A Game By Any Other Name Would Still Be Shit
I recently returned from an epic West Coast odyssey, bookended by both Macworld and the Game Developer’s Conference. Somewhere in between those major events, I made this:
I’m not really sure how to explain this little project. I developed it in about a week, and the initial impetus for creation actually came after watching this video on YouTube
I suppose if you wanted to be intellectual, you could look at this game as a statement about creativity in the game industry. Entirely too much time is spent meticulously recreating the gameplay of previously developed games.
This is true in both the mainstream and independent game development spheres. Look at the countless Cave Story homages, as well as the countless iterations of games like Super Monkey Ball, Madden, Smash Bros, etc
I’m not saying this is entirely a bad thing. Recreating the mechanics of a classic is a fantastic way to cut your teeth in game development. In fact, there’s something even endearing about this, especially when a game fails to accurately capture the finesse of the original and it becomes fun to discover and exploit all of the bugs in its engine.
But, as the name implies, it’s hard to take Shit Game too seriously. And I feel kind of silly talking so much about it already. Don’t be fooled by the trailer. The in-game soundtrack consists entirely of poptunes recreated in general MIDI.
Download the Windows version — Mac users can play the game through CrossOver or other virtualization software. I may do a quick OS X port when Apple releases Java 6.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:06 am
[…] SHIT GAME […]
March 11th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
sometimes, i got stucked beneath the flying big eye ball. This Shit Game is nice.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:45 am
Really good. Even if it is a statement about creativity (creating a game with no originality to show the lack of it in the rest of the community )it is not entirely derivative. The style is terrific and even some ideas (the “free climbing” on platforms for example) make Shit Game something different. If this is a project made in only one week… well, you should make more of these experiments ^_^
Thumbs up
March 20th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Very cool trailer, I totally lost it on the title screen at the end. I really need to grab an Intel Mac so I can give your games a whirl!
May 5th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
♥
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Can haz linux version?
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
very cool! i really like how everything flows together, lots of random stuff = fun. full screen mode on my 22inch is like playing the original gameboy on a cinema screen, but its still really cool - im at the plane level right now.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
never mind. works in WINE
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:54 pm
at marco, free climbing was first done in sonic 3 by knuckles. /OCD
this is pretty entertaining. i love the music especially.
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
This would be great for a homebrew DS game! I loved it!
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
at Jake…I remember two games I know for sure that did free climbing before Sonic 3: Samson from Little Samson (the most amazing NES platformer that nobody played) and also I believe morph-ball Samus could (not for sure).
Oh yeah and if you haven’t heard of Little Samson check it out, it was a gaming that was a generation beyond its time, doomed to die due to crap marketing.
4 playable characters you can hot-swap between, each with different special abilities (from charge shot/floaty dragon to wall-climbing/shooter Samson to bomb dropping mouse and GOLEM!). Priceless!
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Thank you for your game. Came from Kotaku here. Appreciate the Das Boot and Ending themes and No Doubt. Thanks for a great free game.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
That was an amusing five minutes. Nice.
Oddly enough, I’m very curious to know how you made this short platformer. For a hobbyist programmer, is it really as simple or easy as it looks?
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:12 pm
[…] Alright in all honesty this is some epic and I mean EPIC gaming. Apparently the guy who created this did it in a weekend and from my understanding he did it while giving birth to a muntant troll and eating the first born of Charlton Heston and Oprah. Ok I may be exaarating a little there….it may have taken him a week, I forget. If you want to get this game you can cause its free and here is the link. Get it, Love it, Spread it like a fucking STD baby! […]
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:38 pm
This is some pretty stellar shit. I had to talk about it on one of my sites. I just love how bad and creepy the graphics are. Nicely done.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Aptly named.
After the plane level when you have to get past or kill the ghosts with the diamonds of death it was, at least for me, unbeatable. You have to jump back and forth up these bouncing platforms but I always glitched through them and fell down to the bottom as I was trying to get up. Was this meant to be a feature of Shit Game?
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:21 am
The best Shit Game I’ve seen so far! ^^
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:28 am
this game is amazing
August 3rd, 2008 at 11:50 am
[…] Johns is a software engineer and also proprietor of a gaming blog known as Doomlaser. He created this game, known simply as Shit Game, back in February as a commentary on the state of […]
August 3rd, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I just finished the game, please make another! I love it.
August 3rd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I actually really like the plane crashes turning into platforms. I think that one bit of creativity really showed that no matter how hard you tried to make a terrible game, you’re just not that untalented haha
August 3rd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Also the thing about cutting your teeth in game creation by using mechanics and ideas from other’s games is a very true statement. It’s also why XNA game should be free (like this one!) but Microsoft loooves their money too much so now we gotta PAY for our thousands of Pac-Man and Mario clones. No sense at all.
August 4th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Looks sweet. In which language is the game programmed?
August 5th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
[…] por internet desde hace tiempo y no nos habíamos percatado de ello. Su nombre realmente es Shit Game, parece un plataformas a la vieja usanza, aquí tenemos un vídeo demostrativo con el que nos […]
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:21 am
its Good , have addon?
sthit game 2??
September 25th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
haha looks really cool. I dig the naruto tune at the end of the vid as well
AI bomb for the win!