GIRP

[davidn]

This is what you might call a bit of a pickle

When you're laying out the controls for a game, you usually want to make them as natural and invisible as possible, so that the player has to only think about what they're doing in the game and not about what they're doing with their hands. So it's interesting and unusual to deliberately take the opposite approach, and make mastering controlling your on-screen character the primary challenge.

The stress of the last month made me less inclined to work on personal projects than usual, but as a result, I've been playing loads of games in my spare time instead - this is one of the smaller ones. GIRP is another control-fighting Flash experience by the creator of QWOP, the game where you suddenly realize just how difficult running is when you're forced to control each individual thigh and calf in a tragically hysterical parody of bipedal forward movement.

This time, in an arguably easier arrangement, your task is to climb a rock wall with various rings on it that have letters of the alphabet attached to them. Pressing a letter on the keyboard causes the hapless climber to attempt to reach out to that letter, while you try to swing him over to cling on to it with the left mouse button, Ctrl or Shift (whichever you find least totally impossible with the current arrangement of your fingers). Then you've got to keep your finger firmly on that key while attempting to grab on to your next handhold, and the cycle repeats itself as your fingers get more and more knotted and you try desperately to remember which one you can safely lift without plunging into the water.

I've got to just over eighteen metres, but really if you get up to the point where the music starts and you have to deal with knocking birds off the rings before you can grab them, you're doing well.

Additionally, WHY IS IT SNOWING AGAIN

Comments

[kjorteo]

Honestly, the controls weren't what I found to be the most difficult part of this game. No, that would be the ring placement, which has to have the most sadistic random generation without regard for what's actually possible since Action 52.

Let's take your screenshot, pretending for a moment that things were all right and you weren't... well, anyway. Now say you got this far and kept climbing (naturally choosing C next) only to find when it scrolls up that there is but one ring anywhere on the next level, and it's directly above S. Well, hell, there's nothing you can do from C, then, and now you're stuck figuring out the optimal way to alternate as you work back down because there's no "grab the same ring with both hands, you idiot" feature. Let's see, my left hand is on C and my right is on [whatever rung is being completely blocked by your pant leg in this shot, I'm just going to pretend it's Q for the sake of simplicity.] I need to somehow get my left hand on Q so that I can grab S with my right. Maybe if I let go of Q with my right and grab... I don't know, W? Then my right can... wait, that won't work, argh. (And all this is just hoping that there will be more rings to grab above the one above S, if you actually do make it that far!)

Laytoning it out like that got me as far as about 9.1m, but then I lost when I encountered an arrangement like that that I swear was literally impossible.

[davidn]

What a remarkably similar icon to my screenshot :)

I'll say this (which I actually discovered after making this post) - I thought that the rings were very sadistic as well, but the game changed a lot for me when I realized you could jump. If you find yourself in a situation you can't get out of, you can build up a swing and launch yourself away by letting go of the rings you're holding on to, hopefully getting far enough to grab on to your target (if you can manoeuvre your fingers to get him to grab for the relevant ring). I was ecstatic the first time I got it to work, and with some practice it's possible to control it - in my screenshot situation, knowing what I do now, I would say that letting go of W and then swinging over to S/Z would be a fairly safe bet, as I'd be confident of grabbing at least one.

With a hand upside-down on the keyboard and having to carefully wriggle it around while remembering which key is the vital one that I can't let go of...

[kjorteo]

Really, now.

[davidn]

If you get a bit of swing going there, I would even say that that was one of the more possible situations that this game has thrown at me!

Some of the gymanstics that people with more spare time have achieved, though, are on another level entirely.

[kjorteo]

What? No, that's....

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I actually thought this was a joke based on the date of it. More fool me!

[davidn]

I had no inspiration for that - my life has been unbelievable enough as it is!

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

THAT FREAKING BIRD

I was never good at QWOP, but I can only get up to 20m before I try some half-assed leap of faith which I believe doesn't actually work.

[davidn]

It's possible to do some quite spectacular jumps! Even if those ones aren't particularly... well-directed. And the bird definitely seems sadistic, in an already difficult game :)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

wow, I didn't know it was possible to grasp onto rings if you were flailing like that! -- Still not going to try 'jumping' again though.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

36m, now... and then I somehow hit a ring on the way down and flung myself off the side of the screen before hitting the water.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

You know what? I can't make this work at all. I mean, it loads and everything, but when he grabs the first ring, he lets go almost immediately after and falls in because his ladder falls away, and I can't figure out why, or how to get him to hold on. I have yet to actually get a score of more than 0.0m.

Then again, at least it's not negative, like my best score in QWOP. I was bloody useless at that as well. :P

D.F.

[drake [begriffli.ch] (from livejournal.com)]

Just to be sure, you're holding the letter down, right? z.z

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm holding it down. It's possible my flash plugin is knackered or not registering it as such or something, but I am holding it.

D.F.