Gymnast

By: Derek Yu

On: April 16th, 2008

Walaber, the developer behind Jello Car and numerous other physics-ey games, has released Gymnast for the PC (the Xbox version will appear on Xbox Live Community Games). Playing the game requires a joystick with twin analog sticks, as well as Microsoft’s .NET 2.0 Framework. The analog sticks are used to separately control the arms and legs of your gymnast.

It takes quite a bit of time to get used to moving your character with the sticks, but thankfully, even failing is quite entertaining! The awkward spills and deadpan expressions of the characters definitely gave me a few chuckles. After some perseverance the controls start to feel pretty natural.

The game comes with two modes (Challenge and Gymnast), a replay feature, and a level editor. Hit the jump for a fun video of someone playing a custom level they made.

Posted in Freeware, Highly Recommended, Physics, Windows, Xbox 360 | Tags: Walaber

http://Unoriginalreality.blogspot.com Chase

Great. Now I have to go ou and buy a joypad. I was going to use my $10.00 Amazon gift card on a nerdy movie poster, but Gymnast comes first. I’ll have to pay a little out of my pocket, but It’ll be totally worth it.
xerus

I have determined what makes this game so good.

I’m a terrible gymnast. My character is constantly flopping aimlessly into the air, crashing down to earth on his skull, bending over backwards thus cracking his spine in two. But for the one occasion, however rare it may be, when my gymnast actually grabs the next bar after a magnificant display of flips and twists, it just looks so fucking cool that it makes up for all the times where I’ve killed the poor bastard by bashing his head into a flying pendulum bar.
whocare

can only dangle like fish :D
MisterX

I’ve already written it a few times already, but once again: This game is very very great. It indeed is difficult to play at first, but the process of learning is just so satisfying it rarely causes any frustration. You clearly notice how you are getting better the more you play and after a while you will be able to perform cool stunts using the different objects to interact with, such as bamboo sticks, trapezes and sliders.
I also haven’t encountered any major problems, apart from the obvious “getting stuck”, which then again can be hilarious, as shown in the video. But other than that it seems to work flawlessly and especially the physics are simply ideally implemented.
And whoever said that physics nowadays are only used for nonsensical eye candy, this is a great example of something that wouldn’t be well possible without a proper physics simulation.
Moose

Hang on, he’s “released it for the Xbox 360”? Does this mean I can grab it and upload it through XNA?

It looks great but I’m not hooking the USB Xbox 360->PC adapter up to my computer again. (The driver is way too flaky and it drains way too much USB power.)
http://walaber.com Walaber

Thanks for the write-up, Derek!

The game will be released onto “Xbox Live Community Games” as soon as that system goes live, so you will be able to download and play it directly on your Xbox 360. I don’t think the system is going live until fall however. JellyCar will also be released on there at the same time.
Derek

No problem, Walaber! The game is great fun. :)

I clarified the Xbox issue in my post and tidied up the language a bit.
Corpus

If only my controllers weren’t all wireless…
Topdod

You can buy a wireless adapter for your wireless controllers. That’s what I’m doing.
Anyway this game is a lot of fun.
Me and my brother play it a lot and had a good laugh.
Willum

Any chance of a non pixel shader version for those of us with dinosaur PCs? :P
Sigvatr

LOL RAGDOLL PHYSICS

What’s that? The sound of 3452 indie gamers circle jerking.
Lailoken

It seems to me that it’s not really ragdoll physics if you directly control all the limbs…

I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like the physics are more about inertia etc. Swinging your legs to get just the right amount of momentum.

Looks like a great game.
http://www.fuchtelworld.de X-Tender

I would love a keymapping function ingame. with my xbox ONE controller it is inpossible to play
Hunty

that song is awesome, and perfectly mixes my recent fascinations with ragtime and chiptunes.
whocare

wow i beat level 4 in chalenge mode)
X-Tender, try to change config in config.cfg in content folder.
whocare

sorry, controller.cfg)
Moose

Darn you, Walaber, I just bought a Wired Xbox 360 controller just for this. :)
Kenzya

I have had no luck in getting this game to work. I have a PS2 controller and an Xbox small controller just begging to get in on this action.

At first, when this game was on IndieGames.com a couple weeks ago I was getting an initialization error. I tried installing .Net 2.0 but apparently I have 3.0?

Now, the game starts up but when the screen scrolls to the word GYMNAST, a nice little box pops up and says “Gymanst has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. I’ve gotten two errors now that specify absolutely nothing.

grr >:C
Willum

Kenzya, I got the same errors with Jelly Car. It’s because I didn’t have Pixel Shader 2.0 compatible card. Might be the same with you…?
Kenzya

I have a 7800gt so I should be fine.
Annabelle

hahaha the soundtrack to the video is amazing *downloading game now*
Advenith

I like it so far, but the music grates on my nerves… Any chance of a BGM/Sound Effect volume option?
Hideous

Any chance that Walaber could make a GlovePIE script so you can use two wiimote nunchucks? :D
MisterX

In fact a few GlovePie profiles for use with the Wii controllers are actually already included in the game :)
waRsome

Challenging and addictive – the music. The game itself is very similar.
Richard

Attention those in the UK who don’t have an XBOX 360 controller:
GAME’s own USB joypad has only one analogue stick – the other just hits the same switches as the buttons.
This effectively changes the game to be “Gymnast’s Arms”. Aside from being a quirky name for a pub, this isn’t that great.
Hideous

I bought the GAME controller. All you have to do is press the “Analog” button and it works, Richie.
Richard

Aha, thank Hideous. How thoughtless of me.

This game’s great now that I can play it!
http://www.fuchtelworld.de X-Tender

I cant get over the “obstacle” level :/
how do i make controlable flips?

Why is there no forum for the game D=