Let's Sperg The Games of Andrew Dobson - Games so bad, they'll make you explode in anger.

[Gordon Cole]

INTRODUCTION:
Some of you may not need an introduction to Andrew Dobson, bike pump enthusiast, twitter sperg and our "second-favorite" webcomic artist behind OPL.

But a little-known facet about Hat Andy is his attempts at making video games. Years before he began to garner infamy for his actions and his "art", he was an amateur vidya developer, making things on GameMaker like countless other amateur devs. Like other esteemed developers such as Brianna Wu, David Gallant and Jake Alley, his actions have long overshadowed his creations, but I'd thought it'd still be at least interesting to plumb this side of Dobson. His games can be found here, and my original posts about them are here. Bear in mind that this is largely reposting, albeit expanded and cleaned-up a bit than my original posts. With that in mind, here we go!

Table of Contents:
PART ONE: The Adventures of Janus
PART TWO: Bowie Pong
PART THREE: Trace
PART FOUR: Daria's Dig
SIDE-MISSION: Don't Pop Me!
SIDE-MISSION: Kaboom!
PART FIVE: Alex ze Pirate

 

[Gordon Cole]

THE ADVENTURES OF JANUS:
Imagine my surprise when I unpacked the .ZIP file only to find Janus listed as "Magic Orbs Verson23.exe". Never change, Dobbo.

Doesn't this scream "Completely legit and totally not Ransomware/goat porn"?

A common theme among his games are being so old that they're at the point where I couldn't get them to easily operate. The Captain Syrup Alex ze Pirate game was a no go the first time I tested all of them, and my computer's anti-virus software took the better part of an afternoon because it thought the files were all malware, but it eventually cleared. So the first game of his I wound up playing was The Adventures of Janus.

Dobson's only a little influenced by anime & manga.

Before you ask, yes, this incredibly simplistic platformer has a Practice mode. But because Dobson doesn't understand how video games and the English language work, it's actually a tutorial inexplicably listed as Practice. It also takes the inherently insulting nature of a game tutorial to another level by stopping you to explain things that should go without saying like "Push left & right to move", "Press Space to throw apples", "Press up to jump", "Don't take an ax to the water heater", "Don't masturbate in public" and "Don't eat the neighbor's cats in an attempt to get her to move out of sheer grief."

As for the High Scores...

I might be the only person who'll ever play this fucking thing.

Level 1 starts out in the woods, and the flaws hit you like a brick to the face. The controls are stiff, which is a big problem considering it's a 2D Platformer with a fair amount of precise jumps. On top of that, the music in this level is nothing but a six second long loop that doesn't fit at all, and Dobson's skill at game design is on par with his art skills. Mushrooms, which give health, blend into the scenery, to the point where it caught me off-guard that they were even collectible to begin with.

As for the level itself, towards the end Dobson spams so much crap at you that it became challenging in the most unfair way possible, which is sadly all too common with this game. Also not helping are that apples are thrown in an arc, making enemies that much harder to hit. Also, you start out with one life, you have no continues, there's no window of invincibility when you're hit, meaning enemies can hit you multiple times with no relief, your apples reset at the beginning of each level while your health doesn't and 1-ups/health packs are few and far between.

I should remind you, this is the same person who sperged about Cuphead being exclusionary because it was hard.

And here, my troubles begin...

Level 2 is where more flaws shine through. Instead of a slowly progressing difficulty as the game goes on, levels fluctuate between 30 seconds long and two minutes with no rhyme or reason and only some of the levels have backing music attached to them. There's also no sense of connective tissue between levels. There's no story beyond "Move to the right", and in one level you'll be in a swamp, while in another, you'll be in space.

Also after this level, there's a long stretch of levels with no health or 1-ups whatsoever. Thanks a ton, fatass!

The true villain of this game is Dobson's laziness.

Level 3 is a swamp and the backing music is back, only this time, it's a fifteen-second long loop of what could only be described as the intro to an 80s power ballad. But instead of Richard Marx or Dan Fogelberg, it's an incel who's slowly dying alone trying to realize his dream of being a real artist before drowning his sorrows in Big Macs and teenage lesbians.

Then you fight the Loch Ness Monster's exceptional brother and all you have to really do is stand still, throw apples and occasionally jump to dodge fire and move to the left to get more apples. Now it starts to feel like (man)baby's first platformer, especially given that Dobson hates tension, getting better or any sense of a challenge.

OR SO I THOUGHT!

Seriously, he can do nothing right.

Look at this fucking thing.

Next up is the desert, where you're again platforming to silence outside of the annoying jump noise. Maybe it's intentional, and I'm supposed to feel as thirsty and hopeless as Dobson is on a daily basis. It's still me putting more thought into his art than he is. My strategy here, and with every following level is "Stay near the top of the screen and avoid the bullshit below."

"In the deserts of Sudan/And the gardens of Japan..."

After that is going inside the pyramid. There was no indication whatsoever of a pyramid being anywhere in the last stage. Is Dobson saying that all deserts have pyramids in them? REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-

It's also the point where Dobson gives up, and most of the backgrounds become nothing but indistinct gradients. Think of it as the prototype for latter-day SYAC.

Can't wait for him to experience King Tut's Curse in the DLC!

And here's Dobson being racist with the enemy designs. Here's an experiment, show this to the Dobson of today, call out the racist character design and see if he responds with 1.) Blindly accepting a young lesbian's opinion without realizing it's his own game. or 2.) Trying to delete the game from existence, blocking you and getting really salty & defensive whenever someone brings it up. (Don't actually do either.)

Oooga Booga!

The next level is up in the clouds. I timed this stage. It took me 35 seconds to beat this. Watch out brute (ugh) males, Dobson's the second coming of Miyamoto.

I've died and gone to heaven. Or maybe this is hell...

The next level is outer space, complete with copypasted stars, being too close to the top of the screen and the crap on the upper-left part of the screen getting in the way. Just like actual outer space!

GREATLEVELDESIGNMATE

The last level I got to the first time I played this is Bumblebee Land. You bounce from bee to bee and make it to the end. The difference is the camera follows you up and down, meaning that it's hard to gauge where the next bee is on top of the jumps being even more precise than before.

Also, the bees make weird meowing noises when you bounce on them. Y'know, as bees do.

That bee's expression mirrored mine.

It's at this point that I left to go get lunch. When I came back, the game wouldn't work.

UNTIL TODAY!

Yes, I beat the level I half-heartedly played, and progressed even further. Before you ask, no, I didn't beat the game. But going off of what I played, I'd imagine you'd beat the game before cutting to the High Score screen, and I'd bet all my Good Boy Points that's the case.

Anyways, you go from a sunny, pastoral level to... being shrunk down in Dobson's roommate's room.

I assumed Dobson was into basically the opposite of this, but people surprise me every day.

After the frustration of the last level, this one is piss-easy. There's no spikes, and the only enemies are lightbulbs falling down as projectiles. the sad thing is that this is the most visually impressive level.

REMINDER: He went to a good art college, and can't admit to fucking that up too.

After that is "Looking for Hippie Young Man". Hearing the word "Hippie" makes you think of psychedelia (and grody vagrancy), so you're expecting maybe a more unique, vibrant level, right?

Far Out!

Or a dark, dreary level with zero imagination put into it. Bout what I should've expected, tbh.

This is then followed by Part 2 of this, where I'm not joking, Dobson reuses the forest, only shorter and with enemies in different places.

You honestly can't make this shit up.

But even in the most unoriginal man, there can exist a nugget of goodness in the shit.

A GODDAMN FLOATING TURTLE.

Yep, I love this little guy for being charming despite Dobson's incompetence. Maybe him and Curmudgeon Carl could have their own Moon Pals.

But I digress. After that, we're in Hippy Young Man's "Pad", where I assume he's a hippie and a disco fiend as well, going by this not at all lazy and derivative level.

"Won't you take me to/Pumpytown?"

Again, the only enemies are falling projectiles. In this case, very spazzy disco balls. Dobson's such an abelist shitlord. Doesn't he know that those disco balls could mildly annoy his epileptic fans? REEEEEEEEEEEEEE-

-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Also, Dobson's pretty generous with the 1-ups this level, which is for a pretty justified reason, namely, to try and cover his ass over incompetent programming.

The next level is another boss, where you throw apples at a crystal ball which breaks into a coil.

Cocaine's a helluva drug!

The fatal flaw of this boss is Dobson deciding that the main method of attack should be wildly and randomly spamming lightning, meaning that unless you take advantage of random and absurdly narrow holes, you're gonna lose a shitload of health. But again, Cuphead's too hard.

The last level I got to is Hippie Young Man's bridge. Already at the end of my rope health-wise, the idea is to have enough health to run past enemies. I got tripped up on the first enemy. I called it quits and ordered Chinese food.

Prepare to meet Anita, IN HELL!

That's as far as I got. It was a miserable, poorly-thought experience with stubborn choices, hypocrisy, bland art and autism galore.

In other words:

Try and beat THAT high score, Kiwis!

 

[LofaSofa]

I tried to download it but my pc recognized it as a virus and sent it to my virus chest

 

[PsychoNerd054]

Hey Master Roshi, mind teaching us how to obliterate this abomination of a game with a Curse-ye-hame-ha?

 

[Nekromantik]

Truly a threat that should be taken seriously.

This looks like one of those bootleg games that came out for the NES in a blue case. The kind your grandparents got you because they didn't know any better.

 

[Gordon Cole]

BOWIE PONG:
It's Pong, but with a random photo of David Bowie playing a concert in the background. Projectiles of Bowie circa The Thin White Duke fall down when you hit the walls. That's really all there is to the game. There isn't music or anything else that ties this into Bowie.

I'd give this points if a shitty MIDI version of "Fame" played in the background.

No joke, when I first played this, the ball got stuck on the wall and I won against the computer.

Sexy Times Hitler: Master of Bowie Pong and shitposter extraordinaire.

The laziness only gets worse from here.

I want to draw attention to what Dobson wrote in the descrpition:

This is just a quick program i made for a friend. She likes David Bowie, so i made a pong game with Bowie pictures. To make it more challenging i added falling blocks which affect the ball.

Stay thirsty, my friend.

REPLIES:

I tried to download it but my pc recognized it as a virus and sent it to my virus chest

I was half-expecting Dobbo to fuck up so badly that he actually put something harmful in the file without knowing it. But you're really not missing much. I've played Newgrounds games from 2004 that are better than whatever he crapped out.

View attachment 356590

Hey Master Roshi, mind teaching us how to obliterate this abomination of a game with a Curse-ye-hame-ha?

Given that his most obvious source of plagiarism during this time was Ranma 1/2, I'm surprised that he isn't a Happosai clone.

View attachment 356615
Truly a threat that should be taken seriously.

This looks like one of those bootleg games that came out for the NES in a blue case. The kind your grandparents got you because they didn't know any better.

You just hit the nail on the head. His games feel like gussied-up versions of something you'd find on Action 52 or those 100-in-1 carts you'd find in flea markets right across from a sketchy empanada truck.

 

[Ted_Breakfast]

Quest for the Magic Orbs glorifies a damn dirty Aryan male and is deeply problematic for women and people of color. Next time Dobson should just fly his true racist colors and make a Moon Man Doom mod.

 

[The Fifth Waltz]

You are truly a saint for playing this poor excuse of a game.

 

[Fuck you jewish cunt]

I love how all these games look like an 5 year old designed them

 

[Ruin]

Is the protagonist supposed to be blond guy from Alex Ze Pirate?

 

[Gordon Cole]

TRACE:
Get your tracing jokes out of the way, people.

DAT COMIC SANS.

Trace is the most simple, and consequently, the most insulting of the bunch. The aim of the game is to trace the outlines of his horrid drawings before time runs out, but the flaws are that 1.) The paintbrush is scattered, meaning that the end result will be a black outline with random blotches of red and 2.) You're given way too much time to finish tracing, which means you could finish, piss, heat up food in the microwave and dox some poor autist in the time it takes for the clock to run out.

Getting the high score is very easy, and you don't "loose" points if you're off.

Even though I'm pretty sure this was made for two-year olds, at this point, it has an audience of us and only us.

The young people's favorite!

REPLY TIME:

Quest for the Magic Orbs glorifies a damn dirty Aryan male and is deeply problematic for women and people of color. Next time Dobson should just fly his true racist colors and make a Moon Man Doom mod.

"Why can't the hero be a topless teenage lesbian? REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-"

You are truly a saint for playing this poor excuse of a game.

I love how all these games look like an 5 year old designed them

Dobson also acts like and has the tastes of a five-year old, so I guess authenticity is everything.

Is the protagonist supposed to be blond guy from Alex Ze Pirate?

No, but his characters are so indistinct that I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.

 

[Nekromantik]

How is that elf kid holding that sword? Looks like a Link knock off.

 

[The Fool]

I'm getting nostalgic for the old SA lets play threads, thank you for this

 

[Yeeb-Renzo]

Couldn’t you also completely cheese the whole Trace game if you’re using a tablet? Thus making it 5x easier than using a mouse?

 

[A Welsh Cake]

How is that elf kid holding that sword? Looks like a Link knock off.

Can’t be. Dobbo told me link has brown hair.

 

[Somsnosa]

Is everything in the first game actual grainy jpg quality or is it just the screenshots

 

[Cubanodun]

No, but his characters are so indistinct that I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.

He just made recolors from older versions of Link from The legend of zelda (the versions pre ocarina of time), i was expecting a bit of originality but that is work and Dobson hate it, The old man in the background reminds me of a old ass game for kids called I.M Meen, a game that was supposed to teach grammar to childrens

 

[SomethingWittyandBadass]

Stupidity thy name is Dobson.

 

[Gordon Cole]

DARIA'S DIG:
This was the second-most interesting game after AzP to me just going off of his description:

This is a game I started to work on to push the capabilities of GameMaker. I love to explore and I wanted to make a huge game where you have to wander, collect clues, and maybe even feel tense because of the mood. This Game has alot of errors, but it's still alot of fun to run around in. The big technological achievement is that she can cling to the edges and pull herself up!

Tension? Putting effort in his work? Basic game programming skills? Typos? It sounded too good to be true, and well...There's a reason he said "This Game has alot of errors".

We begin in a base camp where our main character Daria stands around in a ridiculous mishmash of Geordi/Cyclops visors, a Lapis Lazuli haircut from Steven Universe, and yellow cleaning gloves. I had no idea that the "Sci-fi Hipster Janitor" aesthetic was a thing, but here we are. You walk to the left to collect boots that make you jump higher and walk to the right to find...a gun?

Who are you and what have you done with our priss?

You walk to the right to go outside, passing the bloody remains of a scientist. Despite the lack of music or even sound effects, so far it's fairly decent at providing a sense of atmosphere. One could argue that the lack of music goes from a fuck-up to actually being beneficial towards said atmosphere. Of course you could play your own music over the game, like the Metroid Prime soundtrack.

You shoot one enemy and can either super jump up to the top of the cave, or go in. Seeing as though the top part of the level is blocked off by invisible walls, you have no choice but to go in the cave.

It's like Axiom Verge, except if it took 5 hours to make instead of 5 years.

You then go into a cave where the game completely and utterly shits the bed. There are multiple exits in the stage, but only one of them is the way to the next stage. However, while the last stage at least had invisible walls blocking you, if you go in a wrong exit, you glitch out, become stuck in the stage and have to reset the level. Laziness at the cost of making a product a normal person would be proud of. Now that's the Dobson I know!

I'm not joking with this. You glitch into a fucking ghost.

After about three minutes of trial and error, I take the lower-left exit to the next stage.

Weed LMAO xd

At least with this stage, the invisible walls come back. However, Dobson decided that this level would be the one where he utterly gives up. The enemies are the giant alien buds and they don't hurt you when you touch them, and all the exits except the one you came out of are blocked by invisible walls. The End.

You half-assed motherfucker.

REPLY TIME:

How is that elf kid holding that sword? Looks like a Link knock off.

Don't ask me, this is the same guy who thinks this is how you hold a burger:

I'm getting nostalgic for the old SA lets play threads, thank you for this

I'm glad you feel that way! Funny thing is, I've never read old SA LP threads. If I had to guess influences for this, I-Mockery, Mark Prindle and X-Entertainment spring to mind. Though if you can point me to some good LP threads, I'll gladly take a look. I'm a sucker for these kinds of things.

Couldn’t you also completely cheese the whole Trace game if you’re using a tablet? Thus making it 5x easier than using a mouse?

This feels like the type of game perfect for tablet use. But Dobson being Dobson, he either didn't program that in, or he'd incessantly bitch if you'd bring it up to him about how it's cheating.

Can’t be. Dobbo told me link has brown hair.

"Link has brown hair because muh DiC cartoon."

Is everything in the first game actual grainy jpg quality or is it just the screenshots

That's the game, unless Snipping Tool is fucking up more than I thought.

He just made recolors from older versions of Link from The legend of zelda (the versions pre ocarina of time), i was expecting a bit of originality but i that is work and Dobson hate it, The old man in the background reminds me of a old ass game for kids called I.M Meen, a game that was supposed to teach grammar to childrens

I.M. Meen! Man, you're bringing back some memories with that game:

Stupidity thy name is Dobson.

And laziness, and obesity, and complaining, and inflation art, and...

 

[The Fool]

This is a game I started to work on to push the capabilities of GameMaker. I love to explore and I wanted to make a huge game where you have to wander, collect clues, and maybe even feel tense because of the mood. This Game has alot of errors, but it's still alot of fun to run around in. The big technological achievement is that she can cling to the edges and pull herself up!

lol "push the capabilities of gamemaker." For reference, this is what gamemaker is capable of.

I'm glad you feel that way! Funny thing is, I've never read old SA LP threads. If I had to guess influences for this, I-Mockery, Mark Prindle and X-Entertainment spring to mind. Though if you can point me to some good LP threads, I'll gladly take a look. I'm a sucker for these kinds of things.

Wow really? Cuz this looks just like one. Well, SA is shit now and has always been behind a paywall anyway, but you can check out lparchive.org, since it has archives of SA LP threads and generally just follows the theme of them.