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October 13, 2005

Latest surreal game tears hair

If it makes you feel stupid is it really a game?

From Robin Allen, the mad genius who drove you nuts with Hapland and Hapland 2 , here's Escape from Rhetundo Island. (detail at left)

In a June story at next-gen headlined simply Hapland, author Iain Simons interviews the 18-year-old English gamer and describes the appeal of Allen's puzzle landscapes:

...The original game released in early '05 was an instant hit in the Flash game blogosphere, and last month Allen launched the far (far) more difficult sequel. It's cruelly unforgiving, frequently requires you to reset the game because you're stuck in a dead end, and follows a puzzle logic that is consistent to itself, but bewildering to most outsiders. Almost inexplicably, it's incredibly addictive....
The game relies heavily on player addiction, on their patience with the repetitious trial-and-error play escalating into an obsessive grudge. To offset this, the visual design of Hapland is disarmingly simple, a gently surreal style that cunningly masks the cruel gameplay. The detailed landscape is lovingly drawn from pastel hues and serves to calm you during the more unreasonably frustrating puzzles...

If you want just a taste of this, there's "a little game" on Allen's homepage. Scroll down, it's on the right. You can't miss the stick figure and the "Go" sign. His Farcade has links to all his games.

If you do tackle the games and whimper in frustration, you may want walkthroughs, or just a clue. Here they are, for Hapland and Hapland2.

In response to pleas, someone posted solutions to each of the latest game's 14 levels in comments at the Rhetundo Page at Milk and Cookies. No permalink, just search "SPOILER ALERT."

It would be cruel not to tell you about these.

Easier seasoners: If these are too tough, I've put much easier games on a Halloween Blog, which doubles as an experiment in importing the business end of the Movable Type blog tool into the news site's frame.

Ongoing stories using separate blog items for each sidebar, update, photo gallery and poll, each with its own comments, could cluster easily in a blog format on one main page.

Posted by Sheila Lennon at 4:11 AM | Permalink