Playing the Ludum Dare 22 Winners, #8 – Locked Away

Next on our list of top dog Ludum Dare 22 creations is a mostly vertical platformer called Locked Away. Made by MoltenMustafa, it starts out strong, asking the player to choose a color before a difficulty setting. I really liked that, and I went with green and Easy for my first run. We then get some side-scrolling text: They locked me away in here. On Christmas day. All alone. Poor kid. And with that, we’re plopped into the game, ready to make our little lonely avatar climb to the top of the map while avoiding enemies. The graphics are retro and crisp, and the controls and movement speed of the avatar is surprisingly fast and responsive. Touching an enemy kills you, bringing you back to an unannounced checkpoint–all of which happens in the blink of an eye. That helps to keep one playing as you can just keep trying to make that jump up until you get it.

Easy is definitely easy. You learn some of the game’s tricks here, like how to time jumps and hit semi-hidden platforms to open up a new path. It doesn’t take terribly long to get to the end of the map. Normal difficulty, however, proved to be problematic for me; I ended up getting stuck between two platforms of moving enemies and just couldn’t squeeze by them without getting hit. I decided to try Hard out, sticking with the good ol’ green, and this time, you’re falling, trying to avoid hitting obstacles. Kind of like in ‘Splosion Man. You basically have to learn where everything is and memorize it; beating Hard got me an end game screen, which had a house and present box on it, but these were upside-down. Not sure if that was intended or some faulty coding

So yeah, I beat Easy and Hard, but can’t get past one part in Normal. Go figure. Y’all should play it though as it is quick and enjoyable, with tight controls. Just remember to choose green as your color. Green is the only way to play.

Don’t judge Doritos Crash Course by the Doritos part

The holidays are almost here, and even the Xbox LIVE Marketplace is celebrating with gifts by giving gamers TWO free games to download: Doritos Crash Course and Harm’s Way. I’ll talk about the latter in another post as I’d like to focus most of my time today on Doritos Crash Course, a game that is sure to surprise just about everyone.

Doritos Crash Course is a bouncy mix of Wipeout, American Gladiators, and ‘Splosion Man. Yes, all of those. Lumped together. With bonus Michael Jackson dance moves added in. Basically, you have to get your Xbox LIVE avatar from one side of the screen to the other by jumping over ledges, swinging from ropes, dodging hammers, and bouncing on trampolines, as well as avoiding a bunch of other typical platformer perils, the most nefarious being water balloons. Oh, how I loathe ’em.

Unlike Harm’s Way, which more or less hands you Achievements on a silver Achievement platter, the 12 in Doritos Crash Course do require commitment. As of this post, I’ve gotten three:

That’s Gotta Hurt (10G): Got smashed by 3 hammers in a row

Roadrunner (10G): Run at top speed when you’re about to wipe out

American Hero (20G): Finished the USA Levels

Hero of the Americas is right! Hope to get some more Achievements tonight. A few require your avatar to do some silly in-game tasks; these are easy things like swinging back and forth on a rope X number of times, but they definitely slow you down and then your chances at the gold medal disappear. So I will save ’em for later.

Played a round online against some Xboxers, as well as raced against Tara’s avatar via local multiplayer. It’s a surprisingly well done game, with the constant threat of failure on every jump, swing, float, and bounce always overhead, and the controls are really tight. One doesn’t need supreme platforming skills, but if you really struggled with ‘Splosion Man then this might not be for you. But you should still get it anyways. Why? The game is FREE, packed with Achievements, too. So, yeah. Download it and have fun watching yourself getting smacked into the TV’s screen or doing a little dance–the avatar animations are the best use of avatars so far.

On a more personal note, I don’t really like Doritos chips. Not since that day way back in 2008 that I got violently ill after having some ranch-flavored ones with my lunch. I’ve vowed to never eat ’em again ever since…so when I say this is the most fun I’ve had with Doritos in a long time, I really do mean it!

Blowing up and up and up in ‘Splosion Man

There’s a couple more great deals going on over at Xbox Live this week, and so I snagged ‘Splosion Man for 400 Microsoft Points. Yes, I’m using them up slowly and methodically, but I’d like to think I’m putting them to good use. Got Peggle and Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting as well, which I’ve enjoyed immensely and somewhat, respectively. Still need to blow my remaining 400 MP, but I’m not sure just yet. I might wait another week to see what new deals pop up…

But yeah, ‘Splosion Man. It’s a kooky game. You’re a dude that explodes. That’s just how you get around. Press A…and you ‘splode. Press X…and you ‘splode. I think you get it. Guess some scientists thought this would be a fun little experiment to play. Well, I think we showed them another thing:

Get Them Out of Our Schools (10G): Eliminate 10 Scientists and stop them from spreading their filthy lies.

So you use yourself as a self-detonating rocket to get around the levels. You can explode up to three times in a row before having to recharge your juices. The first few levels are rather simple, but they do an excellent job of teaching you some wall-jumping tricks and just how far ‘Splosion Man can leap. The main obstacles are the level pitfalls, with toxic fluid tanks below and closed off barriers. Getting around these is relatively easy to figure out, but still might take a few tries; thankfully, the game has frequent save checkpoints. I’ve only played about the first ten levels, and it seems like I have 40 more to go. Cool, cool.

Also, the sound design is phenomenal. Quirky, rock-n-roll tracks keep you moving through the levels, and ‘Splosion Man himself is just brimming with odd noises and bumbling mumbling. Love it. Reminds me a bit of the good ol’ days when main characters really had personalities that seemed to come out of the TV screen, such as Bubsy and Blasto and Earthworm Jim. Have not gotten to the song about donuts though that I read about many moons ago on the Interwebz, but I’m sure it’s fantastic as well.

Achievement-wise, it’s decidedly odd. There’s the usually “do X amount of times,” as well as one for beating the entire single-player game and collecting cake in each level. Then there’s these:

Master of Contrls (10G): Change the controls around in the “Controls” menu.

Get Over Yourselves (10G): Select “Credits” from the “Help & Options” menu and watch the whole thing.

Like I said…odd. Either way, exploding over and over again is right up my alley. I’m looking forward to it later.