Sometimes I think life would be a lot easier if we weren’t all possessed by this pesky will to survive. I mean, it always makes things so complicated. What might have otherwise been a nice, pleasant Sunday afternoon high-speed collision suddenly gets all weird and lawsuit-y. Or maybe that cackling, trench-coat-clad figure in the park really was giving away candy. But now you’ll never know. Death From A 1000 Ft Fall proposes another such situation: you’ve been shoved off a skyscraper by your arch-nemesis, but instead of spending your final moments peacefully wafting, tickling the air itself with your feather-like grace, you start thrashing and flailing and going through your pockets for things that might get you out of your almost certainly fatal predicament. Ugh, survival instincts, am I right?
Death From A 1000 Ft Fall is actually a very elaborate Twine game – one that’s less driven by a singular, largely linear narrative and more about randomized systems. It also uses a lot of pictures, if you’re allergic to words, punctuation, or particularly dander-prone emoticons.
So you’re falling. You have roughly 7.8 seconds to do something about it, which means only a few precious turns before you’re pavement pizza. Plus, you’ve got an ever-worsening stress level to account for since, you know, impending doom and all. Your options include everything from grasping at nearby ledges or buildings to – depending on which items are randomly placed in your inventory – sending your pet flying squirrel to get help or calling your family to say goodbye. You can also set the squirrel free in hopes of at least saving his life. Dying in a hilariously implausible fashion is kind of really sad sometimes, you guys.
That said, the writing’s not the strongest, and the brilliant concept’s somewhat limited execution becomes pretty noticeable after several brief playthroughs. Still though, Death From A 1000 Ft Fall is good for a few quick spurts of entertainment before it plummets back down to Earth. It made me laugh, whimper, and try to fashion a parachute out of a plastic bag and an anvil. Is there any greater endorsement?
Thanks, Indie Games
Freeware Pick: Only words can help you narrowly escape Death from a 1000ft. Fall
August 13, 2013 9:26 AM | Paul Hack
1000ftfall2.pngI'm always interested in something new and creative being done in Twine. Le Sam, the author of Death from a 1000ft. Fall, described it to me in an email as "an arcade-adventure game hybrid in Twine". I think of it more as a turn-based survival game. For reasons that are beside the point but explained in the intro, you are falling. There's 1,000 feet between you and the ground, so you've got a few seconds to figure out how to slow or halt your descent, or at least soften the impact.
The brain does funny things in situations of grave danger and you're experiencing a moment of heightened clarity, so time seems to have frozen around you. Every possible action takes about a second of in-game time, but you have all the time in the world to make your decisions. You have a number of possible actions to take, including changing your body position, examining your surroundings, checking and making use of your inventory, picking and aiming for a good place to land, and just trying to relax.
This game is made in Twine, so you perform actions by clicking on highlighted text, and there are a lot of possibilities. Unlike most Twine games, Death from a 1000ft. Fall relies heavily on images as well as text, and every passage is illustrated. Better yet, the drawings frequently convey useful information.
The game is alternately realistic and fantastic. For example, when you pull an anvil out of your pocket, it adheres to the laws of physics by falling at the same speed as you--but what were you doing with an anvil in your pocket in the first place? And how did it even fit in there? Regardless, the game is a fascinating puzzle with a basis in reality (at least in terms of how things behave after they are falling).
There are a few ways to survive the fall, but some landings leave you a lot more injured than others, so the game packs some nice replay value.
Death from a 1000ft. Fall isn't playable directly online like most Twine games because it contains (and has to load) over 500 images, but you can download it and then play it in your browser, like any other Twine game.
Indie games write up
link goes to different link and doesn't work so check outIndieGames
