This makes Italian politics look reasonable.

Er, that may not be fully disagreeing with you, actually.

You are completely agreeing with me.

Yeah, I dunno why I thought I wasn't.

On the same subject:  There isn't anything you can call a special needs person that won't eventually get subverted into an insult.  'Retarded', 'moron', 'idiot' - they didn't start out as insults.  'Retarded' was pretty PC in its day.

A sad truth, really. I don't know if there's ever a way to be truly PC, as everyone figures out pretty quickly what is really meant by a term, making it no different than the previous.

Well what are you working off of? Some secret development version of Night Sky and an actual copy of Trundle? Jesus, I'm just working with what you gave me. I'm not on the Night Sky dev team nor have I heard of the game before this issue, and I don't have an iPhone/Pod/whatever. Besides, if these are the only details available, then that just cements my point because Trundle could only have copied from what I've listed. That just means that Night Sky will be even more different in the final version. And as I've pointed out, there aren't even a lot of similarities based on what you've (collectively) shown me. (In terms of amount, not percentage-wise. See the next paragraph.)

Now, of course there's more similarities than differences, percentage-wise. We're dealing with (from what I've seen) an immensely simple game concept. Without there being a ton more content like an in-depth storyline, it's hard to make the concept stand out as being different. If you look at the parts which aren't part of the main concept (ball rolls around) the differences and similarities are maybe 50-50. So that looks suspiciously like a coincidence to me.

And yeah, nifflas may have legal ground. I'd dare to say that some sort of penalty should be awarded for the graphics, maybe forcing a change or face penalties. But I wouldn't all-out sue the guy immediately. If the two talk to eachother maybe they can work something out. I don't know. I'm not nifflas and I'm not this other guy. I'm just saying that for the differences there are, it seems wrong to destroy this creation. Alter it? Sure. Remove it if it turns out there was explicit and intended stealing of IP? Sure, I guess, nifflas has the right in that case and I wouldn't blame him. Class-action lawsuit because we don't like the cut of his jib? Hell no.

@Gunmaggot: On the flip side of the coin, let's not forget what happened to the term "special needs". "Special" is now an insult among most children, and certainly not to the fault of people who are disabled. It is not always the fault of those within a descriptor group that a negative connotation arises.

Er, that may not be fully disagreeing with you, actually.

But any game with two paddles on opposite sides of a field with the same scoring rules, same game mechanics, similar controls, ball motion, each paddle controlled by a different player, similar SFX, same user Interface, same 1-bit low-fi art style is pong.

Shade, stop being so sarcastic and just argue your damn point straight like a man.

Hey now, let's not get sexist.

So let's go through the list for Trundle and Night Sky:

Game mechanics? Somewhat. There is a ball and it rolls. Unknown how death is handled in Night Sky, therefor that part seems to be fairly unique.

Controls? No. Night Sky uses some wii control, I assume. Trundle uses touch controls.

Ball motion? Aside from the fact that it rolls, no. Jumping does not seem possible in Night Sky and it does not appear grabbing is possible in Trundle.

Sound effects? No. Trundle's ball does not have the same hard sound as Night Sky's, and Trundle has birds cawing in the background while Night Sky has wind whistling.

Music? No. Night Sky's music is more up-beat while Trundle's is somewhat foreboding. Trundle uses piano and synthesized instruments, Night Sky uses acoustic guitar.

Graphics? Mostly. Both use a silhouette style. Rolling ball with a blue glow in it. Similar design in grass and plants. Background has a gradient. Differences include: Animal movement in background, higher saturation, blue pattern under ball on some platforms. Trundle has higher mountain ranges in background; takes up about 40% of the screen, as opposed to the 20% seen in one part of Night Sky. Windmills and levers look very different between the two.

So it uses a similar visual style, and is about a ball that rolls. That's about it.

So where's Mr Podunkian? We need to go castrate him for his game about a running guy with a gun who shoots stuff in a visual style similar to Cave Story.

And stop bringing up The Underside like it proves something.  Even Arthur doesn't like getting ripped off:

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2008/01/freeware_game_pick_evereternal_winterworld_.html

What does that tell you?  It tells you that no one on God's Green Earth likes getting ripped off.  It feels terrible.

Well, that game looks only a little like The Underside from what you linked there. I mean, there are tiles and parallaxed scrolling, which is hardly original. The character style does look identical, I'll grant. Apparently there's some fries or something in there?

Yeah, of course nobody likes getting ripped off. I'm not arguing that. I'm not saying that an apology may not be in order, if nifflas actually is being bothered by this. I'm saying that it's not right to go all pitchforks & torches on this guy because of what may be a bad coincidence. Once again, has anyone asked this guy to come in? I don't want to bother him because I don't see a problem, but anyone taking issue should confront him instead of plotting his downfall from behind his back. We want to be a friendly community to indies, but how can we be if we instantly jump to the defence of our favourites without giving a second thought to the struggling newcomers who may have simply made a mistake.

I think the biggest moral dilemma here is how we decide who is guilty: Do we do it from evidence and digging up the truth, or by picking who we like best?

moi is the only one defending Grundle who's worthy enough to admit the true nature of his feelings.

Better now? 

But guys, everything else about the game is the same! We can't let this injustice continue!

Would you just say, "Meh, a plumber that can grow and shrink, bursts blocks and steps on turtle-like creatures heads? Not the most original idea ever."?

How high are you? That's a really dumb-sounding idea and I'm surprised a good game came out of it. Hats off to Miyamoto for succeeding with a really weird idea.

What if that game employed uncannily similar graphics and music though? Sure the mechanics are the same but as I said before the mechanics are hardly the biggest offense, quite the opposite actually.

Come on guys, let's go beat down Mr Podunkian's door.

What worries me more is how everyone is casting judgment without asking this guy about his side of the story.

Also it's a bit of a leap to say that I have no respect for IPs. I probably have more respect than a lot of people. I don't see what the IP being infringed upon here is, though. A rolling ball in a silhouette game? No offense meant, but that sounds like something I'd doodle on a math exam. It's not exactly the most original idea ever. It's like saying that any game involving a ball and a paddle is infringing upon Pong.

Yeah, it may be the inspiration. He did indeed point out that Night Sky looked "amazing". So okay, let's look at it from your angle. So maybe he did rip it off. There's still no problem. He's in an entirely different market, there's some very obvious differences, the pricing is different, the levels are different... seems like there's a lot of differences. I don't see why, even if they are similar, they can't coexist.

But hey, while we're at it, we should all band together against The Underside! How dare he make a game that's like Cave Story!

Except that the game mechanics appear to be noticeably different.

That's fantastic.

Blame the publishers, not Steam. The publishers set the price in the different regions.

Well, it's more annoying that Canada is the same region as the USA even though our currency is a different value. Yeah, maybe only a couple cents on a dollar, but it's still annoying.

Actually that board-game idea is pretty good. I could see it working. And you wouldn't have to worry about losing pieces.

I guess I could see it being useful for something like Crayon Physics, or finger painting.

Oh wow. They made a MacBook that works like an iPod touch. Clearly this is the second coming of Christ. Let us rejoice for our saviour. I'm pretty sure nobody has ever made anything like this. It must be completely revolutionary. It just makes so much sense, too, seeing as how typing with a tablet is slow and crappy, and drawing without a pen is messy and shitty. I am very excited for what will be an overpriced and underwhelming product. All hail Apple, lord of computing.

Wheeeeee.

Disclaimer: I don't like Apple.

I think that depends when you choose to shoot. If you wait for a good shot you won't run out fast. If you fire madly you'll run out fast. First time I played I made that mistake, but then I corrected myself on later levels.

But melee attacks are pretty effective against splicers, so you don't even need to use your gun sometimes.

It's really just one of those games where you have to get a hang of it quickly or else it will feel really bothersome. Still, I've played games before where I've felt similar to you, Eric, so I see what you're saying.

I would buy it, if I didn't already have about 12 games to get through. It's likely to be on sale again some other time, so if I'm really short on games that I'm interested in, I'll just pick it up then.

(Oh, the "ugh" thing was just about how Steam evens out the prices in some places yet not in others, btw.)

I think on normal they took 2-3 headshots to kill, so yeah. You should try it on easy, as I think it only takes 1-2 on that. I don't think there's any other difficulty changes.

Also: The respawning thing. Night Sky doesn't seem to do the respawning thing.

Hey Eric, you can take over for me. This topic is too much of a pain to try and deal with.

No joke, I quit playing the game after an hour, and I really wanted to like it. I don't bash games for no reason. I try to be really fair, it just felt like the gameplay was at odds with the atmosphere and the story, so much that it wasn't enjoyable.

What difficulty were you on? I found the game easy enough to play (though I'm no stranger to odd gameplay), but I was on Easy/Normal. I think the harder difficulties only do stupid bullshit like increase enemy HP.

I don't care about the MP to be honest. Let's hope they didn't half ass the singleplayer because of it.

I think someone else said the MP is being developed out-of-house. Hopefully that means the singleplayer will have lots of depth.

I thought the only thing that was really jarring was the whole respawning business, it totally killed the tension and made no sense in the context of the setting (why are you the only one using the Vita-Chambers?).

You can turn them off, you know.