The story of the hardest platform game ever

Some people honestly do love nigh-impossible platformers. I am not among them, but the Linux games are going to be made by people who 1) are making it for themselves (and possibly a few others; that community's relatively small) and 2) aren't looking for massive distribution.

People who love platformers that much usually like them to be hard.

  > when you die it is not fun.

Tell that to Dark Souls. I recently replayed ST:FU on it's harder setting. I think perhaps the difference between "dying" and "not fun" is a couple of things: first, there are regular and predictable save points so the level doesn't have to be started from the beginning; second, there is still some progress saved, experience earned, etc., so that even in death there is some progress; third, a way to track community progress (via achievements or social features) so that it's clear the end is attainable by something other than luck.

I love hard games, but there's a very fine line between hard and frustrating and pulling it off is difficult. For one, if I'm playing well and don't make many mistakes (how many depends on how far in I am - if I'm almost at the end, zero mistakes may be tolerable or even a good thing), then I expect to advance. For example, if I play really well and then lose because of an unforeseeable event, that's not "hard" - that's just frustrating. It's also closely tied in with fairness. If a game is only hard because the AI cheats (perfect aim, always knows where you are, always outnumbers you, infinite resources, whatever) then that is probably not going to be fun. It can be, depending on the game (eg infinite amounts of enemies are a fun challenge in one game but frustratingly unfair in another), but again, this is difficult to pull off. Repetitive stuff is rarely fun, no matter how hard or easy it is.

What makes hard games fun is the sense of accomplishment when you finally outwit or outplay the game. A constant sense of impending failure is a good thing. Failure is also not a bad thing, as long as you can learn from it and do ever so slightly better next time. Constant failure is not a good thing as it quickly leads to frustration. Anything out of your control is also a bad thing and leads to frustration (example: if I died because I made a mistake, that's fine. If I died because I didn't do exactly what the designer wanted and there's no other way to do it, that's probably not fine, unless it was obvious what I should do). Some games also expect you to die a lot, but dying isn't particularly painful, so its not all that frustrating (ie in VVVVV).

Finally, gamers often (maybe even "usually") make terrible designers, so unless you have proven yourself, designing a fiendishly hard game is going to be a pretty big gamble.

As a counterpoint: Spelunky is great fun, extremely hard, and very addicting. It's levels are randomly generated, and if you die you start over from the very beginning; it's perma-death.

I have to disagree. I think making a hard game that is still fun is very challenging. But when you accomplish it, it's an even better platformer than the not-so-hard one. Take Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii) and Rayman Origins (Wii/360/PS3). Both are very hard, especially DKCR. But they are very hard in fair, legitimate and satisfying ways. Beating the later levels in DKCR takes a bit of dedication, but is oh so satisfying when you get in the zone and find that beautiful path through the level.

Also see Super Meat Boy. It's basically a hard as nails platformer where you can and will die hundreds if not thousands of times trying to beat it. It's another great example of very hard (it's way harder than both RO and DKCR), but still fair, fluid, and "zen-like".

I don't think any automatically generated levels could ever reach the level of flow that the games I mentioned have, though.

> There are a handful of platformers on Linux and they all have the problem of being too hard. The games in the first few levels are so hard that the player quits before they can explore what the engine can even do or find the "fun" in the game.

When you're developing a game by yourself, you play it 1000s times to test every small change, debug, etc. So you're becoming pretty good at it.

So you balance it to be challanging, and it's too hard for regular players. At least that's what happened to me.

To be fair, this makes male hackers feel unwelcome too. I opened the page, thought "I'm not being caught with this open at work", and came here to deride the author. That's nice work, Lou...

Wait what.. The problem is that women hackers might not feel welcome, because 'sex has been thrown into it'. Seriously? The author obviously intended it to be funny in a way, so if you don't like it (which of course is subjective), don't come up with over-emancipated crap like this :).

I for one think that people ought to take stuff less seriously, and this writing style seems befitting. Way to go!

I think you misread that. The girl in the first picture is his girlfriend but he is referring to the second picture of the girl in the red dress when he says, "has no idea who it is."

Yes, seriously. Not everyone has a problem with sex, either in earnest or in banter. If you're too uptight for reading creative people's blogs, maybe you should abandon link aggregators and go for something squeaky-clean and PC like CNN or WSJ. The level of PC groupthink on this thread is downright depressing.

The author was both skilled and entertaining. If you don't like his dev blog, then don't read it! Move on to the next link.

THank you for stating this. I skimmed through after the first picture, decided this wasn't worth my time.

It's not even just the sexism. It's a problem of needless distraction over what needs to be readable material.

I'm offended by your insinuation that only hacker women would be offended. My guess is someone's girlfriend or wife or little sister might be in the kitchen reading her iPad and stumble onto this thread by mistake, and be offended that you're not considering that she's offended.

I think there is a bit of cultural relativism going on here. As someone who goes to UCSB, that's simply the culture here. We have a lot of very smart "bro"s and while it might offend you, that's just the way we roll. It's about being chill. partying hard on weekends, getting drunk, having fun, having sex and then working hard during the week (some people are partying all the time, but as the uni has been getting higher and higher caliber students every year this has become rarer.. well except for the SBCC kids.).

While maybe a bit crude, for the average women at UCSB this wouldn't be "unwelcoming".

Maybe he should have targeted the website more to the average American and mentioned Jesus a few times (I'm being facetious to make a point)

> Super Meat Boy has the "ungodly hard" thing down

SMB is very playable and does a lot to mitigate its difficulty. You can find much harder platformers out there. An example is IWBTG (http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/) whose creator also designed some of the bonus levels for SMB.

One thing that SMB did really, really well was provided a very slick learning curve. Every level provided you with techniques that, while learned through repetition, were applicable in future levels and scenarios. Every new mechanic was introduced sparingly at first, but then compounded upon by introducing new quirks to the formula you had already learned.

I think that's what made SMB such a solid game; not the difficulty, but the way the game presented you with that difficulty.

(Also, I'm in general agreement with others about the presentation of this article. It felt like the author was trying too hard to act like a college bro. I will admit, however, that I liked the bit with the monkey.)

Wasn't offended, but I was put off by how immature parts of the article were. The game itself is quite an achievement, and while I certainly don't expect suits and ties, I think the tone undermines your effort and accomplishments thus far.

You could have just posted the video and a PayPal link, and probably brought in 4-figures+ by the end of the day. The game stands alone, you don't need to sell us on how high-larious and cheeky you can be.

Just want to point out that your perception of what is offensive is going to be strongly skewed from the perspective of everyone else. That's just human psychology and relative experience; because you're the originator of all the humor and jokes, you know exactly where the wit stems from. Anyone who is not you (or a close friend of yours) does not, and no matter how much you say "It wasn't meant to be offensive, people who know me know it's my sense of humor," that's not a sentiment that strangers can judge. So they're likely to go with their gut and have a negative first impression. Simple as that.

People on HN are most likely more tolerant/forgiving of this as long as the hacking is good. I doubt that suits at Microsoft or any other corpopration will be. There's just not much point in risking offending someone who has the ability to ax a deal when the humor in question -- from the average outsider's perspective -- adds absolutely nothing to the enjoyment of the explanation.

I personally thought the photos were hilarious and "got" that they were humor, clearly intending to show a progression of suitable partners as you descended deeper into the code cave and away from respectable corporate employment working for the man, eventually resulting in being with a monkey. At no point did I assume these were necessarily real partners.

Personally, I liked the humor. It shows you're an actual human and not a program yourself.

I'm always amazed at the commentators on HN who advocate that you should never offend anyone in the slightest way, ever. <sarcasm>After all, it's clearly not a strategy that works for anybody. Just look at Zed Shaw or Giles Bowkett.</sarcasm>

My attempt at feedback: If you are trying to promote a game you made, promote the game. I have no clue why there are all these pictures of you with random girls, but I can tell you that it lost my interest far before I ever read a word about your game.

Jordan, your sense of humor isn't limited to just to your story, you can also find it in your team's biography: TJ's main role, it seems, is to "look attractive" and your artist, Anders, is "sexy".

I guess he knows for sure that his upcoming pitch meeting won't involve any women, especially ones that aren't a size-2.

It's actually a big man.

Seriously, I thought meh just a hard platform game until I saw the bungee coop

The replays are also absolutely brilliant.

Glad you liked it! Co-op is the big focus for us. The insane levels are twice as insane when there are four people on the screen.

Yes, through the Xbox Live Indie Games program (they might have renamed it recently). Problem is, he wouldn't get the promotional backing that a "real" game gets, both from MS and from a publisher. Those games hardly get any attention, and good games often languish amongst 2-hour tech demos and ridiculous Minecraft ripoffs.

I'm really glad I don't work somewhere that this wouldn't be completely safe.

I want this guy to succeed just so that I can hear more semi-edgy stories like this. He walks the line between funny and TMI well.

I'm not the author, actually. I just ended up with that page as one of my tabs and I'm embarrassed to say that I've no idea how I ended up there :/

Supposedly the AI would have extra knowledge from the level-building stage, so the search space would be smaller than playing "normally".

The fire spinners have been in the game for 3 years, and we've debated them for 3 years. I can see both sides. They're clearly a direct homage to Mario, but it's just one small piece of our game, and the overall package is really nothing like Mario at all.

There have been a few procedural platformers over the years, which is awesome. We're not the first to scene. But I believe we are the first to offer provably possible levels that can scale to any difficulty, both casual and insanely hardcore.

You're right, I was over dramatizing things a bit. It's only getting easier for small indie studios to get their games out and be successful. This really is the indie golden era.

I loved Blaster Master. Though it's only half platformer, and that half didn't seem to be the hard part...

Agreed on the great concept.

I'm in love with the idea of infinite levels, and playing a level that hasn't been played. It reminds me of the thrill of watching a minecraft level birth itself in front of you.

Agreed also, on the kickstarter project. My wallet is ready.

I will gladly take your money, sir/madam! Things sounded pretty solid when we talked to Valve, so a PC version will definitely be in the works.