Equestria Gaming: Sulphur Nimbus: Hel's Elixir

Sulphur Nimbus: Hel's Elixir

The long-awaited Sulphur Nimbus: Hel's Elixir has been released! Start playing and join the Discord server!

What is Sulphur Nimbus: Hel's Elixir?

According to the creator:

A momentum-based flying game where you play as Sulphur Nimbus the hippogriff. The game takes inspiration from momentum-based platformers, six-degrees-of-freedom games, action adventures and collectathons.

and let me emphasize: In the game, you can be a hippogriff!

I don't know about you but I love flying, and I have recurring dreams of being a pegasus and just fly.

The game is on itch.io, and costs $6.50, and you can play the free demo before buying the full version. You can also listen to the OST on bandcamp, with the option to buy the album!

The game is open source and runs on Linux and Windows. Tinkerers might want to look into the source code and start modding (I would pay $5 for a mod that changes my character to Rainbow Dash, and I might not be the only one).

Note: Please join the Discord server and report any installation problems. Oddwarg would help.

Oddwarg

Oddwarg is a prolific game maker, painter, musician, programmer, and all around artist, living somewhere on the coast of Norway. Previous works include PataPony and Corruption. His website is oddwarg.com, where you can get all his games (except the full-version of Sulphur Nimbus) and musics.

History of Sulphur Nimbus: Hel's Elixir

This game has origins from 2013, as an untitled Rainbow Dash game. In 2016 it was put on Kickstarter and got funded in 2016 November. It was planned to be completed in 1 year, but actually took 3 years.

I'm pretty happy with my pledge

Who is Sulphur Nimbus?

According to Oddwarg:

You are Sulphur Nimbus, a hippogriff who gets stuck on a cursed island during a sidequest gone wrong. Collect magical blobs, fight weird monsters, and get lost in the depths of the earth.

Those pair of wings aren't just for looks (unlike the rainbow tail, which is just for looks and doesn't grant you Rainbow Power).

You'll be able to fly wherever you want, but you're a horsebird so it won't be easy. As you dive deeper into the island's underground caverns, you must learn to manage your momentum with increasing care and precision.

What is momentum?

momentum = mass * velocity

Momentum can only be changed by impulse.

impulse = force * time

Impulse and momentum are connected by Newton's Second Law:

change in momentum of an object = impulse applied to the object

Finally, momentum is pretty much the same as kinetic energy (since Sulphur's mass is constant, the absolute value of momentum is sqrt(2 (mass of Sulphur) (Kinetic Energy)), which is proportional to sqrt(KE)), and I might use them interchangeably.

That's all the theory. In practice, you mostly need to understand this (from the in-game flight tutorial, part 2):

This shows the process of diving in flight. In a dive, one starts high (big Potential Energy) with very low speed (Kinetic Energy = 0), and as one dives, the gravitational Potential Energy is converted to Kinetic Energy, with some energy lost (converted into the internal energy of air) through drag.

Flying depends on the skillful management between kinetic and potential energy.

Here's one useful maneuver that the in-game tutorial doesn't talk about: the tight 180 turn. The naive way (pressing hard on the left button) causes you to lose almost all momentum. The better way is to use the hammerhead/wingover. Basically, pull up hard, and at the top of the ascent, do a 180 turn. In this way, you stash the kinetic energy into potential energy, then do the turn, losing little momentum (since at the top of the ascent, you have almost no momentum anyway), then recover the momentum in the descent.

The Immelmann turn can also be done. It does a 180 turn tighter, but loses more momentum than the wingover. I'm not sure whether that's useful in the game.

How to play the game?

The basic process of the game is:

Collect shiny blobs and book pages (some book pages are special diagrams) by exploring, solving puzzles, and fighting enemies.
When you have collected enough blobs and special diagrams, some red walls become penetrable, allowing you access to more areas with shiny blobs.

This repeats until you escape the island.

In the process, you will find out the melancholic story of the island and its lonely queen, Melinda..