Physics Games and Physics-Based Game Downloads

(Rate this game! 159 votes, average: 2.94 out of 5)

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Bloboats is a neat physics game by Markus “MakeGh” Kettunen. He entered the game into the Assembly ’06 Game Development Competition. The competition has some other great-looking titles, so be sure to check out the other entires. I found Bloboats wholly enjoyable, even if it is a little sparse on polish. The readme.txt describes the game as:

Bloboats is a boat racing game in which the objective is to reach the goal as fast as possible, at least faster than your friend does. Perhaps the poor ship, MS Enterprise, is always in distress, or something.

Fun with Buoyancy

The physics modeling in Bloboats is rather straightforward. There isn’t a sophisticated fluid dynamics system at work or anything along those lines. When particles of your boat are underwater, they’re pushed upwards. Gravity and collisions work as you would expect. Your boat’s engine only provides thrust when it’s submerged.

Despite these simple mechanics, I found Bloboats a lot of fun to play. The mechanic had a nice toy feeling to it, and was decently controllable. It took a few minutes to learn how to keep the boat horizontal, but after that things were smooth sailing. The undulating waterline is a neat concept, although overall I think the game doesn’t live up to the potential of its design.

More Content Needed

Primarily, Bloboats needs more content in the way of coherent level design. The game has a fair amount of levels (17), but they’re relatively homogenous. I really would have liked to see the level design take on a more experimental edge, with very strongly themed levels. It’s hard to push this too far. Even gimmicky is better than repetitive.

There’s plenty of head room left to take a play mechanic like this to completely embellish it: weapons, enemy boats, power-ups, submarines, you name it.

(Bloboats Game Screenshots)

It’s Free!

Still, Bloboats provides a great amount of fun for a great price: completely and absolutely free. It’s a great example of an unexplored physics mechanic, and there’s even a hidden Bloboats Invaders game to boot.

Download Bloboats Game (8.2 MB) [mirror]

Be sure to check out the other entries in Assembly ’06 Game Development Competition.

(Rate this game! 85 votes, average: 3.08 out of 5)

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Rocky the Monkey is a new physics game by Rag Doll Software, purveyors of fine physics games. The formula is simple: ragdoll + grappling hook + monkey = fun. The official description of the title is far too excellent to pass up, so here it is:

Rocky the Monkey is a deep strategy game set up in a post-apocalyptic world. Ice caps are melting and water levels are rising at an impressive speed. As a monkey willing to survive, you will have to climb up a series of misteriously floating rocks. Luckily, having been bitten by a radioactive spider, you have gained the ability to shoot webs at will. However, power comes at a price, and you will have to eat bananas constantly to survive. Will you be able to defeat all evil and save the universe?

Control Troubles

The controls in Rocky the Monkey are surprisingly hard to learn considering their simplicity. Standard WASD keys move your simian counterpart, and clicking the mouse will connect or disconnect your grappling hook. Something about the setup isn’t working too well, although once you get past the learning curve it’s smooth banana-sailing from there.

Personally I think the problem lies with the mouse click system. Rather than click and hold to connect an object, you click once to connect and a second time to disconnect. The first few times I played the game I was trying to click and hold and had to consciously remind myself to do otherwise. This usually resulted in disaster.

Never-Ending

There is no level structure in Rocky the Monkey. The world is randomly generated, and the game will simply continue indefinitely as you progress upward. Psychologically I find this has a very negative effect on my play experience. I don’t have a lot of motivation to continue when there aren’t any achievable goals. Something as simple as a break every 100 feet would be enough. As is the game is kind of maddening.

(Rocky the Monkey Game Screenshots)

It’s Free!

It’s hard to complain when the game is free, though, and Matteo decided to release Rocky the Monkey free of charge. Check it out, and if anyone has thoughts on how the controls could be improved feel free to post your opinion. It’s an interesting example of something that should be working well but somehow just isn’t.

Rocky the Monkey Game Info
(The game is now free for customers of Rag Doll Soft games–check site for more info).

(Rate this game! 329 votes, average: 4.07 out of 5)

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De Blob is an amazing project by students at the Utrecht School of the Arts and Utrecht University. The game was developed by a team of 9 in just four months, with everyone working minimal hours alongside other obligations. The output is tremendous. Joost van Dongen, the lead programmer, describes the game as:

It is a 3D game in which the player controls a ball of paint rolling through the city. The ball can absorb coloured NPC’s to become larger and change its colour. With the paint, the player can then proceed to paint the entire city. Almost everything is paintable: buildings, trees, cars and using the paint trace even the ground. The main goal of the game is to paint all 17 landmark buildings. Hardcore fanatics can also try to collect all 50 coins that are hidden around the level.

Perception vs. Simulation

What’s really interesting about De Blob, as Joost points out in his Gamedev.net post, is that the actual physics simulation of the main character is a simple rigid body sphere. Even though the game feels like you’re controlling a blob of fluid, this is entirely accomplished by the presentation. The squash and stretch of the blob and the squishy-sounding audio creates the illusion. It’s a very powerful example of how our internal, mental simulation of a game world can actually be much more complex than the computer’s underlying simulation.

Player perception is an important lesson for game developers to learn. You could enhance the fidelity of your physics simulation, or you could simply create the illusion of enhanced complexity. The flipside is possible, too, where a player could perceive a physics simulation as less complex than it really is. When you design a system, keep in mind that players spend more time playing the game in their heads than they do playing the hard-and-fast numbers inside some piece of silicon.

Mark Your Territory

The gameplay in De Blob is fairly basic, but remarkably well executed. The goal is to become the same color as various targets throughout the city and then touch them. The game uses a very elegant color-mixing scheme to accomplish this. For instance, if you need to turn green you’ll have to pick up a blue and a yellow person. Some of the targets require careful movement to reach, but for the most part the physics aspects of the game are very simplistic.

(De Blob Game Screenshots)

It’s Fun!

De Blob was designed as a kiosk game, where passer-bys in an information center would casually play for a few minutes and then move on. Because of this, the game doesn’t have a lot of structure on top of it. There is only one level, and there aren’t any rewards for actually completing your task.

Still, it’s a surprising amount of fun to play and a visual treat to look at. And, hey, it’s free, so give it a whirl. The only downside is steep system requirements–the developers recommend a 2Ghz machine with 512 MB of memory.

Download De Blob Game [mirror 1] [mirror 2] (99 MB)

More information on the game is available in this Gamedev.net discussion thread, which was posted by the lead programmer.