Warning! Any information about this article is unofficial and not canon to the Giana Sisters canon. Please read it carefully.
Giana Family (also known as "Giana's Multiplayer World") is a 2D multiplayer platform fangame released in August 1998 by Andreas Kahn for the PC and based on The Great Giana Sisters. The game was pretty much popular around 2000, but got forgotten after the site "stud.uni-hamburg.de" have been closed. The game includes an level editor to make your own level. It also can be played on Windows NT with a specific executable called "GianaNT.exe".
The player control Giana or one of her family member and fight against other players in deathmatch levels. Players can collect diamonds and power-ups from bricks and bonus blocks. The game have a training mode for the multiplayer mode where the different maps can be explored alone.
The multiplayer mode has several game rule that the player can choose : Standard Game is the default game mode. Each player starts with 100 health and every diamond gives 10 health (maximum 200 HP). the player die if it health drops to 0, or by falling out of the map area. Power-ups can be used all the time until the player die or take another one. There is also the Sudden Death game rule which is very different from the previously mentioned. The player no HP and die immediately from every hostile source. While owning a spower-up, it diamonds-total drops each second. If it drops below 0, it loose the power. If the player gain 100 diamonds in a single life, it become invulnerable for 20 seconds, but it'll loose the diamonds at this point. Players can play in teamgame or free for all, as well if special map scenarios like "Diamond Fever", "Capture the Flag" or "Domination" should be used.
Playable Characters[]
Here's a list of playable characters that appeared in different version of Giana Family:
Giana Family have two campaigns in the single-player mode. A Beautiful Day for normal difficulty campaign and Day Dreaming for hard difficulty campaign. It also have playable battle levels for the multiplayer game mode:
Normal difficulty
Hard difficulty
Battle levels
A Beautiful Day Afternoon Adventure Evening's Expedition Sunset Surprise Frozen Deams Volcanic Maze
Day Dreaming It's Getting Darker Too Foggy To Awake Below The Castle Castle Of Irreality Waves Of Awakening
Arcade Action Cave Fortress Cave Of Illusions Dyna Blaster Family Showdown Flood Zone Frozen Lake Infernal Cave Maya's World Midwinter Mayhem Night Fever Rock'n'Roll Sweet Home Havoc Underwater Base
Power-ups[]
Here's the power-ups that can be collected in the game:
Fire Wheel (known as "Punker Ball" in the game) : You can bash away some blocks by hitting them with the head from below. Some blocks are diamond sources, you can bash them to increase your diamonds/health, others hold extras or rocks.
Double Lightning : More damage than the lightning shot, but slower repeat count. The bubbles reflect on solid objects.
Strawberry : More damage than the double-lightning shot, but slower repeat count. The bubbles aim on the nearest enemy and chase him.
Clock : Hold down the special key/button for 4 seconds (you can't move). Then all other objects are frozen for the next 4 seconds.
Magic Bomb : Hold down the special key/button for 4 seconds (you can't move). The bomb then inflicts damage to all enemies in range.
Water Drop : Grants total protection of fires and lava damage. You can swim in the flood while pressing the jump key/button.
Lollipop : Grants invulnerability for 20 seconds, but ends invisibility.
Gelee Royal : Giana morphes into a killer bee, until touching any solid. Damages players by flying against them, but can be smashed from above. You can neither pick up anything, while a bee, nor use any weapons. Ends Invisibility.
Cloud : Grants invisibility for 30 seconds, but ends invulnerability.
Candelabra : Allows you to see in the darkness.
Snow Balls : You can throw snowballs. The longer you keep the fire-key pressed before release, the faster the snowball will fly. By pressing jump/left/right while holding fire you can adjust the throwing angle of all following snowballs.
Dream Grenades : This shot can be thrown like the snowball but inflicts area damage. The longer you keep the fire-key pressed before release, the faster the dream-grenade will fly. By pressing jump/left/right while holding fire you can adjust the throwing angle of all following dream-grenades.
Mirror : The mirror will replace your clock or bomb extra. While holding down the special key/button (you can't move) you will reflect enemy shots back, eventually even hurting the owner. This doesn't work on snowballs and dream grenades though.
The site[]
From the official site before 2006 :
"Do you remember the great old game on C64's times called "Giana-Sisters"? Now it's time to change everything about it! This version brings to you a new feeling of network-gaming...
Deathmatch with up to 16 players in LAN's or throughout the internet and you´ll see that this tiny game will bring you real satisfaction in shooting up enemy players.
Giana Family v1.4 has been released after 5 years and allows you to play a single player campaign as well as new multiplayer modes: Capture the Flag, Domination & Diamond Fever."
In May 14th 1999, Andreas Kahn released a "SuperMario" patch for the game that change the graphics of the game and also including new musics. Giana Family 1.30 was also out with new features (which these features appeare also in 1.48). Unfortunately, nothing can be downloaded in the site except the soundtracks and a older version of the game. The site contain a custom levels page (known as "level zone") from other users (which unfortunately we can't download anything either) and another page called "What's new", this page is a kind of changelog of Giana Family version updates.
Video[]
Giana Family - A Beautiful Day Full playthrough
Giana Family - Day Dreaming Full Playthrough
Trivia[]
The last update of this game was in May 31th 2004, 2 years before the site shut down.
Giana Family is one of the fewer game to have a level editor. The other being Giana Worlds 2.
Andreas Kahn never revealed that he used Microsoft Visual C++ to code the game. However, if you dig in the game files, MC C++ is mentioned which lead Andreas used it for making the game.
The removal of Papaya and Fiera is completely unknown. Andreas as never talked about this even in changelogs of the game.
