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

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Vanna, I'd like to buy an "e," or will that cause this bomb to explode?

I like it. I haven't seen this anti-pairs style before, and that struck me while watching the intro sequence. Maybe you're the first.

I made it to the level with 98 seconds, and six buttons. I'm. . .pretty bad at this game. One level I completed with one second left; another with three. I had difficulty with the level that is split into two "L" segments; it's rough on my brain!

I like the comedic intermission segments.

[dr-dos.livejournal.com]

Oddly I made it to the same level as woolman did.

Interesting usage of the standard galactic alphabet.

[davidn]

Glad you noticed :) It was the most easily-in-reach font that I had for putting in unfamiliar yet distinct symbols...

That level's the last one, and I debated whether to leave it in or not (in the original thing that inspired this, the timer was on 60 seconds!) - I appear to have once again made a game a touch too hard, because I'm fairly sure my eyes were upgraded by the time I'd finished testing it. I find it much easier to stick to a sequence of symbols to check (the ones in that last huge one are in various distinct "groups") than to start at one end and work my way to the other.

[davidn]

As ever, the general opinion of the game is that it's pretty tough, so you're actually doing very well to get there. Thanks a lot for saying :) I'm sure that somebody must have come up with the idea before... but there is that remotest chance that there are some original ideas left after all.

[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.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I got stuck on that final level, too! XD It took me a good 4-5 tries to get it. And my first instinct was to press the happy face icon, I didn't even look at the other buttons.

[davidn]

I'm glad that somebody got through it! :) And that that button was as tempting as I meant it to be.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

That was a really good game, such a simple design. I actually lost on the last level. I just clicked 4 random ones before I remember someone mentioning a smiley face on here. The 98 second level was difficult and I finally realised that I could save time by punching 10 random buttons to take out pairs or just get lucky as with up to twenty buttons removed, 30 seconds is ample time.

Everytime I clicked that eject button, I searched the board in blind panic. So good show.

[kjorteo]

My strategy for the last bomb:

Check on the one-, two-, three-, and four-dot ones, because those stand out to me for some reason. I can be done with all of those (either clicking on the unique ones or finding the pairs) in seconds.

Then, shout "ARGH" and blindly and frantically click on everything that isn't a dot (as those have been ruled out) in the first two or three rows.

Sometimes (well, once, but that's how I won) the spread is randomly generous enough that this will leave me something like two left to find and 25 seconds to find them and half the board has been removed already, at which point finding the last ones in what's left is actually possible.

Clear time: 47 minutes, 48 seconds. Shut up. :(

[davidn]

Thank you! That sounds like the feeling that it was meant to inspire :) And that's an interesting tactic for the penultimate level - in the original game that this came out of, the board had that number of symbols but only a 60-second time limit, so even though I tried that tactic at first, I quickly realized it didn't leave me enough time. With 38 more seconds, though, you can easily reduce the playfield to something manageable - that's good lateral thinking!

[davidn]

I think that we've learned over the last while that completing any game at all that I as the author consider mildly challenging is a feat to be proud of, no matter how long it takes :) As I said above, that's a very lateral-thinking tactic that I hadn't thought of, because in the original Flash minigame you just didn't have time to do it and so I'd got out of the habit.

What I'd intended for the last level was for the buttons to be able to be split up into various quickly identifiable groups - the various groupings of dots were the most obvious of those, and they really stand out to me as well (I'd noticed the same thing in the original). The other groups aren't quite so visually distinct, but they're the numbers, wxyz, aeiou, bpqd, and NRS (other people, not knowing the groups as laid out in my head, may come up with their own groupings). I find it much easier to mentally plan for which groups to go through than to do it the most logical way and go from top to bottom, left to right.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Also, I think this is a game that could be revisited as it would be different everytime and it would still be just as difficult. I doubt I would ever have done it had I only had 60 seconds.
Oh I forgot to give my time, 22 minutes XX seconds. Most of that was taken up with the 98s level.

[pami-zee.livejournal.com]

I completed it, but I found the hardest level was the one with just letters. My mind just doesn't seem to like working with them, and the board was all the wrong shape - symmetric in any way seems to be easier for me! Also, when I had to redo the levels for whatever reason I kept remembering what I'd seen before, and that just confused me.

I was scared you were going to do 3 of some shapes for some reason. So you would be able to remove one at random but only one.

But it is a very appealing game to the part of my brain which can play tetris for days, improving my score...

[davidn]

It's interesting to me how different people find completely different things difficult in it - having symbols that are all of the same type, or ones that are unfamiliar. In that level, I'd hoped for the player to get used to the idea of checking and searching for things in an obvious sequence - a, b, c... - but with everything the same general... weight and style, I can see how it might even be more difficult than the final one that has many different groups.