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[Argembarger]

So after teaching myself to play Dwarf Fortress I decided to take a victory lap and beat I Wanna Be The Guy.

Right now, I'm at the final boss. The final boss has killed me around 90 times. I am rather proud of myself for getting this far (Hard Mode) without any help or spoilers. In fact I probably will not return to this thread until I actually BECOME The Guy, so as not to learn any secrets on how to kill the final boss.

And then, once I do, I will proceed to teach myself to play NetHack.

Anyway, I didn't see any threads on IWBTG, so what do you guys think of this whimsical little game?

[breadbocks]

OH GAWD I'M SCARED OF WHEN MY LP GET'S HERE!

If the video LP I've seen is anything to go by.

[Blaze]

IWBTG - So Horribly Sadistic, that it's Horribly Sadistic.

My first (and only) playthrough was on hard mode. I beat it once and haven't played it since. I *think* I'm halfway through I Wanna Be the Fangame, and am currently stuck on the "darkness" area of I Wanna Be the Shrine Maiden.

[Thexor]

I've never managed to beat this - had problems trying to jump-and-grab during the 'moving spike wall' section. Kept mis-keying and dying. (And unlike the rest of the numerous deaths, this was insanely frustrating - not a "oh hey, the game randomly killed me" death, a "GAWD DAMNIT GRAB THE WALL AND JUMP!!!" kind of death.)

[Pandarsenic]

Stuck on:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hulkgief

Have beaten:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mike Tyson, Bowser/Wart/Wily, Mecha-Birdo, and Dracula

[Fikes]

IWTBTG is the wrong kind of hard. Two objects look exactly the same, one kills you. Remember which one kills you. It is more a game of memory than reflexes. I turned it off after the first level.

[Duke 2.0]

My first (and only) playthrough was on hard mode. I beat it once and haven't played it since.

Yup, that would be me as well.

It is more a game of memory than reflexes.

What? No.

Every platformer is a puzzle you solve with reflexes to some extent, and IWBTG contains enough deathtraps and boss patterns to memorize to make this a rather valid assessment.

[Fikes]

Memory should be a part of every game, but it shouldn't be the primary mechanic to kill you. Every level I watched of IWTBTG, while hilarious and awesome (isn't there a tetris level?) went back to the primary mechanic of "Remember where you can and cant stand, remember what triggers deathtraps, live".

Contra is a good, simple example of a hard game. If you don't remember that a spike wall pops up here, it can kill you, but you can also react quick enough to dodge it.

[Sowelu]

Text adventure games also kill you in totally arbitrary ways.  Sure, some of them you can see coming, predict, and just not do in the first place.  But either way, you're going to die a lot.  It's a valid genre, IMO, even though a lot of sulking sad people insist that text adventures should have less arbitrary deaths.

So, arbitrary deaths that need to be learned and avoided do not mean that games are bad.

[Shades]

So, arbitrary deaths that need to be learned and avoided do not mean that games are bad.

It does however mean the design is bad. If there is no possible way you could have predicted the event then there is zero achievement in avoiding it. Sure it's fun the first few times but it gets repetitive quickly and in general leads to a bad game. There is no upside to doing it and it's essentially that the designer was too lazy to make a decent game. There are a few exceptions to the lazinesses where the it is the whole point of the game but those get old fast too.

And yes some text adventure games did arbitrarily kill you but I can't, off the top of my head, recall any of the good ones that did that. (admittedly a lot of deaths where references and in-jokes so you'd have to have arcane knowledge to have see it, but at least it was possible).

[Fikes]

Text adventure games also kill you in totally arbitrary ways.  Sure, some of them you can see coming, predict, and just not do in the first place.  But either way, you're going to die a lot.  It's a valid genre, IMO, even though a lot of sulking sad people insist that text adventures should have less arbitrary deaths.

So, arbitrary deaths that need to be learned and avoided do not mean that games are bad.

Sowelu and I disagree for once… interesting… I do not understand how arbitrary deaths could ever be considered a good feature. All they mean is “reload, try the other path”. It takes nothing other than memory or luck to avoid them. How is that fun? A better system is one that lets you  die once and then solve a puzzle to get past. Half-Life was a good  example of this. I remember in my first play through I saw some water sparking, so I figured It was dangerous. I saved, walked into it, and died. Okay… I’ll try to jump it, it was too big and I died. I finally figured out that you had to drag a box over to get past the obstacle.

IWTBTG on the other hand would show you water 4 times. The 5th time a hand would come out and snatch you as you jumped over it, you’d start the level over, get past the fifth water and have a killer apple fall on your head.

I just don’t see the appeal of playing a level over and over, advancing a tiny amount each time. Okay, after an hour I know how to get past the first 6 death traps, I think I can finally beat the level. BAM killer apple.

[Sowelu]

So, arbitrary deaths that need to be learned and avoided do not mean that games are bad.

It does however mean the design is bad. If there is no possible way you could have predicted the event then there is zero achievement in avoiding it. Sure it's fun the first few times but it gets repetitive quickly and in general leads to a bad game. There is no upside to doing it and it's essentially that the designer was too lazy to make a decent game. There are a few exceptions to the lazinesses where the it is the whole point of the game but those get old fast too.

And yes some text adventure games did arbitrarily kill you but I can't, off the top of my head, recall any of the good ones that did that. (admittedly a lot of deaths where references and in-jokes so you'd have to have arcane knowledge to have see it, but at least it was possible).

I don't know, I think it just means it needs high *mental* dexterity instead of just fast fingers.  Like:  Hey, those apples didn't fall when I ran under them, and now I'm all suspicious.  I actually would compare it to playing a truly nasty text adventure game, or a tabletop RPG with an utterly sadistic GM.  One thing it has in common with text adventures and tabletop RPGs is that nothing is truly constant (except for paranoia), and you don't know when something unexpected is going to happen or when the rules are going to suddenly change.

Maybe that's only my thing because I'm a big fan of the game of Mao, but I think the concept of a platformer with no constant rules is perfectly valid.

...Okay, to be honest, some of the traps ARE nasty and pointless and nearly impossible to predict.  But not all of them are, that's for sure.  If you get into the head of the designer and think "How much can I screw over the player on this screen", it'll take you a pretty long way.

[Shades]

It's not really mental dexterity if you can't work out what will kill you. It's just either a good memory or a notepad ...

I never found that even the most sadistic GM's I've played with were random either, sure they screwed you over at every opportunity but it was never just 'your now dead' there was always a reason (even if it was for asking the same question twice.... damn computer you are not my friend...)

If you find it fun that is of course your choice but I just don't see the upside, may as well be rolling a dice and on a 6 you start again as your input has no real effect on the result.

[Cheese]

It's supposed to be ridiculously and arbitrarally hard. It's like pain olympics except you win manliness rather than ultimate physical self harm awards.

[Argembarger]

I've been stuck on the final boss for a while now. I've amassed around 2,600 deaths over 30-odd hours playing. I find it quite amusing.

It might just be the right kind of personality type to play this game; you have to not only agree with the motto "Losing is Fun!" but you also have to have a nice healthy streak of masochism and stubbornness.

If it wasn't such a bright, colorful, visually appealing game with lots of nostalgic areas, great music, solid platforming controls and the like, I probably would have given up before the first boss. But something just appealed to me to keep playing, figure this out, navigate this maze, kill this boss. Perhaps I am just too invested at this point and I need a psychological payout. However, I'm not obsessing over it. At this point, I play for a few deaths to the final boss and put it down to try again later.

There is definitely something to be said that IWBTG has probably a dozen or more fangames and tributes. Perhaps it's the black humor; the futility of arbitrary deaths; the moon randomly falling on you or the upright spike flying sideways. It's like a running gag that stays far past its welcome and becomes irritating, then keeps going until it transcends the boundaries of humor. I've been stricken by bouts of laughter after a series of unfortunate deaths. (I'm fairly certain I found it legitimately funny, and I wasn't just laughing to keep from crying or anything)

Are the deaths random and unavoidable? Nearly all of them are, at first. It doesn't take any real conscious memorization, after it kills you a couple of times, you just sort of remember whether you like it or not. Once you get past the "random surprise death" stage, the game becomes one of pixel-perfect jumping and hyper-accurate timing and spatial judgement. Therein lies the reward, the "I'm good enough at platformers to play I Wanna Be The Guy", the mental pat on the back as you best fruit, spike and moon and become The Guy.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

OH MY GOD FUCK DRACULA HE'S THE WORST BOSS EVER. IT'S SO AWFUL, A GAME BASED ON MEMORY AND PATTERNS, THAT THEY JUST HAVE A BOSS WHO RANDOMIZES HIS LOCATION AND ATTACKS. UGH. HE KILLED ME MORE THAN ALL OF THE OTHER BOSSES COMBINED. FUCK DRACULA.