Mech
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: N/A (begun in 1994)
Levels: 2
Author: Roland Ludlam
Website: Studio Walljump
Related games: none
Roland Ludlam spent ages fiddling with Game-Maker's powerful visual design tools and comparably little assembling those elements into complete games. That's understandable; the best part of Game-Maker was always the design. The worst part was always the actual game engine.
Mech is less a concentrated and aborted attempt at a game as a test run for a new set of background tiles and for perhaps the most carefully and intricately animated character in a Game-Maker game. Ludlam expressed his frustration with the engine's limitations: "Mech is just a demo -- one level and I think a boss. It was sort of experimental and then I lost interest in it. It features 2 (count em!) 2 weapons, and also incredibly twitchy controls. So for Mech, there are actually 4 firing buttons. 2 for grenades, and 2 for lasers. Terrible." Actually there are three (wonderfully animated) weapons, resulting in six attack keys. In another game that might seem excessive. Somehow when the main character is a bipedal mech, the controls make a kind of sense.
Although the levels are just sort of there -- beyond a point the main level is clearly unfinished, and the boss level isn't even completely playable -- they're also interesting and clever. Ludlam makes a good use of space, and of a very unusual palette comprised mostly of dusty pinks. You stride across a sort of painted desert, avoiding land mines that blast an actual hole in the ground, until you reach a waterfall. Descend the waterfall and avoid falling on sharp rocks at the bottom, and travel through a cavern full of acid. The cavern eventually loops under the waterfall, which feels not so much awkward as revelatory. "Oh, so that's where I am!" you think. At the end of the cavern, dive into a deep pool. This takes you into an underwater passage full of fish and other appropriate creatures.
The next level, dedicated to the boss, looks potentially very clever. Since the character can't shoot properly and therefore it is impossible to attack the boss, it's unclear exactly what Ludlam had planned. Still, what's there is neat -- a huge, multi-segmented biomechanical creature embedded into an overhang.
If Ludlam had bothered to expand the prototype into a full game, Mech might have been one of the most striking designed with RSD's toolset. As it is, it's a tantalizing glimpse of what a person might do with the tools, given the right kind of talent.
Instructions
Use the numerical keypad for control.
- Walk (left and right): 4 and 6
- Jump (left, up, and right): 7/Home, 8, and 9/PgUp
- Shoot (left and right): Z and X
- Drain acid (left and right): 0/Ins and ./Del
- Toss grenade (left and right): 1/End and 3/PgDn
Links
Downloads
- Mech (? kB)
