The basic idea is that every level is supposed to be a different game playable on it’s own.
Games with very diverse gameplay are hard to find, so I always wanted to create a game like that.
The game Incredible crisis is a good example of the kind of gameplay I enjoy, it was an
early influence on the design of ROTSF one. A school trip to the local aquarium Provided
inspiration for the antagonists, the Sunfish or Mola mola.
Ocean sunfish are the heaviest known bony fish in the world and can grow up to 3.2 meters in
diameter.
with their unusual appearance, resembling that of a giant floating fish head, it's not hard to
imagine them as demonic alien lifeforms. And trust me, they are
During my time working on ROTSF I developed a set of guidelines that the game was meant to
follow.
This was somewhat influenced by the Kubus manifesto, a manifesto written by game designer
Overtime I developed other ideas, which became critical to my vision of a ROTSF game.
these ideas are outlined as follows:
Players should not be able to get stuck at any point in the game.
If the player dies a certain number of times they are sent to a latter stage to prevent it from
getting boring. I don't have a problem with this. People have asked me, "if you can pass a level
by losing then what’s the point in trying to beat it properly"
my answer is that passing levels properly leads to different levels, levels only accessible by
beating the level properly. That’s the incentive.
this leads to the next important condition, ROTSF is supposed to contain multiple paths and have
a dynamic, non linear level structure. If possible it should feature self modifying levels and
emergent game play.
I tried to implement these ideas as best I could, but in the end I felt like I only really
touched on them.
Due to a hard drive malfunction, ROTSF one was rushed out to completion. I considered it at the
time a failure. It is by far not without it's flaws. It contains some bugs, has ms paint graphics
described as "awful" lacks any decent animation and is only truly compatible for windows 95.
Despite it's flaws I now think it's actually a pretty good game.
Perhaps due to it's weirdness it has received quite a lot of attention on the internet, numerous
reviews and youtube videos with running commentaries, also some fan artwork. see the bottom of the page for links.
revenge of the sunfish is
If you would like to download it click
The game requires the dll file cncs32.dll to run properly.
the file is included in the zip but you can also download it
Please note that On the second last level if the player moves to the left of the screen they will
fall out of the screen and be forced to quit or restart the game.
During game play
In April 2014, someone called Matthew S. Paynt sent me an email with this attached piece of ROTSF inspired artwork. I think it's Awesome and sums up the game really quite well.