Stumbling through Marble Madness

[davidn]

I'm fairly churning these out now, aren't I? I've been working on the iPhone version of Running Free for most of the weekend after both my parents were absolutely captivated by it while they were here, but for a bit of a break, I had a go of Marble Madness. Because it's like playing a game, except with working on something also attached.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSVPrW5bCqw

This isn't really one of my more earth-shattering efforts - it turns out there's not a whole lot to say about the game, it's just four attempts (with varying degrees of success) at getting through its blatantly unfair obstacle courses. And according to subsequent research, I get up to halfway through the second-last level! That's not bad, is it? Though it does take some embarrassingly Wheatley-like gibberish trains of thought spoken out loud for me to get there.

Comments

[kjorteo]

I'm amazed at your discipline if you've only played it one more time after this! The game's setup is almost built to lure you in, with how incredibly short it is, how easy it is to get close to victory (you made it almost to the end of the Silly race without the speed boost, on your second try!) and yet how elusive it seems to be. For me, I kept making it to the Ultimate race with not quite enough time for it to be possible, and kept thinking "if I could do this part of Ultimate faster, but also if I could shave off just a little bit more from my earlier run and give me just a little bit more to work with...." and next thing I know I've been playing for years.

I finally got it in ... it was before I started logging dates but would have had to have been before December 2005, considering that's when I finished the game after it.

[davidn]

Well, I say "played it one more time", which is technically true, even if it really means "had it on all evening and eventually save-stated slightly through it to see the end". The simple device of having the entire game be a short race with every action affecting how much time you have much later on does make it very compelling, in a way that sounds rather like Prince of Persia now that I say that.

The Ultimate race really is a bit nasty, though - not only introducing platforms that blink in and out of existence right at the very end, but having solid ground underneath so that it plays the ever-so-slightly timewasting "sweeping up" animation every time you fall off! I actually made it to the start of that race with plenty of time left legitimately, but didn't manage anywhere near one perfect run of it (lining up for the jump from the very top giving me a fair bit of difficulty on its own).