Stickman Die!!
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: 1995
Levels: 1
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: Stickman!!! Die
Not to be mistaken for Yurik Nestoly's Stickman!!! Die.
Although with Stickman!!! Die Yurik Nestoly did the equivalent of labeling his yogurt, saving his first opus under the name of "Yurik" in all but the title screen, Alan Caudel still managed to toss it out by accident -- or so he thought! When it looked like he had deleted Nestoly's work, Caudel felt compelled to remake it in apology. Enter: the similarly titled Stickman Die!!.
At a glance the games look similar: a consciously crude stick figure navigates a violent landscape to reach the exit. Caudel, however, approached the remake rather differently. For one, Caudel's game lacks either weapons or enemies. Instead, the danger here lies all in the environment. As if to emphasize the greater relationship between character and map, the stick figure is a block larger and somewhat more detailed than in the original game. Here also, a higher concept threatens to intrude -- as instead of a procedural focus on smoothly employing powers to eliminate threats, Caudel verges toward a survival horror, or even masocore, design. The challenge is to pick away at the world at hand and find a way to survive it.
Which is not to oversell the design here; merely to describe the difference in approach. How do you get to the end in one piece? Well, hack around until you find a way. There's more than one method! In this case play is all about being clever, and getting post-modern in the way that you read a game's design. It's intuitive, compared to the deeply sensory original.
Stickman Die!! is not much of a game -- it never was meant to be. Where it is interesting is where it illustrates how, given same tools and the exact same premise, two closely associated artists can demonstrate two widely divergent approaches to design. Given that the intent of one game was to replicate the other, the differences are all the more fascinating to witness.
| Previous | Current | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Stickman!!! Die | Stickman Die!! | (Overview) |
| Stickman Die series | ||
Contents
Story[edit]
N/A
Instructions[edit]
On numerical keypad:
- 7/8/9: Jump left/up/right
- 4/6: Walk left/right
Credits[edit]
Designed by Alan Caudel.
Background[edit]
Alan Caudel:
- That Stickman Die! game of mine was actually an attempt to rebuild the game Yurik made of the same name after I thought I had deleted some files.
Availability[edit]
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Availability[edit]
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
After an earlier wave of rediscoveries, on July 13 2011 Alan Caudel provided another archive of previously missing Game-Maker material, including Stickman Die!! alongside the following:
Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Stickman Die!! (90 kB)
- Game map (21.1 kB)
