Heh.
I didn’t think much of today’s animation in the first few seconds.
But then.
But then… ha ha ha ha!
Watch it below.
Oh man, just wait until you see how deep the rabbit hole goes here.
Let’s start with how Guy Collins animated Kaizo Trap in the old 2007 Adobe Flash CS3.
At first glance, it looks like the characters are puppets, but in reality there is way too
much complexity in their movements for them to be.
Look at how many perspectives this right arm is moving through.
So most of the characters are hand drawn one image at time.
Once we get into the game part, each of these movements is a looping cycle of hand drawn
frames.
By that I mean this hair isn’t one image posed differently, and this arm isn’t one
image posed differently.
Guy Collins redraws the hair and arm each time they move.
The result looks much more natural than a pure puppet, which would be more stiff looking.
Especially with something like hair, a single puppet piece would look awful.
Not to mention there are tons of non-repeated movements in here, but you only see them for
a split second.
(I actually didn’t realize how brutal these deaths are until I slowed it down for you.)
That’s just the characters.
Meanwhile there are tons of assets flying around, literally enough stuff to make a real
game out of.
Monsters, weapons, traps, effects, stage settings each of which has foreground environments
and background environments.
They all have a pixelated look to them.
In the old Flash CS3 you used to be able to download pixel tools to make pixel art like
this.
These days animators either export the final animation and apply special effects then,
or they dump a grid onto the Flash canvas and use a paint bucket to draw.
The corrupted assets as the animation nears its end are awesome.
Blocks with cut up repetitions of the same asset float around.
The blocks change which character is displayed every few frames, or a change position of
the repeated art.
The backgrounds start to flicker between places, with blocks missing from them.
But what really impresses me about Kaizo Trap is not even the animation, it’s the choreography.
The sheer amount of experience you’d need to have in 2D platform games to make this
up is overwhelming.
I mean, what would you have to do to know what makes a moment intense, what could possibly,
how… oh.
OHH!
Oh god.
Is he actually playing this?
A kaizo game like Kaizo Mario World is hacked to make the levels just barely possible.
The only way to win is through massive amounts of trial and error, memorization, and muscle
memory.
Kind of like Undertale.
But, you know, worse.
A Kaizo Trap is when you think you’re safe, but then the game
does something to kill you because you let your guard down.
The only way to win is to die the first time and be ready for it the second.
Now you see why Guy Collins’ animation is called Kaizo Trap.
And this is where things get really interesting.
Kaizo Trap isn’t just an animation.
It’s a maddening kaizo puzzle game.
And if you finish this animation with a score of 0/5, it means you haven’t seen all of
it yet.
*requires YouTube annotations to play
Hi post-credits pack!
Check the description for a link to all of the Kaizo Trap endings if you don’t want
to solve the puzzles yourself.
If you get stuck at any point there are people in the comments with hints, and who typed
up all of the HEX codes so you don’t have to.