Flash Game Friday: Launch Games!

Have you ever played a launch game? Don’t get them confused with a physics game which involves launching (like Angry Birds), but has a finite space vertically and horizontally. I became somewhat enraptured with them this past week. So I wanted to review, compare, and recommend three of my favorites.

1. Flight
2. Burrito Bison
3. Pogo Swing

(Quick note: I don’t particularly have a favorite Flash Games site, and listing two links to http://www.armorgames.com/ should not be an endorsement, but I will say that their website is one of the least distracting, and didn’t flood Google Chrome with tons of cookies or malware or any of that.)

The basics of a launch game are that you are in a contraption, and it is going to launch you forward, with the goal to go as far horizontally as possible. You are rewarded for your travel with money, which you then spend on upgrades to your launching ability. Launch games also include an endgame, either by acquiring so much money, or being able to travel so far horizontally.

Flight

In this game, you are represented by a paper airplane, which is being launched around the globe (or at least, around the eastern hemisphere). The design is great, and the accompanying story is touching and funny.

The really big stand out for Flight is the dynamics of gameplay. You are given an amount of “fuel” for each launch that allows you to control the pitch of your paper airplane, or gain a slight boost to your speed. Conservative use of fuel can help you adjust the plane’s trajectory and gain a great deal of distance; or you can blow through all your fuel to ascend to the heavens. During flight you are encouraged to collect stars for money and paper cranes, which award higher multipliers for stars collected. Aiming for stars is somewhat tricky, but you will collect plenty along a long enough flight.

Burrito Bison

So, you’re a bison, minding your own business, walking peacefully through a grocery store when suddenly you are kidnapped into a bag of candy to participate in a coliseum wrestling match against a giant jawbreaker. Already, I’m in love. Unlike the other two games I’ve mentioned, this launch game is completed only when you are able to travel the full length of the game horizontally. This entrant also has the least amount of player interactivity post-launch. You could launch your bison and go make a cup of coffee for all the game cares.

The delight of the game is in its whimsy, but also its challenge. A great many things are standing between you and freedom from your captors, including two giant doors and a glass pane. The speed of the bison must be above a certain level, or you won’t break through the door, and go back to the launch point. Speed can be increased through hitting certain gummis (some are carrying bombs, you know, as gummi bears sometimes do), but can also be decreased by missing a gummi (landing on the ground) or hitting a gummi police officer. Lose too much speed, and you are paid for the distance you traveled (and robbed from poor gummis you landed on) and sent back to the launch point.

Pogo Swing

This game made me laugh. Twice. Not just a polite chuckle at a moronic joke, but actual aloud laughter. It doesn’t take itself seriously, but has a more real worldly premise than Burrito Buson. Sort of. You are a group of teenagers, eager to buy something expensive. The answer? Earn money by jumping off a swing onto a pogo stick as far as you can.

Pogo Swing allows you to rotate your character midair. Full rotations earn you more money, but if you don’t land pogo stick first, the results are undesirable. This mechanic adds a risk to greed, which I always find to be an enjoyable gameplay element. When I fail, it’s my fault for being too greedy in going after a seventh rotation, and I watch my teenager bounce to the ground on his head.

Each of these games can easy suck two or three hours of free time away from you, and are fun enough to play, but probably not as enjoyable to play over and over again. Once you have purchased all of the upgrades and reached the end game (either through traveling total distance, as in Flight; escaping the candy bag in Burrito Bison; or by earning enough money in Pogo Swing), there isn’t much else to do, and the sense of trying to accomplish something is gone.

The Games: Flight, Burrito Bison, Pogo Swing

The Cost: Free – these are all Flash games and should work perfectly fine on any recently purchased PC

Worth It? The only thing you are giving up is time, and you were probably going to waste in on the internet anyway.

Best Parts: For launch games in general, it’s the simplicity of play which is a big draw.

Worst Parts: Not a lot of post-game, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you finish the game and still want to play, find another launch game.

Overall: I started playing these Flash games at work, because almost anything is better than work. But when I got home, I still wanted to play them, instead of using any of my much more expensive video game systems. A testament to good (and addictive) design.

Kirby's Epic Yarn

I remember when my co-worker Josh and I first heard about the new Kirby game planned for the Wii (it was amid a series of other announcements Nintendo made). We were fairly excited; Kirby games have always been a source of pleasant platforming. And, the title even promised great things: Kirby’s Epic Yarn. It would be epic, right?

Josh picked it up to play before me, and promptly brought it to my desk and disgustingly tossed it towards me. “You can play this, if you want,” he said, looking at the game box as if instead of Kirby’s Epic Yarn, it actually read Sing-a-long with Justin Beiber. I couldn’t figure out his revulsion, so I asked what was wrong with it.

“You don’t eat people.”

WHAT? What do you mean, you don’t eat people? You’re Kirby. That’s what you do. Making a Kirby game where you didn’t eat people is like making a Sonic game where you don’t run. I had to see it for myself, so I launched my Wii in the first time in months and it updated for three or four hours while I read the manual suspiciously.

There was no mention of not eating things, but I figured it was a lie. Written materials often lie.

The updated Wii was finally ready and I started the game. There was a story introduction – and let me go off for a second here – there are games in which story is important, and highly contributes to my love of the game. Platformers are typically not the medium for that. I don’t care about Mario saving the princess. She will get kidnapped again, and I’ll be off to find more fucking stars to save her. This isn’t Bioshock. I don’t care how coins got into these weird yellow blocks with question marks. The mechanics are designed for fun, not for an overarching purpose.

Anyway, there was a story. Its purpose was to tell us why you can’t eat people (spoiler, it’s because you are turned into yarn). So now, not only am I kind of upset that I lost a few precious minutes watching a story that I cared about, but I really hate the story because it represents a loss of the entire gameplay mechanic the name Kirby on the front of the box had promised.

The game itself is fun enough. You jump onto platforms and there are puzzle-like moments where you have to do one of three things to proceed. Each level challenges you to collect a certain number of beads, which are scattered throughout the level and also dropped by unraveling yarn enemies. However, I can’t shake the feeling that pushing the 1 button (you hold the Wiimote sideways) should cause Kirby to eat someone.

And before I continue to criticize, I will say it’s got a stunningly fun style to it. It reminds me greatly of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. The game’s fabric motif opened a lot of design opportunities, and they were well taken care of. The Wii has a limited capacity with graphics, and this game embraces it, rather than fighting against it.

However, the game gets monotonous in its simplicity pretty quickly. As a nod to this, additional challenges are unlocked if you are able to decorate the apartments of other residents of this yarn-filled existence by collecting trickier to get items from the levels. However, the decoration concept is wasted and introduces further levels of childish gameplay. I wish it’d just give me the additional challenges.

I made it through the first few worlds, each of which culminated in a “boss battle” which involved employing one of two or three strategies. I became disenfranchised, and haven’t played it since. In the end, I just felt as though I was playing a game that was excellently designed and crafted, and then slapped with an intellectual property to garner sales. And my feeling isn’t far off from the truth; according to an article discussing conversations between the development team and Nintendo CEO, Satoru Iwata:

One of the big revelations from the column is that Kirby's Epic Yarn originally wasn't a Kirby game. Good Feel developed the game with the desire to try something new, and so they started from zero. The Japanese name for Kirby's Epic Yarn is "Keito no Kirby," or "Kirby of Yarn." Instead of this, the game was originally set to be called "Keito no Fluff," or "Fluff of Yarn" and would have starred a character named Fluff in a world known as "World of Yarn."

The greatest weakness of the game, in my opinion, is the very thing the development team felt they needed to secure a character with more recognition. How disappointing, as this likely delays having a new actual Kirby game, wherein the gameplay mechanics we love will finally return.

The Game: Kirby’s Epic Yarn

The Cost: Should be easy to find at Gamestop for around $30-$40. A new version will still set you back $50.

Worth It? For non-Kirby enthusiasts: It’s a fun platformer, and would probably be a hoot for kids (there is co-op play, which I didn’t review), but why not spend it on a better game, like Super Mario Galaxy? For Kirby-enthusiasts: purchasing this game probably has the unintended cost of weeks of therapy, buy Kirby Superstar Ultra for $25 instead.

Best Parts: Design. Collecting beads is disarmingly addictive, since the game judges you at the end of every level based on your success in doing so.

Worst Parts: Kirby not being able to eat people and have their powers.

Overall: Playing this game was like getting a chocolate éclair from the donut shop, getting home to eat it and realizing it isn’t filled with custard.