Filed under: Games, Freeware, Time-Wasters
RunMan: proof that shiny graphics are not required to make a good Time-Waster
by Sebastian Anthony Nov 5th 2009 at 12:00PM
What's 20 megabytes, has awful graphics, awful sound, and is vaguely reminiscent of Super Mario Brothers 3?
Why it's RunMan: Race Around The World of course! The website, you assume, is trying to be ironic. 'The game can't actually look like this, surely...' But... well... it does.
The game's visuals look like they were created in MS Paint. In fact, they probably were.
So it looks bad, and the sound effects are pretty awful. But the gameplay is actually quite good. You play as a little star-thing who runs around. Your job is just to make it to the other end of the level at the highest speed possible. The faster you go, the higher the score multiplier. You lose points for falling in holes and hitting enemies, just like in real life.
The music is also great, but somewhat low quality. There's old blues stuff, including Louis Armstrong, among others. Even the not-quite-the-same-in-case-we-get-into-legal-trouble SMB3 world-map music is fun.
This game feels and sounds like it was made in some guy's mother's basement. It's a lot of fun, and worth an hour of your time at least. If you happen to be the competitive, score-beating sort, you might find yourself playing for even longer.
It's available for Windows only and is donationware. Download it and send a few sheckles the developer's way if you enjoy... Or just admire the website, if you're not on Windows.
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I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MarkyB86 said 12:56PM on 11-05-2009
15 attempts at the first boss but this game is sweeeett hah
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Sebastian Anthony said 1:01PM on 11-05-2009
Took me about 10 :P
hazard said 8:44PM on 11-05-2009
I think the graphics are fabulous :)
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Sebastian Anthony said 8:45PM on 11-05-2009
It's all about taste I suppose...!
Jordan Running said 9:45AM on 11-06-2009
I agree. The artist has a clearly defined aesthetic and a confident hand. The graphics are primitive, to be sure, but it's a conscious choice--they're by no means sloppy or poor. They're consistent and very cohesive. Whether or not you like that aesthetic is a matter of taste, but regardless of taste I don't think you can call them "awful."
Sebastian Anthony said 9:54AM on 11-06-2009
I guess I need to use more smilies in the future.
Just for future reference: I'm a total gamer, and an artist too. I 'get' graphics. I am not just some consumer that likes to gripe a lot :)
dodutils said 4:38AM on 11-06-2009
This game use 200MB RAM + 200MB SWAP, far too much ...
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Sebastian Anthony said 9:00AM on 11-06-2009
Well, such graphics do take a lot of rendering power... and space for all the textures in RAM and so on...
dodutils said 9:40AM on 11-06-2009
It's only a sonic-like game, the music files are .oog, gfx resources are only 8bit 256 color files, game is written using Delphi, this game is not optimized at all, may be the entire world if pre-draw/buffered instead of realtime rendering ?
ateb said 8:37AM on 11-08-2009
I too think that the graphics are wonderfully done. Consistent and well produced. This is not anything like the 'awful' ms paint style. It is simple but contributes well to the games style.
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