Robert Recurring
2010, April 14th 12:53 PMIt's that time of month again! The time for games.
Robert Recurring is a side-scrolling puzzle game that is arguably about time travel. No, I did not remake Braid. It is about a different time travel gimmick than Braid.
Windows (.zip version available)
Mac OSX (10.6 or higher)
I know what you're saying. "Oh, this game looks terrible! He must have given up again." No, on the contrary – I ended up spending the entire week working on really fascinating game mechanics, and I've got half a dozen ideas that I didn't have time to get to. Lots of design ideas = no graphics. You don't get graphics.
Graphics aren't for you.
Let me know what you think.
Albert A
2010, April 14th 1:03 PMThere was a neat little flash game a while back that used a similar gimmick. You needed to click your way through a set of puzzles ten times in a row, but each time it recorded previous runs, which potentially opened up shortcuts or enabled synergies in future runs through…
Zorba
2010, April 14th 1:04 PMIf you can find it, I'd be quite interested in seeing it :)
Stiltskin
2010, April 14th 2:12 PMI believe you're talking about Cursor*10:
http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html
Will check this game out when I get the chance.
gramcracker
2010, April 14th 4:20 PMAlso:
Chronotron
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Scarybug/chronotron
and The Company of Myself
http://www.kongregate.com/games/2DArray/the-company-of-myself
This sort of game makes my brain hurt.
soliss
2010, April 14th 5:57 PMYes! I never did manage to beat that stupid Cursor game. But yes, this game reminds me a lot of that version with the Unicorns as well.
Zorba
2010, April 15th 8:43 AMI think it's interesting the quite different direction that those games took. None of them really play with complex interactions with your various characters – it's limited to "click faster", "stand on", and "open/close doors". I think the direction I'm going, while ridiculously complex, still holds quite a bit of promise.
If I do continue it, though, I'm totally changing it so that a clone can jump with you standing on top.
Stiltskin
2010, April 15th 11:20 AMWhile we're at it, may as well point this one out:
http://www.bobblebrook.com/games/a-good-hunch
This may be the "unicorns" one you were talking about, soliss. Except they're goats, not unicorns. Was it this one?
soliss
2010, April 15th 6:43 PMYeah, you're absolutely right, they are goats. :)
ninwa
2010, April 15th 7:32 PMFantastically fun! Of course you remember that braid does in-fact use this technique in their shadow worlds, but seeing an entire game built around this premise is really cool. I had a lot of fun with this Zorba and really hope you take it further in the future.
hcs
2010, April 17th 11:18 AMCool, it almost seems like a game about multithreading hazards, not so much time travel as concurrency. I keep feeling like I need to work things out on paper, but things eventually work smoothly enough, at least up to "bridge" so far. It's harder to discover what the "panel with hourglass" does than I'd like, I'm still not sure if I have it at this point.
Thanks!
hcs
2010, April 17th 7:23 PMJust wanna add, holy crap maize_hard was painful. Mega Man-level frustrating, though fortunately a lot easier to retry.
Groff
2010, April 17th 9:39 PMFantastic, played through them all. Definite thought required, but not too frustrating to just jump right in and try things out (and I'm very glad it doesn't penalize you for doing so!). The ease of retry and simplicity of controls are big pluses.
Zorba
2010, April 17th 10:25 PMThanks, all :)
I actually pushed a new version with maize_hard removed (because it was a bad level :P) but the rest of them I'm pretty happy about.
hcs
2010, April 18th 6:43 PMJust a thought, and I don't know how practical or helpful it would be, kind of lifting from Miegakure:
What if you showed, along with the main run-through that you're currently playing, the view from the perspective of all of the other Roberts, possibly shrunk to minimap size? This at least would clarify just what's happening with, for instance, the tbutton. You could probably get away with much more complicated setups this way.
And maize_hard wouldn't be nearly as bad with the change you mentioned earlier :)
Zorba
2010, April 19th 1:06 AMI've actually been talking about setting things up so that you can watch your other Roberts more easily. I like the minimap-size idea – I was thinking about some kind of a flipbook, but that's a much, much better idea.
And yeah, modified collisions would make maize_hard far easier. That said, I still don't think that would make it a good level, just a less frustrating one :)
Thales
2010, May 1st 8:59 PMfirst of all, don't read this if you don't want any hints given away
I haven't beaten the last level yet but I'm pretty sure you need to jumpon a robert at the top because once you bop that infinity switch it's not coming back. I considered just trying to run really fast before the bottom robert hits the first switch but so far that hasn't worked without explosions
Zorba
2010, May 1st 9:05 PMI'm not sure when you downloaded it, but if you haven't grabbed 1.1, I got rid of a crummy last level and replaced it. Make sure you've got the latest version :)
(or, you know, stick with it if you want to keep plugging away, whichever level it is, it's possible)
Frank Force
2010, May 8th 12:13 PMReally well put together puzzles and sort of addictive. Still working on the last 2 puzzles. Gameplay is perfect I'd just like to see you bump up the visuals a little bit, that could add a lot of flavor and help to draw players in.
Thales
2010, May 17th 7:36 PMFairly certain it's the newest one.
On a semi-related note, I never installed Nieuwe Aarde but I am having the same problem Tang was having there, with this. I didn't discover it earlier because I didn't try to go back to the other levels.
vazor222
2010, July 4th 4:58 PMExcellent game! This is one of my favorites from Repeat and I enjoyed all the levels, even if it took me a while to beat the harder ones. :)
Animato®
2010, September 29th 12:06 AMlovely game …