Brink Cascade: The Bordersdown Game

[Neon Ignition]

Fuse has done it!
Brink Cascade has been beaten after Six Days Nine Hours

I genuinely had visions that the game would be beaten within about twenty minutes of going live so all in all it's been something of a success.

So - Here's the breakdown of what comes next.

At 11:00am the game will end giving anyone who still fancies a dabble some remaining hours to give it a punt. Then, tomorrow when the game is over I'll post an update revealing to all the purpose behind the game.

From Tuesday I'll start breaking down the paths the game contains allowing everyone to quickly and easily see how the routes and endings for all 28 endings pan out.

[fuse]

So when's the physical edition coming out?

[charlesr]

Wait! I've been busy. Only just spotted this. I got ending 4.

[charlesr]

Ok amazing
Enjoying all this.

[Yakumo]

Fuse has done it!
Brink Cascade has been beaten after Six Days Nine Hours

congrats to fuse. I got game over 5 times

[QualityChimp]

Sorry, Neon - a combination of work being busy and the thing being a bit broken when I did have time to play it means I didn't rinse every ending.

Purple Portal is still broken?

I got ending 16 and 17 since the last post.

I also got to THE TRUE ENDING!

The post-credits sequence was amazing and the true hero is hinted at for the sequel!

When done for such a fun game and also remembering the anniversary!

I'm going to see if I can get a few more endings.

[QualityChimp]

OK, apart from the purple path, I've rinsed this MOFO, as I knew I would, also spending most of my time in the side quest of the Black route, when the core story is all within the red.

Got a few gaps, but they must be through that Purple Portal, because according to my notes - yes, I took notes, I've followed all the other decision paths.

->Open Spoiler<-

E01 - Final Demand
E02 - Invoice
E03 - Yoshi
E04 - Sonic cycle
E05 - Nightmare
E06 - Diddy Kong
E07 - Pikmin
E08 -
E09 -
E10 -
E11 - Dark Souls
E12 -
E13 - Portal
E14 - Silent Hill
E15 - QC Bomb
E16 - Game Over
E17 - Space
E18 -
E19 - Trapped in 80s
E20 - Frozen in space
E21 - Animal Crossing
E22 - Big Daddy
E23 - Dozers
E24 - Console War
E25 - T-Rex
E26 - Dogg Thang
E27 - Quantum Leap
E28 - Boris HDR

I'll have to stop there, as I've got loads of work I should be doing!

[Neon Ignition]

Yes! The game is over! The link is still live for those who want to still dabble but the breakdown of the game will begin tomorrow. I'll need to have a check through the links again, textadventures is such a finnicky site but I guess the main thing is it made this even possible.

So, over two months to layout the map, write over 110 pages of text and also attempt to provide any kind of narrative flow so that those who experienced different routes might often reach a bad end via one of the 28 endings but would usually experience some sort of additional story that fed into the overall arc of what was happening. That's not to mention the difficulty in sourcing the Charles jokes and making them work in context of each point in the story that they appear.

We'll begin that journey tomorrow but for now, the formal reveal of the reason why Brink Cascade has been launched now:



2021
The Twentieth Anniversary of NTSC-UK
and
The Tenth Anniversary of Bordersdown

For the latter the precise day is tomorrow, 12 October

[wakka]

Aww, I only played through a couple of times and now I see it's gone

Thanks for all your hard work Neon, it was fun

[Neon Ignition]

Let's Cascade the Brink! Time to start breaking down each of the possible routes that Brink Cascade offers to reveal what the 28 endings are:


Ending 01
Following some forum posting you find yourself being pulled into your screen, warned of the journey ahead. Awakening in a dark stone room you make your way through several dark tunnels before reaching a room with two doors to choose from, one named 'The Path of Red' the other 'The Path of Black'. Choosing the Red door you step through and fall through a black void, falling until you are caught by the wind and land in a wooded area before your first meeting with Charles and his magical Fez.

Charles Dad Joke 01:
"I once debated a flat earther. He said he'd walk to the edge of the world and drop off the side to prove me wrong... he'll come around eventually"

Charles Dad Joke 02:
"I'd love to get paid to sleep... it'd be a dream job"

You have the choice of taking a path of trouble or a dream experience. Choosing the path of trouble you enter an increasingly Mario themed land, serenaded by the Pet Shop Boys Go West. Choosing between going west or defiantly heading east you follow the songs suggestion to stumble across a green warp pipe. Climbing in you're taken to a lava filled land where you meet a sweaty workman named Mario who tasks you with delivering a work invoice. Choosing to use a go-kart rather than walking you head to a nearby Fortress at speed, darting over lava eruptions and rocky jumps, killing Toad along the way. You enter the Fortress and take Luigi's hoover device from his corpse. Now facing Bowser and the Princess you battle the king dino until he's defeated. You pass the relieved Princess her invoice then walk away, leaving her to her fate having forgotten what your main mission was.


Ending 02:
The path is the same as Ending 01's until the final decision where instead of saving Peach you take over Bowsers kingdom, lording over your subjects whilst feasting on the mushroom people.


Ending 03:
The same as Ending 01's route until the decision to walk instead of using the go-kart. You find yourself trapped on a loose piece of rock in the lava flow and the heat causes you to pass out. Waking some time later you find yourself in the land of the Yoshi's. Reaching a house by the bank of the river you are greeted by the Yoshi's where you are promptly ripped apart and feasted upon by the group of dino's.

Ending 04:
At the decision to go West or East, you opted to be defiant and go East. Reaching a boost pad you are charged up and sent running as fast as Sonic over a great distance. You travel so fast your clothes are blown clean off and as you recover from the shock of it all you discover a massive mechanical robot erupting from the ground. Finding yourself nude and flanked by Sonic and Tails, facing Robotnik mid-battle you have the choice to stand your ground or step away from the battle. You decide to stay, a decision you're not convinced was right when Tails begins to get overly familiar with you, and then the battle commences with Sonic and Tails quickly knocked aside by missiles. Causing Robotnik to destroy his own machine, the Chaos Emeralds powering it are activated and as you all try to reach them Metal Sonic emerges and grabs them causing a surge of power followed by an explosion. You awaken to find yourself at the beginning of the Robotnik battle, trapped in a time loop and destined to have this naked battle again and again forever.

Ending 05:
Early in your adventure you had the decision between the path of trouble or a dream experience. Choosing the dream experience you walk through the woods and find yourself progressively being lifted through a rising mist. Eventually the ground disappears and you're flying. Soaring through the air, you loop and bask in the sunlight. Purple eggs on the ground below hatch, tiny Nightopians emerging before flying up to you and then eating your flesh.

[Neon Ignition]

Ending 06:
Back at the choice to stand wit Sonic and Tails or move aside, with this ending you opted to stand aside from the battle. You run away from the conflict as fast as you can until you reach a cave by the road. Wondering what to do next a bullet suddenly rips past your head and you have to decide whether to stand your ground or take cover in the cave. Choosing the cave, you enter under cover of a hail of bullets. You hear beeping and turn to see a pile of red explosive barrels. In a bid to escape you dive into a nearby minecart and the following explosion propels the cart along the broken tracks as the cave system begins to collapse around you. Twisting and turning around the suspended rails you approach a broken section of track and prepare to jump only to be caught by the physics of the real world and plummet into the ground below. Following your death Donkey Kong tastes your remains.

Ending 07:
Having held your ground rather than enter the cave you find yourself approached by Brad, a Full Spectrum Warrior who is on his way to the Brink to stop the Cascade. He gives you some clothes and you head to a clearing for the night. There you are joined by his team mates Solid Snake, Carmine and Sean Bean. You then have to choose whether to head to the Brink or get some rest and ask them about the Cascade. You choose to find out more about the Brink which turns out to be a wall beyond a City, a wall that guards a portal that can transport you anywhere. The wall defends the City from things coming through the portal and that wall is now under attack, if it falls the event is referred to as the Brink Cascade. You can then choose to resume your journey or have a pee in the woods. Needing a pee you choose that option and head into the woods. As you finish you spot a little man nearby, Captain Olimar, who uses his whistle to command an army of Pikmin to strip you apart from the inside out.

[Brad]

Clearly tons of work went into this. I tried a good dozen times I reckon and was feeling confident on one run but ultimately failed

[fishbowlhead]

Thanks for the massive amount of work you put into this Neon, serious effort for Boardersdown and it’s community.

[Neon Ignition]

Cheers, the roadmap for the game is deceptively simple on paper but it was awkward to map out. I'd initially thought it could be suited to doing a trilogy of them but as it went on it became increasingly clear it was a more time consuming project than planned and would likely only sustain interest and working for one so I rolled the nuts of the ideas for the sequel into one strand of this game so it would encompass everything and added some more forum references to cover the nugget of a concept for the third. Cramming in as many references as I could without it feeling overly forced was a pain too, you want the game references but also the user ones. It's why the early routes and endings are so light on cameos from users etc, I was more casual and taking my time at the start so that side of things rolled out slower. The more into the later endings you get the more you get much longer pages with many more faces appearing.

But, for the true ending path, it's definitely the longest and hardest path to correctly work your way to. I think it requires the player to make the correct junction choice thirteen times to get to that ending.

[QualityChimp]

But, for the true ending path, it's definitely the longest and hardest path to correctly work your way to. I think it requires the player to make the correct junction choice thirteen times to get to that ending.

I make it 14 in my notes!