Darkside Adventures

By: Tim

On: November 25th, 2006

Darkside Adventures is the latest platformer by Bernie where… who am I kidding, does anyone actually require an explanation of what this game is about?

Bernie is your Pixel from the West. And I’m officially the laziest TIGSource editor around. Plus it’s amazing that you’re still reading this article instead of going over to origamihero.com and grabbing the sequel to A Game with A Kitty.

Okay, since you’re still here – how about we review TIGSource’s Titanion high scores? Your top five:

1. 452327 crackers

2. 259536 raigan

3. 246838 dessgeega

4. 235026 Dylan

5. 178552 mmodule.com

Posted in Freeware, Platformers, Windows | Tags: Bernie

Eos

Tim, your self-proclaimed laziness is very much in doubt. Have you checked when I last posted? I think I’m more entitled to that title.
Sergio

What, two hours ago? And before that a whopping five hours ago.

Uh… yep.
Eos

And before five hours ago, it was probably four months ago.
dessgeega

my current high is 246,838. i havn’t played the game that much, though.
oho

Im tired of platformers.
Wolverine

Can’t say I enjoyed this game that much. Never been a fan of platform games that revolve around picking up and throwing stuff. Just got pretty dull and annoying at times. Nicely put together but I doubt I’ll be playing it again. Didn’t much like the main sprite graphic either. Seemed badly drawn and ugly.

Wish he’d go back to that Skyhammer game. Been playing through that demo over and over a fair bit and it seems a shame he doesn’t seem to wanna finish it.
http://www.tscreative.net/ BMcC

Oh man, Iâ€™ve been waiting months to make this news post!

I guess the siteâ€™s working again, yeah? ;)
http://www.TScreative.net BMcC

Yeah, actually, I’m still seeing PROXY ERRORS when trying to post comments.

Edit: Also, comments I _thought_ I had posted successfully have vanished, never to be seen again.
raigan

man.. people who don’t like platformers are CRAZY! this game is amazing, the movement feels perfect.

also, my exact score is 259536.
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

I’m with Wolverine on this, it really didn’t do anything for me. I tried persevering to about the 7th level but while I can appreciate that it’s well put together with a few nice puzzles there’s nothing I haven’t really seen before. Really sad that it hasn’t got more innovation and charm in it. And I agree, the main character is a bit unappealing.

That said, I think calling him our “Pixel from the west” is a fairly apt description as Cave Story aside, Pixel’s output ain’t been that marvy either.
Advenith

Finally! I was hoping for a sequel, but it’s been so long… God answered my prayers, many months late.
http://bull.com The Arsecast Toast

I am crunchy.
raigan

so.. have any of you non-likers managed to get wall-running ability yet?! it’s _pure_ fun!! and the secrets.. and the insane difficulty of some of the secrets.. i don’t know. can you name a better platformer? this one’s got SMB2 beat at least — the feeling of movement alone is super fun.

Darkside is totally of Lyle/Cave Story calibre.
raigan

also.. am i the only one who liked ika-chan?!
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

Nopers, I haven’t got that ability, but the game hasn’t been fun enough for me to persevere far enough to look for something which may or may not be fun which I didn’t know about in the first place. And I find it surprising you rank Lyle and Cave Story on equal footing, they’re in completely separate leagues in my head.

I’m not trying to be nasty to Bernie, because I really like anyone who tries to produce indie games which aren’t match 3 crap, but this game just doesn’t work for me so far. If the wall running is so fun, I’d have built the whole game around it.

Also, yes, you’re the only one that likes Ika-chan. ;) Which is to say I don’t like it much at all.
manny

cave story calibre? wow, let’s not get aheads of outrselves here. :)
Wolverine

Actually I didn’t think Lyle was that good either. Cave Story was great though.

Something about the movement in this game does actually bug me. I’m not sure what it is though…
raigan

i don’t know.. how many good indie platformers are there? what does everyone rank above Lyle or Darkside? Poyo’s up there (my mental list is about a year old..). but aside from that it seems like there aren’t really any contenders.

Cave Story is totally a masterpiece, but it’s also only about half platformer (the other half being shooter/adventure).

Super Bubble Blob, Nikujin, Seiklus and Puchi are all really good, but not quite up there (either due to shortness, incompleteness, or my personal bias/taste).

So.. i don’t know. I guess i consider Darkside to be near the top of the pile.. Does anyone have any recommendations?
dessgeega

i’m not a big fan of bernie’s previous endevours. they seem like the least interesting variety of contrived platformers.

i havn’t played darkside yet, though, and i do intend to.
Roman C

The game is weak and the use of the phrase “platformer” seems to me overinclusive here. Per Wikipedia, I guess the apt term “puzzle platformer,” and it’s a subgenre I’ve never liked. Platformers are fun because they are fast, fluid, engaging, and so forth. But this one is extraordinarily tedious. The entire game mechanics (at least early on) are centered around slowing the player down. The jumping feels awkward and somewhat unpredictable and the throwing is unforgiveable. Perhaps there’s a learning curve issue, but I was simply unable to do precision throws, which the game required of me almost immediately, even after dozens of tries.

I would say pass. High polish, low substance.
dessgeega

is there a reason that block in the first stage only gives me a single bomb, other than to be really frustrating? the game lets the player excersize so little control over where thrown objects go. after quitting and retrying the same stage six times, i really don’t feel compelled to continue playing.
raigan

i found the throwing irritating too (or really, the bouncing of whatever you threw).. but still. what better indie platformers are there? what are you comparing this to?!

or does everyone just hate platformers?

(also, i may have to be disqualified since my score is for titanion v0.1.. the limited-capture-beam in v0.2 makes things a _lot_ harder)
dessgeega

i was honestly waiting for kenta cho to fix the capture beam, because it was very broken. 0.2 is much more balanced.

and i don’t think “what else is there?” is a very good defense of the game. off the top of my head, by the way, there’s within a deep forest, the jumper games, and even noitu love.
Roman C

Cave Story, Zeux World, and Akuji, in that order, would be my front three. After that, I’d say you’ve got Within a Deep Forest, Seiklus, and Noitu Love. Maybe this game is better than it seems on its face (I can’t stick with it, I find it pretty miserable) but I would definitely say that there are a lot of better indie games out there.

(Zeux World, if you haven’t played it, is a huge blast; or at least was when I played it a decade ago or whenever it came out.)
Tim W.

alrighty, finished all four worlds. Now off to collect every gem.

bring on reactor 09.
Bernie

Hey, interesting discussion going on here. I always try to make games I’d like to play and I’ll keep doing that because I enjoy it. I’m not surprised some don’t like DA. Not at all! :D

Reactor 09 is almost done.
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

Poyo, Cave Story, N, La Mulana, Noitu Love, Megamunt 2 and Pekka Kana 2 are some of my favourites.

But I utterly agree with Bernie, you should make games which you would like to play yourself. To ask an indie dev to do otherwise is just insulting.
Tim W.

last gem!
Wolverine

Personally found Noitu Love extremely monotonous after a while.

La Mulana was good fun but damn it’s tough at times.

Anyways yeah as long as the actual developer of the game is happy with the final product thats cool. I haven’t released anything I’ve done yet as most of the lil projects I did were personal stuff I think I would be the only person ever to get any enjoyment from them. I myself only want to make stuff I actually enjoy playing myself and if anyone else enjoys it thats good too but its not my priority. Not until I wanna try to make any money anyway :P
http://yummytoast.com Melvin

“as long as the actual developer of the game is happy with the final product thats cool”

If we all adopted that attitude, the entire “games” “journalism” “industry” (i.e. shit-slinging festival / free bjs) would collapse overnight.
Derek

Making games you like to play is great! Just be wary of adopting an attitude where you don’t at least think over people’s criticisms… some people so stubbornly cling to the idea that they shouldn’t listen to anyone else that they never get past a certain level of proficiency.

Not saying this is you, Bernie… just warning against being complacent (mostly warning myself!).
Wolverine

I do sometimes listen to other people, but there was this time someone suggested putting mouse aiming in a platform shooter I was developing, so I killed him.
Wolverine

Actually that reminds me. Does anyone else remember a demo of a very Gunstar Heroes like shoot ’em up on PC from a few years ago? I can’t recall if it ever got finished and I can’t remember the name or find anything about it ever. It looked pretty cool but the demo didn’t run on the machine I had at the time.

I didn’t just dream it did I?
Ben H

Do you mean Streambolt? That was pretty gunstar-ish, and not quite complete.
Wolverine

Hmm, no it wasn’t. I’ve never seen this Streambolt before. Just had a quick go on it and despite the slightly crap controls (feels weird having the jump key above the shoot key when technically the gun is higher than the feet… I’ll just add joypad control later with JoyToKey) and the obvious incomplete feel to it all I really enjoyed it. Not bad at all. But it’s not the one I remember. The one I’m thinking of allowed two players on one machine via keyboard or joypads, had superb pixel art and effects and just looked really well done.
Bernie

Derek: You’re right. I always listen to my testers and fix the things they say need adressing. DA had awesome testers.

Tim: Wow, you’re good! :D Did you find all 4 secret levels, too? You’ll have to find them for a 100% game.
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

Noitu Love was a bit “meh” in the gameplay at times, I’d agree, however it had oooodles of charm in there and some intersting enemy behaviours and that’s what kept me playing. The musical ghost boss is amongst my favourite ever boss-intros.

And yeah, I’m only gonna’ release original games if I’m happy with ’em. However with remakes I’ll shove out any old shit as long as it’s faithful. ;)
NO!

Don’t you forget about ETERNAL DAUGHTER, great game!!11 Albero and Peetoo were somewhat nice too…
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

Aaaah, now I know this ain’t gonna’ make me any friends hereabouts but I’m not a huge fan of Eternal Daughter either.

Let the lynching begin!

Also, is this the longest comment thread EVAR on TIGsource?
raigan

i guess i just figured that noone liked this one cause they were comparing it to some really awesome games i didn’t know about. i did indeed forget albero, deep forest, akuji..

i never got into noitu, were there even any platforms!? the first couple levels were just “run to the right”.

to combat throwing frustration i adopted a policy of “to throw a bomb, position yourself 3 tiles away and throw from a standing state”, it works great.

anyway.. i think darkside’s awesome, SMB2 always seemed to have potential but wasn’t ever really all that fun, this game seems to have fixed that.
Xander

Hah, don’t worry about it A-Host (…I need to find a better way to shorten that), Eternal Daughter didn’t click exactly with me either. It’s inevitable really that some people just wont enjoy it as much as others, though I still admire it for what it is.

DA is pretty damn enjoyable though, there’s something a lot more relaxed about it than other similar games I’ve played lately (Damn you Satan Sam… I -still- haven’t finished it!). I like fast-paced action too, but sometimes I just like to sit down and play something comfortable. It’s the reason I forgive Zelda for never wanting to kill me (The only time I died throughout all of Wind Waker was because I’d enraged an IMMORTAL black pig. Of all the things to poke with a sword…)

That or I’m just too early in the game for it to start kicking my ass… and I’m quite okay with that!

(PS. Looking forward to playing through Reactor 09 now too, and here I was supposed to be studying. Ah well! (Grabs joypad))
NO!

Eternal Daughter is cool, but not at first. You need to give it a chance and play it with a joystick, in the beginning is frustrating and too tough.

I don’t think Bernie is the “Pixel from the west”. He makes quality stuff but as a coder he’s still lacking, his games run at snail pace on my PC while Cave Story was so smooth and wasn’t like 15 megs big. Blame Multimedia Fusion if you want, but I know his coding skills can still improve. Go Bernie go!!!
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

The problem with persevering with games is that there are too many other ones to play to justify the investment of time. If a game ain’t gonna’ whip out its tits and rub them in my face in the first five minutes I’m often disinclined to continue.

I don’t mean that it should give me everything from the off – there’s such a thing as a experience/difficulty curve – but it does have to give me *something* which is either original, intriguing or lots of fun to play.

Oh, and you’re right that Noitu ain’t terribly platformy but it does get more-so later on in the game (although again there are great big swathes of walking later on, too).
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

Seeing as you asked, Ilia, I downloaded your game (Btw, is your webserver a toaster or something? Only my download was slow…) and I think that while the premise is sound and I like how you interact with the instructions the execution is poor. The collision is vile and jerky and the handling of the player is very unpleasant and unnatural.
http://invader.dessgeega.com/ dessgeega

Pfft, my game pwns all.
Sergenth

Bernie, your game is “Kirby-licious” (just like A Game With a Kitty) but challenging and some-what evil like Noitu Love.

When I play platformers, I hate it when there is no challenge, and progress through the level is a mere walk-through or dodge-a-thon (Tak 2 for GBA). DA is the opposite — I can appreciate the constant dying! Normally, I would become frustrated at repetitive, meaningless deaths, but it just takes a dozen or so tries to figure out that there is a trick, and suddenly the gameplay has meaning. The technique-learning is what makes the game worth it for me.

Arse Host, thanks for the mentioning of Pekka Kana 2 — looks really neato.
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

Dessgeega: *whistles and bites tongue to avoid offending anyone else*

Sergenth: Pekka Kana 2 has some kinda’ crappy bits about it, but I find it bizarrely compulsive. Enough to play through the entirety of the game and a fair few of the expansion pack’s levels, anyway.
Mr_Staypuft

By the way, I’ll have that number 3 position for Titanion. (258,815)

Thanks very much.
http://www.TScreative.net BMcC

The Arsecast Host: How can you whistle while biting your tongue? :P
http://www.arsecast.com The Arsecast Host

I have a whistle up my bottom.