Terra
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: 2001
Levels: 19
Author: Robert Brandon
Related games: Skate Board, Raven
Not to be mistaken for RSD's Terrain.
With Terra, Robert Brandon completed what might well be dubbed the "SkateGhoul Trilogy" (along with Skate Board and Raven).
When his brother John designed the first of those games, what he intended was a performance piece, where the player would noodle around open terrain and get points for style. What he made was more of an exploration platformer -- like an early, small-scale Seikuls or Knytt. From there, John went on to chase his ideal in games like Skatenig while Robert took up the pieces of his brother's work and built on what John actually accomplished. Terra is the culmination of that path.
The game is nonlinear both in terms of its progression and its level design. The game begins in a black wander-void similar to the one in Fox World -- another of Robert's projects where he took John's content and built a new, more sympathetic context for it. Find a cul-de-sac in the path, and the game brings you to a side-scrolling area. Each such area uses most or all of the available map space to create a huge, largely empty vertical labyrinth. For most of these levels the object is just to get to the endpoint; occasionally, they present a lock-and-key puzzle that shifts the player's role from meandering to searching.
By and large there is little to do in Terra except to explore -- yet the game does a pretty good job of rewarding wanderlust. Each level is distinct, with its own color scheme and architectural details. The backgrounds are mostly built from flat colors and shapes, yet the style is pretty consistent, creating a coherent aesthetic. The architecture tends to be both distinctive -- full of setpieces and landmarks -- and varied, helping to break up the monotony and prevent the player from getting too lost.
At times the environments include strange physics -- mysterious updrafts or gravity wells. In response the trick moves from Skate Board are worked into the level design as practical tools for navigation; ollies permit extensive platforming, and board slides let SkateGhoul slip beneath low-hanging spikes. The game doesn't go out of its way to explain itself, yet it has a holistic, if rough feel. All of the elements feel like they go together, even if they could use a bit more work to hang just right.
It can be an ominous, dreamlike space. There are occasional signs of life -- the active street lights, the occasional bit of machinery -- but nothing to say where that life actually went, or how long ago, or why. The world tends to sit in a perpetual twilight, neither quite day nor night. As a consequence, exploring can be a little spooky; like exploring an abandoned stadium or shopping mall.
As with most of John and Robert Brandon's games, Terra is incomplete. John got further with Terra than with most games, though, and what he did complete is kind of prescient for where indie games would go in the following decade. With a little more structure and attention to detail, it could really be something special. As it stands, Terra is a neat little rough draft for the future.
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Contents
Story[edit]
N/A
Instructions[edit]
CONTROLS[edit]
For best results, please use the numerical keypad.
- 4, 6: Skate left, right
- 7, 8, 9: Ollie Left, Up, Right
TRICKS[edit]
- 0 Ins: Board Slide
- Enter: 5-0 Grind (Do on rails)
- +: Spin
- *: Kickflip
- -: Nosebone
Credits[edit]
Designed by
- Robert Brandon
Engine and Tools by
- Recreational Software Designs
Edited by
Background[edit]
John Brandon:
- Game by my brother using graphics I created for Skate Board, and some new background graphics he created for this concept. I guess it was part maze game, and part side scroller. Knowing my brother, the levels are probably actually completable.
Rob Brandon:
- This is the game that incorporated the hacky particle system previously mentioned on a Reddit thread:
- So for a hacky particle effect, you could make a tiny monster that moved in a random direction while playing an animation (such as white->yellow->red->black for a flame-like thing) and would automatically die at the end of its animation. You'd then set some map tile to emit them and enjoy.
- ...yeah. Not amazing.
Availability[edit]
Prior to this archive's online presence, this game is not known to be publicly available.
Archive history[edit]
On January 21st 2010, Rob Brandon pseudonymously responded to a Reddit thread with a passing comment about Game-Maker (in particular, about Terra. When pressed about his history with the software, he replied that all of his games were stored on a couple of defunct computers, either inaccessible or destroyed.
Over 31 months later on August 23th 2012, John Brandon commented on a YouTube clip that he had found an archive of his and his brother's old games. The next day he composed a long e-mail describing the contents of a jumbled collection of gameware files, adding up to an ostensible sixteen games. All of the games were in pieces, many of them incomplete.
Over the next five months, through regular consultation, the games were all reassembled as well as the materials would permit. The games were reconstructed or otherwise recovered on the following dates:
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Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Terra (191.1 kB)
