Thursday, January 08, 2009

Mightier

Giant space laser?  What's not to love?Sometimes people come up with a really original game that is just too damn much work to actually play. Mightier is such a game, and I'm going to admit that the thought of actually interacting with the thing in a meaningful way leaves me so exhausted I can't even summon the strength to start downloading it.

You might be more enthusiastic though, and if you are you'll have to tell me how it goes.

You'll find the game via its developer, Ratloop (link). Mightier is a puzzle 3D platformer that involves jumping around and collecting "datagons". The catch is that you'll be designing the levels yourself, to an extent. On each level you can print out the level elements - through your actual real-life printer - and then get busy with a dark pen on the page thus printed. You scribble down some lines, scan the page back into your computer, and hey presto, a giant space laser carves your artwork into the face of the level, thus creating new platforms to allow you to reach new datagons.

Seriously? Print every level, and then scan it back in? The awesomeness is matched only by the unfeasibility. Not only do I have to have two fairly bulky peripherals plugged into my computer to play this game, but I'll have to wait for their epochal print and scan cycles to complete for each and every level.

There's apparently the ability to circumvent all that technowhatsitry by drawing in-game with your mouse. I'm not sure why that's not the default option; possibly if someone plays the thing they can enlighten me. Or you can press your webcam into service as a half-arsed scanner and hold your pictures up in front of it, although that will apparently required your printer to be one of the colour variety.

As a neat side note, you can also create your own avatar using your drawing skillz, much like Drawn to Life, except that in Mightier your creation will animate in three dimensions.

I strongly advise someone to go do my legwork and play this beastie. Remember, printers are just like a C64 joystick only with more buttons. Submit your results in the comments section.

Once again, you can obtain Mightier via the official Ratloop site. It's a free download for the PC, and it's a finalist in this year's Independent Games Festival.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Shit, I haven't used a scanner in years!
Seriously, take a picture with your digital camera and dump that back into the game...

Greg Tannahill said...

Digital camera? What is this of which you speak?

Seriously, my house isn't big on image-related technology. I barely even have mirrors. I think my phone can take photos but I'll be buggered if I know which one of the thousands of cables in my cupboard will let me extract them from the phone to the computer.