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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 5602
Author: Daniel
Date: 27/02/2006
Subject: "Manic Scribbler" Daniel's second review
1.
I completed "Manic Scribbler" last Friday, with 18319 points (18651
after the bonus points for the oxygen left). This result is probably
slightly inflated, because I was playing with the infinite lives
POKE (apart from constantly saving and reloading snapshots) and in
some rooms I may have collected an item, got killed and then
collected it again (various times) before I saved a snapshot, which
I then used to reload the game.
I started playing the game after a few weeks' break from it. The
general impression I had of rooms 10-16 was that they were a little
easier than the first 10 (i.e. rooms # 0-9). This subjective
impression may be erroneous, though, because contrary to the first
ten rooms, I played the second half of the game taking my time,
between one and two rooms a day (evening-night), sometimes also
continuing the same room on the next day or a couple of days later.
So the effort was not as intense as the first ten rooms, which I
passed on three consecutive (long-weekend) days, and which both
ignited my passion to face up to the challenge and brought me close
to a nervous breakdown :-) .
I did not try to topple the Kong Beast in "Coprophagy" (room # 11),
so I don't know if it's possible. Room 16 ("Motherload") seemed
particularly easy, which was strange.
So rooms 10-16 seemed a little easier than the preceding ones, and I
started thinking that perhaps I had grown used to the tricks / traps
Darth Melkor requires the player to use / sets.
This impression changed dramatically with room 17 ("Spelling 'its'
as 'it's' is dumb"), which seemed quite difficult again. It took me
a while to figure out how to collect the leftmost item I admire
the intricate design of the path towards it (spoiler: you have to
start going for it from the other side, as it were). Then I got
stuck hopelessly with the uppermost item, and had no idea how to
collect it without losing a life soon afterwards. The solution is
very easy, in fact, but I had to use my standard trick for such
situations, which is changing the colours of all the cells in JSWED
to solid ones (usually: all fire-cells BRIGHT yellow, all water-
cells: green, all earth-cells: blue, etc.) and looking at the game
in this form. I also consulted Andrew Broad's document about the
quirky features, and then it dawned on me.
Room 18 ("Sensory overload") seemed very difficult again, and it
took me probably about three hours to pass it. Some manoeuvres
involving guardians are very tricky (especially on the right-hand
side of the room), and time becomes a factor as well.
The last room (#19 - "Dark Sith Lord of Mordor") again took me about
three hours to complete. Guardians are practically a non-factor
here, the problem is to figure out how to collect the items and in
what order to do it. I was close to losing hope at times, but then I
went back to the screen encouraged by Darth Melkor's assurance that
he had completed all of the rooms after designing them, and after my
previous experiences with "MS", when all the seemingly hopeless
situations proved to have a solution (and an easy one, in some
cases).
So, to sum up, "Manic Scribbler" has been a delightful challenge for
me. It took a significant amount of time (certainly over two hours
per room, on average), but I had a great time struggling with it,
and a great joy after getting to the end. I highly appreciate the
vicious design and the excellent use of the quirky features of the
game engine. Great job, Darth Melkor! You are a very efficient
conduit for the dark side of the Force, indeed! :-)
You have suggested you will not be designing a "Manic Scribbler 2".
What about a "Jet Set Scribbler", though? 64 rooms of seemingly pure
chaos, and in fact an outstandingly clever and nightmarishly
difficult design? :-)
2.
Igor Makovsky wrote:
> (...) in JSW games it is needed to use your brain, not only O,PI am quoting this (omitting the first part of the sentence) without
> and SPACE...
any intention whatsoever to offend anyone. I recognise that one has
to have PRIOR KNOWLEDGE in order to be able to solve puzzles
involving quirky features, and then USE THEIR BRAINS APPLYING THIS
KNOWLEDGE.
"Manic Scribbler" is a particularly good example of the above. The
path the player needs to take in most rooms is not clear at all, and
it takes quite some time before you find it. There are moments when
you get stuck and think it's impossible to collect an item, and then
it dawns on you and you see the way. "Manic Scribbler" is an
excellent exercise in the application of the quirky features, and
even /with/ a good knowledge of them, it is not easy. It wasn't easy
for me, at least, but extremely gratifying when the puzzles were
solved :-) .
Daniel
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