Cheesy Trials

[AndyH]

Underwater basket weaving is on the list Jeff.

[Mayhem]

EDIT: I think I figured it out. The prg doesn't work when the name is "underwater.prg" but works when the name is "under.prg" ... might be a filename length limitation.

https://www.mdawson.net/vic20chrome/vic ... /under.prg

May require short filenames (8 characters or less), it was a limitation with the GEMUS script into VICE as well.

[Jeff-20]

May require short filenames (8 characters or less), it was a limitation with the GEMUS script into VICE as well.

Ah, I see now.

[tokra]

Just tried it yesterday. Man, that game is hard! Bad enough there are puzzles to solve (which cheese to get first) but then there is the brutal time-limit. Just one wrong wiggle on the joystick and that's it.

I think the game correctly mimics the behaviour of 80s games in "faking" longevity with difficulty. So far I am love-hating it since I can get so annoyed at some levels. Just like when you die in Super Mario and need just ONE more game...

Well done!

[AndyH]

hehe yes this game was designed to be tricky and requires a bit of practice to master Echo's abilities. Hopefully the controls are responsive enough and feel fair, I did try to do extra things to help here. For example, when you fall off a ledge you still have a couple of frames to 'recover' and make a jump. It felt too unfair otherwise. Similarly when getting on a ladder I put a small delay to stop you immediately jumping off.

While some of the screens are hard, and that's intentional, they become so much easier once you know the lay of the land so to speak. And there is more than one way to solve them... one in particular is quite challenging, but if you step back and look at it there is a really easy solution

You might be pleased to know that there are not too many rooms where there is a choice of which cheese to pick first. There is a really tough one much later (thanks to my son for being evil on that one) but that's the deal with this game. 36 rooms, I didn't want to make it easy for the play to just zip through them all. I did try to interleave a 'breather' type level inbetween the 'tricky' ones and you can jump between experiments if one in particular is frustrating you.

Glad you are enjoying it.

[AndyH]

BTW, I could have been really 1980's evil and put a limited number of lives in the game. Fortunately, I'm not totally stuck in the past and you have 99999999 + infinity lives to play with

[tokra]

I'm just too frustrated to continue right now. I've fought my way to level 1-7, but the times I even get far enough on that level there are two "bombs" at the top with no way to get the cheese or the door. I've tried jumping from the ladder but this does not seem to work. Before that the jumps need to be pixel perfect and if you are even slightly off on a ladder (by walking just a little too far) you cannot go up or down and loose the time to continue. I've checked this in the level select-screen and it seems the mouse can be a little to the left or right of the ladder to go up or down, but for some reason this does not work consistently with the top right ladder in level 7.

Maybe I'm getting too old for this type of game. The timer is so frustrating I'm seriously considering hacking the game to find the counter to disable it. It is honestly hard enough without it. It feels like an "expert mode" that only enables when you have played through the game once already.

[chysn]

I think it's a ton of fun, and certainly one of the best VIC-20 games ever. Unfortunately, I don't really have a sufficient joystick at the moment, and this game really punishes me for my various old-timey joysticks' foibles.

I'm of the opinion that games should get pretty hard pretty fast, because you do have muscle memory kick in, and "hardness" helps keep games re-playable. Omega Race is fun after all these years because it's hard. So I don't have many complaints in that respect. On the other hand, I'm only on level six....

[AndyH]

Seven is tough, but like most rooms it is easy once you learn the trick. It's a bit tougher because there are not many other routes or options to beat it. Other rooms can be done in more than one way, I have found. If you get really stuck/frustrated I can post a partial video to show the key to it ... you can also have a go at the other experiments and come back to this one later.

[tokra]

Maybe I am missing something, but it seems just impossible to get the cheese or door when there are the bombs at the top of the stairs. I don't think there was another order to get the cheese-pieces, but there is really no time to think with the brutal timer. I guess hacking the game is the way to go for me

[AndyH]

hehe - they can be devilish.

Hacking is an option.

If you want to know how to beat one on the early rooms, try this guide. Warning: SPOILERS!

[hasseapa]

Phew! I did the first 12 levels in one go. I probably found level 7 & 8 the hardest, but perhaps I got better at it at the end. The time limit is always very tough.

Puzzle platformers are my cup of tea so it was still a pleasure. Thanks to the very quick nature of the levels and the fact that there is no delays, i.e. waiting to have another go, it never became too frustrating.

Love the animation of the mouse and the hinted contours of the cat (& its subtle turning animation). The graphics and presentation are really top-notch. However, the monochrome style can make it hard to quickly locate the cheese.

I have to give Experiment 2 & 3 a go another day. Perhaps during the Christmas holiday.

[AndyH]

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for all the kind words. Impressed you were able to beat the last room of experiment 1 also.

It became clear half way through that I'd need to make sure you could restart the rooms pretty quickly, initially I had the timer counting down to 0 after you fell from the bottom and that was quite frustrating.

[Ola H]

This is brutally hard with a keyboard! But now, finding my USB gamepad and trying it again, I think I will do much better. Would love to play it on my real Vic with a real joystick (much prefer joysticks to gamepad)

I did load it with my Savyour (an all in one USB save/load device and mouse/joystick converter with full 1541 emulation) but the Savyour blocks the Vic's only joystick port, so I could just look at the very nice title screen

But this is truly a top notch Vic game in every respect. Will play it tonight and beat the first 12 levels, that's a promise! But perhaps I shouldn't get to cocky. I went directly for level 13 (Spring is in the air) and just had to give up after 15 minutes of failures. I'll lick my wounds and start at the beginning

[AndyH]

A few rooms in experiment 1 is definately recommended to start with