Physics Games and Physics-Based Game Downloads

(Rate this game! 103 votes, average: 3.88 out of 5)

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Pluto Strikes Back is a great solo project by Petri Purho, who has been rapidly prototyping games in the spirit of the Experimental Gameplay Project. This title was created in seven days, and the concept is awesome: Pluto, angry at being reclassified as a “dwarf planet”, takes a bat to the rest of the Solar System to act out his jealous revenge.

Beauty in Simplicity

I’m impressed with the elegant minimalism of Pluto Strikes Back’s design. It may seem, at first glance, that designing a simple game would be easier than producing a feature-laden one. In my experience, though, the opposite is true: It’s really hard to create a tight, simple design. And once you have that core game built, it’s pleasantly easy to start adding on top of it (Petri does mention on his blog that destructible planets and a few other features were planned but scrapped for time).

Feature-wise, Pluto Strike Back is in dire need of a high score table. The game is based on arcade scoring–you keep racking up points until you inevitably die. Sure, you could write down your scores and share them with friends, but the game should really be doing that for you. In-game high score lists would really give the game some legs.

Planetary Physics

Pluto Strikes Back utilizes a simple planetary gravity physics model. As the asteroids get closer to the planets, gravity’s influence exponentially increases. It takes a few minutes to adjust to the sudden boost of speed the asteroids get as they approach the baseball bat-wielding Pluto. Asteroids will orbit around planets and swing back around if they’re moving slow enough.

The one thing I would’ve liked to see in the gameplay is more dynamic objects. All of the planets are essentially anchored via springs to their starting locations. They behave a bit like really sluggish pinball bumpers, moving back to their initial position after taking a hit. It would be nice to have the ability to knock them lose, clearing the Solar System of planetary swine.

(Pluto Strikes Back Game Screenshots)

And, Hey, It’s Free!

Pluto Strikes Back does a lot of things really well: an obvious scoring system, a clever concept, and solid production quality (especially considering it was a week-long solo project!). The game presents a short 5-minute distraction, rather than a deep world to explore, but it never claimed to be. It’s free, too, so you really don’t have an excuse not to sink five minutes into it. I recommend you do so now!

Download Pluto Strikes Back Game (4.36 MB)

Make sure you visit Petri’s blog for his other, also excellent, experimental games.

(Rate this game! 130 votes, average: 3.01 out of 5)

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Rag Doll Kung Fu is a mostly solo effort by Mark Healey, a former Lionhead artist (who has since founded Media Molecule with other Lionhead veterans). RDKF is a very impressive production; especially considering that Mark made the jump from artist to programmer in order to implement his vision. The visuals are fantastic, the cut scenes are consistently quirky, and the overall production quality is top-notch. But how does it stack up as a physics game? Well, read on…

Puppet Physics

The control paradigm in Rag Doll Kung Fu is best described as puppetry. Your character will stand under his own power, and you click and drag appendages to move him around. The feet stick to the ground with a breakable force; lead left or right and the feet will unstick and swing forward. This results in a great impression that the character is reluctantly following your cursor.

To strike, you right-click on any limb and drag it towards your intended target. Upon release of the mouse button your character unleashes a kick/punch/head butt/whatever. Any weapon in your hand will automatically connect; all you have to do is flail.

Precision Mousing Required

Where Rag Doll Kung Fu falls down, in my opinion, is its requirement for very precise mouse movements. If you want to kick something you need to find and click on one of your feet. In the midst of battle, and because the default camera behavior is to auto zoom out, that can be rather tricky. This is exacerbated by the fact that the game forces you to constantly move the mouse (you need to move the mouse in tiny circles to constantly power up your chi). The end result is that the mouse cursor is all over the place.

I have a really hard time getting into the flow of a RDKF game because of this. Other character-based physics games, like Ragdoll Masters and Ski Stunt Simulator, implement tighter, more 1-to-1 control of your character. I much prefer direct contract as compared to Rag Doll Kung Fu’s point-and-drag interface. The learning curve may be more obvious when you can simply click on what exactly you’d like to move, but for me the skill ceiling is much, much lower. My skill as a player doesn’t improve much, so I’m still fumbling around as much after a few hours of play as I was when I first picked the game up.

(Rag Doll Kung Fu Game Screenshots)

Content and Production

It’s worth noting that despite RDKF’s flaws as a physics game, the overall experience–when you take into account the cutscenes, production polish, and available minigames–is definitely worth your dollar. The game looks absolutely gorgeous, with a lot of obvious drug references and influences. The slowdown mushroom effect is great. The cutscenes are strange, and depending on your sense of humor you’ll probably be delighted or irritated by them.

A Disappointing Physics Game

At the end of the day, though, I’m not that impressed with Rag Doll Kung Fu as a physics game. I was really looking forward to it, too, after I heard such amazing things following its demo at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop in 2005. There are just too many barriers getting in the way of meaningful, controlled player movement. My RDKF experience usually looks like puppets spazzing out, and that’s not very satisfying or very replayable.

Download Rag Doll Kung Fu Game

The full version of Rag Doll Kung Fu is available for $14.95 on Steam (a demo is also available).

(Rate this game! 136 votes, average: 3.37 out of 5)

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RoboBlitz is a great new FPS-ish physics game by Naked Sky Entertainment. The game plays quite a bit like your standard shooter with a delicious physics coating on everything. The characters are actually physics rigs; they’re “animated” through physics simulation rather than hand-created keyframes. This setup rarely means much in second-to-second gameplay, unfortunately, although the game does employ some clever physics puzzles overall.

The official description is:

RoboBlitzâ„¢ is a humorous, physics-based action game full of inventive gizmos, weapons, characters, and environments. Players take on the role of Blitz, a multi-talented robot who must activate an aging Space Cannon to save his world from a band of maladjusted space pirates.

Physics Puzzles

While the RoboBlitz marketing emphasizes the puzzle aspects of the game, I actually think they could’ve done much more in terms of physics puzzles. There are some neat designs–I particularly enjoyed the laser levels–but on the whole the game makes little use of physics during the standard enemy encounter. You’re usually better off just blasting your enemies, rather than using your grapple/connection beam or utilizing the physics of your environment in some ingenious way.

Because of the weak tactical advantage of using your environment versus simply using your weapons, RoboBlitz plays out much the same as any other shooter or FPS. It’s certainly a challenge to encourage the players to use physics for gameplay, but the designers could’ve done much more (especially with the grappling hook and playing with gravity).

Scrumptious Content

RoboBlitz does a great job delivering plenty of content. The game has 18 levels broken into six groups of three. The third level of each group is a boss fight. I found the boss fights to be somewhat frustrating. I’m perfectly willing to accept that I might be a little daft, but I usually had to wait for the automatic hint before I figured out exactly what the level designer wanted me to do.

The game also employs a user-driven unlock system for new weapons and upgrades, which is a welcome feature. Even though your choice isn’t very significant, since you’ll unlock everything before too long, any level of control makes me feel like I’m more in charge of the experience.

(RoboBlitz Game Screenshots)

Available on Xbox 360 and PC

Overall RoboBlitz is a very polished looking game. The artwork is fantastic, the game makes impressive use of its UE3 engine underpinnings, and the overall production quality is very high. It’s an especially impressive title considering its rather affordable $15 price point.

Download RoboBlitz Game (181 MB)

The full version of the PC game is available on the official RoboBlitz page for $14.95 or on Xbox 360 Live Arcade for 1200 points ($15).