Creator of Dicey Dungeons, VVVVVV and Super Hexagon launches a big collection of his shorter games
If, like me, you failed and failed and failed to get a decent score in arcadey reaction game Super Hexagon, then take solace in this: there are a bunch of other games by the same developer you can fail at. Terry Cavanagh, also the maker of VVVVVV and Dicey Dungeons, is releasing a collection of his freeware bits and bobs on Steam next week, called simply Terry’s Other Games. Looking at the games included, it summons a nostalgic giggle just to see just how many of Terry’s short games have been intriguing enough to grab the eye of an RPS writer over the years. I mean it literally. One game is called Grab Them By The Eyes.
There are 21 games in total. Others in the collection which we’ve previously written about include the clever isometric illusions of Naya’s Quest, minimalist rando-gen thief ’em up Tiny Heist, and first-person co-op puzzler At A Distance, which demands to be played on two machines side by side for full lateral-thinky effect.
“But it also includes a bunch of smaller, messier games,” says Cavanagh on the Steam page, “experimental games made in a weekend, an unfinished prototype, joke games I made for game jams, a game I made as a teenager.”
That sounds as much an act of vulnerability as it is releasing a game, like those videos where artists tour their sketchbooks, or go through old work. There is some achievement hunting to the proceedings as well. Each game in the launcher comes with a couple of tasks to fulfil for twinkling stars. But wait, this may be a trap. I have chased after all the shiny trinkets in VVVVVV, and I can tell you: it was only partially worth the hair loss.
Terry has written up the reasoning for many games he has included, but also his thoughts on those he has excluded. Constellation – a swell wee browser game about typing random words to see what appears – didn’t make the cut because you’d need a keyboard and he wanted every game to be uniformly playable on controller.
“Also! This game is weirdly tricky to localise,” says Cavanagh, “because the word list is really particular and built about what words prompt you to think of other words, and those connections don’t quite seem to translate from one language to another.”
Makes sense! I always get the feeling localisation and language is important to Cavangah. Dicey Dungeons was translated to Irish, for example, and this collection is getting the same treatment. You don’t have long to wait, it’ll be releasing on Steam on Feb 13th, and will package all the games together for a to-be-decided price.
