Video Games

"You Have To Burn The Rope" is an easy and quick to finish game with a little trick. In this game there is only one level with a boss. You, as a player, have to literally burn the rope in order to kill the boss and finish the game. Controls in this game a simple: you can move and jump around with arrow keys. Most of the letter keys on the keyboard would trigger a weapon throw, which is ironically useless in this game since those weapons don't do any damage to the boss. All of those things are mentioned in the beginning of the game in pure text form by the author of the game. Naturally, when seeing a game similar to those made in Game Maker, you would expect tools at your disposal to be useful, especially when to comes to killing a boss with weapons. However, in this game you simply have to follow the game's name and burn the rope to complete it(see Pic. 1).

Pic. 1. You Have To Burn The Rope

"WizardWizard" is a typical game with many levels and puzzles which one must complete in order to advance to the next level. There are 25 levels in this game with difficulty increasing with each level you pass. The controls are simple: you can jump, double jump and move with arrow keys. And that is all you need to do here. Your goal for every level is to obtain the key and open the door which leads to the next level. Even though a player can die from a fall into abyss or to a spinning cog, the death is not permanent and the player would respawn immediately and attempt to complete the level again. However, when the player dies, the deathcount increases by one. Note that each level's title provides a hint to or outlines the major obstacle in your path to finishing the level(see Pic. 2).

Pic. 2. WizardWizard

"This is The Only Level" is a game with only one physical level, but with dynamic mechanics which change with every stage of the same level passed. Things like gravity, controls, objects' and surfaces' characteristics vary with each stage with one or more things from the list changed on each stage. Even though the level's structure always looks the same, the objective, which is to reach the other end of the level, or rather escape the level, would be the same and in the same place. However, due to variation of all of the factors mentioned before, players experience different challenges throughout the stages of the game. The game tracks your time, and the number of deaths. Each stage has a title which is a hint to how to beat the stage(see Pic. 3).
"This is The Only Level" looks very similar to "WizardWizard" in terms of some mechanics objectives, and GUI. The first and most thing in common between both games is that there is no permanent death, while there is a deathcounter which counts number of times a player died. Both games have that counter in their graphical user interfaces. Second similarity is the simplicity of the controls. While controls in "This is The Only Level" might vary with stages, the general idea is that you can jump and move around with arrow keys just like in "WizardWizard". Third, each stage in both games has a character controlled by player in two-dimensional space, a spawn point and an objective which players have to reach in order to advance to the next stage/level. Fourth, GUIs in both games have a stage/level title which somehow relates to, or points out the challenge of that specific stage or level, sometimes making it easier for a player to find a way to complete the stage/level. Fifth, both games have two objectives players have to complete, though there are some exceptional stages in "This is The Only Level" where you don't have to complete one of the two objectives to proceed to the next level. In "WizardWizard" players have to obtain a key to open a gate leading to the next level, whereas in "This is The Only Level" players have to press a button first in order to open a path leading to the next level.

Pic. 3. This is The Only Level