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Monday, July 27, 2009

Lawyers chase ambulances, Atheists fear God, and rumors of a hyper-advanced mode?

I'm excited about this one! Feep over at GAF (you'll remember him as the author of Post 217) was able to get his hands on the game over at Comic-Con and has a bunch of impressions for us. Normally I'd just like you to the "article" (in this case, a post) and then comment on the highlights, but the whole damn thing is a highlight, so I'll go through this piece by piece. Get ready to be hyped even more.

Actually, prior to Feep we had this hilarious gem which made the title of this post:

At one point I called out a "Lawyer" and then something popped into mind that I just HAD to try with the guy! I called out an ambulance, got in, and drove off. Now, I didn't think they'd actually program this in the game, but the lawyer, true to his nature, CHASED after the ambulance.

I REALLY hope that's true. They've kept in a ton of typical "cliches" about professions, such as cops loving donuts. Oh god, I'm going to spend so much time in the intro screen just running away from the lawyer...

Now, onto Feep's impressions.


God vs. Atheists This one's great. If God is on screen when the atheist is summoned, the atheist will quickly bow twice to God before running away, screaming.

Bwahaha. I was hoping this would happen! I'm not sure if they really bowed or if that was they "OH SHIT" animation, but regardless it's still hilarious. And true to life!


Hwacha Not in-game.

Catgirl Not in-game.

Not too surprised catgirl isn't in the game (I imagine that's a trademark issue). Hwachas seem like a pretty famous weapon, though perhaps it's the language issue that prevents it from being in the game. Perhaps under a different name?


Post Two One Seven Spawns a banner-type object containing a shrunken version of the official art that Edison Yan drew to commemorate Post 217. Jackson, I'm honored.

Yes! I had a feeling this is exactly what it would spawn. Definitely not disappointed.


Necromancer Spawns, surprise, a necromancer. I'm a little unsure of what happened next; I had already spawned a politician, and one of two things occurred: either the necromancer directly transformed the politician into a green zombie, or the necromancer summoned a zombie who then bit the politician, and therefore turned the politician into a green zombie.

Now that's just plan amazing. I notice he says "green" zombie. Do you think it's literally a green zombie (we've only seen blue), or perhaps the "Ghoul" we saw earlier when a vampire bit someone?


Zonkey It's in there! A docile animal. I also tried Liger, and of course, one appeared...but unlike the Zonkey, the Liger was a huge asshole. It killed the poor Zonkey and then came after me.

I had no idea a zonkey existed. It does. Wow. I love that the Liger attacked it.


Portal Gun Worked, and fired...something...but it did not appear to be a portal, and left no lasting mark on the terrain. I was running out of time here, so I performed no further testing. I also tried Portal, which works, and will eventually spawn a random creepy (I got a demon, a gargoyle, and an alien through separate portals). You cannot use them as in the game Portal, however, which would pretty much break the game difficulty.

When I saw this was in my heart skipped a beat. Feep isn't sure what fired or what effect it had on anything, but it's in. It's safe to say it won't act like Portal's famous weapon, but the fact it's in at all is amazing. I also like their interpretation of Portal.


Baking a Cake I summoned a bowl, and then proceeded to fill the bowl with egg, flour, sugar, and milk. I then summoned an oven, and put the bowl in the oven, and waited a few seconds...but unfortunately, the items did not combine to form a cake. (In fact, for a moment I thought they HAD, but the game actually spawns a cake when you type in "sugar", and nothing had changed). This isn't terribly surprising; 5th Cell can't program in an insane number of recipes for a single object like oven...but to be fair, I didn't have time to try simpler recipes (something like egg -> omelet, or whatever).

That's a shame, though I didn't really expect it to work. Interesting that "Sugar" spawns "Cake", though. Goes to show that while they might have a great amount of words, we'll probably have a large amount of repeats as well.


Celebrity I spawned a celebrity and then a reporter, but the reporter made no effort to chase her. I then summoned a paparazzi, and not only did the paparazzi start to chase the celebrity (who was running away screaming), the reporter actually JOINED IN the chase once the paparazzi got it started. I guess he thought, "Oh, man, there might be something newsworthy over here!"

What a great interaction! I wonder if the reporter chasing after the paparazzi initiated it is on purpose or not. I wonder if they'd fight if I gave one of them a weapon.


This was the recent press build of the game, I assume. Only around 10% of the stages were unlocked for play, but interestingly, they did not seem to follow any particular order of difficulty. The single stages available in Worlds 9 and 10 were quite simple, but World 1-11 (involving a switch and a bunch of spikes) was quite difficult. I'm proud of the solution I worked out, though

That's good to hear. I'd love to see 1-11. Hell, I'd love to see the last level of ANY of the words. At least we gave (further) proof the levels do get a good deal more difficult.


An Hero Yup.

Bwahahaha. I hope this works like I expect it to, though I somehow doubt it



The word "Up" spawns a strange, mechanical-looking box (which also spawns if you type "Give Up"). I was unable to discern what it was, and it seemed to have no useful function. "Down" does not work.

How curious! I wonder what it does? I'm betting if you interact with it in some way it forces you to give up...maybe? Hmm. Honestly the first thing I thought was "this is a suicide machine", hehe.


Alright, now for the rumor. And this is a big one if it's true. I'll quote Feep verbatim here and leave you to draw your own conclusions as to whether you believe it or not. If it's true, then this game definitely will increase in difficulty...to say the least.

I also found...something else. Or rather, I was talking with an entertainment journalist the next day who was quite familiar with the game, and she told me something extremely interesting. I hung out with her quite a bit; she bought me an authentic Afghan meal for dinner.

I want to reiterate that this is an extremely unsubstantiated rumor about a late-game unlockable that I came across, hearsay, from a woman who I had never met before, ever. And she was a little weird. Not, like, really weird, but just a little off-putting. Jackson, if you want me to remove this information, please let me know immediately via either this thread or Private Message.
She claims that there is some kind of hyper-advanced mode, whereby you can only use an item once per GAME. As in, you need to beat all 220 levels and not use a single item more than once throughout the entire run.

Until we can confirm it's true or not we'll leave it like Feep does: just a rumor. But it is interesting, and dear god, it could change everything.

Amazing impressions all around, and I am even more psyched for this game than I was before. I am continuously blown away by the sheer attention to detail they put into every item. It's ridiculous.

So what do you think, guys? You excited yet?

6 comments:

  1. I wouldn't get my hopes up about "Portal Gun" since Feep said it didn't do anything unusual. I believe that when you put an adjective and a space before something, and the game doesn't recognize it, it just gives you the adjective-less version.

    Like in one of the earlier videos (maybe in the set that included the crocodile/farmer and flower basket ones?), the player put in "white house". You don't get THE White House where the president lives, but just a house which isn't even white. Seems the same happens with "give up" here.

    Great job on the site, btw! Both in compiling reports and offering your commentary. Glad you didn't quit for too long.

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  2. Like Anon, I'm fairly sure Feep got a regular gun.

    And I did a search for "up". I couldn't find anything box-like.

    I am really stoked for that advanced mode, though! Because, damn, would that make things interesting!

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  3. I think that's a definite possibility, but I would imagine Feep would have recognized it was just a normal gun.

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  4. I really pray for the hyper-advanced mode. Im plaing with this idea since I read about this game for the first time. It would be absolutelly perfect way to slowly increasy the difficulty without actually presenting more and more crazy and strange levels. They actually can made all of them really simple, but the difficulty will increase due to your imagination.

    Im really considering buying DS just for this game. Im still not sure, because its a lot of money for one game. But if they will implement the hyper-advanced game, in definetly in. Such mode will add really lot of fun to the game.

    To be honest - to play each level 4 times witch different object is nice, but not so chalenging (you will definetly find 4 solutions in no time) But doing it throught all 220 levels... that would be great. (just imagine - first level you can use jetpack, helicopter, helium balloons, trampoline or leadder to get over big obstacle. After 50 level it will become real fun :-))

    I just hope, that in such mode, you will be able to replay old levels with new solution - that will release the object from the previous one. Like "Oh I need the jetpack in this level really badly. But I used it 10 level ago. So I will go replay the old level without jtpack and will become available for me in the latest level"

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  5. *skips to comments after reading half way*

    HAHAHA, oh wow. Portal Gun is in? Even if it doesn't fire working portals, I'm impressed. :3

    *continues reading*

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  6. btw - I was thinking about this engine possibilities. And I believe they can create big revolution and breakthrought in the genre of Adventures (like Monkey Islnad, Broken Sword and this kind of games). Wit hScribblenauts engine, they could create adventure, where you can basically pick-up ANY item. And combine it wit hanythink else in the game. And play and solve the quests in your way. Not the pre-scripted one.
    I really hope they will create such game as the next product. You know - for adventure game, you dont need Longcat etc. So they can reduce the object list only to the object that fit the enviroment and game world... and with more limited amount of objects (lets say 800-1500) they can hugely improve the interactions etc...

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