just sit still and watch for a moment.
LordRolo

ya the game does have some preety bad gameplay decisions, the end boss is not that hard once to relise that if it goes off the right side of the screen it will come back on the right side of the screen. At which point you stay on the left and that gives you enough tiem to dodge it.

But for anyone who has not played this game it is not a game to relax too mroe a geam that you should play when you are already relaxed and prepared to soak in the atmospher because thats what it really is all about.

fun little game and worth the mark it got on newground IMO. worth playing and had fun.
moi

That’s a good cure against insomnia.
Skofo

Pretty, but that’s about it.
Dock

I enjoyed the movement and controls, but found myself lost and bored after a while. The environments are pretty repetitive and I found myself doing leaps of faith more often than I’d prefer. There’s definitely a lot of potential in the game otherwise. :)
mots

boss is horrible
Carl (Small Cave Games)

Fun animation/graphics and setting. I had framerate issues and yes I gave up on the boss after a bit. No need to make him take up the whole damn screen! ;)

I think the collection aspect went a bit overboard (175 mushrooms?). But I did really like the signposts, secret tunnels, and the “meditation” powerup.

Overall, it’s worth a play I’d say.
Krux

a hint for the boss, hes does not follow you, he makes always the same. So he is easy as soon as you know that.
http://www.dg-studio.blogspot.com dg-studio

playing this game make me relaxed. the scenery is very beautiful.
http://www.goodgamery.com Basilisk

Neat game, though it could have used a bit more varied terrain. The temple pieces showing up near the middle were neat, but then nothing else new showed up.

I like how you can open the map mid-flight so you can nail those hard jumps.
Vanguard

I thought the animation was really beautiful. It doesn’t have a lot of gameplay, but it managed to hold my attention.

I think the reasons people are having problems with the boss are because sometimes his mouth is open and the side he comes from horizontally seems pretty random, so you try to look for a pattern in those things. Basically it gives the player *too much* information, and they look for a solution that’s more complicated than the truth.

SPOILERS FOR THE BOSS:

He just attacks the top rows twice and then the bottom rows twice. Just alternate after every second pass by and he’ll never touch you.
Bob

A nice way to spend some time.
Bob

Bleh, I was going to say that it felt like it was leading to something big what with the music and rain in that last comment, but oh well.
Cog

William seems too laid back. Maybe its the mushrooms Sly keeps bringing him. Doesn’t seem interested in anything but those rune stones. If he’s some kind of wizard you’d think he’d be able understand Sly’s fox speech or something.

I went back after picking up the secret of flight expecting him to say… something… about it and he just asked about the rune stones. I’m sitting in front of the screen saying… “uh, glowing transparent wings? on a fox? How is this not cool, William? *Sigh* Always with the rune stones, eh, William?” LOL

Overall, I loved this game. The music, the atmosphere, the gameplay are terrific. The size of the world is pretty extensive, and there do seem to be quite a number of secrets to pick up.