Jed

Imagine yourself as a perfectly content robot, surrounded by a bunch of baby robots that frolic and play. One day, you fall into a nap. During your unconsciousness, the babies are kidnapped for no real reason. Now they're trapped in foreign lands, alone and scared, tied to the ground by collars. You must rescue them.

Such is the story of Jed. Using thick pixel graphics and synthesized music, it's emulative of old-school platformers. There's an interesting twist to game-play, though: special tiles cause Jed's perspective of the world to flip—the background becomes the foreground, and the foreground becomes the background. Whichever is currently the background can still be seen behind the foreground in a darkened state.

Although by no means a long game, several levels test the player's skill and determination to save your baby buddies while avoiding a plethora of obstacles. Some stages contain rockets, which allow Jed to fly over the terrain, and three-shot guns that lock enemies in place for several seconds.

As a Freeware Game, it can be downloaded here. It is currently playable on Windows and Linux systems.

Tropes used in Jed include:

• 100% Completion
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Several robots are hidden past where the world seems to end, usually seperated by a concealed passage or a low roof that can be walked on. Some of these are hinted at by inexplicable empty blocks inside the wall.
• Ambiguous Gender: Word of God says that Jed is a male.
• And Your Reward is a Hat, Beard and Tie
• Badass Automaton
• Badass Beard: rewarded for fulfilling the Time Trial.
• Badass Grandpa: if you equip all of the unlockable clothes, Jed takes this appearance.
• Boss Battles: The giant crawler and piranha robots, with the former appearing in Stage 5 and Challenge, and the latter being exclusive to Stage 10. Your main goals are the same as with their smaller versions: don't get hit and reach the door.
• Brutal Bonus Level: Challenge.
• Collision Damage: the only way enemies can actually damage you is through contact.
• Convection Shmonvection: “Challenge” takes place around some sort of lava flow.
• Cosmetic Award: all of them.
• Cute Machines: the babies are freaking adorable.
• Difficulty Spike: In some levels, it depends on if you're trying to rescue all the robots, but there's definitely a point where it gets harder in general. A borderline case of Schizophrenic Difficulty.
• Escort Mission: what the game boils down to, although you can go right past the babies in favor of reaching the exit.
• Excuse Plot: Rescue baby robots! Really, even the game's description above is taking liberties.
• Floating Platforms: which ones are actually floating can be difficult to decipher at times, due to the game's world-flipping nature.
• For the Evulz: the enemy robots' motivation for everything evil they do, according to Word of God.
• Friendly Fireproof: the few times you get the enemy-freezing gun, the babies are immune to its shots.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality
• Gotta Catch Them All: semi-important-type.
• Hailfire Peaks: Challenge earns the triple word score via the Fridge Logic listed above.
• Jet Pack
• Jump Physics: somewhat like that of Cave Story, in that the Jed glides more than drops.
• Layered World
• Lethal Lava Land
• Level Editor
• Mecha-Mooks: the standard piranha and walker robots.
• Mechanical Monster: the upscaled piranha and walker robots.
• Mercy Invincibility: extends past normal Collision Damage to water and lava.
• Nintendo Hard: The Slippy-Slidey Ice World segments. Dear God, the Slippy-Slidey Ice World segments.
• No Name Given: see Word of God.
• Non Lethal Bottomless Pits
• Needs More Love
• Nice Hat: unlocked after beating the game.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: until you've rescued at least one robot, Jed will die from a single hit.
• Palette Swap: of the “same color, get bigger” variety.
• Papa Wolf: Jed. Even if he doesn't actively harm the robots that kidnapped his babies, he walks circles around them while leading the toddlers back to safety.
• Piranha Problem
• Power Ups: the Jet Pack and pellet gun.
• Retraux
• Ridiculously-Human Robots or Mechanical Lifeforms: it's difficult to say which, due to humanity's apparent nonexistence.
• Selective Gravity: a select few objects delight in punching the law of gravity square in the face.
• Slave Collars: used to keep the baby robots in place.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Patches of snow drastically change the movement system—Jed skates rather than walks, and there's massive inertia toward changing direction, even in jumps.
• Super Drowning Skills
• Time Trial: getting your collective time to less than seven minutes unlocks the beard.
• Trial and Error Gameplay: Challenge kicks this into high-gear.
• Wave of Babies: the final storybook picture.
• Word of God:
  • The Player Character is named “Jed;” it took that name from the Grandaddy song “Jed the Humanoid.” Fortunately enough, the song's subject is unrelated.
  • Baby robots are made like baby humans—i.e., through sex.
  • Jon is thinking about creating a Sequel.