One word for all you weekend downloaders: Hide. Not hide as the verb, or even hide as the animal skin noun. Hide as the name of the game that's right below this. Hide. Hide! HIDE! Also, Approaching Dawn and WARP!
Hide (Mac/Windows, 14MB, free) - Want to play just one game this weekend? Make it Hide. It's short. Atmospheric. Hauntingly creepy. And it's all about exploration. You're in a snowy field with alarms ringing in the background. Wander around the grainy 3D world and see what you can see. Eventually you'll come across one of five signposts, and when you do, things get even more interesting. Something with a flashlight is out to get you, and your only defense is to hide. Created by shouldice for a Super Friendship Club game-making pageant.
Vest Trials: Approaching Dawn (Windows, 10-27MB, free) - Exploration-based platformer, anyone? Vest Trials: Approaching Dawn is a phenomenal game with a big overworld to explore, ten levels to investigate, unlockable items, secrets, and all of the other things you would expect from a game in this genre. Control Dareo as he explores an abandoned temple area by area, unlocking more worlds to explore as you progress. Lots of action, spikes, moving platforms, and other traps! It feels a bit like Knytt in design, though it's a fundamentally more action-filled experience.
WARP (Windows, 3.73MB, free) - A pleasing little single-screen platform game that doesn't overcomplicate itself with wacky gimmicks. Your goal is to make it to the exit door on each level. To get there, you'll have to make use of screen warps, stepping off one edge of the level to appear on the other side. It's a tad disorienting at first since your character doesn't just slide smoothly through like in most games, but very quickly you get the hang of it, and the game becomes about smart jumps and stupid mistakes instead! A browser version is playable here.
Note: All games have been confirmed to run under Windows 7 and are virus-free. Mac users should try Boot Camp, Parallels, or CrossOver Games to play Windows titles, Linux users can use Wine. If you know of a great game we should feature, use the Submit link above to send it in!
Hmm - interesting. Warp is also available to play online, e.g. at https://jayisgames.com/games/warp/ . I played it a while back (it's a great little game), and this makes things a little easier for non-Windows gamers.
Hide totally just scared me half to death.
It took me a minute to figure out what to do, though.
part of the reason for that was the invisible walls (annoying more than anything else) and the fact that each "sign" appeared only accessible from one particular point.
Also, the fact that you can only "dash" in one direction is a) absurd and b) infuriating.
that aside, I'm rather impressed. I love the fact that you can't see yourself, and the use of the falling snow to indicate direction of movement, and the slight sound to indicate each goal - great idea.
all in all, it was really really interesting, but feels more like a concept than a finished game.
crashlanding: The developer of Hide actually said a few days ago "I'm calling this one finished", even though he was about to go on vacation. :-) Some more work might be done, who knows. All I'm sure of is how terrified I was when one of those flashlight guys actually caught me.
In hide, found a sign that said
"Rape 5 of 5"
Judging by the sirens at the start, am I a rapist running from prison?
no,
nevermind, just found "persecution 2 of 5"
and then I come around the edge of a building almost straight into a flashlight. he was looking the other way and I backpedaled quick XD
Ugh Hide is waaaaaaaaay to scary for me. The noise those flashlight guys make when they are close to is unbearable. I had to quit when I was in a place where I could HEAR one but could not SEE his light so had no idea where he was. No THANK you! Haha.
Ok, so in Hide I've found 4 different signs, 2 each in 2 games.
I'm pretty sure a flashlight thing pops up every time you view a new sign. why? cuz I took one step back from a new sign and things went white, then red, then black. Popped in right on top of me.
And geez, with the weird sounds and dramatic music flare when you are close to the lights, it's really frighting getting caught.
Signs I've seen are murder, rape, persecution, starvation. Wonder what the 5th is?
I hope WARP doesn't have that spike and grass blend the browser version has.
Wow. If students in game design looked up "atmosphere" in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Hide beside. The game made me feel like a fleeing Jew being pursued by the Nazi's; powerful stuff. Just thought I'd help out with the sign locations.
First off, church is to the North and you start on the South (for location purposes).
1. To the west of where you began, located on the side of a tree.
2. To the east of where you began on the side of a house.
3. In the middle of the lake to the Northwest on the map.
4. In the middle of the map near a house. The sign is located on the side of a tree.
5. The last sign is located on the church to the far Northeast corner of the map, located on the front of it.
Also, you will hear bells as you near the locations indicating the signs.
When I downloaded Vest Trials, I expected a fun platformer. I did not expect IWBTG2. Guess which one I got :|
Still, it's 0k.
Hide is by far the creepiest game I've ever played.
I've found all 5 signs, but the best I can do in a game is 3/5 before getting caught.
After 3 signs, the flashlight guys are joined by a blimp with a spotlight. That ramps the difficulty considerably.
can the character do anything else besides jump around, platform to platform?
does he get a weapon of some sort mid-way through the game? maybe special abilities or equipment?
In Approaching Dawn,
can the character do anything else besides jump around, platform to platform?
does he get a weapon of some sort mid-way through the game? maybe special abilities or equipment?
Ah, Hide is lots of fun. Very atmospheric indeed. I feel the use of some disturbing, ambient music could up the creepy-factor a lot.
It's weird, actually: the fact that the enemy thing has a flashlight makes it a lot less creepy for me, because it stops me from feeling that there's a deformed monster or zombie after me, and only a policeman or something.
Anyway, only played once so far, and it says I found 3/5 signs, even though I'm sure I only saw
Murder 1/5, and
Persecution 2/5.
I'll be playing for a little longer indeed. Good stuff.
Judging by the responses, here it seems I've been saving the best for last. WARP had me bored before level 5, and VTAD - though it looks good - has only the platforming concept in common with Knytt: it's more of an excersize in restarting than it is in exploration. Especially for the last one, the controls are not responsive enough for the type of game: I made it partway through the first screen of level four about a bazillion times when I realised there can be no reward great of for me to keep trying.
2 down, 1 to go, and expectations are up...
I agree with Lucky Dee. Controls and collisions are sometimes bad, and the difficulty is not the kind that makes me want to retry. I went to level 4, too, but I wasn't really having fun.
Little do you people who stopped at level 4 realize, but that first set of levels is only a prelude. The full game is at least three times longer than that, and gets exponentially more difficult, if you can believe it.
It really has nothing in common with Knytt, except for the blocky graphics. It's mainly a linear, hardcore platforming challenge, with some puzzles and mini-games thrown in. You can hunt around for secrets sometimes, but that stuff feels tacked on to the meat of the game: a grueling set of dexterity tests.
It all feels half-baked, including the sticky controls and the repetitive level ideas. Some of the longer maze-like levels are incredibly tedious. I would like to see the developer put this sort of ambition towards making their next game fun, and not just big.
Hide, on the other hand, is pretty brilliant.
I managed to find all 5 signs after a few tries, but the goal seems incidental. The star is the mood.
It's hard to believe how intimidating those flashlights and shadowy figures are. I've always been a fan of survival-horror games for the tension and atmosphere, but nearly without exception, they deflate once you can see the monsters clearly and shoot them in the head. No matter how detailed the textures or numerous the polygons, a zombie is just a physical thing.
The pursuers here are frightening on a deeper level because you can't quite make out what they are. They don't sound human, but they still could be. They act human enough. The flying machines that come later move but don't sound like helicopters. It really engaged my imagination.
Even when you watch a pursuer charge right up to you, they seem to be shaped wrong. There' something wrong with their arms, or maybe that's a sack, or a weapon of some kind. The first time I got caught, I actually caught my breath.
Quite the little game.
Hide is particularly terrifying because it's so bloody hard to see. The only sign I can ever find is
"persecution" on the building door.
Half the time I can't even tell the difference between a hill of snow and the sky.
Someone help me with Hide. I can't seem to find a sign at all, even with the help listed by Ryuskae. I do hear the bells, but when I move around, I can't find any. Is there something I'm doing wrong? And I'm guessing the worm's eye perspective is really intentional at the beginning of the game.
The best way to find the signs in Hide is to
just take some time to explore, and find all of them before you "collect" the first one. The guys with flashlights don't appear until you begin collecting them, so you have all the time you need to familiarize yourself with the map.
Having beaten the game, I can't help but wonder if
there might be more than one ending?
I was also wondering about possible multiple endings in Hide.
On the subject of sprinting (of which I had a LOT of trouble)
I found you can use either WASD or the arrow keys to move around. If you rapidly press both the up arrow and W repeatedly, you can get the character to cover some serious ground. I think though, that you are unable to move much at all after being winded. Either that, or I keep hitting invisible walls...
Also just finished Hide, eventually. You do get winded - you can tell this by the speed and volume of your breathing. Staying still, or better yet crouching (use space), lets you recover fairly quickly though. The ending is rather gloomy now isn't it...
@OtherBill: Thanks, I didn't realize you could wander around as long as you wanted before the flashlight-being comes after you when you get the first sign.
Just played the online version of Warp - simple in its mechanics, but fun without being impossibly difficult/annoying. Didn't take too long to beat the game.
Also, I only played the highest-rated user level, but it seems like some of them can be really good (and definitely more unforgiving than the ones in-game).
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