Special Agent Bunnet versus Doctor Dishwater

[davidn]

Marking about the fifth game that I've released since starting my alleged current project, I battered this puzzle/observation thing out in MMF over the last week after taking the concept from a game that I was doing for another site. Buying the Commodore 64 book had got me in something of an 80s mood - I came up with the entire "storyline" for it on Tuesday morning and it was done by Friday. I wanted it to be a bit... crazier and take itself less seriously than some of my other games, striving for a mood that was something like the random shareware games that I was fed on while growing up.


Special Agent Bunnet versus Doctor Dishwater

The aim is simple, as described in the story - deactivate the bombs by finding the buttons that don't have duplicates anywhere else - but the field you have to search through gets gradually larger throughout the game. About ten people have reached the end so far - one of them in four minutes, which surprised me as my own record's closer to five. Hopefully it's the kind of thing that you can use to distract yourself for lunch - then to forget that lunchtime ended an hour ago.

What I'm interested in is whether this sort of anti-pairs game is something that anybody's done before - it's such a simple idea that I feel that they must have, but I can't name anything myself (though perhaps you could argue that it's just a variant on the hidden-object click-em-up genre).

I'm also aware that this game's title starts with "Special Agent", further cementing the theory that I only have three game titles that I'm going to be using for the rest of time.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I gave up on the same level as everyone else! If it really is the last level though, I'd be tempted to leave it in; one final challenge to struggle through if you've been enjoying it thus far!

This game is super, duper charming. :) The funny interstitials actually made me laugh out loud, because they surprised me...

I have to say, I actually felt like the tension was significantly higher in this one, because the easy levels made me cocky, and then I had pride invested in my ability to play the game!

[davidn]

That's an interesting thing to say about the tension... if you come at something knowing that it's designed to be near-impossible from the start, then it's less... challenging (as in, feeling that you should be able to do it) than having been taught how to do it by the early levels and feeling that you should be able to get over the gradual hurdles? I can see how that would work.

And thanks, I'm glad you liked it :) With such a quick project, I tried to give it... character, and was also admittedly rather inspired by the qualities of Homestar Runner that we were talking about a few days ago... that balance of being comfortably odd but trying not to draw too much attention to it.