The Basement Collection
Flash Game Collection
1 Player
System: PC
Developer: Edmund McMillen and His Amazing Friends!
Year of Release: 2012 (2001-2009)
Beaten: March 5th, 2015
Edmund McMillen has made two of my favorite games of all time. Super Meat Boy is one of the best platformer games I've ever played, frantic yet precise, the game quickly devolves into chaos as obscenities are shouted at the screen and countless meat boys carelessly throw themselves to their death all in the name of true love. The Binding of Isaac is a love letter to the original Legend of Zelda with a rouge-like paint and some possibly heavy religious overtones, though a lot of typically dark subject matter is addressed in the game it manages to handle it well and keep a lighthearted tone and feeling for the most part. Before these games McMillen made a lot of games using Flash that were posted to Newgrounds. I haven't even thought about that site in a long time, I used to visit it all the time. A lot of these games have truly unique ideas (or at least rarely utilized ideas) and for that reason might hold merit, but for the most part I found this to be a really disappointing collection. Also, this is a collection of FREE games that will cost you four dollars. On the one hand, you do get a bunch of extra content, and McMillen is interesting enough to warrant looking into this (if you're a fan), but on the other these are still freely available online. Needless to say that's a little awkward.
The Basement Collection, as the name (and previous paragraph) imply, is a collection of various things McMillen has made. Yes, things. Included along side his games are additional art, some music and even a few comics. It's presented in his trademark style and I can't fault it aesthetically as I do enjoy his art style quite a lot. A handful of games are available from the outset, and by beating them other things are unlocked. Various achievements exist to possibly add to the replayability, but honestly a lot of these games just didn't interest me into playing long enough to unlock all of them.
Triachnid was originally released in 2006, it stars a three legged spider-like creature and you control his feet. You can latch on to surfaces, grab things, toss them, hold them in your mouth, and eventually creature webbing that you can then use to cling to, swing from, or catch things from falling. A creature has eaten your beloved, and it's up to you to keep yourself and your babies safe, which requires you to find your scattered larva throughout the eight levels. This is a really neat concept, and from time to time I was genuinely having fun with the mechanics, the few times they worked out it really felt like I was controlling a highly agile arachnid. The majority of the time I was annoying trying to get the feet to go where I needed them to, or grab the key I needed. I never really figured out combat, not that it happens enough to worry about it. You simply climb through the levels, sometimes pulling things, or tossing jewels in glowing spot in the wall, all while carrying your young. I can't really recommend the game, other then it's a cool idea and if someone could figure out a better control scheme I think the idea could really be expanded on.
The majority of the initially unlocked games come from 2008, the first of which being Coil. I really did not enjoy Coil. Again, it has a couple interesting ideas going for it at least. Most of the game is built around the idea of a "coil motion" of your mouse, and in that way it works. But it just isn't terribly fun to play. Anything detracting feature (well it could be argued it's a neutral, or even positive, feature, but personally I didn't care for it) was the less than subtle birth/sex/life theme the game ran with. I really don't have much to say about this game other than it wasn't very enjoyable, especially the second bit where you had to divide the three different colored cells, if you don't know what I'm talking about you have a little more happiness in your life than I do.
The predecessor to one of my favorite games is luckily included in this pack, Meat Boy as it's known is pretty much a shorter version of Super Meat Boy. Four chapters worth of levels of wall jumping, salt avoiding insanity ensue. Maybe I'm just not used to playing with a keyboard, but I'm not going to lie, the jumping felt way off in this game. I managed to beat almost every single level in Super Meat Boy, but I was having trouble with basic jumps in Meat Boy, I'm not using the age old "it's the controller's fault!" to make up for my poor game, the foundation for excellence can be found here, but ultimately just the skeleton of that greatness can be found here.
Aether is another interesting game, though I didn't bother finishing it (I might go back and finish) but I've played enough to comment on it. Your goal is to leave Earth on your new found alien buddy, this strange octopus-like creature. You fling yourself through the stars looking for other planets and that's it. You can find some moons and some zodiac constellations, but it just boils down to more flinging around the cosmos. It actually controls mostly well, and while there is a clear goal it still feels mostly hollow. As an experimental game it's interesting, though whether it's worth playing is up for debate. It feels more like interactive art than a full on game, and through that lens it certainly succeeds.
The last game to be released in 2008, Grey Matter, is my favorite of the bunch so far (spoilers: it's flat out my favorite game of the bunch. Described as an anti-shooter the game is simple, the screen is set up like classic Asteroids, with enemies coming in from all sides. You are a little black dot that can move around, hitting space gives you a boost that lets you move through bullets and other dangers, your goal is to slam into the enemies that appear, while there are multiple enemy types you must hit three of the same type in a row. This creates a line from where you killed this enemies resulting in a triangle, and anything caught in this triangle explodes giving you a huge point boost. I don't think I did a good job of explaining this, but just know this is the most interesting game in the mix, and a refreshing take on the shooter genre. Well worth a look.
Two games from 2009 made it into the game, the first of which being Spewer. Spewer. Fucking Spewer. You are a little... worm creature thing that, well, spews vomit as a means of jumping further, higher, and eventually you can find pills that alter your vomit to act differently. The game consists of six chapters, which are made up of eleven single screen platformer/puzzle stages. It plays fine, and aside from the gross concept it isn't a bad game by any means, I just can't personally get into it.
The last game unlocked right out of the box is Time Fcuk, I'm not sure if that was a "clever" sensor for fuck or not. The premise is "simple", you find a duplicate of yourself on a box who demands you get inside the box, you get forced inside and a little over thirty single screen puzzle platformer levels must be completed, at which point you emerge from the box in time to force yourself into the box anew. The title seems to imply time is fucked in some way, and the ending hints that there a lot of your dead bodies lying around. The plot is interesting, but really vague so it's hard to glean what the intention really was, but that is fairly common with McMillen's work, maybe it just doesn't have a meaning at all. The gameplay has a weird multiple dimension angle where you can shift dimensions that have different platforms to jump on, and you can easily kill yourself if you bring yourself into a dimension on top of a wall. It's another sort of difficult game to describe, it's decent and another game I'd recommend checking out, but again it isn't really my genre of choice. Better than Spewer though!
For the most part beating these games unlocks arts, comics or other games. The other games consist of a map pack for Meat Boy, which is just more of the same but new levels. An original "game" is included though called AVGM. This is the biggest piece of shit in the world, I know that it was made sarcastically as a jab to all the "Cookie Clicker"-esque games out there, but this game is still god damn awful. Do you know those "create a picture" programs where there are various bits of clip art you can drag around the screen however you want to "make a picture"? Yeah, this is that game. But to unlock the clip art you must click a light switch, and the amount of clicks goes up exponentially. While it may be a clever jab, in execution is it horror the likes of which even Carnary Mary of Banjo-Tooie is appalled by. My arm literally hurt after getting about 2500 clicks, and I eventually gave up on it. FUCK AVGM.
That unpleasantness aside my favorite aspect of this whole collection is the various collections of McMillen's art. He is really a very talented abstract artist, and as stated before, his style appeals to me. To many it might seem disgusting, but really if you're familiar with this guy at all I'm pretty sure you can immediately tell if you're a fan of his work or not.
All in all McMillen is a very interesting guy, if you're a fan of his work four bucks is a small price to pay to get the majority of his previous work in one convenient and stylized package. In reality though little here is worth checking out for most people, and if any of it interests you I've linked each game to it's free version online so you can give these all a shot. It's a strange collection, and I experienced more frustration/annoyance while playing it than any thing else sadly.
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