Gap Monsters is a negative space puzzle game by Nutcase Nightmare and Peter Gresser, but it's also a pretty good guilt generator too. The goal here is to guide pink blobs with big, trusting "are you my mommy" faces towards their destiny... which, as it turns out, is electrocution. Endless, endless electrocution at the hands of someone they trust. It's okay, they don't feel anything. In fact, they're being teleported to a farm somewhere! Yeah, a big farm where they can run and play and... shut up, sidebar text, I'm working on my denial here!
Use your mouse to push and pull the background to manipulate your hapless critters into the red electric squares on each level; white background pushes a monster, while monsters will just sit on black backgrounds and let themselves be pulled around. Be careful; move two coloured pieces together and they'll combine and you won't be able to pull them apart, which makes maneuvering around immovable blocks on later stages a challenge. Just click on a colour and drag to experiment; you can hit [R] to reset if you make too much of a mess of things, or if you made a mistake while your tears blurred your vision and need to take a moment to compose yourself.
Gap Monsters is one of those rare puzzle games that seems so simple and is executed so beautifully. While there isn't a whole lot of variation, the clean visuals, fantastic peppy soundtrack, and tricky gameplay make it a top-notch bit of puzzling for your coffee break. While you can just do a lot of willy-nilly clicking and sliding and still ultimately get the monsters to their destiny in the same way that pounding on random controller buttons will eventually give you a super combo you can never replicate, managing to solve that same level with only the few moves allowed to get a star is a lot more challenging. Mix in a bit of black humour in the form of the soothingly-phrased but guilt-inducing sidebar texts and you have a recipe for success. Gap Monsters is wickedly amusing, cleverly designed, and is the perfect thing to harden your heart into a lump of coal against future tragedies.
Ugh, the face that monster makes when it screams... Not a pleasant game for me, no matter how interesting the gameplay is.
Personally it's one of the best games I've played all summer. Never repetitive and devilishly tricky once you get about halfway in, but I'll definitely attempt to do the rest. Not sure why the "scream" is unpleasant. Kind of adds to the humor for me.
I think it's one of those uncanny valley things? When a monster screams, it's entire body opens up in a toothy scream, but the eyes are still at the same place, making it look as if its mouth is located above its eyes...
I can concede that point. I just imagined it was upside down for some reason the developer didn't want to share.
I managed to get less than par on the last level but still haven't beaten five of the levels. Fiendishly tricky! Anyone else get less than par somewhere?
Did anyone else create a level and then have it never show up? It COULD be related to Newgrounds and having to sign in there instead of using the JIG provided link, but I was just curious if anyone had it work here.
I actually am pretty proud of my level, it's trickier than it looks.
An addon to my post - after checking in, it did in fact never post my level (which makes sense, it has to associate it with a screenname anyway), so I got on newgrounds and did it there, where it worked just fine. I am having way too much fun with this game.
Definitely think about changing the game rating for this one. Even if there's nothing besides some violence, it's quite dark humor and something parents might not want to introduce to their kids.
I can get below par for 3 little pigs:
move bottom n pig up one, upper right n down and to the right, top white all the way up, bottom right pig to the left eye, and then requires the bottom left one to "climb" stairs by shaking the white up and down.
Couldn't find a way to finish at par for dig and the last level, but everything else I was able to solve on my own. Enjoyable puzzling and interesting but ultimately unnecessary atmosphere. Nice music though.
@hikari no sakura
My issue wasn't with the scream image so much as the commentary that went with it about the endless suffering the monsters experience.
The visuals, the screaming, and the sociopathic flavor text make this one of the most pointlessly unpleasant gaming experiences I've ever had. No interest in playing past the tutorial stages.
I played a few levels and didn't get the negative space aspect of it. Additionally, I just didn't like the whole feel I suppose, so I don't think I'm going to bother trying to figure it out.
I found it ridiculously hilarious.
The sadism is SO over-the-top that it's quite funny. The screaming images were creepy, but that's because I always found the cartoon idea of "eyes projecting from the head on tiny stalks" thing gross. But the different screaming sounds were funny. One sounds like opera, another like a belch...
And the levels were tricky and required enough thinking to be quite fun. I will admit I needed the video walkthrough in order to make par, but most of them I got on my own.
5/5
I can get below par on "Got your Back".
First press restart with the "r" button on your keyboard. Then VERY quickly move the white tile and push the gap monster to the red see-through block.
The gap monster will pass under the corpse.
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