GFD

in the wake of ROBLOX_OOF.mp3, this is one of many soundtracks revealed to not have been composed by Tommy Tallarico at all. (Twitter thread source; or partial Internet Archive version. i’ve been gradually retagging my music library as i notice his name pop up, so i just searched for this info.) instead, most of it was composed by Tony Bernetich, despite Tommy Tallarico later claiming in interviews that it was his work. (Anything But Tangerines was composed by Christophe Beck, who scored Disney’s Frozen and several Marvel films. it’s pretty good too. he’s currently credited on the game’s Wikipeda page as “Christopher Beck” with no link to his own page, while Tommy Tallarico is still the first listed composer.)

Tony Bernetich said of Tommy Tallarico “Musically, Tommy is possibly one step above a garage band musician”, and “He’s really not a composer and knows very little about the art of composing”. what Tommy Tallarico did contribute to this soundtrack was performances of the first and third movements of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata — which he stole from MIDIs created and published online by Edward Grant in 1989 (Twitter thread source; or Internet Archive version). arguably, this puts the game’s soundtrack in legal jeopardy since, while the song itself is public domain, this specific rendition of it could be considered protected. Earthworm Jim 2 is currently available on Nintendo Switch Online.

A year and a half ago, I threw together a game called The Sorcerer's Detritus real quick like for a game jam in the Thinky Puzzle Games Discord. It's a game where you control a magician's hat that accidentally falls into the sewer, and you have to get back out. The original concept of the game was a ripoff of Toki Tori for the Game Boy Color, where every level you'd have a limited number of special actions based on magic tricks (like using a balloon to go higher, or sending a rabbit out to knock yourself forward across a gap), but that wasn't super exciting to me and one action felt like it was potentially much more interesting than the others, so I made the game completely about that instead.

The game is one of the simplest I've released. Here's a complete list of the mechanics, all of which are covered in the tutorial (except for one interaction between two mechanics which I forgot to include, but it seems everyone discovers it in level #2):

1. You can move left & right
2. There's gravity
3. You can push one or more objects
4. Pushing a key into a lock opens it
5. There are thin, one-way platforms you can move upward through
6. If there's space above you, you can create an object directly beneath you, pushing you up one space

That's the whole game.

The level design is also insultingly simple, with a few levels only having a single obstacle. Like, here's level #2:

That's it. That's the entire level. It looks like a joke.

People get stuck on this level for 20-30 minutes, because this game is somehow the most brutally difficult game I've ever made, by a wide margin. This catches everyone who plays it by surprise, because it feels incongruous that such simplistic mechanics and levels could possibly lead to complex situations, yet it does. Analyzing exactly how they do is a bit beyond the scope of this post, but the condensed version which may not make sense if you haven't played the game is that because your ability to move objects upward is fairly constrained, ending up in a situation where there's an object directly to the left of a key is highly problematic, so most of the trouble spots in levels are figuring out how to avoid that situation.

Since I made this game mainly for a Discord of puzzle nerds, and because it's so difficult, I never really made any effort sharing it anywhere besides tweeting about it one time. (Not that I ever particularly share my games around anyway.) So it got a bunch of plays and funny reactions from the Discord server around when I released it, and then afterward it got maybe a couple of daily views from people searching for PuzzleScript games on itch.io. But...

So you probably don't know this if you don't have an itch.io creator account, but the user dashboard has analytics: you can view a daily graph of project views and a list of incoming referrers from the past 30 days. Occasionally I'll get a notification on itch.io after getting a new follow or comment, and when I'm there sometimes I'll just check the dashboard out of curiosity. And since I released The Sorcerer's Detritus, I'd occasionally get a couple of hits from some weird referrer in the list, and when I looked into it, it'd inevitably be someone linking that game for some reason. For example, were you aware that Rate Your Music has forums? I wasn't! But there was a thread about puzzle games, and someone had to link it because it's one of the hardest games they've ever played.

Random links like this from reddit and whatnot continued intermittently until the start of this year, when things escalated. I got a bunch new followers in January, well not really a bunch in absolute terms but definitely compared to how many I normally get in any given time period (0), which seemingly corresponded with the game being included in this list of "the best puzzle games" that someone made. Which is a really bizarre inclusion to sit aside every other game in that list, but the guy said he just liked it a lot.

And then after noticing yesterday that I got a couple of new comments, I opened the dashboard and uhhhhhhhhhhhh saw this

Normally the y-axis of this graph is labeled in multiples of 10.

Apparently LilAggy, a speedrunner/challenge runner who's played Sekiro at Games Done Quick events a few times, streamed my game. Twice! He introduced the game in his first stream by saying he was told it's very difficult, so I guess someone showed it to him and challenged him to play it? It took him about three hours in the first stream to get through the first four levels (the majority of that being on level #4), and then he came back a couple of days later and got through the back half in an hour and a half. And now one of the top hits for the game is a video of that second stream calling it "The HARDEST puzzle game no one's ever heard of."

The game hasn't exploded or anything. It's still under 10,000 views total. It's not getting a bunch of YouTube face let's play videos (though there's now a walkthrough video too lmfao). But to the extent that anything I've made can be described as "infamous," I guess I have something now that's infamous. Feels weird! It's cool that my hastily put together li'l game that's way harder than it feels like it has any right to be has somehow ended up having some bizarre charm for a bunch of folks though.

I don't know if it's going anywhere from here? Maybe this was just a random blip and the game will just sink back into obscurity where it belongs. I love it here in the dark, it's cozy. Hate being perceived.

Also, if any part of this post made you play the game: sorry.

this is great, i gave up at level 4 after like half an hour. for more in the “accidentally incredibly difficult tile‐based sidescrolling puzzle game that nobody’s played” genre, see also: Spacenörd (2009), distributed as part of Remar Games scrap pack 1 (Windows only), which took me nearly 4 hours to beat all 41 levels (where 10 are tutorials) even with someone else’s help:

from the included text file:

This game is stupidly hard. Please don't mail me asking how to solve a level - I'm not making a game guide for it.

This obnoxiously difficult turn-based puzzle game was originally made as a gift. Inspired by Lemmings, I wanted to remove the pixel-perfection and time-pressure aspects, and reduced the gameplay to a single creature. So, every action you take is automatically applied to that one little guy.

This is probably my hardest game ever in terms of puzzling. Some solutions require you to ignore the obvious path, or the entire level may be a false lead. Beat the game (while enduring the theme music that can't be turned off) and you deserve a medal of some sort.

yes it is actually a whole game, for values of “whole”; it’s small in scope, given that it was made in less than 2 weeks. it’s also more fun than you might expect from a 3D platformer thrown together in such a small timeframe (though it’s obviously not going to be a masterclass in anything). there’s even lore! and a soundtrack! and source code!

advice for Windows players: if you’re having trouble using a non‐Xbox/XInput controller, add the game to Steam (“Games” → “Add a non‐Steam game to my library…”) and enable Steam Input for your controller there. if you’re still having issues, try removing/disabling controllers you aren’t using (it seems to only poll “player 1”).

there are certain moments in games that when invoked, take the reader back to the moment they first experienced it. the baby Metroid; Snake's ladder climb; and perhaps most memorable of all, the Spelunker elevator.

what do you mean "shut up dork"? YOU know what i'm talking about:

this moment comes literally 2 seconds after pressing start to begin the game. years of precedent tell you that your character can clear a 1 millimeter gap by simply walking over it, but Spelunker is here to remove the comforting lies you were told: welcome to the real world motherfucker. EVERYONE dies here their first time playing, there are no exceptions.

spelunker is a legendary kusoge (crap game) for a lot of reasons: the repetitive and silly BGM, the brutal difficulty and the Spelunker himself, one of the most fragile and inept video game protagonists i've ever seen in my life. there's an often-repeated bit of trivia that Spelunker was such a cultural touchstone in Japan that it spawned the expression "Spelunker's constitution", typically referring to athletes who are easily injured by trivial things.

SO, you fall off the fucking elevator. you're probably going to do it again in about one second because upon death, Spelunker will respawn quickly and without fanfare at the very edge of the platform he fell off of, making it hilariously easy to repeat fatal mistakes once or even twice more.

when Spelunker jumps, he's locked into the height and trajectory so if you made a positioning mistake there is no mid-air correction a la Super Mario. if he falls roughly 4/5ths his height, he dies instantly, and you don't even get the catharsis of seeing him hit the ground! he just freezes in midair like an idiot. if a bat shits on him, he dies. if he sets off fireworks (to scare bats) and they fall back onto him, he dies. if he uses his gun to defeat a ghost his air supply plummets (guess what happens when it runs out). he dies a lot

for these reasons and more Spelunker is known as a kusoge and the patron saint of the bargain bin in Japan. calling it such is funny but i just don't agree with it. Spelunker is not a bad game, it's a deliberate game. it runs on harsh but internally consistent rules that are reinforced clearly and early; as early as the first couple of seconds. is Ghouls and Ghosts a bad game for its bottomless pits and locked-in jump trajectory? how about Castlevania?

Spelunker is fun okay! it's just difficult, unorthodox and a little absurd. you can certainly not like it, but it's learnable and rewarding and honestly thrilling once you're just good enough to start blazing through the obstacles while still dealing with the randomly appearing ghosts and constantly depleting air supply. i urge you to give it a fair shake and you might fall in love with it; or, try another game commonly considered to be bad! there's something redeeming in almost any game.

also, if there's an unpopular or infamous game you love please tell me what you love about it!

i have to give them credit for the impressive cruelty of bouncing you 10 feet just for tapping your toe against a rock though...but at least it happens *consistently* 😎

(image source: The Prisoner Apple II manual)

i think it's worth reiterating that there's a difference between kusoge (derogatory) and kusoge (subculture). the latter is actually closer to how people are seeking for unorthodox gameplay and being extremely amused/charmed by it.

titles like Atlantis no Nazo fascinate people within the kusoge subculture because they're doing something entirely different. they're not doing Good Game Design. one of the reasons i'm pretty sure the old avgn was popular on nico is because they inspired people to look into the kusoge subculture: NES games like Silver Surfer are unique for how difficult and "unfair" they can be, so they provide experiences that can't be really found anywhere else.

it's only rather recently that this idea of "masochistic" and jank gameplay is legible to mainstream gamers (thanks Dark Souls but also you're not that jank). people are too subscribed to game design concepts like FLOW that folks only see the "bad" and "outdated" in kusoge (subculture).

much of why i'm inside this subculture is because i reject what's considered "textbook standard". the most interesting games are the ones that go for the more negative emotions that mainstream games today avoid. the kusoge i enjoy are the ones that violate norms because it doesn't care or even recognize; it puts me into a spot and makes me rethink what makes for fun game experiences. i call any game "kusoge (subculture)" if it's able to surprise me.

you could say i read kuso as surprise or shock, so how does it look like? in games like The Prisoner for the apple ii, it could mean having entirely different controls when you're inside the room versus the world map. in 9:05 by adam cadre, the text parser is hiccuping with most inputs you put in because it's simulating the protagonist's state of mind. in Viscera Cleanup Detail, the bugs and physics trouble your cleaning up of bloody space stations and make for interesting stories. in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., shooting accurately is a privilege. in Pathologic, you are terrorized by how hungry and tired your character can be from simply walking around town.

and it doesn't have to be exactly mechanical too. in the Caligula series, that could mean having storylines that go into taboos like fatshaming and gender dysphoria. in Romancing SaGa 2, it is accepting your characters will die in order to pass down the skills and stats to the next people; by contrast, Venus and Braves is about you as an immortal who must keep fighting for 1,00 years, attending the graves of your soldiers who lived and died by you, and wondering when you'll be out of the game because it's such a miserable experience.

all of these games have been labeled kusoge in one way or another for not meeting "appropriate" standards for game design. their volatility is what's so exciting about games. if you don't feel uncomfortable playing a game, you aren't going to remember this experience -- a purely comfortable game is simply Entertainment: fun and forgettable.

even the more interesting cozy games have discomforting vibes at random times. animal crossing n64/gc lol.

anyway, kusoge is cool and i'm always looking for them. bye.

spelunker (nes) is excellent, very inspiring game. i 1cced it because i'm cool, it's easier than you might expect once you get accustomed to rope jumping

while kastel is right about there being a subculture that uses "kusoge" positively, i kind of wish people would just say they think these games are good and interesting without also calling them "shit games" or whatever. people who genuinely like my games often struggle to describe them without basically saying something like "it's bad game design but done on purpose"

interesting to see this being discussed here. i haven’t played classic Spelunker admittedly (though i know of it), but i have played “Spelunker Party!” by uh. i guess Square Enix owns this IP now? it’s one of the more random game purchases i’ve made. i grabbed it because it looked pretty different, and so would likely deliver on offering a unique experience for the 3 friends i was having over later. it was honestly pretty fun! we only got to play it a couple times together pre‐pandemic, so i don’t remember it well, but we definitely all enjoyed it.

the stiff controls and simple rules made the game easy to pick up and be competent at, as mistakes were easy to understand. the pace being very fixed as a consequence made it easier to keep up with other players (and other players couldn’t “race ahead” very much). the customizable appearances are a given with “party” games, but your choices here also change up your abilities. some let you deal with some hazards more easily, creating opportunities to help out friends. others are more explicit in their ability to assist others, like a long‐range revive pet. and with how easy it is to take damage, everyone’s failing all the time, which has an interesting effect of making it so nobody feels they’re dragging down the group since specific failures rarely stand out in the chaos, and also with a good friend group you’re just laughing off the instances where you accidentally bomb your own friend.

idk, it stood out to me as an interesting example of how this kind of gameplay can absolutely work even in a modern setting. there are definitely QoL changes and a lot of added mechanics and stuff, but the core gameplay and its brand of challenge remains fully intact. despite this, it feels more like a multiplayer Mario game in practice during co‐op than it does Syobon Action