All this chit chat about babysitting NPCs brought back one of my most treasured gaming memories; Galapagos is a game which made hardly any impression on the gaming landscape and yet still to this day it is unique in its concept and execution.
Developed by Anark, a company trying to break into the artificial intelligence market the premise of the game was simple. You had to guide a four legged spider like robot called Mendel out of a the nightmarish world it was trapped within. The clever bit was you had absolutely no control over Mendel.
Mendel comes kitted out with basic sensors along his sides and a very simple eye mounted at the front, he starts off with a very basic AI routine, responding in unpredictable ways to the dangers around him. As the game progresses Mendel begins to ‘learn’ behaviours based on the players actions. By using the mouse the player can brush Mendel on the left or right hand side and eventually it responds to these stimuli, turning in the opposite direction. If you are in a really evil mood you can really screw Mendel up by leading it into danger and confusing the little bugger, resulting in a jittering wreck who is so paranoid it can no longer function effectively.
When not caressing Mendel the player has to interact with the game environment, by clicking on switches, bouncers, boxes and just about everything that stands in Mendels way. Interaction is for the most part digital for example, click on a rotating platform and it reverses direction.
By carefully controlling the environment and training Mendel to do the right thing the game can become rather manic, requiring some quick thinking and rapid mouse work.
Naturally the game is not without its faults, the camera can be a complete arse at times, which makes some sections overly hard and some of the platform sections are far too random in their design, nevertheless it is a completely unique game with basic but vibrant visuals and design that these screenshots don’t do justice.
this looks completley utterly bonkers... with this and POD and other PC titles you've subjected youself too, I don't know how you still like playing computergames... Although you imply this game is good, I bet its sheep manure.... go on, tell me it aint so.
Well it's kinda compelling in a sick way.
The game is pretty badly flawed due to the random elements and the annoying camera, but when it's working right it's actually a lot of fun. It doesn't really hold your hand in anyway, so you have to experiment by clicking on the various elements and observing any change. Each level is a series of puzzles where you have to work out how to get Mendel through to the next section using the available environmental tools at your disposal, combine this with a test of timing and dexterity whereby you have to keep Mendel on the straight and narrow whilst manipulating his environment all in real time and you can begin to see how the game works.
It's strange because it really does have that 'one more go' hook about it, despite being incredibly frustrating (especially when Mendel falls to his death for the nth time on some sick and twited arrangement of platforms).
As a high concept game and a curio it's well worth a play to see if you fall for its charms.
I could see a varient of this working extremely well on the DS. Mendel would need a character injection and the camera would need to be sorted, but it would make an ideal DS game with its touch screen capability. The game can be played for as long as you want too, which is perfect for a portable title.
I did play the demo of this, waaay back. It was kind of fun, but it felt like a pure puzzle game to me rather than anything else. A sort of 3D single Lemming.
I agree with what you say about the faults though - there was too much trial and error involved, and it became frustrating. I always meant to check out the full game though...
Your lemmings analogy is pretty spot on. The only real difference is that the lemmings are totally predictable, wheras Mendel will just do its thang. Training Mendel up and keeping it out of danger keeps the pressure on. The demo world iirc had a couple of hard sections, but the full game just goes into overdrive with the difficulty. I stopped playing when I got to mines of something-or-other (plon?), which was a fire themed world with rotating springy platforms. basically you have to bounce Mendel up and catch it on the next platform by rapidly switching its direction. It is a complete bast and way too frustrating.
I couldn't find the demo of this available anywhere. I expect it's a bit old now.
It is very old, we are talking circa 96. If I can find the demo I'll pop it on me website over the weekend and post a linky.
gamesdomain.co.uk use to be fantastic at all that, but then...... urrrrggggghhhhhh things happened.
back in the day I used to use happypuppy, but it ain't what it used to be
Yay,
Found the demo of this on PCZONE Issue 56 (November 1997)
Good news is it works under WindowsXP, more good news is the visuals still look pretty fresh for an eight year old game. Camera is a bitch though
I'm uploading it now...47mins to go...
OK, here it is for anyone who's interested
madbury.net/demos/setup.exe
It's a 37.3MB self extracting zip archive.
Enjoy.
dled it. It was all going great till I tried to alt-tab to another window..... galapago process cpu usage = 100%
oops.
What are the controls?
all on mouse,
left click to interact with the environment, right click on either the left or right of Mendel to rub him.
To start with you have to click on the blue diamond shaped thing to release the containment field (once the intro has ended natch). You can then activate a laser barrier to keep him within the save point area or let him wander onto a platform which takes you into the level proper.
Thanks Madbury downloading now!
It's a pretty hefty download.
One additional note. I think the devs gave Mendel a very basic intelligence in this demo. There may be an option to erase this and start with a blank Mendel, which is the proper way to play. Don't be alarmed if he dies a few times after this (It's all part of the learning process
)
--EDIT-- Freaky it seems that Anark changed direction completely in the years following the release of this game http://www.anark.com looks like they are doing high end 3D apps now
They do tools and middleware for games too:
http://www.anark.com/news/news_events.asp
Ah so they do. Clearly they couldn't find a market for their AI technology. Funny as I would have thought that decent AI routines are the holy grail of games development at present. I guess eight years ago it was all about the graphics.