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Small Worlds http://jayisgames.com/cgdc6/?gameID=9

cute how your worldview changes as you move...you'll see.

Saw this earlier and it was a really fascinating and worthwhile experience. Once the whole world was discovered it looked really beautiful. My favourite was the ice world which reminded me a lot of a snow globe, especially with the circular form.

I'm not usually into exploration games but I found this held my interest till the end.


Also I thought the jump controls were inconsistent.

Yeah it's sweet.
More art games should be like that: less bullshit and more art.

A really good example of how fucking up something simple like jumping can completely ruin something otherwise compelling.

It gets in the way of the game, but it didn't ruin it for me. Beautiful little game. I love such small but very varied and dynamic worlds, they are part of the reason why I like Clonk so much. I want to play some Knytt Stories now.

I also agree that this is the only kind of "art game" I like. In fact, I think this should even have a more "obvious" meaning than it does.

I'd like to play more games like this, so if anyone got recommendations.. :) Specifically, I'd like other games which are really about exploring such nice worlds, and less about platforming. I found that Knytt Stories is a nice mix, even though it leans more towards platforming, whereas I didn't have much fun with An Untitled Story because of the, at least for me, rather uninteresting world and much stronger focus on platforming and collecting.

I liked it, although the jumping controls were awfully frustrating.

QFT

That made me so sad the way the jumping really took most of the fun out. I absolutely love the visuals, but the unresponsive jump made it a lot less fun.

Lovely game! Thanks for the tip off! I agree the jumping was a little bit off but it didn't matter to me. Sometimes you have to stand still - jump - then move.

It's small, pretty pointless but lives off of your imagination  :-*!

Doesn't the jumping mainly feel so unresponsive because you're used to jumping right before passing over an edge, which is very hard in a game with such a low resolution, as it's only 1-2 "pixels" big?

As Christoffer said, it's much easier if you don't try to jump while moving.

I think of how you'd get the jumping "right". It worked pretty well for me.

I think the point of most of the game was that is was counter-intuitive.

That's what exploration is about.

Loved the music.

This game was definitely worth playing.

the part I didn't like about jumping  was certain(one?) jumps required you to run and jump from the edge, I failed that jump both jumping from a stand still and running and jumping(running right off the edge), multiple times.

I must be really good at games... I don't remember any of the jumps to be hard at all.

That would be easy to fix, just test for jump input before clearing the "standing on floor" flag or something.

I think it has more to do with the blocky way the character moves. He moves 1 block at a time. The trick is to press the jump button first.

I don't think you understood what I just said.

I really didn't have a problem with the jumping. Once you figure out that you need to jump first, then move it's really easy.

It would still feel kinda weird as the character moves pretty quickly in relation to the world. But yes that would probably be a bit better.

This really is a powerful and beautiful piece of work.  And I'm a pretty harsh critic of art games for the most part - while I love what they stand for, I don't automatically like them, as many end up being like teenage poetry!

Particularly like the use of overlapping soundtracks.

Beautiful. I think the frustrating jumping controls can be forgiven.

The only quibble I'd have is that you sometimes just ran into the gem for a level and as a result left the rest of the area unexplored.

This is amazing.

[SPOILER]

At the left-most level, the one of the (I think) green teleporter, at first I thought I was underground, with light filtering from the top. Then I thought that they'd play a trick and I was at the clouds or something. When I was about to collect the gem, I saw what it really was, and I stood there for maybe 30 seconds just staring. It's very rare when I feel this way.

[/SPOILER]

I love it.

It's probably something which would be easier for inexperienced gamers so I wouldn't crow too much.

inconsistent =/= hard.

pretty decent experience.

I really like this game it's awesome. It was too short though and the ending was generically ambiguous.

The music from the snow world is maddeningly familiar but I cannot place where I have heard it before. SOMEONE HERE MUST KNOW WHAT IT IS.

EDIT: okay i looked and the music is from incompetech that's why it's familiar

Where can I find all the music?

Amazing!

Incompetech.com (http://incompetech.com/)

At the moment there's a news post on the front page that lists the tracks used by this game.

It's a wonderful site where one guy makes available for free (with a very liberal license) a huge collection of music that he has made for various projects.  You can also hire him to make music specifically for your project.

The fact that his site exists and he seems to not be starving to death makes me very happy.

The Tiny Worlds game also made me very happy!  For what it's worth, I found the jumping fine.  Probably they should have freed the player from the "pixel" grid though, as obviously many people didn't like it.  Add in some gentle collision response to nudge the player down narrow passages, and it should work out.

I played this game two more times after I played it once. I thought it was excellent; a beautiful mix of exploration on a tiny yet epic scale. I'm a sucker for story though, and would have preferred one that is more than 7 words, heh. Still loved it though.

Also, the meteor/big bang world was awesome.

I want a sequel!  :gentleman:

This is a really nice game, and its interesting how everyone seems to interpret it differently. The best part is how your perceptions slowly change as you explore, like the game is telling you a story but without exposition; it really uses the gaming medium to tell the story.

Anyone know of other work by the same author?

I must be dumb... I couldn't figure out what I was looking at in this one :(

I thought that exactly this part was lacking. Or, rather, that the author could've made more of that cool feature.
For example I liked that in the city level you first only see glamorous skyscrapers and fountains, until you see that river of green waste-stuff and find out that it flows right into the ground-water. But, in the other half of the level you aren't really told anything new. And, apart from that "space" level I didn't notice any other level being really impressive like that.
I think it would have been pretty cool if the game really told such a little story in each level, and once you explored them all you understand the big picture and why the hub world looks the way it does. I think there are a lot of possibilities.

Still, one that topic, I liked that all levels turn out to be somewhat spherical. When you get to the exit and explored the whole level, it's like you're looking into a snow globe :)

From what I could gather, the city theme was the pollution running into the water, like you mentioned. But then there's the rocks breaking up, maybe from a nuclear explosion? And on the planet with the nukes, it's like they caused nuclear winter and there were no more people left.

But the weird shell/egg thing? Got me.

Nice game, but what's with all the hype?

I really liked the concept... but It just wasn't enough to hold my interest til the end.

Well, my impression of the overall story was that the hub world was a kind of museum, and each little vignette was a record of events where humanity had given in to their destructive nature. Hence a blown-up planet, a utopia choked by pollution, a world ravaged by nuclear war, and the corpse of an extraterrestrial killed by fearful humans.

In the end the protagonist is too overwhelmed either by guilt at his hand in these events, the futility of life in the face of such horrors, or just the prospect of being alone now that mankind has become extinct. Therefore he decides to end it all by flying into a nearby sun.

The line "there is too much noise" could represent jumbled thoughts of guilt or doubt, or the horrible white noise that fills the lonely spaces in the empty ship.

EDIT- By the way, the newer version of the game has fixed the jumping difficulties people were experiencing.

It takes the cake for best game with the worst ending

this game is awesome. its one of the few games that does exploration right.

ElihjahKatz is right the its got the worst ending.

Mmm, I hadn't thought of that. It does make sense.

I found this most awesome!

I put up a review on my blog (http://notch.tumblr.com/), and got very inspired by playing this.

Very cool!

played the game a few days ago actually, was quite confused at the start but ended up absolutely loved it. this is the best kind of exploration game as you have no idea how big the world is.

im not sure i got the story, but i got the fact it was something to do with mankinds violence or something... what was it made in?

I think the story was vague enough to allow for tons of different interpretations.  :shrug2: I thought it was more of a reaffirmation of life than anything. It's like the protagonist dwelled too much on the shittier aspects of life and wasn't able to appreciate the beautiful aspects of it. He was more set on his destination and ultimate suicide than the journey, and didn't see the beauty of his surroundings. Of course there is a lot of ugliness in the world, but there are redeeming parts too; you just have to spend time exploring to find them.  :shrug2: I dunno, just a thought.