by Неизвестный
Fuck you, Jon Blow. Fuck you, you coward. I’ve played your stupid fucking game, with its metaphor and allegory and what-the-fuck-ever. It’s just Mario in a business suit. I’ve played it, I’ve played your deepest flaws and vulnerabilities. And so what? Your deepest flaws are time travel and jumping? Or if it’s more, why keep them hidden? Why mask them in colorful design and cutesy characters? [A player will look for reflections of a game’s author. Be sure they see you the way you want to be seen]. It’s not that, not just that. Take everything. Your highs, your lows, every fucking aspect of your character and put them in the motherfucking game. Become your game. You are your game. You live, breathe, eat, sleep, die by your game. Fuck your flaws and vulnerabilities. I will use my everything.
It’s easy when you know how. It’s easy to work it out, easy to undo your best laid plans, easy to overhear your roommate [be sure to enlist some trusted beta testers] Danny talking with his girlfriend about when they’re going on vacation. Easy to set up auto-emails on a timer, easy to [remember your early builds may contain bugs] go to the mall and buy the knife, the cables, the plastic sheeting. It’s easy [act on any feedback, talk to your players] but it hurts. Suffer for your art. Become the game you want to make. Pour your heart and soul into it. You are not a faceless corporation. [You are not a faceless corporation.]
If I had my own game, it would be a reflection of myself.
Here I sit, suspended, gouges red and bloody, my essence, everything, flowing into the machine, replacing my need for knowledge or skill. It is [i am disconnected] draining me, sucking me dry, I am becoming the game. By a gamer, for the gamers, you will play [i am in beta] my very soul and you will fucking like it. Cables spill from my [i am golden] throat as I narrate; tears pour from my eyes as the pain begins to throb. Just me, opening my heart to the world. Each cut a level, each twist a hurdle to overcome. I laugh [announcement incoming] and blood bubbles into my throat, over my lips.
Play me, you fucks.
[For your initial release, self-sacrifice is not advised. Test out the technique on an animal or loved one before committing yourself to code.]
***
Text: Review of Super Knight Leaper for GameRanx, written by Ashton Raze. Dated April 19th, 2013.
Used with permission.
Review: Super Knight Leaper
by Ashton Raze
Developer: Christopher B. Broake
Format: Windows (version tested), Mac
Released: Out now (Steam, Desura)
Price: $4.99
Indie platformers are a dime a dozen these days, with the excellent Super Meat Boy leading the pack when it comes to arcade action, and the recent Thomas Was Alone sitting alongside Braid and Limbo if you’re after a more narrative-driven experience. To stand out from the crowd, you really have to do something special. The much-anticipated Super Knight Leaper, despite its generic name, certainly leaps for the stars.
Unfortunately, its jump falls significantly short, and the result is a painful faceplant of epic proportions. Despite the pre-release hype, Super Knight Leaper is an unfinished, unenjoyable disaster. With any debut release from an unknown developer, certain flaws can be forgiven, but here…
Honestly I don’t know where to start. The game’s a mess. From the generic opening level in which Sir Brian’s girlfriend is kidnapped (complete with painful chiptune renditions of classic Skrillex tracks), to the horrific collision detection, the sloppy, incomprehensible art and the pitiful dialogue.
Sir Brian struggles to make even the simplest of jumps, and in a game about leaping over spikes, this is a significant problem. Holding down the up arrow allows you to sort of…float around, but occasionally, and without warning, gravity will send you plummeting down to earth and often to an untimely death. Every so often, if you brush up against a wall, the character sprite will begin to vibrate, and eventually the level will reset. Bug? Deliberate mechanic? Who knows. Nothing about Super Knight Leaper makes much sense.
Even more confusing is the narrative, which seemingly has nothing to do with the disastrous events unfolding on screen. The voice acting is delivered in an angry whisper, and is comprised of little more than guttural sounds with the odd curse word thrown in. Occasionally, text appears on the screen, although this does not match what’s being said, and seems to be a series of quotes from other, more successful games and—in one particularly unusual instance—from the GameSpot review of Skyrim.
Why do these things happen? This is a question you’ll give up asking long before you stop questioning why you wasted five dollars on this game. If you do persevere, which I do not advise, you’ll be met with a few sections towards the end that could almost be described as genius if they appeared in a better, remotely playable platformer. The penultimate boss, for instance, is Edmund McMillen’s head, but beating it seems to require more luck than skill. I’m still not entirely sure if I ended up winning the battle, or just glitching my way to the next level. Then, at the end, after a painfully bad, hour-long section, you finally reach your princess. Perhaps attempting to mimic Braid, or even Super Mario Bros. in ending with some kind of twist, your princess turns towards the screen, staring, and points silently, her face emotive. The scene freezes. Ten minutes later, the game closes. No end credits, no game over, just… a quit to desktop.
It’s unfathomable how this even got released, let alone how the developer is daring to charge money for it. Save your cash. Buy something—anything—else. Hell, with the time you’d spend playing Super Knight Leaper, you’d be better off learning how to develop your own game. Just make sure you use this as a reference guide of what not to do, ever.
A broken, muddled mess of a game that will leave you wishing you’d saved your money. Perhaps worth a look as a bizarre curio, an example of when the hype train gets it wrong, but nothing more.
Score: 2/10
***
Text: Review of Super Knight Leaper for GameRanx, written by Ian Miles Cheong. Dated July 7th, 2013.
Used with permission.
News: Super Knight Lawsuit
by Ian Miles Cheong
The strange case of Super Knight Leaper took an even more bizarre turn today as, after a failed petition, thousands of gamers have filed a lawsuit against the game’s elusive creator. Reminiscent of 2012’s “Retake Mass Effect” campaign, the lawsuit was brought about after hundreds of forum users discovered the software was causing slow, yet widespread file corruption. Attempts to identify and combat the virus have thus far met with failure. If successful, the lawsuit could cost the developer of Super Knight Leaper in excess of ten million dollars. The game’s mastermind, Christopher B. Broake, could not be reached for comment.
March 2010
Denis Farr
PAGE 1
This close.
This close, his face doesn’t seem nearly as impressive—no longer crowned with the might to plague your every move, and to send you through days of tortuous ritual and frustration. Your hand runs through his hair, grasping it tightly as you pull him within inches of your own face.
He’s kneeling, yanked off the ground slightly by your pull. Already a hollow symbol of anything he was.
Here is the man who destroyed your life. Your husband? A pile of ashes, all because of this pile of filth’s actions. He watched outside as your love was caught, screaming, in the house surrounded by soldiers. The life you once led, instead conscripted to deal with the problems he created.
You became a pawn. Whether or not fate guided him, he stood firmly in your path. He set the motions into place. He dies.
Focused. All that is visible anymore is his face, your right hand clenched in his hair, and your left hand gnarled into a fist, looming over you both. He’s beaten. You’ve won.
—Pull back your face and go in with the fist, go to PAGE 2.
—Pull his nose to yours, glaring into his eyes, go to PAGE 6.
PAGE 2
With a clumsy precision, you snap back your face as your fist connects with h
is cheek. There is a resounding thump—a sound like a steak being slapped onto a cutting board sound. Before you can fully process what you will do next, your fist has snapped back and is driving toward his face again.
He utters some unintelligible sound. Pain speaks a much clearer and more concise message than any language at his disposal. As does blood, which starts trickling out of his mouth by the time your third punch hits.
There is a terrified keen coming from him as you pause for a moment.
Looking at him now, it’s difficult to imagine he was ever a threat to you. How could this ruin of a man have ever come into your life and wrecked it so thoroughly? You once again shove his face into yours. At first it slips a bit, before you hover it just slightly from the tip of your nose.
This close?
This close, all you really see anymore is red.
—Continue the assault, go to PAGE 4.
—Pause and stare, go to PAGE 6.
PAGE 3
You can't do this, can you? Can you really push yourself so far? Then again, you've already killed plenty. Whole armies have been crushed under your choice of weapons. Maybe it's just all the violence. You could make this simple, quick, and easy.
—Go to PAGE 5.
Or not. Just stay on this page of your life for a bit. Consider the ramifications. Close this story. Skip it. Do you need to see the end?
PAGE 4
This time you pull your head back slightly before snapping it forward again. Then, pushing him to the ground, you find your knees digging into his chest, your fists trading back and forth, left, right, left, right, left-right-left-right into his face over and over again. At some point, it becomes difficult to distinguish which sounds are coming from your own fists and which ones are coming from the pound of meat that is now his face.
Eventually, you look down at him and all you see is blood surrounding puffed up eyes, a slightly agape mouth, and the ears to frame it all. Ears that are pooling drop after drop of blood.
This is vengeance. This is what you were seeking. Everything you have done has led up to this point. The anguish in your life said press on, and you did. You pressed, and pressed, and pressed until the sack of shit you have before you was nothing more than a portion of the bloodlust you’ve had to get to this point. Each hit, each punch was for lives wasted. Lives you wasted in getting here, lives he wasted in his vainglorious grasp at power.
—You've had enough of this. You need to walk away, go to PAGE 3.
—You've had enough of this. It ends now, go to PAGE 5.
PAGE 5
With a sneer smeared across your lips, you stand up. Taking the knife from its sheath, you hold it up level with your gaze. It takes up the left side of your vision. He takes up the right. The blade is pristine. He’s a crumpled mess. It’s good. It’s clean. He’s finished.
As you slit his throat, you wonder what's next. What can you possibly do in your life to eclipse this? What did you solve? What did you gain?
War changes everything?
PAGE 6
He stares back, the fear in his eyes all too clear to see, the looks of grandeur and power he supposedly embodies reduced to nothing. However, as you continue to stare, all you see reflected in his eyes is power gone awry. Abused power that has led to ruined lives. Countless lives. All in the name of some ideal. Some invisible thread that strings together all the actions as if they are anything more than a cry of bloodlust covering corpses and maimed bodies.
You continue to stare into his eyes as a revulsion creeps into the back of your throat. At first it is a slight, unpleasant nudge. Then it grows until you feel it choking you. Gasping for air, you push him back while stumbling away from him. Putting your hands on your knees, you take a few deep breaths.
You're no longer facing him, but you can hear the sound of panicked shuffling and rasping sobs. He’s crawling away. Eyes closed, you just listen for a few more seconds. This is the sound of a man brought low. A man who, if he continues to live, will seek to avenge himself on you one day. This is how the cycle continues.
You know you can’t just walk away. After what he’s done, there can be no forgiveness. After all you’ve done, there can be no going back. The only way forward is back toward him.
Pushing off your heel, you turn around and walk after him. His scurrying grows more frantic. While you stride forward with purpose, he stumbles, a suitable mockery of what once took place. He looks back, and meets your slitted eyes. Reaching him, you kick him down onto his stomach.
—He must pay. Punch him. Go to PAGE 2.
Unto Dust
Maddy Myers
Jackpot and I duck behind the pile of crates before the shots fire. I see him go down before I hear the guns. Safe.
"Raven," he chokes out. "I've been hit."
"How?" I whisper to myself.
"What the fuck?" he says. "I'm at 45% now. What the fuck happened?"
I stand up and throw a grenade. Then I duck back down again. My body starts shaking. I grasp a crate's edge and push myself back deeper into the pile. Pain begins to waver around the edges of my eyes. I look around in a panic.
"Jackpot?!" I wail. I can’t see him. Has he already evaporated? Against my will and my better judgment, my body collapses to the ground. 5%. My arm, strong enough only to hold a pistol, shakes as I raise it. A figure rounds the pile of crates and stands over me. I hear his laughter through a hazy, thick buzzing in my ears. I aim the pistol at his head.
I fire. I watch the bullet go through his eyes.
And still, he laughs. Still, he stands. "Fucking noob," I hear him say, as I fade away. "Noob got pwned."
***
I spawn back at the base. Jackpot pats my back. "Hey, good work back there," he says. "I watched you on the camera feed before re-spawn."
"Thanks," I say. "I thought I got him."
"You didn't," he says. "No one can get him."
"What?"
"He's using some sort of ... I don't know, he's hacking. He's cheating." Jackpot straps on some armor. "It's not allowed on this server. He'll get booted."
"Are you sure?" I ask. "He's been top stats every time. I thought he was just good."
Jackpot stares at me. "We both watched you shoot him in the head," he says. "We both felt his bullets go through the crates. No one's that good. What, you’ve never seen a hacker before?”
"I have, once or twice, but what kind of hack makes it so that if someone shoots you, you live?"
"I don't know, invisible armor? I don't fucking know." Jackpot seems annoyed, all of a sudden. "What makes you think I know anything about how it works? I've never got one done. How should I know?”
"You said he was cheating, that's the only reason why I asked. Why are you mad?"
By the time I've finished the question, Jackpot has his back to me and he's twenty yards out. The round began a few seconds ago; the rest of the terrorists have made it halfway to the bomb by now.
I shuffle after Jackpot. I forgot to buy armor, but the shop has closed. I've got to run. I feel like taking out my knife and just waving its useless short range flash at enemies until the hacker gets the boot, but I don't. I'm too angry to fight and too angry for jokes. Usually, a hacker doesn’t last this long. This all doesn’t sit right with me.
I keep my sniper rifle out. I'll just play the turtle for now, hunched back in my shell and lining up shots from afar.
In the corner of my eye, I can see kill notifications blurring the top corner of my visor. The hacker is on the move. Headshot, headshot, headshot.
I stay where I am.
Headshot. This time, next to Jackpot's name.
I shift my weight. Jackpot is watching me on his retinal cameras before re-spawn, by now. He must be wondering why I'm still camping at the base. He must be grumbling that he taught me better than that.
I leap in the air, whirling until I feel dizzy, until I can't tell sand from crates from sky. I wait until the shot comes out of the air. Not a headshot, at least—I woul
dn't give them that pleasure. I jump and jump again and make the process as trying as I can for the counter-terrorist cyborg.
The shot hits my leg first. I try to jump again, but my leg gives out, and a second shot hammers into my shoulder as I collapse. 2% health.
I can hardly see through the thick red haze. But, oh, that same voice in my ear again. That same laugh. He stands over me and takes out his knife. He crouches, again and again. He slices. He laughs.
***
"I can tell something's wrong," Jackpot says, "Because I can't feel a difference in the code."
The code. Always the code. He can feel it every time we boot up, he says. Scrolling through his brain.
"Can you feel anything?" he asks.
I shake my head. He was only posturing. He knows I can't feel the code, or at least, not enough to matter. I'm not an old enough model. Just DLC. A special addition. The latecomer. The noob.
Jackpot's memory contains bits and pieces of the earliest forms of the world. He was the first model made. He tells us stories of running through the streets of this city as it grew around him. He remembers and compares each update to the one before it, on and on until all the other teammates sigh, “Shut up, old man.” I like his stories. He can always tell me how a map has been altered, even though the rest of us can only feel our memories clipping and blurring.
In the past, I've tried to watch the scrolling numbers behind my eyes during the world’s occasional jumps and pauses. During updates, I can feel stops and starts twitching through my muscles, driving my blood in circles. But I can't tell the difference, in the end. I can never remember it, once the world comes back into focus and the round begins.
"Of course you can't," Jackpot spits. "You're still a nonbeliever, aren't you?"
"No," I say, avoiding his eyes, scrolling through armor upgrades. "I told you. I believe in the users now."
"Well, you don't believe in the developers," Jackpot shoots back. "You don't believe in our creators.”
"It just seems ... disorganized," I say. "How could they let all of this happen? Users aren't just modifying maps anymore, they're modifying us."