The Great Work (Nifflas)

tgw
This game is closely connected to a documentary film by Bautafilm about Christer Böke who has has taken one year off from his well-paid job as an IT-salesman to become a full-time Alchemist. Watch this trailer![Author’s Description]

[Download for Windows]
[Download for Mac]
[Download for Linux (64 bit)]
[Download for Linux (32 bit)]

[MMF2 Source Code]

11 Comments.

  1. you’re sure that’s not a screenshot of knytt underground?

    • From what I understand, Knytt Underground originally grew out of this small game.

      • this actually goes a long way toward explaining knytt underground, because knytt underground is just this with all of the detritus and focus on quantity that one expects (or expects an audience to expect) of some ps3 game that you spend money for.

        i like this a lot so far. i haven’t finished it yet, but it’s a much richer experience.

        • I know what you mean about Knytt Underground (particularly the sprawling inventory), but at the same time I think the length is important. There’s just so much you can do with the form-switching that I don’t think a shorter game could feature the same challenges without an unpleasant difficulty curve.

          (I’m also maybe biased because it’s the first Nifflas game I’ve ever been able to play, because the rest were all Windows-only.)

          • Was the multiplatform release of NightSky only available through the humble bundle? That’d be sad. (If not, get it.)

    • It appears to use the same base-level engine, but the differences are interesting, if nothing else for how they set some of Knytt’s design decisions in relief (especially w/r/t movement, here needing to hold a button to activate wall/ceiling-climbing).

      The inventory system is unwieldy-feeling at first, the way you swap items between your own collection and that of other characters, but it feels pretty elegant once you get the swing of it.

      Unfortunately, I think the tutorial may be necessary for this one? Curious, then, that it’s not nearly as foregrounded as Knytt Underground’s.

  2. That was great. I prefer the controls of Knytt, but this had some neat mechanics. I wish there was a little more done with the alchemy though. It kind of felt like the first couple recipes were getting us ready for some more general crafting mechanic, but it never really progressed past “combine stuff as instructed by the pieces of paper”. Ah well—I’ll just have to wait for Hadean Lands to happen.

    Also, I LOLed at the book translation part.

  3. Charles de Goal

    Oh, interesting. And it even works great under Linux!

  4. Um, why is S jump, not UP? It makes it really awkward to play.

  5. The jumping mechanic makes this completely unplayable for me. 😐