Duration: 14:32

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5

A 1-credit clear of the arcade game Asylum [asylum], played with WolfMAME 0.255. Score: 1,435. Thanks to @juanman2483 for showing the way to lead the Arnold-Schwarzenegger-impersonator to victory.

This is an unreleased prototype and it's an interesting mess. You face evil vacuum cleaners, pencil launchers, and a goat-skulled devil. You bounce free-falling elevators up to a higher floor. You restore health by finding a magic toilet to "flush out the uncoolness in you". It feels like the game designers could've been drunk, or sleep-deprived, or both, and reminds me of other gratuitously-weird games like Weird Dreams, or the DOS text-mode game Insanity.

Playing the game is a bit annoying - your health slowly drains over time (you have "Gauntlet health"), there are a lot of gotcha death traps, and aiming your shots is a little fiddly. But the zaniness has some charm. I like how the mascot devil-character gives you "hints" where you always want to do the opposite of what it says. The main tech to beating the game is that after you jump, you can push both buttons together to double-jump, and that double-jump can carry you over walls and other hazards. The other trick is getting the hang of the elevator sections - my strategy was to deliberately aim to hit the wall a little *under* each bomb, watch what's coming up on that side, and then react by either bouncing away or staying. The last trick is just getting good item RNG - some of the best are the toilet icon for a full health refill, a tortoise-and-hare boosting your run speed, and a power-outlet giving you more strong shots.