Every Sunday, I'll try to post a new game that has been overlooked in the shuffle.
Turning The Spigot: The Obscure Game Awareness Column - Week 16
Posted 10-05-2008 at 08:41 PM by Spigot
I've just returned from a week away on an island... And that gave me the perfect game for this week's Turning The Spigot...
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
Galapagos: Mendel's Escape.
Platform: PC
Year: 1997
Rating: Artificially Intelligent
Galapagos: Mendel's Escape is one of the other games that came up during the conversation that kickstarted this series of threads 16 weeks ago. It is a game that is so obscure it doesn't even have a page on Wikipedia... It is the only game that the developer, Anark, ever released... And yet it stands out in my mind 11 years after I first played it.
Galapagos is one of the first games that I can recall playing that showed me that games can be more than just a stage where you shoot/jump/blast things or save the world with your androgynous party of pre-adolescents. It was one of the first games that I can recall that took control out of the hands of the player, limiting us to the role of teacher and observer as opposed to directly moving the avatar around the ingame environment. It also showcased a kind of emergent AI that laid the groundwork for things like Black & White's animal/dieties.
The point of Galapagos is to guide Mendel, a four-legged bug-type robot-thingy, through a series of rooms, each containing at least one or two lethal traps. You do this by poking Mendel or manipulating the environment.
At the beginning of the game, Mendel is a blank slate. It will happily walk through fire if you point him in that direction as it just doesn't know any better. As Mendel succumbs to the various instruments of destruction littered about the lab, it will start to instictively shy away from the things that have done it harm in the past. This can be a slow process near the beginning of the game and at times Mendel will be reduced to a quiverring wreck if you've let it die a lot of times.
Where the game shines is when you see Mendel instinctively find its way through a room with a minimal amount of input from you, the player. This may sound counter-intuitive, as gamers tend to rail against any moment when a game takes control away from the player. In this case, the game gives an almost parental sense of pride to the player when their Mendel is able to take the lessons from the rooms they have had it progress through and succeed on its own.
The presentation of the game is rather surreal, taking place in a strange geometric world of pulsating lights and sounds. It's not quite as trippy as REZ, but it's up there.
Unfortunately, I can't find any videos of the gameplay, but here are a few shots of the game.
Mendel:
A typical level:
Oh, I forgot to mention that you can also export your Mendel's brain and share it with your friends. Whether your Mendel is a genius at manipulating its environment or an absolute neurotic wreck who cowers in the corner is up to you and your 'parenting' skills.
This gem can be found on Amazon.com for a mere 81 cents! Good luck finding it anywhere else. Given that the company who developed the game has gone on to do high-end 3D rendering projects for various tech firms and essentially disavows the existence of the game, it is pretty safe to classify the game as abandonware...
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
Galapagos: Mendel's Escape.
Platform: PC
Year: 1997
Rating: Artificially Intelligent
Galapagos: Mendel's Escape is one of the other games that came up during the conversation that kickstarted this series of threads 16 weeks ago. It is a game that is so obscure it doesn't even have a page on Wikipedia... It is the only game that the developer, Anark, ever released... And yet it stands out in my mind 11 years after I first played it.
Galapagos is one of the first games that I can recall playing that showed me that games can be more than just a stage where you shoot/jump/blast things or save the world with your androgynous party of pre-adolescents. It was one of the first games that I can recall that took control out of the hands of the player, limiting us to the role of teacher and observer as opposed to directly moving the avatar around the ingame environment. It also showcased a kind of emergent AI that laid the groundwork for things like Black & White's animal/dieties.
The point of Galapagos is to guide Mendel, a four-legged bug-type robot-thingy, through a series of rooms, each containing at least one or two lethal traps. You do this by poking Mendel or manipulating the environment.
At the beginning of the game, Mendel is a blank slate. It will happily walk through fire if you point him in that direction as it just doesn't know any better. As Mendel succumbs to the various instruments of destruction littered about the lab, it will start to instictively shy away from the things that have done it harm in the past. This can be a slow process near the beginning of the game and at times Mendel will be reduced to a quiverring wreck if you've let it die a lot of times.
Where the game shines is when you see Mendel instinctively find its way through a room with a minimal amount of input from you, the player. This may sound counter-intuitive, as gamers tend to rail against any moment when a game takes control away from the player. In this case, the game gives an almost parental sense of pride to the player when their Mendel is able to take the lessons from the rooms they have had it progress through and succeed on its own.
The presentation of the game is rather surreal, taking place in a strange geometric world of pulsating lights and sounds. It's not quite as trippy as REZ, but it's up there.
Unfortunately, I can't find any videos of the gameplay, but here are a few shots of the game.
Mendel:
A typical level:
Oh, I forgot to mention that you can also export your Mendel's brain and share it with your friends. Whether your Mendel is a genius at manipulating its environment or an absolute neurotic wreck who cowers in the corner is up to you and your 'parenting' skills.
This gem can be found on Amazon.com for a mere 81 cents! Good luck finding it anywhere else. Given that the company who developed the game has gone on to do high-end 3D rendering projects for various tech firms and essentially disavows the existence of the game, it is pretty safe to classify the game as abandonware...
Total Comments 1
Comments
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That's quite an odd game. It's always sad when a promising developer closes or leaves the industry.
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Posted 10-07-2008 at 10:16 PM by mister slim
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