increpare introduced me to transformice, a kind of lemmings in which each lemming is a human player. at least one of the players is a shaman, who has the power to change the game landscape by introducing platforms, counter-weights and by nailing things together. each level of the game contains a mound of cheese and a mouse hole (maybe more than one mouse hole if there’s more than one shaman). the mice’s goal is to get to the cheese, take a chunk, and bring it back to the hole. the shaman’s goal is to make that possible when it otherwise isn’t.
naturally, the game has more interesting decisions for the player who is the shaman. but i like the idea of a game where there are no trivial actors: where every role in the game is played by a human player. what’s also interesting is the way these player mice function as a measure of the shaman’s success: the shaman’s score is the number of mice who successfully return to the hole with cheese. in the case of a two-mousehole level, the mice are voting with their feet for which shaman is better: the better solution will bring more mice to that hole.
16 comments
Agreed, this idea has a _lot_ of potential for online play. Is it possible to create an mmorpg with no NPCs whatsoever? Would that make mmorpgs not suck?
Played this for a little while, but 90% of the games the shaman just killed everyone. In the other 10%, the levels were designed so that you were likely to die in the first few seconds, or as a result of other mice, or the worst offenders: They didn’t need a shaman at all.
The idea seems really neat, but I would have done it a lot differently.
There’s no reward for being a good shaman, it’s often hard to tell where you are (do I really need to see the names of all the other mice?), and on the occasion I finally got to be a shaman, none of the controls worked.
hey trevor maybe you should read the FUCKING INSTRUCTIONS
the reward for being a good shaman is titles and the reward for being a good cheese gatherer is that you get to be shamans quicker
its the points system
It’s a fascinating little game, although the level design is usually frustrating and unfun.
The actual idea is pretty brilliant. I think the main problem with the setup is that players are fairly nonpermanent, and penalty is low. Encouraging more attachment to your player, more will to keep her alive, would make the experience a lot more cohesive, I think.
‘the reward for being a good shaman is titles and the reward for being a good cheese gatherer is that you get to be shamans quicker’
I was unable to be a good cheese gatherer, because as I said, 90% of the time the Shaman just tried to kill everyone.
And when I did get to be a Shaman, none of the controls worked. Luckily it was on one of the levels where a Shaman wasn’t even needed, so everyone got the cheese.
Neither of those things match the premise of the game.
I seem to have had a totally different experience from everyone else here… When we got cheese, good. When we failed miserably it was usually hilarious so that’s good too. There was enough crazy physics shit happening and spewing mice all across the screen to keep me things interesting.
Even on the maps that required little or no intervention from the shaman, usually the shaman would turn violent and try and throw us all of the screen, and in most games that would be irritating but in this case it was just fun.
Anybody who enjoys this game is literally fucking retarded. This game is a perfect combination of everything that isn’t fun about games
GUHH
BUHH DURRRRRRRIDSFSfffff
*spittle noises*
p.s. if you don’t like this game then you don’t like games with more than one human player
@ alex: I don’t know, it looks like it COULD work with a little bit of effort.
Yeah, with just better level design it could be really great. It’d be totally different, because right now it’s Trolling: The Game. It can be fun if you think of it like that, but I wouldn’t mind also trying this same idea with a better focus on co-op.
It’s sad that many of these games are troll bait. Hell, it’s sad that there are this many trolls around on the net, which pretty much destroy many good chances out there. Unless someone comes up with an online game idea that actually works with or around trolls…
The times that I have played it people seemed pretty interested in helping each other. Trolling shamans were roundly shouted at; most people seemed interested in making elevators and stuffs, and genuinely being helpful.
I’ve been playing this tons and new situations still keep coming up! Super cool super cool.
You guys are all missing the point. ALL OF YOU.
“Unless someone comes up with an online game idea that actually works with or around trolls…”
This game is fucking hilarious BECAUSE OF the trolling. If you get upset at being trolled, you’re taking it too seriously.
The trolls are rare enough, and the punishment for getting trolled small enough, that they don’t bother me.
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