Super Crate Box follow-up

I quite enjoyed composing my opinionated review of Super Crate Box the other week. If you've not read it, do so here; or not, if you enjoy missing things. The departure from my usual style was apparently a popular one, with my little despondent blog being inundated with newfound traffic, certainly due to the wit and eloquence with which my critiques were presented. For the record, "inundated with traffic" here means "viewed by about 20 more people than usual" and "the wit and eloquence with which my critiques were presented" is a discreet euphemism for "a charitable mention on the developer's Twitter".



I feel I neglected some opinionated information in my previous foray into reviewing, so consider this a follow-up. Here's what remains of my impression of Super Crate Box:

While the game features only three enemies, each performs a niche role to make the game challenging and entertaining. I've nerded up pictorial a list:

These are the main fodder on the enemy roster. They waddle from the spawn to the fire pit and require a minimal amount of damage before being dispatched. They spawn alone, or sometimes in groups of three. At least someone has friends.


These lumber from point to point,  requiring approximately twice as much damage - and nerve - to defeat. I really like the design on these guys; they feel like a mutation of the smaller ones, with every aspect increased in ferocity.

These flying skulls drift from the spawn point towards the player, like deadly flotsam on an invisible sea. They don't go in the fire pits, so there's no danger of them re-appearing at spawn, deranged and seeking your death to quench their blood-lust. They tend to attack directly from above, perhaps to hinder camping.

Don't get me wrong, all is good and well in List-Of-Super-Crate-Box's-Enemies Town. However, I feel that some more diversity could be injected into the game's catalogue of enemies without sacrificing its arcade-style simplicity and the distinctiveness of each foe. A creature that spawns smaller hostiles upon death would result in a greater opportunity for the chaotic fun that the game features, and would add further strategy. I envision a pulsating, fleshy seed pod that slowly crawls across the level on its veins, roots or tentacles, like a pixelated Triffid. After its leathery casing is pierced, the pod collapses along with the core creature, resulting in the release (or perhaps birth) of four or five smaller, faster and weaker bugs. These too could belong to the skull school of character design.

Other features I'd like to see implemented in the future:

- A training arena, in which the player can test their unlocked weaponry on any amount of any enemy of their choice.
- The ability to toggle certain weapons (or sets of weapons) from the game's rotation, at the cost of recorded high scores. I'd gladly swap my high scores for a opportunity to rid my life of those fucking dual pistols.
- More levels! While the three included do offer a good variety, and the two of those three that are unlocked are done so at appropriate intervals, the game's simplicity can result in stagnation if the setting isn't frequently changed. An industrial level with conveyor belts, perhaps?

So, that's the entirety of my impression of Super Crate Box. I intend to play it feverishly for a while longer.

Super Crate Box, or: "Super! Great! Rocks!"

Item boxes are a staple of video games, in terms of imagery, gaming culture and in actual application - by extension, so are power-ups. While it's not necessary for me to pontificate upon their evolution from a simple reward scheme for well-timed jumps to a crafted tool designed to maintain the game's pace and a motivator for complex moral conundrums, it's easy to realise how they've endured with versatility as a mainstay of games, both video and otherwise. Not to mention, they tend to make a nice blip noise when one collects them.

Self-indulgent introductions aside, Super Crate Box is a recently-released independent game by Vlambeer that aspires to alter this formula. It is heavily derived from the arcade era of yore and is described by the developers as "an arcade delight with interesting, refreshing game mechanics, cracking retro art and a terribly hip chiptune soundtrack". This is the second-most apt phrase I've heard that epitomises Super Crate Box. The most apt phrase I've heard is "an arcade delight with interesting, refreshing game mechanics, cracking retro art and a terribly hip chiptune soundtrack - and fucking intensely engrossing". This is one of the most addictive and rewarding independent, freeware games that I've ever played.

The gameplay is simple and indeed refreshing: the player has a selection of three small, Mario Bros.-esque levels, and must collect as many crates as possible before being killed by the constant stream of marching and flying nasties. The trick is that only one crate exists on-screen at any one time - when a crate is collected, your weapon is randomly replaced with another from the game's 15+ arsenal and another crate is randomly placed somewhere in the level. Some weapons are simplistic and self-explanatory, like the dual pistols or the revolver, while others are powerful yet impractical, like the minigun or the bazooka. If an enemy reaches the lower hole in the level (obscured by flames), they re-appear at the spawn, viscous, energised and speedier than before. The result is therefore the player managing crate collection, enemy disposal and enemy avoidance, all the while toting a manically fluctuating inventory of manically fluctuating usefulness. This equates to perfect game balance, best summarised, ironically, by the the word "control". The game gives the player the perfect level of control on the outcome, meaning both death and the new high-score are a direct result of the player's competence instead of the game's imposed difficulty. It's a fight against the player's level of competence, rather than a boss or timer, which is the perfect reward and challenge. Incidentally, my level of incompetence is indeed a harsh challenge, both in Super Crate Box and in mundane activities. When losing - and I've lost a lot (both in Super Crate Box and mundane activities) - it never felt as though my run had ended due to a flaw in the game or misappropriated difficulty, but rather a flaw in my technique or a lacking area of my skill. Ultimately, this forms a feedback-loop of incentive to practice and, therefore, play. This is by a wide margin the most entertaining feedback-loop I've ever participated in.

The weapons are distinct, with no two behaving any more than mildly similarly. For instance, both the minigun and the machine gun shoot with rapidity and have a moderate spread, yet I've found myself cursing my luck when having to change from one to the other unceremoniously. The minigun's knockback is great enough to actually use it as a form of convenient locomotion for advanced players, but it deals less damage than the machine gun and has considerable wind-up time, which forces judicious use. No two weapons look the same, further distinguishing them at a glance; this is especially handy, as in the chaos of the game, one can on occasion miss the weapon identifier. My personal favourite is the "disc gun": an imaginative weapon that shoots a disc boasting infinite enemy-penetration. It also bounces off the walls, at which point it become a danger to the player, which just adds another level of player-derived complexity and control.

All of this is delivered in a package wrapped with endearing graphics, stuffed with entertaining sound and marinaded in a whimsically unique style and atmosphere. That's right, this game has an atmosphere. How many independent, freeware games have a palpable atmosphere to compete with Super Crate Box? Spelunky and Eversion are the only that immediately come to mind. This game could easily be sold for profit on Steam, Xbox Live Arcade or the iPhone store, however, I'm decidedly glad that it's not, because I doubt I would have played it if it were. The game is just that delightful, and I'm just that selfish.

Best of Omegle 4

I should write another blog post. Fuck, I don't really feel like it. Maybe if I worked harder, I'd have more readers. No, the lack of readers is directly proportional to my lack of talent. I'd better put something up, otherwise the minute group of dedicated readers I've miraculously accumulated will unsubscribe from the feed. Blogs are so much work. Why is one post a week so much work? Oh, that's right, everything is directly proportional to my lack of talent. Fuck it, I'll just shove some Best of Omegle up there with blatant disregard. I'll justify it by writing some barely-humourous faux-monologue declaring myself aware of how lazy it is.

And so, I searched sloppily through the backwash of my Omegle logs and found these. They're short, so we won't suffer for long. I'm planning a trolling extravaganza for the next BoO post, and it will be a long one indeed. In the meantime, read these, leave comments and subscribe to the RSS feed. In other words, don't unsubscribe. The monologue won't be happy.

You: Do you believe in any god?
Stranger: yap
You: Which?
Stranger: you
You: No.
Stranger: u r my god now
You: Cool.
You: The one commandment: Get fucked.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Another:

You: Greetings.
Stranger: You have 5 questions, I will answer honestly.
You: Okay.
You: Why do you wish for me to participate in such an insipid transaction?
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Note that the following conversation took place during Christmas-time:

Stranger: 15m lookin for older girl...
You: I want to kill myself, and you're the one who needs to convince me otherwise. Be my angel on this Christmas.
Stranger: ummm dont do it
Stranger: not a good idea
You: I'm a changed man!
You have disconnected.

Another. This one made me laugh while reviewing it for inclusion:

You: Greetings. What brings you to Omegle?
Stranger: he
You: Does he now?
Stranger: searching gud friends
You: Ah.
You: I have a propensity for whiling away the nights searching gud friends.
Stranger: wat happen
You: Nothing happen.
You: Nothing at all happen.
Stranger: ok that gud did u find sumone
You: I most definately did find sumone. Not just any old sumone, but a really gud sumone at that.
Stranger: wanna be gud and old friend if u wish too
You: You read my mind! Well, my help's mind, anyway.
You: I do wanna be gud and old friend. I do so wish too!
Stranger: wat is ur name then
Stranger: my name vibhor
You: My name Ug! Me Ug! Me like Internet!
Stranger: from which city
You: Bedrock City.
Stranger: which country never heard of that place
Stranger: me male
You: It's good to know that you Male.
You: I also Male.
Stranger: why so gud abt it
Stranger: ya ok
You: Don't go asking questions abt that!
You: Your a gud question asker indeed!
You: Not to mention various other things!
Stranger: why
You: Only gud things, only gud things!
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

That should do. Why do I listen to you?

The Fresh Prince of Questionnaire

I recently uncovered an old yearbook questionnaire from my final year at school. While it was student-initiated, it was still evidently within the teachers' jurisdiction to chew me out when the bemused student captain discovered what I'd written. I believe the word "counselling" reared its head during the ensuing discussions, then "medication", and finally the phrase "forceful application". This questionnaire actually epitomises my behaviour throughout most of school quite accurately.

Click on these tablets of subversion to view them in their original size. I recommend it, because in their default state they're as blurry as a public access channel.

Despite the fact that I conspicuously edited out my name, it's clearly me. Yeah, I didn't care too much for school.

From rags to slightly less soiled rags

Well, I've drastically updated the face of my blog. I mean severely. Let's put it like this: at the time of writing, Joan Rivers is who most personifies the current trends of my blog - facelifts and terrible, obnoxious jokes. Before this, it was more "glob" than blog; at least ascetically. I overcame my acute laziness and spent some time in Photoshop to whip up the header, background and button for my YouTube channel. This is the closest I'll ever come to an achievement, so please, allow me a moment to confront the sheer magnitude of this.

*One full moment later*

So, I now have two followers. Which makes me sound like a cult. Great. That said, two followers is the most meagre of cults. I mean, it's the smallest amount of possible cult members; at that juncture, you're bordering on "you and that guy".

Now point your dainty seeing-holes at what I've highlighted with a Microsoft Paint brand rounded rectangle:


The diagram to the left of my follower count displays three green silhouettes, and its sole purpose is to demonstrate the act of following or fellowship. The very visual manifestation of following - the default, broad, distilled, archetypal, simplified essence of following... consists of a number of people greater than my followers. That fucking snooty, aloof diagram has more followers than me. I've been outdone by a representation.

This is a morbid day for me and my followers. However, we shall prevail. I believe that we can surpass the milestone that is equation to the diagram. Expect more posts and more Best of Omegle within the next few days and, eventually, the ensuing months. I intend to maintain this steady output until I show that filthy diagram who's boss.

In the words of political visionary-turned-political disappointment Brack Obama: "Yes we can overcome the diagram!". I don't remember if he was indeed talking about a diagram, and if he was indeed talking about subjugating a diagram, but I'm sure the sentiment still applies.

Edit: Wow, three followers. Technically, I still need four to trump the diagram, so get following. Perhaps the diagram and I could put aside our differences and merge into one conglomerate with six followers? This has my approval, so the ball's in your court, diagram.