jack

You will remember the flash game? I won't link to it here because I hope to upload version 0.4 shortly, with new levels, more plot and a fiddled interface.

What I like about it is the complexity of the characters. Many games do wonderful things with enemies with very simple rules (eg. Chip's Challenge, Deadly Rooms of Death) which can literally be summed up in one or two clauses. These are a bit more complicated, enough to have some challenging emergent behaviour. Instead of exploring interaction solely on a map, you have to explore abstract state spaces that control them, the idea being even one enemy can be challenging.

Although it should always be fairly logical, simple and graspable, many levels are essentially written around observing, predicting and exploiting just one aspect of behaviour. And others are tweaked to make the overall effect what you'd expect -- eg. if being chased by two enemies, and you go round a corner, and the first follows you, the second will follow him, rather than standing around stupidly. Exploiting that subtlety is far ahead, but it correctly gives you what you'd expect: both continue following you, but they don't just automatically know where you're going.

However, I think I was too niggardly. I like exploring every aspect of interaction of each piece of scenery, but I should have had some more simple interface: a fence, a gate, etc. Then levels could be simpler because you don't need to justify "you can get him but he can't get you" you can just do it, and if you have a fence it's entirely obvious what that means.

Anyway, the point of the post. I never had a name for the game. What should I call it??