WARNING: THIS GAME CONTAINS A LOT OF GLITCHY, EYE-STRAINING VISUAL EFFECTS AND FLASHING LIGHTS
♦ Livestream of the MegaZeux world “Malardy” by NoahSoft (2011) [https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=2818] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:19) “Malardy”
Exploring another surreal journey of a game by NoahSoft.
This one throws players directly into it, using glitchy aesthetics, and a deliberately challenging to read font for text with lots of live charset editing and palette changes (sometimes straight up random ones). You really have to stumble your way around to figure out what's going on, but Noah does what he does best, presents the player with seemingly meaningless nonsense that eventually you start to understand.
You are in a land called Malardy, and you seem to have brought some people in your life with you, who would prefer that you hadn't. Is this all a science experiment gone wrong? Or is it a manifestation of the stress in your life? I don't know.
MAKE GHOST
There are puzzles to solve though, and that will keep you busy enough. Identifying them, figuring out what's actually wanted of them, and then realizing what's even changed afterwards. Solid walls and walkable paths blur together demanding you examine everything as closely as you can, but please don't ever ask why. Sometimes it's just to make progress, sometimes it's to help some of the locals deal with their own troubles. Settle a dispute between two friends, or just answer some math problems. (Keep a calculator handy.)
By the end though, you'll start to see Malardy on its own terms, and that's when it suddenly turns into a surreal dungeon crawler, its most coherent moment, but still requires you to think about how you move throughout it.
MAKE GHOST MAKE GHOST MAKE GHOST MAKE GHOST
Also I kind of love the guy who demands to show you his special skill of making the font even more unreadable by mangling a vowel of your choosing to be unrecognizable compared to the stray pixels of the other letters. The fact that a letter becomes total garbage makes it suddenly easier to pick out in the mess, ironically making it the most recognizable letter of all.
What a weird little game.
♦ Originally streamed on May 25th, 2025 ♦
