Dungeon

By: Paul Eres

On: November 16th, 2009

Dungeon is a game by a powerful tag-team: Mr. Podunkian (of The Underside fame) and cactus (of dozens of games per year fame). To quote Zarathustra in the forums: “a horribly hard platformer with bad graphics? This is indie people”

My favorite part of the game was the room titles, which I think were a great way of adding an interesting background story to a game without dialogue. It’s a short game, took me about 10 minutes to get to the end, while playing in a window and having a conversation with two people at once (one of them Podunkian). A good indie game snack.

“Dungeon is a tragic platformer about what can happen in a
castle, and how it affects people like you and me.” -cactus

EDIT: cactus has an update for us!

Sorry about the radio silence, we felt it was necessary to let this experiment live its own life for a while.

Anyway, this should pretty much make everything clear

And here’s a bugfree version of the game

Posted in Platformers, Windows | Tags: cactus, ThePodunkian

DOUGLAS

good game I guess
now go finish the underside
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

The jump thing is a bug, this game is so fucking bugged : prolly because it was rushed away.
jeffery

actually it was programmed on purpose so each person has a unique “bug” to deal with. just check out the forum topic
anothergol

Overdiscussing this crap will only motivate “artists” to make more of those time-wasting “artsy” “games”..

There should be an artsy game blog for this kind of stuff. And let’s hope this game is only trolling and does nothing harmful, like that other recent pseudo-game.
fuzz

no actually cactus made it

thus no harmful stuff, just intentional bugs.
anothergol

Oh and I would add, it IS a game, but not a game for us who have wasted our time. It’s a game for the author who must be laughing his ass (while smelling his own farts) looking at users who can play the “game” wonder why others find it impossible. Do we look like lab mice?
Paul Eres

“There should be an artsy game blog for this kind of stuff.”

it’s called tigsource, get it right
yourname

this game sucks, cactus, you should take a look at those youtube videos where you tell people how to make games without sucking
Paul Eres

what. who else could make a game in 48 hours that gets on the frontpage of tigsource, timw’s indiegames blog, and WIRED of all places? and gets more comments in those blogs and in the forums than games that have been worked on for years, like au sable? people will probably remember this game for years, and remember the tricks it used (if in fact the conspiracy theory is true). not to mention all the tigsource frontpage trolls it peeved off (its greatest accomplishment). for 2 days that’s pretty good, i’ve nothing but admiration for it.
anothergol

>>itâ€™s called tigsource, get it right

I thought it was about independent gaming.
So if it’s really about artsy crap as well, maybe you should add a sticker to warn readers when it’s not actually a game.
It’s an experience that some may like, but it’s not a game. See, Fathom is making the player think he’s gonna play something else, but it’s a GAME, it has gameplay, graphics, atmosphere. This is just some social experience for a single guy, we haven’t played anything here, we’ve been played with.
And not just that, it’s also technically very poor. You could as well talk about the gazillion of little flash games out there if quality doesn’t matter.

Even just for safety reasons you should flag such “games”. It won’t take long until some “artist” looking for attention will intentionally let his “game” do harmful things (without warning this time), just to laugh reading discussions.

I used to like the demomaking scene. But you know how demomakers are, and the day some anti-bill-gates asshole decided to make his demo delete Windows system files, I stopped playing demos. Sad.. but there are kinds of programmers you can’t trust (& it has nothing to do with talent). And I know I wouldn’t trust self acclaimed artists.
anothergol

>>>for 2 days thatâ€™s pretty good, iâ€™ve nothing but admiration for it.

Ok so you now admit that making people discuss is a major quality for a “game”.

You don’t know what you’re starting.. I’ll try to avoid testing for the next few weeks, it won’t take long till some asshole makes you all discuss about how his game emptied your HD. You’ll see you’ll remember his game for a long time.
Consumatopia

dang, if this game pisses you off, wait until it occurs to you that other games might be doing the same thing in a far more subtle way
Jamal

The most insightful summation here I think comes from Dst, who says: “I realised that the entire game is a cruel prank on the OCD nature of gamers.”

You should have heard me cursing over and over again the “no pussyfooting” screen. But I’ll own up to the fact that I was the fool for wanting repetitively to beat it. And it’s a pretty clever way to employ the tragic theme.

One poster intimated the game being similar to lose/lose, but Dungeon is a little meatier and the gimmick better because it comes as a surprise. Basically, the punchline is not ruined before you play, which was the former’s drawback by design.

Would you guys really have been more satisfied if Dungeon were the generic platformer it postures as? At least this game has a funny/intriguing concept.
Bob

I think I just realized something…
I’m willing to believe that the game could have intentional random bugs programmed in it…and that would make it insanely diabolical (plus that last line by cactus).

Think about it. What where the themes?
Tragedy…and…
…comedy. And this all has certainly been a tad comical.
Paul Eres

@anothergol – a warning sticker would defeat what’s in my mind the game’s greatest achievement (getting tigsource trolls angry, giving them some grief in return for all the grief they’ve given others). besides, that’s assuming i was in on the joke, rather than just reviewed the game honestly. how could i have known ahead of time?

besides, why would it matter if paranoid people don’t play the games that are posted here for fear of viruses or gameplay-worshipping gamers don’t play them due to fear of games that try new things? they could always go read other sites if they want standard games, no? there’s joystiq, kotaku, rock paper shotgun, destructoid, wired’s games column (oh wait!), and a thousand others. and yes, generating interesting discussions through trying out new things is one of the values experimental games can bring.

also, assuming the conspiracy theories of this game being intentionally buggy are true (which is by no means proven), if you really needed a warning label, didn’t you see cactus’s video where he said ‘games don’t have to be fun’? or the cactus quote in this very entry? or realize that podunkian is a jerk? those could be interpreted as clues that something else is going on besides the typical way standard games play players through the stimulus/reward cycle.
Consumatopia

I for one am both pro-Dungeon and pro-tigsource-trolling.
Yesyesitis

Greatest Quote of our time (referring to an indie game):

“Braid is beautiful… and overrated.”

Awesome!
pleb

paul why do you equate media coverage with a good game? cactus could sneeze on his keyboard and it would be on offworld in 0.2 seconds

also, buzz-word “conspiracy theory”
Paul Eres

actually a lot of cactus games never get covered anywhere — have any of you heard of ‘arms’? it’s my favorite cactus game.

anyway, i don’t really believe in ‘good games’, i was talking only of success, not quality.
H2O

I’m wondering if there is more than one version. Mine’s 3639 KB, anyone else?
Vanguard

Podunkian and Cactus are both overrated, but this game is pretty cool and funny.
Ezuku

Eh, kind of liked it. Especially the :

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

It was / it wasn’t.. bit…

But can you avoid the dagger at the end? I hit it and the game completely restarted? I really don’t understand the end bit.
Zaratus

That “No Pussyfooting” screen gave me a lot of trouble too at first, with my extreme acceleration thing going on, randomly. Sometimes I’d be able to make a tiny little jump, other times I’d shoot way too far.

It actually felt like those controls were intentional, to make you have to run through the whole thing at top speed, pretty much.

Compatibility mode, making movement normal, made the game a piece of cake. That screen too, became a joke to complete.
Ezuku

Speaking of which, I’m so psyched about his (hopefully) next game, airpirates.
Paul Eres

p.s. see the thread or the edit above, cactus just admitted something
Ein

Clarify… Genius. Pure genius. As expected from cactus and podunkian.
Crap

To correct another commentor, it’s not “unlike”, it’s “just like” in the sentance “just like cave story, this game sucks”
Vox

I get the tragedy now. It’s a tragedy this game had so much potential but it’s just so freaking annoying.

Sometimes ‘indie’ is used a little too much to excuse bad workmanship.
Crap

Why does it suck like cave story?

Because when you die in this game – which is often – there is an annoyingly long pause before you can play again. Why? Does it take a lot of processing to recalculate all those primitive graphics?
If the game has a ten-minute playtime, five of those minutes would be the pauses.

Just like in cave story, which had annoyingly long pauses during coversations that couldn’t be skipped.
Ein

lol @ people getting trolled by the game
MWB

Clarify = Pretty damn clever, didn’t see that one coming.

Damned pussyfooting one had me going for a while.
JoeHonkie

Hah, I just decided I wasn’t having any fun and quit after about 15 tries of the same room. Then I moved on with my life.

While I don’t really “get” the fun in this kind of project, I’m pretty sure it cost me nothing but a few minutes of my time.

It looked nice, though.
Person

I really want to know how to make the kind of music that was played in the game. Can anyone link me to a few websites (no plug ins please(unless they are for Reason 4.0)

Thank you

and if they were easy to use that would be great
Dar o

Now I feel bad for using Windows 95 compatibility mode to finish the game.

I should had waited for 2v and “experience” the “game” as it was intended.
Jamal

“I for one am both pro-Dungeon and pro-tigsource-trolling.”

LOL at Consumatopia. Cheers mate! :D
lol

lol @ everyone still thinking this game is unfairly hard
Ben

Whoa, I really like this concept.
Luckily it was 07 for me so I got interesting screen titles and the game was beatable.
Now toying around with the other modes…
Bundt

Haha, I got 06, which apparently makes the cake level impossible, but I got that jump (after many, many tries however), so, I guess it wasn’t TOO impossible XD
undertech

lol
Nezuji

Yeah, what Bundt just said goes for me, too.
anothergol

>>>>dang, if this game pisses you off, wait until it occurs to you that other games might be doing the same thing in a far more subtle way

Nope, no one is gonna put harmful code in a quality game he spent over a year on. In a game he made in 2 days, however..
Someone just looking for attention won’t spend a year on it.
Mooseral

Eh, I’m also curious to know what the sword jump conclusion was. My keyboard won’t let me switch modes, I can’t get any high jumps from compatibility, and my default was slippery physics…

So, I guess I’ll just wait until a non-shanked LP comes out.
anothergol

>>>they could always go read other sites if they want standard games, no?

It’s not about normal games vs independent games. It’s about independent games vs artsy social experiences. This is not a game, really, or maybe you have to give your own definition of a videogame.

Some devs are still making good games, it’d be sad if those started to be suspected because of some guys. The next time I see a bunch of pixels I won’t know what to think of it. It may be a good, real game like Rockboshers, or just some lame prank like this one – how would we know?

And why wasn’t there any of such artsy pieces of crap 20 years ago? Because there was no internet place where people would have discussed them. Proof that there’s just zero value as a game.

>>>didnâ€™t you see cactusâ€™s video where he said â€˜games donâ€™t have to be funâ€™?

nope. But now I’m warned.
Didn’t even try any of his games because they all looked like shit. So if on top of it they’re no fun, that doubles the reason. A guy releasing a game per week can’t make good games anyway. I only tried this because there was another name associated.

>>>i was talking only of success, not quality.

THIS should be something for kotaku & others to typically worry about.
Paul Eres

ah, so anothergol, you want a site that reviews indie games which try to be like mainstream games, rather than a site that reviews all indie games, including experimental ones? i’m not sure such a site currently exists. feel free to start one. if there are enough people like you who hate experimental games, maybe it’ll even beat tigsource in popularity.
RT-55J

Hey guys. What were your numbers? Mine was 12.
The Average Comment

“Indie developers are free to make whatever kind of game they want, but they better make something ***I*** enjoy, **OR ELSE!!!1!**”
tso

i am a communist, and as such, i approve of this experiment
buraldo bivera

i got 11 good god my shit was so slow
fillis take

14 = breeze.
cactus

@Person: I made the music in Famitracker. Google it if you want to make something similar yourself :)