Game critic, indie-game auteur, and friend-of-The-Gameshelf Anna Anthropy has just released her latest game, When Pigs Fly, via the Newgrounds game portal.
It's a flash game about a little piggy who falls into an underground labyrinth. The piggy is helped by a pair of wings which let it soar over any obstacle, but which will fail in a burst of feathers and squealing if they brush against anything other than air. And there's your game. You have infinite lives, and "dying" sets you back only a second or two.
Edit: Finished in 32:29, with 241 accidents. I enjoyed it, though it's surprisingly tough. The visual atmosphere reminded me of Knytt, though Pigs' linearity and difficulty put it in a separate class of gameplay.
Oh, geez. I am just not hardcore enough for this. Dying may only set you back a couple of seconds, but dying twenty times in a row sets you back a whole lot of them.
Sorry, folks. I love the setup -- the opening scene gets full weight out of every element, from the animation to the sound effects to the "how to play" text. But that 119th stalactite ground me down.
The author posted a giant map of the whole game. When I checked it, I discovered that where I had last quit was only 1 screen away from the end of the game. So I thought I'd give it a quick shot. And so I started in the horseshoe-shaped room near the end. And I landed on the first little platform, and I disappeared, and then the screen changed, and then it changed again. And I could occasionally hear squealing, but I couldn't move anything, and it was on the screen that's just above the giant "WHEN PIGS FLY" logo you can see on the map. I relaoded and continued, and I ended up starting there. So then it was just a matter of flying easily through to the end. So, I guess I "won" the game. 54:51 with 491 accidents.