Mr. Berkel Derkel!
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: 1995
Levels: 2
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: N/A
Anyone who makes more than a few games is going to have a moment of whimsy. In some cases this lets out the id and results in some unfortunate exhibitions. In others, we get the likes of Mystic Towers or Fred Earwigian -- a "quirky" game featuring a strange fellow, behaving strangely in a strange world.
Mr. Berkel Derkel is an unfinished glob of untempered goofery. The sprite is mostly animated, but most of the frames are just sketched in. The mechanics and levels feel like placeholders. There is enough here, though, to draw a good impression.
The game is colorful and surreal; it makes little attempt to represent objects or concepts outside of videogame logic. Objects carry properties because those properties give the player something to do. The character has moves that a character in a side-scrolling action game like this would have, because he's a character in a side-scrolling action game. It's circular logic, because games are built with circular logic. And to an extent, that's part of the joke.
As a game of the sort that it is (to add a tautology to our circular logic), Mr. Berkel Derkel is pretty entertaining and well-built. Much of its charm comes from some interesting individual elements that sit just outside the norm. Enemies, for instance, have a tendency not to die outright. In many (not all) cases, striking an enemy will merely disable it or send it running. In time, the monster will recover from its shock and resume its previous activity.
The attacks themselves are sort of interesting, in that there's both an offensive and a defensive attack. The offensive one shoots on the most recent vector of character motion; the defensive one encircles the player. There's no limit to either attack; you just use them as the situation demands. This isn't the game-breaker that it sounds like, either; even with the defensive move, Berkel Derkel is far from invulnerable.
The two levels are nicely differentiated, though both subscribe to the obstacle course model of design that games like Mister Spiff IV|Mister Spiff explore to its logical extremes. Here are some blocks with different properties; now let's interact with them. Whee! Compared to some other obstacle course designs, Berkel Derkel makes a decent effort at filling its levels with memorable landmarks and setpieces. In level one you have the floating steps over a lava lake. In level two you have the vertical pagoda section ascended through strong air currents.
With Mr. Berkel Derkel, Caudel isn't framing a major opus; the game exists, it would seem, solely to amuse its author over a bored afternoon. And indeed, his own interest waned quite quickly. Even in a doodle, though, we can find some inspiration.
Story[edit]
N/A
Instructions[edit]
- Enter: Attack
- H: Defend
On numerical keypad:
- 7/8/9: Jump left/up/right
- 4/6: Walk left/right
- 2: Duck
- 1/3: Walk down-left/down-right
Credits[edit]
Designed by Alan Caudel.
Availability[edit]
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History[edit]
After an earlier wave of rediscoveries, on July 13 2011 Alan Caudel provided another archive of previously missing Game-Maker material, including the following:
Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Mr. Berkel Derkel! (224 kB)
