Let's Play Not Worth its Own Thread: Screenshot Edition

The place for putting LPs you don't think are worth their own thread, or an LP of a game's highlights, or something else cool you think of!

�Microgames are limited to four posts per update. This should be obvious; this thread's only for small projects so any of you thinking of trying to work around the queue will have to try again some other day. Unless you work something out with me ahead of time or if something pops up out of nowhere, abuse will be met with a punch to the biscuits. And if it turns out you don't think you'll have enough time for whatever you have planned, perhaps it may be worth it's own thread after all.

�Only one run of a game at a time. This is all in one thread, so keeping all of this organized is gonna be key. While there's no formal queue per se, please wait until the current game is finished before starting up your own.

�Microgames must be wrapped up in one month's time max. I've been pretty lenient with deadlines as far as bigger projects go, but the idea here is to give fast, bite-sized LPs a chance to shine. You should have plenty of time to wrap up your game of choice so don't dawdle with your run, and make sure you're good to go before you start up! No one likes a lollygagger.

�Once you finish a Microgame, you need to wait two weeks before you can start another. This is so the thread won't get locked up by a single person doing one microgame after another. If the two weeks pass and no one else has stepped in yet, then sure, you can go ahead and start another.

I think that's pretty much it. Have fun, and take it easy!



-Archived -
Aeroflux (Part 1/2) - Alpha Werewolf
Angband - dtsund
Covert Action (Part 1/2) - Taeryn
Daymare Town (Part 1/2/3/4) - Loki
Donkey Kong Jr. Math - Octopus Prime
Kung Fu - Octopus Prime
Magic: The Gathering - Alpha Werewolf
Minesweeper - Bongo Bill
My Hero (1/2) - Yimothy
Octodad - Umbaglo
The Oregon Trail - Rai
Pangya - MythrilMoth
Porrasturvati - Sky Render
Small Worlds (Part 1/2/3/4) - Kirin
Uncle Zebulon's Will (Part 1/2) - Foxeris
You Have to Burn the Rope - Sky Render

So we have a fine new micro-LP thread, and I think it's time we get things in motion. So we'll start with one of the most terrifying games ever. Few games will challenge you like this one. It's the epitome of difficult. It will haunt you night and day for months after you finally beat it.

Let's Play You Have to Burn the Rope!

Oh, you think I'm kidding? Just you wait.



You are cordially invited to suffer along with me.



An efficient title screen that doubles as a starting area. Clever developers. And here we have our mysterious and nameless protagonist, sometimes called Hat Kirby or other equally silly names. But he doesn't need a name.



Already you can see that this game pulls no punches. You don't even get to sharpen your skills on grunt enemies, you have to go after a big-shot super-baddy right off the bat. Gruesome.



To shame you even further, they give you this awesome axe-tossing ability and make it so you can't even kill the boss with it. Now that is brutal difficulty. Even Ninja Gaiden games at least make it so your basic attack does something.



The game tauntingly suggests you take a flamethrower to it. Yeah, too bad there's no flamethrower weapon.



I think they forgot 4. It helps if you're a massochist.



Oh wait, there's #4. If anything, that's the most cruel part of all. Most games you can just quit when you die and figure "at least I tried my best". But this game won't even give you that much.



Sure enough, as soon as you step into the room, the wall behind you closes off Castlevania-style and you're left to fight this monstrosity called the Grinning Colossus.



He's a mean bastard too: about 12 times your height, 7 times as wide, and he shoots MIND BULLETS! (That's telekinesis, Kyle...)



Tossing axes into his grinning maw doesn't do much, as he has a healing factor that's just insane. Seriously, you could toss for hours and he'd never drop below 80%. They weren't kidding about the whole "your weapons are useless" thing.



Oh, and did I mention he can air-juggle your ass? This guy is a bastard.



And in grand video game tradition, the solid stone wall is of course completely axe-proof. Well crap, now what?



Where did that torch come from? Ah who cares! It's not a flamethrower, so it'll be useless.



From up here, you can lob axes forever at him, but he'll never die and somehow your axes don't cut that rope. I guess they're blunt? That might explain why they do jack-all to the Colossus.



No salvation to be found on this side either. Well crap, now what?

Yes! BURN THAT COLOSSUS! HAHAHAHA!



Oh come ON! He even knocked the torch away! Well, I guess the only thing left is to try a Kamikaze attack from above...



Oops, looks like the torch burned the rope. That can't be good.



Great. So I accidentally gave the Grinning Colossus a new hat. Do you feel pretty now, oh so pretty, Ms. Colossus?



Wait what



Are you kidding me?



That's right, we have a game that bald-facedly tells you how to win in a reverse-psychology effort to make you not try that because it's too obvious. EVIL!



So there you have it. You Have to Burn the Rope is exactly what it says on the tin, which is exactly what you would never expect from a video game.



Ah well, at least the ending theme is catchy.

Let's Play You Have to Burn the Rope!
The End







The Grinning Colossus will eat your soul...

Huh, so that's what this game is all about. I'd heard about it before, but never seen it. Definitely a fiendish bit of game design.

I beat that game a few times just to listen to that song. So great.

Also, this mini-LP idea is a good one. I'm eager to see how it works out.

This has never once occurred to me. I commend you for showing me a brand new side of this game.

With the semester wrapping up, I've had a hankering to do something. Something quick and easy. Something that isn't Pokemon (Though I have something for that in the works that will happen sometime in the next month).

So, for the next microgame, I need a few things! Specifically, four party members, a month to begin in, and a favored auto company name. All of these are related.

May. That can be a month or a party member.

I heart this thread already.

We all need a little Tenacious D now and again.

Alice, Bob, Carol and Dave, starting in the month of May and favouring Hyundai as their dealer of choice.

Zoom zoom.

Pappy, with names like that, you sound like you're setting up a math problem. You know, something like:

Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dave get in their car (a Hyundai) and take a road trip in the month of May. Alice drives 20 miles at a rate of 30 MPH, before Bob takes over and drives....

Close! Alice and Bob (and friends) are actually common names used in cryptography and physics problems.

Well, in this case I think I'll have to nominate Foo and his cousin Bar for consideration.

I nominate Sherry, Lamb, Hush, and Charlie.

- Eddie

I like Alice and Bob, but prefer their cohorts to be the nefarious Eve and Mallory (names from computer security problems where Alice and Bob are attempting to communicate with each, other, Eve is attempting to eavesdrop on them, and Mallory is attempting to do something malicious to their communications.)

Since this is a microgame, I think I've got enough for what I need. If anyone else had anything they wanted to do ahead of time, go for it. This may take me a few days.

Howdy, y'all, and welcome to Let's Play Windows Minesweeper: Windows 7 edition (which may, in fact, be the same as Windows Vista edition)!



Yeah, look at that pristine field of mines. As you can see, we're playing on Expert difficulty here: 600 spaces, 99 mines.

As is customary, we start with a totally random space, guaranteed not to be a mine.



What the hell are we looking at, here? Each space, when cleared, that does not contain a mine reveals the number of mines that are adjacent (including cornerwise) to that space. If the space has no mines adjacent to it, instead of displaying a 0, it's just blank, and all eight surrounding squares are automatically cleared.



Our goal here is to clear all the squares that have no mines. To help us in this regard, we can right-click on a tile to place a flag on the spaces where we have deduced there is a mine. The flag prevents us from clicking on that tile accidentally (which is especially helpful if you are right-and-left-clicking on a cleared tile to clear all adjacent unflagged tiles!).

You can see in this screen we have placed a flag right there in the middle. Note the "1" tile above it and to the left. That tile is adjacent to its own number of uncleared tiles: by this, we can be absolutely certain that every uncleared tile adjacent to it has a mine. Similarly, every other space adjacent to any "1" tile adjacent to that flag is guaranteed to be clear, which is why we've started on opening up that area to the right.



The bulk of play consists of figuring out which tiles along the border of a cleared area are mined and which are safe.

Just below the left section there, you can see one of the more common patterns: if you've got a straight row of 1-2-1-2-1, then there will be a mine in front of every "1" and a safe tile numbered between 2 and 5 in front of every "2."



As you can see, we've cleared all the way out to the corner by now, and can now proceed along the rest of the tiles available to us. Going from the top seems to be the way to go at this point.



We can keep going from here, but let's get sidetracked.



We seem to have exhausted that direction, so let's go back to where we were.



Sadly, it looks like there's a little island that we don't have enough information to clear out. So let's see if we can't squeeze a bit more information out of that left face.



Do you see it? That "3" tile on the left side - it's only adjacent to three uncleared tiles, so they must all be mines. We can work with that.



Sadly, we can only get a few more flags out of it, until eventually we have no choice but to make a wild guess... and, sadly, it did not turn out well for us. Oh, and I must be getting a bit rusty: there's an incorrect flag in there (not counting the one I had to guess on).

Thanks for joining me! I'm Bongo Bill, and this has been Let's Play Elementary Logic Error Windows Minesweeper.

Yeah, that's the same as the Vista version. Personally, I kind of wish there were an option to revert to the classic look and feel, but eh.

One thing I used to like to do (when, uh, extremely bored) was make a custom game of minimum proportions and maxed out mines. Everyone should do this at least once, but don't expect to ever win.

EDIT: It's less entertaining in modern versions, since you're guaranteed to hit a blank square on the first click. In the old days, you'd usually get an 8 immediately...

What? Wouldn't that mean the mine field isn't actually generated until your first click?

I always liked to do min mines/ max field and enjoy the first click clearing out 90% of the board. It's a nice change after blowing up several times in a row on hard.

That is correct. Pre-XP versions of Minesweeper had a curious oversight related to this, as well: with the right starting conditions (usually with maximum space and minimum mine count), you could have a one-click win.

They don't generate the field until the first click to ensure that the player doesn't lose instantly on the first click. It's something many CS students learn eventually, since Minesweeper is (I think) a common project to write.

Well I don't know how much you guys know about Minesweeper, but I'm an expert. In fact, I got a 1-second finish on the easiest difficulty on a school computer once.

On XP. Possible, but damn near unobtainable.

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to school you on Minesweeper here, Bongo.

Not true. It can actually be cleared out with logic. Observe:



Because of the 1 next to the wall, we know that the squares labeled A and B contain exactly one mine between them. Thanks to the adjacent 2, we also know that square C has one. The next 2 over then tells us that squares B and D have none. Cleared!

Here the two 1s at the bottom guarantee that the third square is free. The upper 3 then shows that the square you clicked definitely has a mine. The lower 3 pinpoints the other mine, freeing up the square at the bottom.

So I had a sudden urge to micro-LP Small Worlds, though I'm not really sure if it's a good idea. The game is quite nice, takes like 15 minutes to play and is entirely exploration, which means an LP would pretty much necessarily spoil all of it. Would have some pretty pictures, though. Do people think it's a good idea?

I figure it would take five updates (one for each section) and could have some minimal interactivity, letting people pick the order of the last four levels. I'd need to clear out a block of time to make sure I got through all five updates fairly quickly. One every other day or so would bring it in safely under two weeks.

Go for it. Spoiling the whole game is kind of an inevitable side-effect of an LP, unless the game in question is of the "rules without linear goals" variety, like Minesweeper, SimCity, and so forth.

Ok, well, I'll tentatively plan on doing it here. But I don't have time to finish before leaving on vacation next week, so it won't be right now. Maybe around the end of the month (though, will anyone actually be reading right around xmas? We'll see.)

Don't plan. At least, not in this thread. Just play it and go.

I'm not trying to over-plan, but like I said it naturally lends itself to five updates, so I'll need at least a week free, which I don't have right now. So, later this month maybe. Don't wanna clog up the thread with a half-finished run when other people might wanna do some single-update stuff or whatever meantime.