This was originally posted on the now-defunct Random Fury! videogame blog.
Have you ever wondered what happened to that avatar you just lost down that hole? Ever pondered what’s down those pits? The developer of this game has, and he wants to share his vision with us.
After being faced with a slightly-too-big gap, you plummet into the Underbyte, which I imagine is similar to the underworld, only it’s built from 1’s and 0’s and has much cooler chip-tune music. When you reach the bottom, you find it’s inhabited with all your avatar’s previous lives who are just kinda mindlessly wandering around, occasionally jumping. Once you are down there, just do as the man says, and don’t press X – It’s all glitched out and may cause your character to do something unexpected. But then again – it is survival of the fittest.
There are loads of other nice little nods to glitched videogames, such as the broken clock in the top right hand corner which goes from random number string to random number string, and the quintuple jump – a double jump with code so jumbled, you can do it another three times. I couldn’t help but lose interest after I had noticed all the little in-jokes, but it’s still a nice little platformer. Although it mostly consists of working out how to get rid of the glitched bitmaps by colliding them with the screechy glitch blocks, and the scrolling isn’t as smooth as it could be, it’s very playable, and a lovely exploration of what could possibly be.
Try it for yourself and see what you think, here’s that link once more: http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/23223
