Andy in Asunderland

Andy in Asunderland

Release type: Incomplete
Release date: N/A (Begun 1996)
Levels: 6
Author: Roger Levy
Website: rogerlevy.net
Related games: KonoTest

What survives of Andy in Asunderland is one of the most promising sketches in the Game-Maker repertoire. Unfortunately, what exists is just a fraction of what once existed -- which itself was far from complete. Even the existing portion is damaged, and had to be hacked back into a rough working order. Yet what we have here is nothing short of brilliant, making a quick argument for Game-Maker's viability as a significant design tool.

The most immediate strength that Levy brings here is, as in his other games, his visual sense. Andy is a heavily stylized game, inspired by Nintendo's Yoshi's Island but making its own meal of the ingredients -- and doing it within RSD's engine. At a glance, the game just looks professional, and like it has its act together, stylistically and thematically. It's vanishingly rare to see Game-Maker used by a practiced artist, with an idea about what he wants to accomplish.

What the style may mask, however, is the technical insight. You have a few neat flourishes, like the in-game animated cutscenes and level intros -- which we've seen elsewhere, but are both tricky to accomplish and welcome every time -- and across its few short levels some of the most deliberate, well-judged level design in a Game-Maker game. What Andy really contributes to the Game-Maker toolset, though, is its handling of monsters. Watch and learn.

Level one of Andy in Asunderland

One of the longest-standing complaints about Game-Maker is in its monster handling. In reality, once you understand how monsters work they are one of the most powerful and fascinating elements of Game-Maker's weird and twisted grammar -- but they are by no means intuitive. Any expectations that you bring to the tool are likely to be dashed as soon as you try to make them work. Game-Maker's monsters are their own thing, with their own uses; they aren't built to do what you want.

Regardless, the first thing that people usually bring up about Game-Maker is that they can't get monsters to shoot. Indeed, unlike with characters you only can set a monster to birth another monster at death. This is a curious oversight, to be sure; it may have its technical reasons, but intuitively it doesn't seem too big an ask to permit monsters to do most of the same things that characters can do. Like, shoot.

So, Levy found a way. Alongside Alan Caudel in his tribute to Raiden II, he is amongst the first to do so. Of course there was a way; in Game-Maker there's always a way. Levy's method, as demonstrated all through level one of Andy in Asunderland, is as follows:

• Create a monster who seems to shoot at a certain interval
• Create a non-obvious background block that births a shot-monster at that same interval
• Create a static, higher-level monster that blends into the non-obvious background block
• When the visible monster dies, have it birth the higher-level monster, plugging the birth block
• From the player's perspective, killing the monster made it stop shooting

There are nuances here, in exact placement of the pixels, the exact number of ticks to set, the exact power levels to use. It's all very fiddly. But the point is, he got it to work -- and so can you. So can anyone who uses Game-Maker. As with other great games, Andy in Asunderland expands the vocabulary available to other authors. And that will always be cause for untempered acclaim.

It sure does help that the game is so good, though.

Well, what there is of it.

Story

N/A

Instructions

Spacebar: Shoot

On numerical keypad:

• 7, 8, 9: Jump left, up, right
• 4, 6: Walk left, right
• 2: Slouch

Credits

By Roger Levy.

Background

Roger Levy:

I played Yoshi's Island and was inspired to make an action adventure game, and came up with Andy in Asunderland about a blonde boy in jeans and a T-shirt that gets sucked into a wormhole that appears in his back yard randomly, and everything in the dimension on the other side is pretty trippy.

The version [that survives] was way before another crash. I had made a world map for the first world, hacked intro screens for each level (LEVEL 1-1, LEVEL 1-2, etc - it was drawn like chalk on a chalkboard and looked very nice), and a plan for what each world was going to be and kind of a story involving these "coin-head" characters with X's for eyes.

Availability

Prior to this archive's online presence, this game is not known to be publicly available.

Archive history

In December 2011 a passing reference to Game-Maker in the TIGSource forums led to direct communication with Levy. On December 30th he provided the sum of his surviving Game-Maker work, which was then added to the archive.

Links

• Play Andy in Asunderland online

Downloads

• Andy in Asunderland (123 kB)
• Level 1-1 map (96 kB)
  • Level 1-2 map (35 kB)
  • Level 1-3 map (33 kB)