Adam's B-Day 3: The Saga Continues
Release type: Freeware
Release date: November 17, 1995
Levels: 9
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: Adam's Birthday Game, The Adam's Birthday Saga Continues, Adam 97, Adam 98, Adam 99, Adam 2000
Not to be mistaken for Alan Caudel's The Adam's Birthday Saga Continues.
After two years of rest, the Adam's Birthday saga returns with Adam's B-Day 3, aka Adam '95. This third chapter in Alan Caudel's half of the mostly-annual exchange is a strange and inventive game, that amalgamates some emerging design concepts to lay down a path for future work.
The series may have rested for a while, but Alan Caudel has been busy. Since 1993 he has branched out considerably, with games as refined as FireAxe, as radical as Adventure, and as distinctive as Power Budd!. The most immediate precedent here, though, lays in the gonzo platformers Lil' Choklit Donit Man and Mr. Berkel Derkel!.
As with those two games, Adam's B-Day 3 seems to draw its inspiration from the cultural space between David Perry and Tex Avery: smoothly rendered extreme takes of peculiar and twitchy motions. Eyes bulge. Grins threaten to tear faces in half -- faces that carry most of a character's body weight, leaving stubby limbs to flail and slowly carry the character forward despite great effort. Since all the mass is in the head, so is the power and thus so is the attack. Here, Adam's main offensive move is a risky forward dash through which he slams his face into enemies. It's all very strange yet deliberate.
The consciously slow walking speed carries comedic value, similar to Watch Me Die!, and it also contrasts Adam's default movement speed with the dash move, that serves as a forward hop just as much as an attack. As erratic as it may seem, motion is of key importance in this game. In early areas, every jump or dash counts; one hit leads to death, monsters tend to patrol everyplace you need to go, and your one method to clear them launches you straight into harm's way. Furthermore, the path keeps branching, and some branches lead to inescapable death.
The difficulty here, it seems, is part of the comedy. Around the time it stops being funny, the game also stops being so hard. Later the game goes the other direction, handing the player various tools to allow near impenetrable defense (a spark explosion) and super glitch powers (a sort of morph ball roll ability). It's easy to duck or roll, then to stand up or jump to clip through walls. This power comes in especially handy during level 2, allowing the player to easily slip through what otherwise would be a confusing and time-devouring maze.
The levels are both highly varied and very detailed, particularly in their response to the player. (When you fall in the slime, you create splashes and displacement.) Each level starts with an on-screen title, made of monster blocks that then explode in all directions. Levels one and four have super animated backgrounds, where every tile ripples and flashes and undulates (which must have slowed contemporary PCs to a crawl). As per Game-Maker standards, it's frozen at the screen's edge, but the visual artifact is an acceptable trade-off.
Level two is a top-down maze, with shifting mucky currents; as in Adam Tyner's games there's a collection aspect here: you need to track down every present to unlock the exit. In this case the counters don't reset upon death, however -- and there are some secret areas to quickly stock up your present counter -- so it's not as arduous as it could be. Level three is a first-person space sim, where you move a reticle around the screen to shoot down tie fighters and try to recover Adam's presents from Darth Vader.
There are so many other interesting touches, including an alternate ending and a huge, well-designed boss monster (with a really nice transition). It's not obvious what to do, but when you figure it out the game changes view and plays the first of several peculiar in-game cutscenes.
Technically and stylistically, Adam's B-Day 3 sets the stage for the varied structure and dynamic animation in Dummy Duck II, which in turn serves as the foundation for most of Alan Caudel's later legacy of design. Though on its own this game is strange and easy to overlook, it serves as a major step in its author's development and an anchor point for many games to come.
| Previous | Current | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Adam '93 | Adam '95 | Adam '96 |
| Adam's Birthday series | ||
Contents
Story[edit]
Read the comic I sent.
Instructions[edit]
Keyboard[edit]
Use da numeric key thing-a-ma-doodle to control.
- up - down
- down - up
- left - right
- right - wrong
- word - up
- D - drop
- P - EEW! Not in here!!!
- down+left - flash burst thingy
- down+right - " " other way
- + and - make you roll once you pick up "roll" block.
- up+right - Do I really have to tell you?
when you da target thing, press (ENTER) to fire.
(ENTER) - skips animinamations
Joystick[edit]
Same, except to roll, press down, and either button.
Credits[edit]
By Alan.
Of course.
Background[edit]
Alan Caudel:
- Earthworm Jim was an inspiration for a few of the games I did, including Lil' Choklit Donit Man as well as some of the elements of Adam's Birthday Game 3, I think that's where I got the idea for the floating "level 1" banner that explodes after the level starts.
Availability[edit]
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History[edit]
On October 20, 2010, Caudel posted a comment to a YouTube video of Peach the Lobster, under the name dummyduckrulz; following up the conversation, on June 29, 2011 he provided a link to a collection of games recently uncovered by Adam Tyner. This initial archive included:
Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Adam's B-Day 3 (191 kB)
- Level 1 map (163 kB)
- Level 2 map (138 kB)
- Level 3 map (6 kB)
- Level 4 map (21 kB)
- Whirlpool map (22 kB)
