FRED'S EXCITING ADVENTURE [Halloween Prank/Artgame]

snapman's picture

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THE FOLLOWING POST IS A WORK OF FICTION INTENDED TO CREATE ATMOSPHERE AND BACKSTORY FOR A HALLOWEEN GAME
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Figured I'd make a new thread for a new month.

A quick note before this week's find: Prior to the Geocities rescue mission (great job all involved!) I had made a list of the places I had been downloading these freehosting picks from. Now that list isn't anywhere to be found. I know I had been writing it on my other laptop, but I can't find it anywhere on the drive. I still worry that the list might have contained links to some Geocities pages that we didn't get to mirror.

What I did find on the laptop however was "Fred's Exciting Adventure"! It's a cute little platformer starring what looks like a cross between Cool Spot and Sonic the Hedgehog. The levels make heavy use of KnP clipart, but there's an interesting visual conflict between the home-made and stock art. A little green guy runs back and forth on the hill, and knocks you into the air if you touch him. He's a little difficult to jump over, but it seems to work if you just hold the right arrow and jump key down. The next screen introduces spikes and moving platforms, which make the green guy more dangerous (notice the blood on the spikes if you fall on them!). He even has the nerve to stop at the edge some times, making it impossible to jump him until he starts moving again!

I haven't had time to finish the game yet (so busy that my Monday updates are on Thursday!) but a glance at the levels in KnP seem to indicate that the game isn't very long (maybe even unfinished?). Something about the game feels really familiar to me, and I don't know why that makes me uneasy. Maybe it's just that I don't know if this game was from one of the Geocities sites we could have lost, which adds an air of mystery to it for me. Until I track down that text file again, or find the site I got it from, this game is an orphan.

AttachmentSize
FRED.zip1.54 MB
fred1.png29.71 KB
fred2.png30 KB
fred3.png35.22 KB
qrleon's picture

Oh man it gets pretty wacky

Oh man it gets pretty wacky at the end. Definitely worth finishing.

dessgeega's picture

damn

damn

snapman's picture

Okay, finally owning up to

Okay, finally owning up to this. If you haven't figured it out already, I made "Fred's Exciting Adventure" as a fun Halloween project. I got the idea after playing "Nanashi No Game" on my DS. The end of Geocities provided the perfect backdrop for a game to have an unknowable origin, and the "weekly freehosting pick" was both research and a ruse. The game is supposed to have a sort of meaning to it, regarding the whole "Klik" and "Indie Game" scene, and Glorious Trainwreck's place in it. I hope my misdirection made the experience interesting for those who played it before this reveal, and I hope everybody here is forgiving enough to not resent my deceit.

The game is largely an homage to the original "Furballs" by Spram, which is one of my favorite KnP games ever.

qrleon's picture

I WANT TO BELIEVE

I was going to question the huge active objects on a game timestamped from 1995, but it seemed weirdly plausable. That lost KNP platformer I mentioned on IRC, about the people with wheels instead of feet, had a boss fight with rising water just like that. (the water source was the boss's tears)

Also, I didn't bother loading it in the editor.

sergiocornaga's picture

This was really excellent, I

This was really excellent, I just wish I'd played it before reading this. :(

Some of the scenes in this were eerily familiar from games I've made in the past. That's... that's a coincidence, right?

I thoroughly enjoyed this!

I thoroughly enjoyed this! :D

SpindleyQ's picture

Hereby nominating this game

Hereby nominating this game for the Breathtaking Triumphs page.

Also, if you haven't cracked open the game in Klik & Play and poked at all the creepy disconnected scenes, you haven't been properly cursed.

sergiocornaga's picture

Seconding nomination!

Seconding nomination!

sergiocornaga's picture

Just a heads up, I made TGF

Just a heads up, I made TGF ports of this game and its sequel today for all you 64-bit Windows users out there. Download here!

Let me know if I messed anything up, snapman! FRED 3 IN 2014

AttachmentSize
FredsExcitingCollection.zip11.44 MB
Danni's picture

Here's a bugfix to frame 21

Here's a bugfix to frame 21 of Fred 1 so that it requires user interaction (instead of going off as the beginning). Seems that the speed variable breaks in TGF1. This fix should make it behave like the original KnP version. Unfortunately it has the TGF splash at the end.

Frayed 2 has no TGF conversion bugs that I'm aware of.

AttachmentSize
fec_bugfix.zip11.49 MB
sergiocornaga's picture

I removed the TGF splash. I

I removed the TGF splash. I also had a change of heart and separated the games into two downloads.

While testing, FEA crashed a couple of times following the Evil Face scene due to TGF's sound bugs, so I looked into making a build in MMF2. Too much breaks, unfortunately, so I've just bundled each game with Bumcharles 2 style .BAT files. Good idea?

(P.S. I'm replying to my first post in case we need to edit our posts)

AttachmentSize
FRAYED2.zip9.93 MB
FEA.zip1.96 MB
thesycophant's picture

I checked this out because

I checked this out because it was on freeindiega.me. Thanks for promoting it, sergiocornaga!

I'm really impressed by it. So moody. So freaky. I played it right before bed and found it kind of unsettling. So unsettling that I've decided I'm waiting to play FRAYED 2 till it's light out again.