The Adventures of Dink and Nipples, the Flying Long Horse

So, what have I actually been doing for the last while?

One of the projects I have been working on is an online puzzle-style Flash game. At present it is tentatively titled: The Adventures of Dink and Nipples, the Flying Long Horse: The Human Trap. And if you’re not sure what all that’s about I will endeavour to explain.

Overview

A Long Horse is a cryptozoological animal, a regular horse with an extra long mid-section basically. And well, in this game said horse can fly, like Pegasus. So far, so simple. But!!! this flying Long Horse can split into two halves: one in the front, one in the rear. (Not unlike those two-person horse costumes.) And those two halves of the Flying Long Horse, the front and rear portions, are individually Dink and Nipples. Dink is the smiley faced, simple half, and Nipples if the flying, brainy portion. You can see both of them here in the following model sheets, as well as the fully formed Flying Long Horse. Click to see larger versions in my flickr site.

Storyline

The plot of the game is such: Dink and Nipples, being a semi-mythical creature of the cosmos, are hanging out in that specific place where mythical creatures hang out, a side-step over from our corporeal, less-majestic existence. One day they hear news that a friend of theirs, an equally mythical and fantastique creature, is trapped in the shell of a living human being’s head - having got unduly lodged there during a botched dream-transfer. Being mythical creatures these characters can traverse the paths and doorways of the dream-world and move from place to place and dream to dream at will - as long as they can find the next doorway. Dink and Nipples’ friend has found himself in a dead-end and will disappear forever if the human wakes up.

Dink and Nipples being the heroic horse that they are cannot abide to tolerate their friend’s incarceration and eventual dissolution inside a human’s skull. So, they must travel through the paths of dream and find their friend inside it’s Human Trap and release him. In each level of the game then Dink and Nipples must travel through a different dream, or mini-world, in the grander dream-realm to finally enter into our meagre realm and save their friend.

Gameplay

The general play for the game will include several Stages, with multiple Levels in each Stage, culminating in a fantastique Final Level. Each Stage has paired levels with similar game plays, growing progressively more difficult and fantastique as Dink and Nipples advance. The player progresses through the levels by controlling Dink and Nipples by clicking on each character and then on possible locations or items with which Dink or Nipples can then interact. Players who fail to complete a level are simply deposited at the end of the previous level and can retry any level again without having to restart the entire game.

There are also a series of special powers that both Dink and Nipples obtain throughout the levels, metamorphosing into super-powered Dink and Nipples, necessary to solve each level. But I won’t go into detail about that here to save from spoiling the storyline or level designs.

Postlude

The Human Trap is meant to be a casual game with a variety of puzzles and level designs to interest the imagination of the player. The storyline, puzzle-style game-play and visual designs will take precedence over interesting game mechanics, simulations, or more “hardcore” arcade-style game play. It is my hope that Dink and Nipples captures the imagination of some portion of the web-o-sphere and gains some attraction and attention. Oh, and I want to print shirts with them on it and sell them, hehe.

At present, I and my friend Toon Degryse are involved in pre-production. I am acting as creative and production lead, and Toon is assisting with ideas and doing the code. As you can see, character designs exist for Dink and Nipples, and we are at work on level and overall designs. I will post more material and information as things progress.

For those interested, inspiration, and just down right great games with similar puzzle-style gameplay, can be seen in: Samorost and Warbears. Though stylistically, you can see Dink and Nipples stand apart from these games.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 1:57 am and is filed under Dink'n Nipples, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.