Physics puzzles games

[berarma]

HI.

Platformers like Manic Miner are basic physics puzzle games, Batty, Tetris, Deflektor,... all use physics. Which other games using physics puzzles existed on the Spectrum?

Thanks.

[Lee Bee]

Call me stupid but how does Manic Miner use "physics"? Isn't it just a standard platform game?

[berarma]

Call me stupid but how does Manic Miner use "physics"? Isn't it just a standard platform game?

I might be stretching the definition a bit too much. The player walks, jumps and falls. The goal of the game is to solve puzzles by doing these actions at the right time in the right places.

We can ignore it. I'm looking for games more obviously physics driven.

[Lee Bee]

The Final Matrix has nice physics!

[stupidget]

I'd say the following all use some form or 'physics'

• Underwurlde - The worlds most annoying game

• Pixy the Microdot

• Any decent Thruster type game

For me the champion has to be Fairlight!!! Each item has it's own weight, there are items hidden behind other items, you can use items to push other items along. The best representation of a physical 'real-world' was the the fact that when you killed a guard, he'd drop his helmet, which you could pick up and drop anywhere else. When that guard re-spawned it would be where you'd dropped the helmet!! Brilliant stuff.

[bluespikey]

Can't think of explicit physics game like The Incredible Machine. There are a few games with realistic physics in them (Unlike the fixed arc jumping of MM). Like Thrust, or EMotion is very nice and isn't talked about much.



In terms of enviromental puzzles, rather than straight physics, Head Over Heals has some clever rooms using conveyor belts .

[Ralf]

I might be stretching the definition a bit too much. The player walks, jumps and falls. The goal of the game is to solve puzzles by doing these actions at the right time in the right places.

Yes, you are. Calling Manic Miner a puzzle game is too much for me

But I get what you mean. You are interested with something like these: https://www.physicsgames.net/
Where you need to solve some problem and you have a world with gravity, object colisions, rotations, friction etc.

The problem is that these modern game often are called "physics" games because they contain some complicated and complete
model of reality describing these actions.

Spectrum games are usually much simpler. They may have some simple logic for jumps or pushing objects but calling it "physics" it too much again.

[berarma]

Thrust-type games are another kind of game which used physics but they were very well known.

Interesting note about Fairlight. I never played this.

I played E-motion a lot, although I see it more as an ability game than puzzle. Good mention though.

HoH is a platformer with some interesting tricks.

It seems I've caused distress by calling MM a physics puzzle game. Let's roll with it. I mean, you have to solve a puzzle room using time, space, gravity, velocities,... Anyway, let's forget about platformers. It was just an example because there aren't many games involving physics in a meaningful way.

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

[dfzx]

...there aren't many games involving physics in a meaningful way.

I loved Sagittarian Pinball BITD. There was also a game of pool I really liked, I think it was this one, but 40 years might have blurred my memory somewhat. But you asked for puzzle games, and neither are.

[Timmy]

Oh, Boulderdash is probably a physics puzzle game then.

Or maybe Thrust.

[RWAC]

The Light Corridor
Pang
Bumpy

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Hunchback
Abu Simbel

[berarma]

The Light Corridor is an interesting game. I haven't never heard about it. It makes good use of 3D graphics.

Not many games and not what today we consider physics puzzle games. There were so many experimental games that I expected something unexpected.

Thanks.

[AndyC]

A Whole New Ball Game maybe? It's kind of physics-y. Given that 8-bit machines weren't ideally suited to running lots of physics calculations, I wouldn't expect many.

[IgnaCoBo]

Try Sir Fred:

Jump, Swim, run and stop with inertia.
Rope swing. Throw objects using parabola movement...

Amazing for those days!!

[berarma]

Try Sir Fred:

Jump, Swim, run and stop with inertia.
Rope swing. Throw objects using parabola movement...

Amazing for those days!!

Yes, the Tomb Raider of that era!

It was more focused on the ability aspect and with slow controls, but way ahead of its time.

[Dr beep]

my games:

wiwo dido the case of the last keys
wiwo dido and the broken timemachine

wiwo dido is not only the name of our hero but also short for
walk in walk out drop in drop out

[worcestersource]

I guess various snooker and pool game? Possibly a bit more than simple geometry.

How about Juggernaut? You’ve got pivots in that one.

Bugaboo?

[Jbizzel]

Call me stupid but how does Manic Miner use "physics"? Isn't it just a standard platform game?

Gravity my boy. The apple striking the Newtonian bonce. But aren't almost all game physics based then??

To be serious tho.... Thrust!

Light corridor is so good .. just for the very excellent music. Music in a game = sound waves = physics!!

[dfzx]

Gravity my boy.

But MM doesn't use gravity. The jump is just an up-and-down animation. The falling is just incrementing Y by a set amount. I suspect the vast majority of platformers don't use any rules of physics or any sort of gravity equation.

[dfzx]

What about flight simulators? We don't discuss those much on SC, and I've never come across a disassembly of one. But surely they employ the laws of physics, at least to some extent?

[Jbizzel]

Well, it has the most basic of gravity, in that you fall downwards.

So you want games with inertia and terminal velocity?

[AndyC]

What about flight simulators? We don't discuss those much on SC, and I've never come across a disassembly of one. But surely they employ the laws of physics, at least to some extent?

Sure. And so do many racing games. But I wouldn't call them "physics based" any more than JSW (which I'd say has very primitive "gravity"). They're just a bunch of specific rules tailored to specific outcomes (i.e. your car slows if you stop accelerating but only because the game engine knows specifically that should happen, rather than it being a result of actual friction calculations).

"Physics based" when referring to games usually means the game engine implements a reasonable set of physics rules and then all object interactions are simply allowed to happen within those rules. Specific interactions aren't programmed in but kind of emerge as a result of a combination of rules. So when you hit a tower of blocks in Angry Birds, the game has no specific rule for where you have to hit it for the desired result, it just applies it's Physics rules and things fall or otherwise as a result.

An extension of the idea is the "emergent behaviour" you see in games like Breath of the Wild. So a bear will attack anything nearby that it seems threatening and thus if you, as a player, can lead a bear to enemies it will attack them for you etc.

[berarma]

Gravity my boy. The apple striking the Newtonian bonce. But aren't almost all game physics based then??

Not all games use gravity, and not all games using it can be considered puzzle games. Also, physics isn't only gravity. I mentioned Deflektor too in my first post but no one seemed to notice.

The key in this post is "using physics as a mean to solve puzzles".

My first thought was platformers like MM in which every room is like a puzzle which is solved by moving around, calculating jumps and avoiding collisions. All of this is implemented on modern games using physics engines. The mechanics of the game are some sort of physics to that world mimicking the ones in our world.

Why MM is a puzzle game? Because we're presented with a problem to be solved in a way which allows strategy, planning and execution. In contrast to games which present a challenge through sending enemies/bullets at you in which only skill, reflexes and luck are useful.

I was looking for more heavily physics based games but there aren't many to put as examples so I gave some lighter examples to widen the spectre.

But MM doesn't use gravity. The jump is just an up-and-down animation. The falling is just incrementing Y by a set amount. I suspect the vast majority of platformers don't use any rules of physics or any sort of gravity equation.

Most games use simplified or altered physics, specially on these low-powered machines. Even if they aren't exactly the same physics we have, we consider them to be the physics of the world our games are set in.

What about flight simulators? We don't discuss those much on SC, and I've never come across a disassembly of one. But surely they employ the laws of physics, at least to some extent?

Yes, they are physics based but I don't see the puzzles.