This week's Link Dump Friday was actually written last week in the not-so-distant past. I... suppose that's not quite as impressive as being written in the distant future. But you know what is impressive? Naked royalty, rubber ducks, robots, romance, and massive bodily trauma! Usually searching for all those things in a single sitting would get you put on a special "list" with the government, but today you're free to enjoy all the carefree charm that unlikely combination has to offer.
Naked King - You could say this game is only here because with a title like "Naked King", how could we resist? And you're right, partially. But it's also a Minoto game, and with that comes all the crazyweirdbizarrewhatisthisidon'tevenknowsignature Minoto style we've come to expect. As you may surmise from the title, there is a king, and he is naked (in a Ken doll sort of way), but there is also a monkey, a crab, a fluffy dog, and a very expensive painting. You cannot resist.
Hanger - [Parental Warning: Contains blood.] Now, far be it from me to tell you what to do with your life, but it seems to me that if you're the sort of person whose limbs fly off in a bloody tangle if you so much as brush against a flat surface, maybe Spider-Man-style swinging isn't the best career decision. There's something undeniably entertaining about flinging yourself around the screen here, and when you develop a rhythm you really start to feel proud of yourself. Then apparently a butterfly sneezes on you and your limbs burst into wet chunks. I just don't know anymore.
Guy of My Dreams - Don't you love Nerdook? We love Nerdook. And even though this avoidance/action/collection game is a little simplistic, we kind of love it a little, too. The goal is to go through life, picking up important things like roses and chocolate, until you find a guy who resembles the "guy of your dreams" and attach yourself to him without so much as an introduction. (I can verify this is how I met my husband.) The longer you spend with him, the more you learn about his personality, which can be good or bad, and if you dump him for someone else, you'll be sad for a while. At least until you get some more chocolate. I really like this trend in realism these days, you guys.
Seer - Another Gambit prototype inspired by Oedipus Rex, wherein you help a familiar devil thingy and his rubber ducky navigate the dark ocean to find the lighthouses you need to reveal the truth hidden beneath the waves. It's a little cute, and a little creepy, and, say the developers, "Your reading and interpretation of our games matters as much, if not more, than any intended meaning suggested or intended by the work's creators." What did you get out of it?
Rescuebot - In this escape game, you play a robot activated after an earthquake who's trying to find the last survivor. There's something adorable about a robot that sets out to save your life with a tube of lip balm, but there's something even more about a robot who rescues... well, you'll see. Short, cute, and not too difficult. Just the thing to get your gears a-churning.
On Naked King, I'm stuck with
a screwdriver, comb, and dog hair. I've unscrewed the power switches, but can't figure out what to do.
Never mind, I got it.
It's in the money.
Min-o-to! Hooray!
Rescuebot was adorable. I think it could have been even a bit better if
you found the computer & e-mail before the cat. Then you might have wondered why they don't seem too upset about losing their Captain.
Thanks Zach, I was stuck on the same part.
does the earthquake in rescuebot have anything to do with the one that shook my hometown? (Christchurch, N.Z.)
HaHaHaHa...sob!
Guy of my Dreams was actually quite realistic, in a weird sort of way.
She had her ideal guy picked out, and she kept meeting guys that may have had similar qualities, but eventually their idiosynchrosies showed through. And the older she became, the less and less the available guys had anything in common with her perfect guy. And at one point the perfect guy actually appeared but another guy got in the way and she lost him. And this was when she was in her late 40's.
"Meh. An uneventful Life".
This game was not realistic in one aspect though: I've never seen that many available guys in one area, ever.
douglasadamsreborn,
I doubt it, since rescue robot takes place in Canada - that would have been the mother of all earthquakes to affect both Canada and New Zealand :D
bio
haha... thanks zach... I misread your spoiler and was:
clicking on the monkey for ages before I realised you'd said money! :-)
Naked king...*Big smile!*
Where I got stuck a while:
Tried combining things... dog hair + bleach made the hair disappear.
Happened to find it in one of the seemingly empty Item squares
In Guy of my dreams, I found it quite interesting that it took me two years to notice that the guy I was dating was attractive! But all in all a hilarious game, really! One of my "best" hubbies was Neil, who was physically exactly my dream guy, but turned out to be a criminal (-9) and a murderer (-15). Good thing though, he was also efficient (+3). Mysteriously, we did not end up having a very happy life together.
On Naked King, I have the
invisibility string
But I have no idea what to do with it.
Oh, figured it out.
I'm stuck on Naked King....
I have the driver, decolorant, comb and clump of dog fur
I can't figure out what to do next
@Gabe Puratekuta
You have to combine two items
Hanger link is not working on my comp.
ARGH! I spent all that time lining up the lighthouses in Seer, and...it glitched and I'm stuck inside the last lighthouse.
@ pete
How do you combine?
I love it when initially you look down the list of Link Dump and immediately think - aahh these look a bit dud - and then half an hour later you've played them all and they're all, at the very least, good fun and at the most surprising and great!
Naked King is typical Minoto fun
Hanger I thought I'd dislike but it was a well crafted and quite fun diversion (love the
skin and costume changes each level
Guy of My Dreams I initially thought - this is totally not my cup of tea - but it was a really great surprise. Very funny and rather depressing at times
Raul is a murderer -15
Seer was actually quite moving when I slowed down enough to appreciate it
And with Rescuebot , although I'm fine with disposable escape games, this was so simple and tender I felt incredibly connected to everything I did that when it finished I felt really proud of myself and the li'l robot!
Great offering as usual and although I've never thanked Link Dump for retaining my sanity every week I'd like to do that now. Thanks Dora (and team)! (oh and Dora, who was that brilliant illustrator woman you mentioned ages ago
who does those takes on literary figures etc... I knew her before but have totally forgotten her name now and need to recommend her to someone)
Love love love Seer. The shadows! Watch the play of shadow and light. Great stuff, especially if you're patient.
Rescuebot is now broken. No game loading in IE8, just useless ads.
[Try the new link. I just added the game to the JIG hosted games. Maybe it will work better for you? -Jay]
Glad you approve, jimlefevre. :) You're thinking about Kate Beaton, whom everyone should know about. She's not only brilliant, she's brilliantly funny as well. http://www.harkavagrant.com
JIGuest, I'm having no issue with Rescuebot. Maybe try another browser?
I think the title "Naked King" was derived from The Emperor's New Clothes, a globally known fairy tale.
This Link Dump Friday is a total win. Woohoo!
I'm a step beyond Gabe Puratekuta:
I combined the decolorant with the tuft of dog hair, the dog hair disappeared and the decolorant seems unchanged.
It feels like I've tried every possible combination of items, and nothing reacts.
Seer is a beautiful game. It was difficult but not too difficult maneuvering around each light house. It is a subtle, gentle, and needs patience game. Just what I needed right now. :) The music is so soothing. I think I liked the beginning music the best. Well, that is all the play time I have for now. Hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend.
Wow. I had no idea what mit gambit was!
"Welcome to the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore created to explore new directions for the development of games as a medium."
There are so many games there. How wonderful. Thanks for posting their games here. :)
In Seer I'm stuck by a lighthouse. The waves/tides keep me from getting away. Anyone know how to escape the tides?
@Czaerana : use the momentum from the waves resisting you to slingshot back and forth.
Naked King Walkthrough
I'll be referring to each scene as Screens 1-4 in order from left to right.
Let's begin!
Move right once to Screen 2. Pick up the split pink and yellow Capsule.
Return to Screen 1. Twist the handles of the faucet so the circles match the colors of the Capsule you just picked up
Pink - Left, Yellow - Right
Use the Capsule on the orange mixture in the tub to fill it up.
Move right twice to Screen 3 and use the Capsule on the crab. Pick up the Comb and the Walnut he fetches for you.
Move left to Screen 2 and give the Walnut to the blackbird. Once the car breaks the shell, pick up the seed.
Now, who looks like they could use a good brushing?
Go left again to Screen 1 and use the Comb on the very cute shaggy white dog to receive Dog Hair
Move right to Screen 4 and give the Walnut seed to the baby chicks. When they hop off, pick up the tall scale-like object with the face.
It's a Screwdriver!
Move left to Screen 3. You can use your Screwdriver on the base of the ladder, and set the ladder against the side of the boat.
Move left again to Screen 2. This time, use your Screwdriver on the power box. Open the door and inspect the switches. Look familiar?
Below the painting on Screen 1 is a sign that reads "$10,000". The solid zeros correspond with the switches you need to move up. So the order is:
Up, Down, Up, Up.
Return to screen one. The laser grid protecting the Painting is now switched off, so you can pick it up.
Go to Screen 4 and give the Painting to the artistic elephant. Pick up the Decolorant he drops at his feet.
Select the Dog Hair and inspect it in your inventory. Use the Decolorant on the Hair to turn it into Invisibility String (you cant see it, but the string is in the second to last box in your inventory)
Move to Screen 3 and climb into the boat.
Give the Invisibility String to the mouse and you will receive Clothes Not Seen in the last box of your inventory.
Return to Screen 4 and hand the Clothes to the Emperor.
Cover your eyes!
This is my first walkthrough, hope it was helpful!
hey there, georgy girl!
I'm confused if there's supposed to be different ways to complete naked king. It says "king end only one method". Does this mean that was the only method to complete it, or that I've only taken one method to complete it and there are more?
I tried playing Seer again (that little guy in his ducky boat is so cute), but I still got stuck at the lighthouse where the tide flows in. I can't get my guy out!
Also on seer, I don't know if it's just because of my rubbish computer, but the lag was unbearable and made it unplayable. This happen for anyone else?
Power of the post! My little guy got out of the tidal trap. Thanks JIGuest.
@Fanjita It means there is only one method to beating the game. If there was an alternate ending it would say "method one of two/three" etc
When I lit the fourth lighthouse in Seer,
I couldn't leave it! Happen to anyone else? :-(
@Czaerana: I got stuck at the same place. Still don't have a solution. Sorry!
Interesting on Guy of My Dreams...one of my highest scores was when I decided not to pick the guy of my dreams, but a guy who looked interesting...and had a very good life.
Also intriguing that the perfect guy doesn't come along until very late in the game, and she's passed up all these other opportunities to be happy.
I realize that the game has to have an end point...but to pick 50 as the end of life? Yike.
Trinn -
Thanks for the walkthrough! it was helpful. =) I was having trouble with
the power box - from the previous hints, I was looking for actual cash!
I don't know why I was so literal-minded with this one. I usually get the minotos pretty well. Thanks again!
I LOVED Guy of My Dreams.
I found out that, to get 5 stars, you don't necessarily have to find your dream guy. The 3 traits are more important, and then as long as your guy has 2 or 3 similar traits to that of your dream guy, you should get 5 stars. That's how it worked for me at least.
I also thought at first that you won't find your dream guy until late in life, at 40s or something, but then I found him around 35, and I've once found him around 25 as well. And sometimes he's not been there at all.
Also, I love the idea of chocolate giving you happiness, that's totally how it works for me. ^^
I hope the game designer will choose to make a version for us guys as well. That would be neat.
For those stuck at the lighthouses on Seer, try moving at an angle against the tide. Go to a corner and press both arrows to go in the direction you want to. That seemed to work for me.
In Seer, it's possible to swim against the rapids, but you have to start some distance away to build up momentum. At least one of the lighthouses is surrounded by rapids all pointing in -- you gotta take a run at it to get past that first layer.
Yeah, Naked King is confusing and I got stuck.
The good news however is that Guy Of My Dreams is REDONKULOUSLY fun to play! Yes it's incredibly simply. It's a top-down scrolling game where you run over good stuff and avoid bad stuff. But the little extra touches make it worth playing again and again.
Get achievemnets to unlock different outfits. Your dream guy may have a HORRIBLE personality.
Your boyfriend can die! If you've been together a long time, you're sad even when you dump HIM, just because you've been together so long.
It's a lot of fun!
Argh, I'm stuck in Seer. Finished the lighthouses, but now my little purple guy won't come out of the lighthouse =[
I thought I wouldn't like Hanger because of the blood (then why did I play it?). But I really enjoyed making him soar gracefully from point to point. And I managed to keep him whole on several levels.
I finally quit on level 9, Squares. After probably 20 attempts I almost got to the end and after I died that time, I couldn't face starting over yet again.
Maybe it was just me, but the difficulty level had been rising at a nice slow rate up to that level. I'd have enjoyed playing longer, but not on ... shudder ... level 9 any more.
Wow. Seer was awesome. Though I am glad I came across the Exit sign while looking for lighthouses, or I wouldn't have known what to do after I went to the middle. Everything about Seer was cool - the music, the physics mechanic, the character you play, even the little squeak your duck makes when you hit an obstacle!
Naked King was also fun. I give the emperor new clothes :D
Guy of My Dreams didn't do much for me, though it did look cool.
Wow, two point-and-click games in one Link Dump Friday! It doesn't get any better than this.
That being said, I'm stuck in Rescuebot ... I can't find any items I can use to
stabilize the wreckage
Hopefully I'll figure this out ... eventually ...
Found the object I needed, and finished Rescuebot. Great little game!!!
About Seer, I wish it was a bit easier to navigate away from the lighthouses. Once I found out that
the blobs of light were revealing words
I wanted to navigate to the next lighthouse to see whether
each new lighthouse would gradually reveal more words, or whether I'd have to remember the fragments from each lighthouse.
I had to give up though. I kept getting stuck inside a lighthouse. I don't mean inside the waves surrounding the lighthouse, that was fun, but in this case I couldn't use the down arrow to leave the lighthouse itself.
I'm afraid did a google search to find out
the phrase revealed by the game, starting with "how terrible".
How terrible-to see the truth when the truth is only pain to him who sees!
About my reaction to the game prior to my frustration, it was fun to follow the beam to the first blob of light. Then it became a bit agonizing moving around in the dark trying to find another lighthouse. When I did find another lighthouse and got a new beam, I had an emotional reaction stronger than I usually get in games (relief/gladness). That second blob was where I found out about the
words appearing
but I never did manage to get to a third blob due to my inability to leave the third lighthouse.
Help I'm stuck in rescuebot and
Captain Morris doesn't have much longer before the hypothermia sets in! D: I need to stabilize the wreckage! Can anyone help me out?
That having been said, now that I've posted a distress call I'll immediately find the item I need.
Power of posting.
Yup! I found it. the Power of Posting never lets you down!
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