VolChaos
December 1, 2011 52 Comments
Despite what my naysayers would have you believe, I have absolutely nothing against retro games. The target of my scorn is old games. They’re not necessarily the same thing. The assertion that I’m against old looking games on principle is absurd. The last I checked, the #1 game on my list was Dead Pixels. And let’s not forget LaserCat spent months on top of the leaderboard.
I had a nice discussion with Kris Steele, the creator of VolChaos, and we both ultimately concluded that my mindset is the result of a generational thing. I’m 22 years old. I’m guessing that’s significantly younger than many of you reading this. And while I’m sure a lot of you will hike up your slacks, spit out your dentures and call me a whippersnapper whose opinion is invalidated because of my age, I’ll remind you that I am and always have been a serious gamer. So while I was raised in an era of Playstations, Dreamcasts, and Nintendo machines with increasingly silly names, I also have always looked to the past in my endless pursuit of the perfect game. During the fiasco with my anti-Sega tangent, someone told me, not an exact quote here but this is the gist of it, “Sonic the Hedgehog (the first one I presume) is the best game I’ve ever played. I first played it when I was 8 years old and I never have played anything better. Why would I want to spend $60 for new games when I’ve already played the best game I’ll ever play?”
When I read that, I thought to myself “I’m only 22 years old. I sure hope I haven’t already played the best game I will ever play in my entire life.” Don’t you think that would be kind of sad?
I swear there's a VolChaos review coming at some point in this article.
It’s not about how old the game is. It’s about the game itself. At my age, I can’t look back on games that were around before I was born and say “well, they were good for their time.” I don’t honestly know if that’s the truth. I do know that the games from my time aren’t really that good. I grew up with Spyro the Dragon, Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, and everyone’s favorite 64-bit era title, Goldeneye. Each and every one of those games fucking sucks today and if you disagree with that, I say this: go play them. Right now. And tell me they’re every bit as fun as they were back then. They’re not. Many of my childhood favorites just aren’t fun today. Some have aged better than others, but in general games really don’t stand the test of time. The games that are exceptions, those are true masterpieces. I first played Super Mario Bros. 3 in 2003 on the Gameboy Advance. It blew my mind that it was, more or less, a direct remake of a game from 1988. That’s a full year before I was born.
Likewise, I first played Sonic the Hedgehog on my Nintendo Gamecube in 2002, when it was released as Sonic Mega Collection. So I actually played Sonic before I played Mario 3. It wasn’t my first experience with Sonic as a franchise. I got Sonic Adventure when the Dreamcast launched and I fucking loved it. At the time at least. Years later I would play it again and realize it’s an absolutely abysmal game. I probably should have caught onto that over the years when I played such masterpieces as Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, and Shadow the Hedgehog. In 2002 I was thirteen years old. I should have been right in the target demographic that Sega carefully tailored Sonic to appeal to. But I simply could not enjoy the original Sonic games. I’m not arguing they are terrible. They’re not. They’re just not spectacular games. Quite frankly, they’re kind of bland. Maybe they were good, but I don’t know that. Given what other games were doing at that period, stuff like Super Mario World or Wonder Boy III (one of the most awesome gems I found on the Wii’s Virtual Console), Sonic just seems so simplistic, sterile, and plain.
Maybe it is a generational thing. I can’t put myself in the mindset of you old farts who fondly remember getting your shit pushed in by Ghosts & Goblins or Battletoads. The uber-difficult games of the 8-bit era are something I just don’t understand the appeal of. It doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t find them fun. I would say Smash TV is kind of hard, but I did have fun with it. Or Mega Man. It was alright. I just don’t equate being fun with being difficult. Some do I guess. And that applies to modern games as well. Yea, most games these days are laughably easy, but every once in a while a game like Dark Souls comes around. When that came out two months ago, I remember everyone raving about how hard it was. And I was like, “who gives a shit how hard it is. Is it any fun?”
Hard games can be fun. Take Aban Hawkins. It was the second game I ever reviewed and it still holds up as one of the better punishment platformers I’ve played. Most of that had to do with the game having fairly decent play control. In a way, it demolishes the theory that I’m against retro punishers because it was in fact an 8-bit styled retro game. So were the Platformance games as well, and it’s not as if they had flawless control. Going into VolChaos, I knew it was a punisher. I knew it was retro-style. People assumed I would hate it because of one of those two reasons.
No, I hate VolChaos because it controls like shit. Conceptually, I have nothing against it. In fact, I actually should like it. My favorite moments in platform games are ones that are filled with urgency and tension. VolChaos is a game that is designed specifically with those two things in mind. As a cowboy who looks absolutely nothing like Chuck Norris in the slightest way, you have to run for a goal while trying to stay well above an ever-rising ocean of lava. If you want, you can simply make a mad dash for the goal. If you want a supreme challenge, you can try to collect all the gems scattered throughout each stage. There’s also a handful of sentient fireballs and malicious flaming birds. By that I mean they’re on fire, not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. What birds do in the privacy of their own nest is nobody’s business but theirs.
I had a few problems with the game. The minor stuff includes the fact that there’s no countdown to when a level begins. In my opinion, it would make a huge difference. A 3-2-1-GO to open every stage would allow me to set myself. Since you’re basically racing against lava, having a countdown seems kind of necessary. I disagree with Kris that it would fuck up the pacing of the game. It doesn’t need to be a slow, Ben Stein-style countdown. Just something other than fading in with everything already moving, including the Cowprick. Yea, if you move the stick before the screen fades in, your dude will have already moved and likely roasted himself.
I also have to admit that I have no interest in getting a 100% completion in this game. Yes, doing so unlocks “expert” mode for each level. That likely would be worth some amount of gaming cred, but in order to do so I’m guessing I would have to devote weeks, maybe months, towards becoming a professional VolChaos player. I’m not really looking for a game that would require that big of a time investment, especially from the XBLIG marketplace. Besides, I’m guessing that being a professional VolChaos player wouldn’t pay all that well.
Of course, my biggest problem is with the overall control of the game. I found it to be just too loose and floaty. VolChaos is primarily about jumping from narrow ledge to narrow ledge. The tool you’re given to do that is a jump that feels out of synch with the overall movement physics of the game. When you jump, the Cowhole seems to build up more speed and momentum than he should. Since the ledges are often only the width of the character himself, this will usually lead to you overshooting your target and falling into the lava. There’s almost no way you can naturally jump and hit the platform. I spent the entire game doing what I call Joystick Jitterbug, leaping with the stick and then immediately having to pull it in the opposite direction to avoid overshooting. Then to make sure I don’t undershoot, I have to pull the stick forward again. The ensuing dance was the only way I could manage my way through the game. It also left a powdery residue on my controller that I could bag and sell in Oakland if I was the unscrupulous type.
I guess some people like this sort of control. Kris told me he had people congratulate him on the floatiness, and given the reaction to my Sega piece, I believe it. If his aim was to make an old-school platformer with extremely high difficulty and spotty play control, mission accomplished I suppose. For me, a platformer absolutely has to have good control. VolChaos is hard, no doubt about it, but why is it hard? It’s not the level design, or the lava. It’s the controls. They’re what killed me the most. Call me crazy, but when I’m failing at a game, I want it to be because I’m a fuck up. In VolChaos, my most common method of death was landing on a platform, trying to jump again, not jumping, and watching my guy walk off the ledge and into the lava. It took me about two hours to get the “normal” ending, almost all of which was spent fighting with my own controller. Well that’s not the mark of a great game. That’s just annoying.
But I’m sure people will disagree with me and say I’m just being a hater or a troll or whatever. As Kris pointed out to me, I’m the only person who’s said to him that VolChaos is no good and I’m not the type of person the game was intended for in the first place. And it’s true that people are tossing themselves off in glee over his game, which already has been called game of the month by those NeoGaf dudes that link in here every once in a while, and Twitter has lit up congratulating him on creating such a wonderfully frustrating game. I’m truly glad they all enjoyed it. I didn’t. For me, VolChaos is the worst volcano themed form of entertainment I’ve ever encountered. Yes, yes, I’ve seen Dante’s Peak. Yea, I saw that other flick with Tommy Lee Jones too. Okay, third worst ever.
No, I didn’t see that Tom Hanks volcano movie. No, I don’t want to see it either. Quite frankly, I would rather play through VolChaos again.
VolChaos was developed by Fun Infused Games
80 Microsoft Points think the Cowboy dude looks like he’s wearing lipstick. Fun Infused said the Cowboy was supposed to look like Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris does not wear lipstick. In fact, I think suggesting he does gives him the legal right to rip your arm off and beat you to death with it in the making of this review.
Indie Gamer Chick 
I do agree with your two main complaints, but mainly the countdown. I forget which game it was that released within the last year, but basically the countdown was “3, 2, 1, Go!” the first time you went though the level and ” 1, Go!” every time you restarted the level after dying. I feel like that would be a nice addition, especially on the Expert levels where being behind by a step means dying. The fade in, instant start screen works marvelously in Super Meat Boy, but then again you don’t have lava racing after you in that game either.
In terms of controls, I found myself getting better at them over time and I discovered the floaty feel, but then again I have only played the first 20 levels, so I can’t really comment on them without playing the whole game.
I do think that he has the level design down (from what I have played). The placement of everything seems very well thought out and makes the game more fun to play well all the levels are varied.
I also am a fan of the time system. This is the perfect game for online leaderboards if they were useful in XBLIG. The combination of collecting all the gems in order to make sure you get no time loss is nice and challenging. Too bad I can only race against my own times, because that gets kind of old to yell “haha eat it me!”.
Once again I cannot really comment fully on any of the game’s features fully because I haven’t played it all the way through, but the first 20 levels have been very enjoyable.
Nice comments on old games. I agree. You seem to have covered everything from that angle. I will be the first to admit that most games just do not hold up over time.
While I enjoyed the game, I did have some trouble with the controls too. He’s using an inertia based system, and in a game like this you need to be able to start and stop much more quickly. (For example, it seems physically impossible to be tricky with the thwomps. You really just need to book it past them.)
The overall charm of the game (the intro, graphics, and goofy text) and the fact that it’s exactly my favorite sort of game mean I’m willing to forgive that. I got to level 36 in one sitting last night, with 100% on each level.
Joe vs. the Volcano is pretty damned awesome, btw.
I don’t watch Meg Ryan movies.
I’d recommend listening to the song “Volcano” by Presidents of the United States of America.
On Sonic – keep in mind that at the time, most people were comparing it to NES games, not Super Mario World. It’s more impressive in that context. Also, the Sonic & Knuckles lockon cartridge was a really unique idea – even the Nintendo fanboys of the time liked that.
Mario 64 – you’re crazy. That’s one of the few early 3D games that does hold up today.
Volchaos – I had no issue with the controls other than the fade in bit. I’d generally overjump very slightly, but not much. Just a light tap the other way would correct it. I tend to do that in a lot of games though. I prefer less floatiness in the jump, but the levels are designed around the physics so it worked. My deaths came because I aimed to collect all the gems. Without going for gems, I think the game isn’t very hard.
2D games usually age better than 3D (especially early 3D) ones. This said, I had no problems with VolChaos’ controls, but the one thing that spoiled it for me was the 2-3 seconds blank screen wait after every death. I’ve also been playing Super Meat Boy lately (and VolChaos is very like SMB) and I loved how it lets you restart immediately after dying: it lets you try again and again the most difficult passages without feeling too frustrated. In VolChaos instead, you try something difficult, then you die and you have to stare at a blank screen for 2-3 seconds for no reason, then the fade in kicks without a warn. Gamebreaking for me – but it’s a good game except this.
I’m working on a fix for this, hopefully it will be out next week. Some Xbox’s seem to have considerably slower hard drives than the one I developed Volchaos on. On my Xbox, it is instant, exactly like Super Meat Boy. This was a complete surprise to find out it wasn’t like this for everyone else and I’m going to get a fix out as soon as I can.
Indeed, on my system it plays exactly as in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1eztjlS_-Q including the looong delay after pressing “A” at the start… nice to hear you’re working on it though. 🙂
That’s the video that really tipped me off on the problem. At first when I watched that video, I thought my Internet was laggy, took me a while to realize the pausing was actually in the game itself.
I’m not sure if there is much I can do about the lag when pressing A at the start, but I should be able to get rid of the lag after deaths and clean up the lag at the end of levels some.
Bruno: Do you have an Arcade Xbox or one of the 4gig versions? I’ve also been surprised to see slowdown on YouTube videos of Elfsquad in spots that run flawlessly on my system, and was hoping to figure out exactly what the discrepancy is.
It seems to be hard drive Xboxes. I’m thinking at this point it is the older Xboxes with hard drives and possibly also having a lot of games on these older Xboxes.
I would be curious for those seeing slowdown, if you save to a flash drive instead, does it go away?
I wonder if that problem would be corrected with the upcoming Dashboard update. My Xbox takes, no joke, about 5 minutest to load up my game list. But a few people with the Beta told me that problem no longer exists with the new dash.
Of course I know nothing about programming so maybe I’m wrong.
That’s an Xbox issue. I’d hope they can clean it up, anyone with lots of games will run into that.
Just tried choosing the internal memory unit for saving and yes, no slowdowns whatsoever. Much better! BTW my 2 cents about the countdown: as long as it’s fast – personally I’d go for a “back from the dead” animation, SMB style, but your choice of course!
Awesome that works! I’ll still try and fix this as best I can from my end too, but at some point it will need to save / load and that will still be slow.
I wonder what it would look like if I just ran the death animation in reverse… hmm… could be cool.
I bought it used without HD, but I’m not sure it was an arcade one or a normal one with the HD taken off of it. Anyway it has an internal memory unit and an hdmi out, which my older XBox didn’t have. I added a 120gb HD later, also sometimes the dashboard gets stuck loading things, maybe because the HD is too full? just approx 4gb free on it…
WOAH THIS IS PRETTY FUCKIN AWESOME!!!
Sorry about that, all y’all.
It’s just that up until now I had no idea that this XBLIG Shangri La existed.
The Indie Games Channel is probably the first thing that I check when I fire up my Xbox, and it’s always been a bit (a LOT bit) of an annoyance that it’s hard to find news/reviews about those particular games.
I mean, it’s not that difficult to find/Google (because that’s a verb now, right?) info about the games on there and whatnot, but it’s tough to find an informative, thoughtful kinda site that’s dedicated to that sort of thing.
Know what I mean?
… yeah – I guess you do actually.
So – yeah, this is a great find for me and I concur with you IGC on “Dead Pixels”.
IS BOSS.
Um, thanks? You can try Armless Octopus, Two Fedoras, and Gear-Fish as well.
Thank YOU, actually – ArmlessOctopus and Gear-Fish look especially promising.
When it comes to basic video game news, I mainly live on Destructoid. When it comes to
Indie Game news…well, up until now I was like a doomed sailor – lost at sea … without a life-raft.
Yeesh.
On topic, “Volchaos” is pretty fun for a SMB clone.
The control mechanics can be dodgy as hell for sure, but I think I’ll probably end up dropping that dollar.
If you’re looking for a site that caters specifically to indie stuff, stay tuned. I’ve heard rumblings from my friends.
Glad you like the site. Hope you find some cool games on here.
charlie — don’t toss around the phrase “SMB clone”. Probably not what the developer was going for. SMB has its own style and so does Volchaos. SMB is about finishing the level with trail and error, but no real time limit on most of them. While Volchaos is about getting to the end and trying to chart a path in order to collect all the gems along the way and not die.
Kairi — ooohhh rumblings? That can only be good news for the indie channel.
Super Meat Boy was a definite influence, I started work on Volchaos largely because of Super Meat Boy, but I put my own twist on this genre too. I wanted to speed up the game more and add more suspense.
oh yeah, I can definitely see the influence on the fast paced gameplay. You just twisted it enough in your own way so that it would stand on its own without having to really on people saying “This is just like that awesome Super Meat Boy game”
For whatever it’s worth, I prefer Volchaos to Super Meat Boy.
‘Thank YOU, actually – ArmlessOctopus and Gear-Fish look especially promising.’
Go Fish! That’s the equivalent of a pretty girl telling me I’m cute, so I’ll take it.
I’d actually agree with most everything I’ve read on here, review and comments. It’s definitely its own game. Influences are there, sure, but I’m having fun with it so far (only on lvl 15), despite not usually getting into punish-formers. I think a countdown would work well here, especially on the Expert levels where you jump right into it, pardon the pun. Thankfully no slowdown for me between deaths, and I’m like Kairi, plenty of XBLIGs on my 120gig (15gig open), along with ubiquitous DLC.
On a side note, GoldenEye is still awesome today, Kairi, and I will proximity mine and / or Bond Slap any comers… you’ll just have to actually BE at my place, oh, and bring extra controllers; its one drawback.
does it help if I say you are cute? no?
And for some reason I still get minor slowdowns. Just enough to bug me, which is unfortunate. Which xboxes do you all have, cause I have the new 250 gig
I have an old Xbox with a new 250 gig, and I get the couple of seconds delay before respawn. That tells me it’s the Xbox, not the HDD.
well I think the issue is quite widespread, right now it is affecting the start of the level every time I play. I would suggest maybe have the level spawn, then the character spawn, then the lava rises on a slight delay. Quick fix without need of countdown
I actually like that idea and would endorse it.
Dcon6393 – I realize that they’re completely different style-wise, but conceptually they’re pretty damned similar. This is not a bad thing or a knock on VolChaos.
It’s a tried and true AWESOME formula.
kriswd40 – Your game is a pretty cool guy. Dig the soundtrack.
*stoked*
I dunno, a developer title like FUN INFUSED GAMES makes me think the guy’s trying to make games that appeal to a pretty wide audience. You know, people who like GAMES with FUN put into them. 🙂
Not the 5% who always like aesthetically misguided punishment games.
Volchaos’ floaty controls don’t really bother me. I always have to do that Joystick Jitterbug in LaserCat too, thanks to the cat’s gargatuan drifty leaps. Besides (old game alert), I’d take floaty jumping over Castlevania 3’s fixed-distance jumps any day.
It also seems a little churlish to criticise the game for having too much content. “I’d have to spend a while playing it, and I don’t want to” isn’t more a criticism of your attention span than the game itself.
In any case, Volchaos didn’t impress me that much. I don’t actively dislike it, but it doesn’t really do anything for me either. Maybe I’d have a higher opinion of it if I liked punishment platformers, but I don’t. Except for N+.
God damn, typos galore. You really need an edit function in your comments section.
> The minor stuff includes the fact that there’s no countdown to when a level begins. In my opinion, it would make a huge difference. A 3-2-1-GO to open every stage would allow me to set myself. Since you’re basically racing against lava, having a countdown seems kind of necessary. I disagree with Kris that it would fuck up the pacing of the game. It doesn’t need to be a slow, Ben Stein-style countdown. Just something other than fading in with everything already moving, including the Cowprick
Come on Kairi, don’t you listen to me? I told you I was fixing the moving while fading in issue and I’m looking into the 3-2-1 thing too. I’ve implemented a sort of race car start thing (yellow skull, yellow skull, green skull for go!). It doesn’t quite feel right yet but I’m trying it out.
I’m aiming to release this update next week. Will include another couple things too, like tweaks to level 31 and 10 (making it a little easier, as gamers seem to struggle too much with this early level).
I’ll look at movement again and potentially tweak some acceleration / deceleration, but it’s unlikely there will be any major changes.
I could have sworn you said “no” on the countdown thing.
I’m currently tinkering with creating a 2D platforming game, so I’m reading all these comments very closely. Ms. Chick has always had a real bug up her ass when it comes to 2d platformer controls, and it’s clearly something that is important to get right. I suppose you’ll never please all the people all the time.
I’ll have to download Volchaos, if only to know what “too floaty” actually means.
Adman
It’s relative. One of Kairi’s preferred punishment platformers, Aban Hawkins, feels a little heavy and clumsy to me. Personally I prefer too floaty to too heavy.
For comparison of jumping mechanics: try Volchaos, Aban Hawkins, and After Dusk – Volchaos has floaty jumps, Aban has heavier but kind of medium-ish jumps, and After Dusk has jumps that feel like dropping a brick into a bucket (though I quite like the game overall).
Durn – need to get acclimated to this new (for me) commenting format.
My reply from December 3, 2011 at 12:26 am should’ve been here.
Sorry y’all.
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I haven’t played After Dusk, but I’ll take the Aban Hawkins jumps over “floaty” any day of the week.
Also, aren’t there 2 kinds of jumps in *”AH&1000S”?
* – yeah, it looks ridiculous. That’s why I typed it.
Yes, Aban has a second “high jump” button in lieu of a double jump.
BTW Charlie, use the reply button instead of creating a new thingie every time you reply. Good man.
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Great review as ever. Got to say I disagree about Crash sucking. I’ve burned through it to 100% completion over the last couple of weeks and it’s just as good as ever in my opinion. If you have psplus I think it’s still free to download, give it a try yourself!
You know, I’m not hating for the sake of hating here. I just don’t see it from everyone else’s perspective.
My first ever console that was mine, that I wanted, was the Playstation. I played Crash Bandicoot at a Kiosk at Sears (I think it was Sears). I was 7 years old. I had to have it. Santa gave it for me for Christmas that year. And I totally loved it. Loved the original sequels too (I lost interest when it hit the PS2).
But I just went back and played it for like 20 minutes because I got it with my Playstation Plus subscription and I was like, uhhhhh, just not that good anymore. It doesn’t change the fact that Crash Bandicoot is and will always be the thing that got me into gaming. That’s one thing so many Retro guys do, like I’m personally attacking their childhood. I’m not. I’m also not interested in the slightest bit with reliving my childhood. The games I liked as a kid don’t stack up today. And I can’t trick myself into thinking I’m having fun with modern Crash games just because it’s what I loved as a kid. That’s what I think so many Sonic guys do. They played Sonic as a kid, so they want to have the kind of fun they had as a kid in their adult years. Even if the new games suck, they’ll tell themselves otherwise.
I got a Nintendo 64 for my 9th birthday in 1998 and because I played Banjo Kazooie on the kiosk at Toys R Us. I loved it then. Downloaded Banjo Kazooie on my Xbox 360 and I got bored after an hour or two. It’s not that the game is necessarily bad. It was really good for it’s time, but it’s just okay now. Plus, I’ve already invested 40 or whatever hours of my life into the game previously. Any time I spend with it today is time that I can’t spend with new games that I haven’t already played before. There’s so many out there, and I want to be able to play as many of them as I can.
Super Mario 64: Loved it as a kid. Hated it on my Nintendo DS 8 years later, although maybe that had more to do with the fact that Nintendo was dumb enough to make Mario 64 without an analog stick. For reals Nintendo? That’s like trying to swim without water. But even if I dust off my Nintendo 64 today, Mario 64 can’t hold a candle to the gameplay experience I got from Super Mario Galaxy, or countless other 3D platformers that have come out since. I had the same thing happen with Ocarina of Time on the 3DS: a game I loved as a kid but I don’t really want to replay again as an adult because Zelda has been done better a couple times over since then.
Oh yeah, I know exactly what you’re saying. I’m not one of those people who thinks you’re trolling. I just believe Crash to be an excellent game that’s worth playing on its own merits as a brilliantly designed and charming platformer. Same goes for Mario 64. The likes of Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye and Spyro, however, I don’t think are much fun now and they would fit the ‘good for their time’ description. Like you, I’m not interested in playing games like that when there is better stuff around, but I don’t write off retro altogether because I know there are more Mario 64s and Crash Bandicoots that I’ll have just as much fun with as any modern game.
And when it comes to going back and playing the same game again, I suppose that’s just about personal preference. You obviously like to play something once through and move on, whereas I tend to play games again and again if I like them. Probably helps that I have the worst memory ever heh.
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