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[Loren Schmidt]

The player movement / controls seem more responsive this build. I've noticed a bunch little changes. Cheers, Derek!

P.S.- the new shop type had me splitting my sides the first time I saw it.

[Dilt]

Often, roguelikes give you an infinte amount of time to quietly determine your next move, letting your enemies move only when you do. Essentially it's just time for plotting. Since this game is rather roguelike, it makes it desirable to want to pause and decide on the next move. The ghost is a finite limit on this time, so it screws a small bit with the above mentality.

[your name here]

I played a level in the first area where there was a straight line of land from one side of the map to the other. It would have been impossible to get through without a bomb. I've also seen levels start with leaps of faith with nothing at the bottom to break my fall.

[brog]

Actually, the time limit is very much in keeping with the roguelike genre.  Roguelikes generally do have time limits (well, turn limits) in the form of hunger (and sometimes others, like corruption in ADOM), in order to force players to keep going further instead of hanging around on one level.  Rogue could be won very easily if you didn't have to eat.

[Zaphos]

Often, roguelikes give you an infinte amount of time to quietly determine your next move, letting your enemies move only when you do. Essentially it's just time for plotting. Since this game is rather roguelike, it makes it desirable to want to pause and decide on the next move. The ghost is a finite limit on this time, so it screws a small bit with the above mentality.

You can press escape to pause the game, if you want thinking time?

How convenient, only 5 minutes after I launch the game.
The nefarious yeti spike room
Useless to say the hole you see above the spike was the only hole on the top floor that could get me to the floor below.

... that is pretty bad!

In practice I always have some extra bombs or ropes, though.

[PureQuestion]

I was thinking... it's incredibly difficult to get a good start when using a shortcut, particularly the area 3 one. would you be able say, gives us a couple extra ropes and bombs, or even actually send us to a room with a few crates so we can get maybe an item or two? I'd love to be able to have a compass right off the bat. After all, you still lose the one major point of playing through everything: money, which is tantamount to score.

[William Broom]

I have often found locations where it was impossible to proceed without using bombs or ropes. But that's just part of the game. I think it makes the game more interesting, and in my experience it is very rare to find yourself unable to proceed because you don't have the right item. It's probably happened once to me in over 200 plays.

[vdgmprgrmr]

Ugh, I'm approaching 500 plays and I have yet to see level 8. (I made it to level 7, once, because I decided to ignore treasure (which, I thought, was the point, turns out it just acts like the point, but isn't.)

I'm done here. It's not worth the time to see whatever's next.

No matter how well-made the game is, being able to play it is a bit of a priority for me...

[jkd003]

Ugh, I'm approaching 500 plays and I have yet to see level 8. (I made it to level 7, once, because I decided to ignore treasure (which, I thought, was the point, turns out it just acts like the point, but isn't.)

I'm done here. It's not worth the time to see whatever's next.

No matter how well-made the game is, being able to play it is a bit of a priority for me...

That's probably for the best if you really are stuck on lv7 after 500 plays.
But keep a eye on this game, hopefully Derek will put in a easy mode so everyone can beat it.

[FiaStarta]

I'm done here. It's not worth the time to see whatever's next.
No matter how well-made the game is, being able to play it is a bit of a priority for me

I think that's the problem of the majority of independent old-school games being made. They're also old-school in their difficulty, while things have changed.
Just imagine a sadistic game like Rick Dangerous these days, no one would bother finishing it (while we all did when we were kids. Is it that we had more time? Or that games were much shorter in content?).
To me a game isn't about challenges (challenge=work), it's not a pastime either (I don't have time), it's about narration & discoveries. OR gameplay but then I'd rather play contemporary games, online (playing with real people, that's where the replay value is these days).

However, unlike in a lot of great games that can't be finished, here you can cheat easily by editing the test level & placing lots of crates.
(but I must admit that even with about everything in my pocket, I haven't seen ice levels yet)

Still, I like the ambiance in this game. Kind of a Jack the Nipper II, that would only use technical advances where it matters. I think it should be one giant map (& have savegames), so that instead of levels after levels, it's a little world.

[vdgmprgrmr]

It's not about the difficulty in general, it's the kind of difficulty it is. Good difficulty is when it's you who screws up. Bad difficulty is when it's not you where the problem is, it's the game. When the game itself is why the game is difficult something is wrong. You shouldn't have to rely on luck or flukes to get through a game. You should have to rely on personal skill at the game, that you've built up over time.

It really saddens me that because I lack some sort of reflexes or finesse, I can't play good games that people put out. And you can't suddenly gain reflexes or finesse. This is why I had to give up on Cave Story and Gish.

This is what indie developers seem to not get right in their games. In most of the retro games that I've played, they had good difficulty. "Oh, I should have moved farther to the left." "Oh, I should have kept firing some more instead of stopping." In most indie games, they don't achieve that. It's always, "Whoop, he used that attack." or "Dang, that skeleton wasn't dead." Why?

I mean, Derek says this game is inspired partly by Nethack. From what I hear, Nethack is much harder than Rogue, but I play the crap out of Rogue all the time. It's not the difficulty that's put me off Spelunky, it's how the difficulty is achieved.

[WieboW]

I've been trying to download this beta for days now but never been able to complete it. Is there a mirror location somewhere? I'm anxious to try this out!!

[FiaStarta]

This is why I had to give up on Cave Story

Don't - it's pretty easy to cheat in Cave Story (& yes it's way too hard), just give yourself infinite everything and you'll see it's still an amazing game.

they had good difficulty

I don't think they had good difficulty. It really are games & ourselves that have changed.

The 2 games I mentionned above:
Rick Dangerous, while doable, it's reputed for its total unfairness, that's totally the opposite of good difficulty  
Jack the Nipper II, apparently the game can be finished, I didn't even know. At that time, no one could finish games. I could name a ton of such games that I don't even know if they have an ending.



Btw, I even managed to die in that custom level full of crates
I open a crate, found some strange tool, I use it and realize it's a teleporter. Cool, I try it once again, I reappear inside a wall and die.. No enemy, nothing, just bonus crates, and I die

[Xion]

How convenient, only 5 minutes after I launch the game.
The nefarious yeti spike room
Useless to say the hole you see above the spike was the only hole on the top floor that could get me to the floor below.

Yeah I've had that happen to me a few times as well. In fact the very first time I made it to one of those rooms it was dark and the first thing I did was leap into spikes.

And I agree with brog on the matter of the ghost.

My quickest time for area 1 is something just over a minute total, I believe, first level done in 14 seconds.

[WieboW]

I read something about this game and Derek as well and it ticked me off. It was about the lines of "the game is bad because Derek 'stole' (read: used) ideas from other free games to create a new one". Linkie here: http://www.pigscene.com/?p=225
This article is so bad it made me think: is it satire? this being the internet and all

I personally don't think this is bad at all. I mean, if Blizzard can get away with it and create great games with this design philosophy, why can't a independent developer do this as well? I personally work like this as well and isn't this the way most of us started out, thinking: "this game is good, but if it did this or that it would be even better. Damnit, I'll go ahead and do it myself!"

This alone made me want to try to play this game, but the download link in the first post is so slow that my download times out every time. sniff.