Writer Mike Walbridge’s goal: play every Molyjam game and tell you about as many as he can. Want to know more? Click here.
246: Friends ’til the end: “You play as a small boy with a remote control helicoptor that is alive and your friend, then you discover a nuclear missle inside it”
The controls and movement abilities in this game need some tweaking, but the Game Over screen alone is a good reason to play this game. It’s also one of the most distinctive games. You have to delicately move a helicopter with a nuclear bomb in it? This is so dark and gritty, and you’d never see this one on Xbox Live. The challenge is frustrating, but at least there’s that screen.
243: Far From the Tree: “What if you could plant seeds that grow into cover systems?,” “What if a cover system had raw emotion? i.e having to use dead people that you loved as a means of cover?”
Somehow this game uses two tweets, with apples being the dead bodies used for cover. Some gritty potential here, as you have to die on purpose in select spots in order to progress.
242: Phone Frag!: “What if everyone in the world had an explosive telephone in their body? If you could find out their number you can detonate their phone?”
This reminds me of the challenging classic Zombies Ate My Neighbors. You have a dog, and you must go around the level looking for phone numbers. When you get them, you must dash to the phone booth and then type in the actual numbers for the guys to explode. Simple, fun. I like the frantic possibilities that having to type all the numbers requires. I wonder what the game would be like with varied enemies and obstacles.
235: You Are The Road: “Have you ever played a racing game and wanted to play as the road rather than the cars? I know I have…”
This is one of the better examples of having players compete on different levels.
227: In the dark, the blind can see: “A survival horror game where you have to sing lullabies to your 2 year old to stop them from screaming/crying and giving your position away”
Your home has been invaded, and you play as blind father trying to escape with his baby. But if the baby you are holding cries, it gets shot. Then you get shot. Every single time I die I cringe and feel highly uncomfortable. All of the simple effects are put to maximum use here.
226: Recidivism: “Imagine if when you kill someone their death animation loops and ‘burns’ into your screen so you have to watch it for the rest of the game?”
Someone actually dared to make a game based on this tweet. It starts off as a simple 8-bit platformer, but quickly turns to gory, dark, and horrid. There were so many bodies that I couldn’t even finish the game, as it slowed my computer down.
224: I, Crow-Bot™: “You are a scarecrow in a world with just 1 bird”
This is the first time I’ve seen a game I challenge the player to do something about a harmful animal while not harming the animal, which needs to be protected. Eat your heart out, PETA. Or don’t.
223: OCTOPI EVERYTHING: “Online sidescrolling co-op 8 player game where each person controls a leg of a octopus. Each leg can attach guns which the player can fire”
It really does have simple 8-player controls. I played this for only 10 seconds, but the capabilities here are tremendous! What if you had a spaceship, and each person had a different role, that was 8 players? Or a spaceship where you all had guns and you were in separate spots? Funnier is where the legs were located: 4, q, z, c, b, m, p, 8. Shaped like an octopus. The boldness in making an 8-player game is commendable.
222: Revenge Of The Road: “Have you ever played a racing game and wanted to play as the road rather than the cars? I know I have…”
Sleek presentation, this is also a good representation of the road vs. car idea.
221: Six: “You know in cut scenes when it says ‘3 months later…’? What if the game ACTUALLY locked your save file for 3 months?,” “What if games rewarded you for believing rather than winning?”
This game takes literally six days to get through. It is based on one of Grimm’s fairy tales, so there is no surprise here, but this game quietly reveals the potential games have to impress a story on us. If a game forcibly limited the player in accessing the story according to time intervals, making the player feel the passage of time, this would commit them literally in a way text or the scrolling images of cinema and TV cannot. This is something that could be used somewhere, somehow.
218: TETHER: “What if you lived in a world where all guns are required to be plugged into wall sockets?”
This is the best so far of the plug tweets and at least the third I’ve played. Great classic arcade action. Recommend playing and developing further.
217: The Shadowland Prophesy: “We’ve had emotional game endings but have we ever had an emotional title screen?”
This is a hilarious game that I don’t want to spoil but it is a very eye-opening possibility to what you can do with title screens and option screens. Great potential for puzzle and minigame mechanics here. Brilliantly done, this game actually made me laugh, both out of humor and from the joy of being surprised at just what a game’s author is capable of.
211: NukaBaby: “Imagine carrying a radioactive baby in a pitch black environment, your baby would act as a torch. Rocking the baby intensifies the glow etc,” “A survival horror game where you have to sing lullabies to your 2 year old to stop them from screaming/cry”
Another differing conditions versus mode that I recommend you try. Fully functional—make sure you play with someone else!
