Glum Buster

All I can say about this game, it doesn’t work with WINE.

It doesn’t seem to get further than allocating some 500mb of virtual memory. :(

for such cases i got special folder with some stuff to check when i boot to windows… but not right now, unfortunately.

that will teach you using a macintosh lol

Also just completed the first chapter. This game of full of ideas and craftsmanship, I love it.

@Paul Eres: I know that WINE is available for Macintosh, along with tons of other operating systems. I believe that OS X Leopard has something called Boot Camp to run Windows apps, but I haven’t had very much experience with Mac OS.

I’ll try to play this on my machine when I get home. I’m running PC-BSD at my house (uses WINE), so I’ll see what kind of grief it gives me and I’ll see if I can help getting it to work.

Whats interesting is the game seems to be one of those games people profess to be “art” yet on a technical level, its basic at best. The graphic proficiency is sublime in direction, the design of the game is excellent, its true to say its not a mainstream game at all. It presses all the right buttons, insofar as to say its not what you’d expect from a triple A title, and i like it.

It stuns and surprises me to this day the content that people can output using game maker or other such relevant tools, to show the creative output of amateur game makers.

Without sounding contrary, i want to congratulate CosMind for providing a very valid contrast to what we currently expect from gaming today.

Very pretty, but a bit dull.
There’s a few interesting concepts, but the control is a bit floaty (yes, he’s floating, but still), and none of the puzzles were particularily interesting and the combat, if that the right word for colour changing and triangle drawing, doesn’t add much.

It’s good… but is it a “game”?

Oh, the environments were very nice. However, no matter how one uses the words, regardless of whether it’s a game or something else, this is a piece of interactive entertainment, or interactive art, if you prefer. Thus the interactive elements have to bring something to the table.
Much like Scary Girl, this product is strong on the visuals and, in my opinion, of course, weak on the interactive component. I gain no pleasure from failing to draw triangles around squids that fly off the screen. My grasshopper jumping off without me and exploding is not fun. Puppeting my balloon boy around the screen feels empty.
I would rather PLAY a fun, ugly game, and LOOK at pretty pictures, than play a pretty, dull game.
I can, however, see how the twinkling, chiming environments could engage someones sense of wonder.

4 years of development, quite a long time,
downloading now

I prefer the varied style because it makes the world feel like a complex and interesting place — I don’t really like when a game just has one basic interesting mechanic and does variations on it (like in Portal).

I guess the bottom line is don’t really care much about engaging with the gameplay mechanics, I care about engaging with the world. The gameplay part of games is not typically why I play them, it always seems less interesting to me than the other parts — although there are some exceptions, like Braid, where I found the gameplay actually more interesting than the story or world (not to say those were bad, just that the gameplay was really interesting in that game).

But games like that are the exception, most of the time the gameplay is just sort of there, it’s the thing I have to get through to see more of the game’s world. I like it to the extent that it enhances the world and increases the immersion, but I don’t see it as an end in itself or a reason to play something.

I never really thought about it that way, but I find myself agreeing with Paul. While the individual gameplay elements introduced aren’t that amazing, I love the way the game is constantly mixing things up and being generally unpredictable. It’s really what makes this an experience.

The framerate dropped quite a bit for me though, which was especially annoying in the wide open areas where it happened often.

Also, I felt like some of the areas were pretty bland visually. Unlike Seiklus, where each little object and pixel in the world seems to have a unique purpose, there’s lots of repeated terrain tiles and swathes of rather plain areas in some levels. What was there was nicely done though, and it’s only like this in the areas with gravity.

I’ve never played a game that I so quickly felt so much deserved to be displayed in a gallery.

Wow, this game really does feel like something different. It might not be for everybody, but I love this kind of experimental stuff.

Played through the whole thing yesterday, and loved every minute of it. Heck, playing the game gave me the trippiest dream I’ve had in quite some time (based around the ‘windows’/electricity in world three).

Not only is it beautiful (and I’m not talking just visuals, here), I found GLum Busters really fun to play. Puzzling out the different enemies and getting their masks, collecting all the butterfly helpers, navigating the different environments. My favourite area was world 4, definitely, especially after you “absorb” the gloom and lose your ability to fly: the stained glass / silhoutte theme was really neat, the atmosphere was really vivid and the bird flying / undead puzzles were some of the most enjoyable.

I got a bustability of 22400 so far (lost my hat, dangit) and I’m working on collecting all the happy faces. (Just a heads up, there’s an item you can collect later on in the game that makes finding them a lot easier).

Then I’m going to play the whole thing through again.

(@CiJolly, did you know that you actually can control the grasshopper, even when you’re not riding it? Its motions are linked to yours).

I’m getting stuck in a red room, with a pink thingy trying to come at me from a yellow glowing spot, it’s got a locked door in the center, with invisible blocks around it, and 2 more in each corner of the room.

Hope there’s more to it than what I’ve seen so far though, interaction wise, the setting is very meticulous.

It looks indeed very nice. If it’s comparable to Seiklus i’ll probably love it.

I generally like this sort of game, but I can’t get past the very very first part after the beginning. There’s a thing that goes “ding”, I can fly, I’ve collected some shiny things that came out of another shiny thing I stepped on, I’ve got some shooty powers that seem to only work to make the thing that goes ding turn green, and that’s about it. Oh and I can make little whooshy things in the sky. I have no idea what to do from here.

Oh wow, okay.

This is a great game. For some reason, though, the little mini-tutorial never showed up the first time I played. When I started a new game, though, it explained what I needed to do to get past the first part. Weird.

(spoilers?)
Played through it, pretty good. As you’d expect from a game with so much variety, it’s not all peachy, especially the amazingly bad dove flight bits. Oftentimes you must waste time waiting for things to happen, such as camera panning or slow bubble-facilitated ascension. Some of the environmental graphics don’t give a sense of depth, in that you can’t tell at a glance whether something’s collidable or just background decoration. The only time I came across an obscure (or even difficult) solution, graphics were the problem again: an underground column did not give cues that it was destructible.

Apart from those minor issues, no complaints here. It has a strong sense of adventure with only occasional dextrous challenges. The levels seem to end right when they start becoming tedious. Nice level design, high interconnectedness and complexity yet surprisingly almost no confusion. Didn’t think I’d like it but I did.

The pink one flies toward the white butterflies that are important for puzzles and also deflects enemy projectiles. On a related note, I only found four, is there a fifth one?

After beating it, I really gotta take my complaint back about the visuals. It was really only the third level (the one with the electricity/windows) that felt like that. The later two levels are especially awesome-looking.

BTW, anyone else contributed? It’s a pity the game has been out 3 days and played probably by thousands of people yet only had 14 contributions.

my patience didn’t last until the bright blue sky came along. it definitely has a charm, but ran much too slow on a 800MHz Turion and the mechanism got hard to understand (invisible blocks with a non-redable purple blob which moves a bit when you blue it).

but, it seems like I’ve missed the mini-tutorial too. going back for that.

What’s the deal with the butterflies you can find? Do they actually do anything? I’ve bumped into the lantern things but they just fly around the screen and don’t follow when I leave or anything… should I be doing something else?

Also, game IS amazing! Playing on “Dangerous” mode now…