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An Unfinished Flash Game Got A Finale After 15 Years

4 years ago - Edited 4 years ago972 words

The Homestar Runner guys finally added an ending level to their Stinkoman game after 15 years!!

This was an interesting thing to see in my recommendations:



I've talked about Homestar Runner before. It's a Flash animation... universe, I suppose you could call it, which I enjoyed a lot in my teens. We don't really see these self-contained little created universes these days because the internet works so differently - people seem to just use sites that aggregate content in some kind of algorithm-driven feed, rather than visiting individual websites - which is a shame (though if you're reading this, you at least visit this site, so thanks for that!).

They mostly did animations, though they had a few basic games to accompany the world and characters they'd created. They were mostly short parodies of the old, simple games I suppose they'd grown up with - the NES era and earlier, mostly before my time - though they also made a more substantial platformer based on the character Stinkoman, who was an alternate-reality variant of the wrestler character Strong Bad (how would anyone even explain this thing to people who've never experienced it directly??), which was heavily based on the oldest Megaman games.

It was meant to be 10 levels long, with the levels released at the rate of one a week, I think? I remember being very into Homestar during the initial release, and waiting for each one with interest. They only released 9, though, and for reasons I always wondered about, they never finished the series by adding a final 10th level.

(There's a surprisingly thorough and well-written ∞ Homestar Runner Wiki ∞, which I spent a lot of time reading through back in the day, which says the reason there wasn't a level 10 is because the programmer moved away.)

Now they've finally got around to finishing the series, after 15 years. So that's interesting!

I felt a rush of joy and excitement as soon as I saw the trailer, and wondered how people might feel if I were to release a direct continuation to the MARDEK games I started so long ago. I have no plans to, but I suspect the emotional reaction might be similar. I'd love to be able to provide that to people, though it's a shame it'd take so much time and effort.

I spent the morning playing the game in its entirety, from the first level released way back in 2005 through to the new addition that finally gave it an ending. The whole thing took just over two hours.

Was it fun? Did I enjoy myself? Eh... Honestly I'd say I was glad when it was over; the game itself was never exactly well-made, since it was just a thing they did for fun on the side, and their specialty was animation, not games development. The gameplay is clunky and often frustrating, the audio is heavily compressed and even harsher on the ears than the stuff I put on Bandcamp yesterday, and the whole thing just felt... old, I suppose. I was also bothered by some inconsistencies with audio quality between levels, or pixel size between sprites, things like that.

I got through it, though, and I was at least a bit impressed by how they handled the finale. It was interesting seeing how they paid homage to the old stuff by directly reusing old level assets in the final level, and through reused, familiar musical motifs (interesting that the music was composed by the programmer, a friend of the Brothers Chaps; I always assumed they made it, and was surprised that it seemed more in-depth that the other music on their site).

Would I have paid for it, were it to be released with a cost on something like Steam? Definitely! Not so much because I enjoy and want to replay the game again and again, but I suppose just out of appreciation for the place the whole universe they created has in my heart and my personal history. I suppose that's the biggest reason why people bought MARDEK, and why I hope they might give a little back for other stuff I release like music albums.

Playing this made me want to return to my old games though, maybe put Clarence's Big Chance on Steam or something? I'd even be open to making minor tweaks based on feedback... so maybe what I could do is release a version on itch.io, then based on any suggestions people have from playing it on there, I could make some changes and add a version to Steam? Just some brainstorming, not decided intentions or anything! I might replay that today and see how I feel about it after that.

It's interesting that Homestar is still ongoing in some greatly reduced form - they've put most of their animations on YouTube, and very rarely put out new ones, even adding the Flash versions to their site! - though it's obviously something they do on the side for a bit of fun while working actual real salaried jobs (Matt Chapman voiced characters and contributed writing to Gravity Falls being one example that jumps to mind). ∞ Getting over a million dollars on Kickstarter for a Homestar-based project ∞ is a nice outcome during Homestar's afterlife, and I wonder if that motivates them to do more with it or not. I wonder what they'll do after the death of Flash in a couple of weeks.

So yes, that was interesting! Got me reminiscing, and wondering what to do with my old stuff. Quite fortuitous actually since I've been feeling very bleh about the idea of revisiting my old Flash games despite talking about doing so, and this gave me a bit of a kick to actually do that.