Boomtown Rats: Transformice
I haven't posted about this until now as the servers have been heaving for the last day with its mass Digg-age. After trying all yesterday, I finally managed to get into a game at about 2am last night. And it's good! This morning? Servers are still sticky, but there's a new Russian one as well as the English and (more populated) French ones. I've got in after a few tries. MAYBE YOU COULD TOO. And it's worth the effort. Transformice positions you as a mouse, with the mission to get cheese and get back. With many other mice, trying to do the same thing. What stands against you? Physics. Evil physics. Luckily, one of you is the Shaman, who is abstractly meant to be facilitating all this hot mouse-on-cheese action. It doesn't normally work like that. A video explaining it and a few other notes follow...
In short: hilarity.
You've got a couple of dozen people trying to complete the same aim at the same time, in levels which offer individual challenges. Sometimes it's every mouse for itself, climbing on top of one another to reach the Cheese, with your comrades only of use as glorified steps. Other times you're entirely reliant on other mice being sensible - like the level where you start in the middle of a see-saw with cheese at either end. If too many mice go one way, the whole thing collapses. It's a game about balancing the interest of the group (Can any of us make it?) with the self-interest (I will score better if I make it first?). I'm generally reminded of the scene in the Towering Inferno where too many people try to use the sky-line-car out of the building at once, and they all end up falling to their deaths. Except funny.
The Shaman is the special chap, who's able to create actual tools to help you succeed in your task, like pulleys and bombs. In other words, it's a little like being a Lemming in lemmings, with one of your number in the position of leader to save you all. Except, much like Lemmings, it doesn't normally end that way.
You're going to be all over this. More evidence? The other reason why I'm posting it is that it's the game that we've recieved most mail about in ages, and I'm posting it to stop more people filling up the inbox. Novel, striking, fun and a great excuse for mice-based-gags.