Specter (play)

Joseph Wheeler, 73 years old, woke up in a strange place after his death. It's snowing around. In the falling snowflakes, Joseph recognizes the moments of his life, and an unknown voice invites him to build a story out of them.

First of all, Specter is a platformer, and the path from one end of the platform to the other is the life of the main character. It is divided by age: 6 years, 8, 12, 17, 44, 73. In each age segment, the hero looks different. If at 6 years old he is a moving little boy, then at 73 he is already a crooked old man with a cane. At the beginning of the game, you can choose at what age to start, after which the game actually begins. It all looks like an ordinary platformer: jumping over obstacles, climbing stairs. But this is not the main goal.

According to the game world, “balls” fly. These are the memories of Joseph. In the beginning, we choose a memory from which we will continue to push, since after the first we will have the main life themes of Joseph. They can be seen by pressing the "P" key. It can be “Mama”, “War”, “Love”, etc. Depending on these topics in the game, we will have memory-balls, if the ball is light, then the memory is similar to the main themes of the already selected memories, dark, respectively - no . Dark balls-memories will direct us to a new path in the story. In each memory, we will be waiting for the story of Joseph about some event in his life, such as his first snow, Jefferson's monument in the park, memories of the Father, as well as a mini-game in which two finals are waiting for you, depending on the success of your actions .

If you do not pass the mini-games, the player will take a lot of dark balls, memories, then Joseph will not be able to tie all the thoughts together, and the story will end.

• Somewhere up ( Ever Upwards ) - in this mini-game, Joseph flies up and collects the "stars". Great effort from the player is not required.
• Pursuing the light ( Pursue the ight ) - Joseph goes for the glowing ball, while the player pressing the space bar raises the ground in front by pressing the space bar, and also the ground behind the main character disappears. In order to successfully cope with this mini-game, it is necessary to keep a balance between the emerging platforms and the disappearing ones.
• Approach - Joseph needs to go to a blurry figure, overcoming obstacles and trying not to fall. As the figure approaches, it becomes clearer.
• Way up ( Work You Way Up ) - The main character needs to climb to the glowing ball upstairs, for this he must use the levers that control the platforms.
• Collect a picture ( Bring The Pieces Together ) - The player needs to collect some image from the pieces.
• Away from the edge ( Away From The Edge ) - darkness moves from above, from below it is also not less, you need to balance between these two edges, jumping from a ledge to a ledge.
• Through the darkness ( Through The Dark ) - Joseph falls down, a circle of light around him. On his way the dark balls, if he touches them, then his circle of light melts, if he disappears, you lose.

After successfully completing any mini-game, Joseph becomes a “ghost” and can pass through the memory balls without touching them. Until the player presses the down key.

Traveling through the memories of Joseph Willer, the player himself thinks about his life, about the actions that he committed and or could not. For adult players, the game can give impetus to rethink many things. There are 112 memories and 50 possible endings in total.

The game is written in the Adobe Flash design software, which classifies it as a flash game, but it is somewhat different from them. Among the distinctive features - the use of external files and save the results in a separate file. In the root directory of the game there is a Data.xml file, which is a regular XML file , but in which all characters are replaced by neighbors (+1). For example, the string =Fwfout? !!=Ubh!Obnf>#Jousp#? means <Events>¶..<Tag Name="Intro">¶ .

• Official site (eng.)