Physics Games and Physics-Based Game Downloads

Michiel van de Panne from the University of British Columbia graciously took the time to answer my questions regarding his work on Ski Stunt Simulator, perhaps my all-time favorite physics game. His gives his thoughts on academia/game industry collaboration, his varied success with commercializing Ski Stunt Simulator, low-level physical play control, his development process, and more.

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(Rate this game! 103 votes, average: 3.22 out of 5)

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Pogo Sticker by Jetro Lauha is a simple freeware physics game inspired by, quite obviously, pogo sticking. Jetro is most known for his Dismount games, although he has long been involved in the demo scene and currently works for Sulake Corporation (developers of the famed Habbo Hotel).

In Pogo Sticker, you control a rather abstract-looking pogo man. Clicking the mouse increases your jump height, and moving the mouse to the left or right of your little dude will steer him in that direction on his next jump. Your power meter slowly reduces over time. You need to be sure to keep increasing it, although be careful: Hitting your head too many times will fail the level, as will coming to a complete standstill.

The 12 levels in Pogo Sticker are fairly varied and rise quickly in difficulty. The game starts off as simple enough, but soon ends in frustrating disaster. The only means you have as a player to learn how high to jump in certain areas is to fail, again and again. This pain is exacerbated by the quantized power meter; one mouse click equals one defined increase in jump height. I think the game would be much better served by some kind of analog power definition, where you could more finely control your jump power. Oftentimes I feel like I know my jump meter won’t have enough power for what I want to do, but I dread giving it another click on account on the braining that’s sure to follow.

(Pogo Stickers Game Screenshots)

All in all, though, Pogo Sticker is a fun enough game and an interesting implementation of a real-world physics game. Pogo Sticker tracks your fastest time on each level and rewards you with various medals. Personally, I find the game a little too hard to control to warrant that kind of replay, but perhaps others will disagree. Either way, it’s a well-produced game and a good way to kill a few minutes during a work break. And hey–the game’s free.

Download Pogo Sticker game here (1.11 MB) or head on over to Jetro’s website for MacOS and Linux versions.

(Rate this game! 52 votes, average: 3.21 out of 5)

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Strange Attractors by Ominous Development was created for Retro Remakes’ One Switch Competition. It tied for sixth place in the competition, but has since been nominated as a finalist for game design in this year’s Independent Games Festival. Everything in the game is controlled by a single button. In Strange Attractors, this single button toggles in the influence of gravity between the player’s ship and everything else.

Gravity in Strange Attractors resembles planetary motion. Rather than a downwards force, each individual object has attraction to all other objects. The end result is a lot of orbital-like motion. Orbital motion is fairly intuitive to control, even though we don’t have a direct analog to it in our day-to-day lives.

I’m not entirely sure what the goal in Strange Attractors is, to be honest. I just launched right into the game without reading any documentation. You have a timer, though, so I suppose the goal is to get to the next stage before that timer expires. There are a lot of crazy little men floating around, too, and dashing their tiny bodies against other objects appears to increase your timer. Strange Attractors is definitely a suitable name, because the game itself is a little strange.

Despite the one-button controls, it is possible to control your ship with some degree of intention. It’s hard to exactly hit any target, but you can influence your motion to a general degree. The later levels introduce vortexes that will fling you around and drastically increase the number of large objects blocking your way.

(Strange Attractors Game Screenshots)

Playing Strange Attractors is a bizarre experience. I would recommend just launching right into the game. The first half of the fun is figuring out how to control your motion, and the second half of the fun is figuring out just what, exactly, is going on. Why are there little men floating everywhere, and why do they scream so?

If you’re looking for neat one-button game design that makes great use of physics, check out Strange Attractors. Or, if you’re looking for a game with a lot of tiny little men that say strange things before their inevitable demise, Strange Attractors is a good match for you, too.

Download the game here (25.0 MB) or over at Ominous Development’s site.

An interview with the developers of Strange Attractors is posted over at Gamedev.net for some insight into the game’s development.