Redevilopment

Something tells me this title either took waaaay too long to think of or just popped into the heads of one of the developers while they were on the can...but I digress.

This is the kind of game that makes me want to neglect playing and reviewing DigiPen games as a whole in favor of wrecking shop in Saints Row 2.  There's virtually nothing to talk about that I haven't said a million times before, so this review is inevitably going to end up being about as large and imposing as a shrew in a sinkhole.

I'll say this much: this game has possibly the worst conveyance of any game on this list I've played.  What should have taken 0.0000001 seconds ended up taking like 3 minutes because the developers thought it was essential to crowbar in some incredibly basic...things which I refuse to call humor before it let me play.  The text boxes fade in and out in no hurry at all, and by the time you actually start playing, you're already insanely frustrated by what you just had to sit through, so you're probably going to end up just running straight through the not-very-thoughtfully-designed levels with no inclination to keep running...like how I felt during races when I was on the track team.

If I had to compliment the game on one thing, it would have to be the character design, which conveys enough about out character to make him relatable (without the help of those accursed text boxes) while also making him slightly lovable...of course, this is vastly overshadowed by the crap factor.

Then the game crashed, which was my excuse to stop playing fo' good.  So yeah, that's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay evil.

Links
Gotta love portmanteaus: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=473

Redemption

It's not very often I come across a DigiPen game with a decent plot.  What with the time constraints and limited resources that I assume these students have to work under, most of them don't even try coming up with a plot for their games.  Even the ones that do sort of just establish a setting and leave the rest up to the imagination.

Redemption is sort of a condensed version of everything I think a video game plot should be.  And I mean really condensed.  A quick bit of text at the beginning establishes that a manmade substance called Sample17 has effectively rid the world of humanity and it's up to you, a cleaner robot, to clear out the evil goo and make the world habitable again.  It's kind of like the plot to Wall-e, except...well, you know...good.  In fact, your character actually looks a bit like Eve's brother as he goes through his punk rock phase.

Now, the plot of Redemption took a bold step into the unknown just by existing, which is respectable, but if humanity was wiped out by this Sample17 nonsense, then who is communicating with you and telling you to clean the place up?  The beginning text makes it seem like you're just hearing the recordings of scientists just before they were consumed by their creation, which is emotionally moving enough to get me in the right mood for busting some evil purple gooey heads, but then how do the training rooms make sense?  The same text that sounded completely defeated by this Sample17 is now telling you not only that they were able to isolate a relatively harmless sample of it, but also develop weapons to stop it AND leave those weapons in close proximity to the Sample17. Wouldn't it make more sense to just have the weapons laying around broken down labs for you to find?  After all, if the humans were capable of developing weapons that halt Sample17's growth, how did they manage to get eradicated by it?

These weapons aren't exactly pea shooters, either.  With that excellent segue, I can now talk about the game feel.  It's damn amazing.  The shotgun makes anything in its proximity into a cowering little bitch, and I assume the weapons I'd have unlocked later are even cooler.  The reason I didn't play far enough to find out is because the first non-tutorial level hides the goop spawners so infuriatingly well that I end up just running around aimlessly as the area gets completely covered by death, which I would dare to call the game's biggest flaw, even though the rest of the levels could be perfectly streamlined for all I know.

The game looks nice if you can get past the Minecraft-esque block aesthetic, which is essentially the 3D version of pixel art.  The music and sound effects compliment the setting nicely, and if it weren't for the aforementioned plotholes and design flaw, I would dare to call this game nothing shy of amazingly crafted.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay redeemed:

Links
What do you need to be redeemed for? You're a robot: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26061

Reboot (kinda)

one day, maybe I'll get a bunch of people to download this game so we can actually host a game and play it like it was meant to be played, but as it stands, I have to give Reboot the same treatment I give all the other multiplayer-exclusive games.

I will comment on the 2 things that I noticed while strolling about the maps all by my lonesome.  First off, the game looks nice, but what do you expect from the Unreal SDK?

Second off, this game features some of the most ass-backward button allocation I've ever seen in a FPS game short of System Shock 2.  Right click to jump?  Shift to both sprint AND use a weapon's secondary feature?  What the what?

Ah well.  That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay competitive.

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26718

Rapidfyre

Y'know, I like my computer.  I like it a lot, but nobody's perfect.  Every computer has its flaws.  My computer has a 700GB hard drive.  That might seem like a lot, but games tend to be huge files, and I set out to play 500 of them, not counting the non-DigiPen titles I depend on to keep me sane.  So now, we're not even 2/3 done with the year and I've only got 130GB left on my drive.  Mercifully, the DigiPen games tend to be pretty small.  The largest one I've encountered was Crazy Cross, and that wasn't even half a gig.

Enter Rapidfyre.  Things were off to a bad start when I saw that the application file alone was 500MB, and the whole package was more than 800.  After sighing and saying goodbye to another gigabyte of storage space, the game wouldn't start.  "Oh no," I said, "I've sacrificed too much to declare this a broken game."  I decided to do a bit of research; then I found out that Rapidfyre is a mod of the Alien Swarm SDK, meaning I had to go download Alien Swarm, a 2GB file, as well.  So in total, that's 3 entire gigabytes of space.  That could comfortably fit 6 Crazy Crosses!

So yes, I am a bit biased from the get-go, but come on, 3 gigabytes?  The game isn't even that long.  I got through it in less than 40 minutes.  40 minutes!  Crazy Cross took me almost a week of casual play, and that game was entirely original.

Oh yeah, that's another point of bias for me.  I absolutely loathe mods, remakes, or pretty much anything that can be construed as lazy.  I've never modded a game before (unless you count texture swapping in GTA: Vice City), so I don't know how much effort went into making this game, but I can't give it credit for looking and feeling nice, because that was the work of the Alien Swarm guys.

And once you take that into consideration, there are really only 2 things to judge Rapidfyre for: the dual-color mechanic and the enemy design.  Both of these things are pretty well done, but I can't help but wonder how many times the guys at DigiPen are going to try and sell me Ikaruga in a different package.  I feel like that time I was like 8 years old and I told all my friends and family that I wanted a new video game for Christmas, and literally everyone who got me a present decided on Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg.  It's a great game, as is Ikaruga, but I can only play a game so many times before I get bored.

The final boss is well constructed, as are the rest of the enemies, but hot damn they are easy to take down, especially when you're given th-th-thirty lives?!? What?!  5 lives would've been fine, 10 would have been generous, but 30?!  How inept do the developers think we are at playing these games?  A simple design flaw like that can really sap the tension and excitement away from what is otherwise a very tense and exciting final boss fight.

So yeah, final verdict: Rapidfyre was fun but mindless, a welcome departure from Alien Swarm's unforgiving difficulty, but the concept is unoriginal and the gameplay doesn't deserve a much better adjective than "solid."  If you've got 3GB to spare and you were holding out until now for a truly polished game to waste time with, go nuts.  Otherwise, don't bother.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay absorbent.

Links
liberal use of "y" does not make you cool: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24912

PuzzlePusherParty and Qubie (sorta), as well as R-Chain

*sigh* today is a boring day.

PuzzlePusherParty is a multiplayer-only game, so there's not much I can say about it.  Mercifully, the game allows you to use an xbox controller, rather than requiring it.  One player can play with WASD while another plays with the arrow keys, for example.  I've seen way too many games on this list forbid that simple privilege to the players, and it's nice to see a game designed with the players in mind.

From what I can tell, the game is fast-paced, fun and frantic.  The mechanics are simple, everything is well-conveyed, the game looks, sounds and feels beautiful, and I genuinely have nothing to complain about...though that's probably because I didn't have anyone to play with.

Qubie didn't install correctly, so I tried it again.  It didn't install correctly again.  I restarted my computer and tried again.  Didn't work, so I'm calling this one broken.

Finally, the only real review today (if you can even call it that), R-Chain.

I was worried about this game when I saw that it was a senior project.  Lord knows I haven't had good luck with senior projects in the past.  My spirits were lifted when I saw the splash art that said "powered by Unity." Of course, there are exceptions, but games that use Unity tend to look really good, and games that look really good tend to have been made with some bit of care.  When a senior combines his experience at the school with genuine care, the product should be good as a result, right?

Well, in this case, yes.  R-Chain is a good game.  It's one of those games that analyzes music and generates the level accordingly.  Instead of jumping over hurdles and gaps, like in ParChord, here you emit radial bursts that cause any bullets in their proximity to explode.  Those explosions then trigger other explosions and then you go blind.

Yeah, I would say that's this game's major fault.  Even when I played with placid background tracks, the screen was muddled up with so many colorful things that it was excruciatingly difficult to tell what the hell was going on.  Still, this game certainly provides enough sensory stimulation to be fun, and exploding your musical tracks is an idea that simply cannot fail.

That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay bright

Links
misuse of the word "puzzle": https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24657
Qubie: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26629
R-bitraty and pretentious letter usage:  https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26770

Puzbot

Ever notice how these blogs are getting shorter and shorter every day?  You also ever wonder why I keep drawing attention to the face that I'm running out of things to say about these games?  I do too.  Let's get on with the review.

Let's talk aesthetic, first.  The visual design is...erhm...interesting.  It's got that kind of "alpha build" look to it where everything is rendereed really nice and everything but the textures don't really seem to mix well with one another.  It looks fine, I guess...actually, no.  It doesn't look "fine" or "okay."  It strays away from mediocrity in every way.  It somehow manages to look extremely appealing and offputting at the same time.

The sound direction is kind of the same way.  Imagine blasting your favorite song through incredibly high quality speakers...underwater.  That's basically the feel that this game replicates.

In terms of conveyance, there's not much to talk about here.  Everything is explained to you through a little box at the bottom of the screen, which is perfectly easy to ignore if you'd rather have the game tell you what to do through the gameplay alone.  It strikes a nice balance between pandering to those gamers with the attention spans of wet towels and appealing to more sophisticated players who like to get immersed in the game's mechanics.  The arc that a block will take after you throw it is nicely outlined so there's no confusion as to what will happen once you take the action.

The thing that stuck with me most, however, was unfortunately the game's greatest flaw.  There is a huge perspective problem with this game.  I have no idea where I reside in relation to the map.  I always manage to fall into gaps I didn't even know were there.  Sometimes a block will seem out of reach, but when I inch nearer to it, I push it off the edge.  Other times, a block will seem to be as close to me as possible, but I can't grab it.  It's not impossible to get used to, but trust me when I say it gets really damn annoying really damn fast.

That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay puzzling.

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26678

Put Me Out!

And speaking of fun arcade-type games, here's another one.

The game gontrols from a top-down view, kind of similar to Hotline Miami and the early GTA games.  Funnily enough, once you mow down a few pedestrians with your fire truck, you begin to almost think you're playing a GTA game, but I digress.

Put Me Out is the journey of a fireman who wants to put out fires.  That's it.  You run around the overworld, following your compass to find the nearest burning building, and then use a variety of water-spraying methods, from water balloons to super soakers, to put out the fire.

The main problem I had with this game was the conveyance.  Yes, we're going back here again.  It's only really a problem in the first minute of the game, but many would argue that the first minute is the most important minute.  Every 13 nanoseconds, you're stopped in your tracks to have the (relatively intuitive) controls explained to you by a librarian-looking woman.  The problem is: they're xbox controls.  All of them.  If you're going to go to the trouble of incorporating an unnecessarily obtrusive tutorial, you can at least let the people who play on computers (you know, your primary demographic) understand what you're talking about.

Anyways, other than that, this game is a riot and I don't have much else to say about it.  Every design choice seems to revolve around the central feeling of having a rip-roaring good time, and I can appreciate that in a game.  It just means there's probably not a whole lot to analyze.

Upon the end of your time limit, you're shown an invoice that tells you how much you earned for your services, much like in the end of Starfox 64, and any game that reminds me of Starfox 64 is a good one in my book.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay dry.

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18539

Purge

It's funny how prevalent certain things become after you start noticing them, isn't it?  For 16 and a half of the 17 years of my existence, I had no idea that the British word for "flashlight" is "torch," but now that I learned that, for example, I see it everywhere. 

The reason I bring this up is that, not too long ago, I compared a game I was reviewing to Bossinabox and Claustrophere.  As it turns out, Purge feels exactly like a combination of those two games.

From Bossinabox, Purge gets its fixed-rail movement system, and from Claustrophere, it gets its crowded and hectic feel.

The two elements work together really well.  Other than aesthetic things, such as the music sounding like something your little cousin would throw together in MadTracker2 before learning what VST plugins are, there's not a whole lot to complain about.  It's a simple, straightforward arcade-type game.  You like making things go boom?  Purge is for you.

Actually, there is one fatal flaw.  Again, it's not really the programmers' fault, but it just breaks the experience so much.  Certain button combinations don't work together.  For example, I don't believe you can move right and shoot diagonally down and to the left at the same time.  This is because the arrow keys, those finicky little bastards, control your gun.  It would have been nice to have the option to use the mouse, or even other keys such as "I,J,K and L."

Oh well.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay cleansed.

Links
Bulimia Joke: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1642

Pudding Panic

yeah, this one didn't work either.  All I could get to run was a level editor that I didn't bother looking into too much.  Don't worry, though, I won't leave you hanging for 2 days in a row.  I'll be back later with more review goodness.

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1547

Psyched

It's a not real exe, but I found a demo reel on Vimeo that looks pretty cool.  Kinda like a gravity gun-only game of Half Life 2: Deathmatch.

Links

http://vimeo.com/3478295
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1655

Propero

Whoa! Hng-Oh God..

In my experience at the DigiPen Game Gallery, there have been quite a few racing games, and while many were good and many were bad, there were pretty much only 2 that actually made a lasting impression on me.  Those two were Nitronic Rush, a game that delivered exactly the experience that was advertised with only very minor faults in level design, and A Series of Tubes, a game almost as diseased as its developers, who were stricken by a severe case of senioritis.  What if I told you that Propero was like if those two games had a child?

It takes the high-octane, adrenaline-fueled gameplay from Nitronic Rush and its visual style and absurd speed from A Series of Tubes.

The final product actually works very well, and while it is plagued with some really irritating design flaws like the classic "esc" insta-closeout, the game as a whole has a reasonable difficulty curve and gameplay that will really make you grip the edge of your seat (or, in my case, just giggle a little bit).

You know how oftentimes I'll criticise a game for not having enough "polish?"  Well, here's an example of a very unpolished game that's still incredibly fun to play.  I was thinking of witholding my seal of approval for this one because of how unrefined it is, but screw it.  I had enough fun to warrant giving this game the highest honor I can.

I would talk more about why, precisely, the game is good, but Blogger is giving me a weird glitch at the moment where I can't type anything unless the mouse button is being held, so instead of the rest of the review, here's a relevant image.



That's all I got for today, until next time, stay speedy.

Prominence

Prominence is a 3rd-ish person shooter where you shoot little bits of yourself to kill other enemies, which then turn into absorbable globules that make you bigger and, therefore, give you more ammo.  You shrink in size as you take enemy fire or go out of bounds.

I say "3rd-ish" because the camera appears to be embedded inside you.  I don't know, something about the angle is very weird...maybe it's because the camera is placed directly behind the character at all times, making you seem like a blue smudge mark on the lens.

Other than that, though, the central mechanic is solid and the gameplay is quite fun.  It's another one of those small, time-wastey games like Bossinabox or Claustrophere.  The shooting works well, and killing enemies is both challenging and satisfying.

I'm going to save us all some time and say that other than the less-than-beautiful visual style, the only real problem is the camera.  It's especially aggravating when you go out of bounds without even knowing where the bounds are.  The whole thing feels just a bit too disorienting.

All in all, it's a decent start but it needs a bit of tweaking.  That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay big.

Links
Big Blob Kill Little Blob: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26677

Promethia7

Ah, the noble shoot 'em up.  In my opinion, some of the greatest games ever created operate under this name.  These games tend to be created with only one objective in mind: fun.  It's not about telling a story or advancing the medium, both of which are very venerable and worthwhile endeavors, mind you, but the shoot 'em up says "forget all that for now.  You deserve to unwind, so here are some 'splodable things.  Enjoy."

One branch on the tree that is the shoot 'em up is the bullet hell.  Typically top-down shooters that flood the screen with so many enemy projectiles that attempting to follow them all will probably result in a brain hemorrhage.  Done well, the bullet hell will allow the player to step back, analyzing only vague patterns along the screen, and enter a state of flow unlike any other.  Done poorly, it's a frustrating, stressful mess that will have players throwing their controllers into various inorganic substances, screaming "I quit!"

Promethia7 is, thankfully, an example of a good bullet hell...half of the time.  Essentially, there are 2 portions to each level in the game.  There's the very short, enemy-filled pathway leading up to the boss, and then there's the boss battle, which is clearly the focal point of the level.  In this way, the level structure is kind of similar to that of the Joe and Mac games.

Now, here's my question to the developers:  what did you intend the player to do in those short passageways leading up to the boss?  Did you want the player to actually take time dispatching each and every enemy? Because I just ran right past them as soon as I figured out that was an option.  Sure, the enemies drop health and ammo when killed, but you'll spend way more of that stuff killing all of them than you will ever gain.  Besides, the boss fights all have smaller enemies within them, whom you can kill and reap the same benefits.

See, in Joe and Mac, the pre-boss level made sense because there were powerups for your weapon and such that you could get there.  These would in turn make the boss fights easier, but only if you were skilled enough not to lose half your health fighting the smaller guys.  In Promethia7, there are no powerups, just items to replenish what you lost by being there in the first place.  Thus, there's no reason to actually take out the guys before the boss.

That said, the boss fights are done pretty well.  There's enough stuff on the screen to make the whole thing challenging, but not quite enough to drive the player into sensory overload.  I still haven't come close to beating the third boss, but hey, that doesn't mean the game is unfair.  Just that I'm not good enough to conquer it.   If you just ignore the parts before the boss battles, this game ain't too bad.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay a'shootin.

Links
Esoteric Word Followed by Number: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26661

PS- there's a SWORD in this game?  I only figured that out after I replayed it and clicked the "how to play" button for kicks and giggles.  Good conveyance there, guys.  5 stars...

Project3

Really, guys?  Two CUB3 clones in one day?

Alright, well at least this one has some damn substance.  Actually, I'm not sure whether I like this game more than I like CUB3.  They both have their advantages.

I think the main thing Project3 has going for it is the aesthetic.  This game is quite pretty.  And hey, CUB3 was nothing to sneeze at either, but I think Project3 has it beat.  The colors pop more, the sound effects are crisper, the turning is smoother, it just feels better.

The thing that CUB3 has over Project3 is variety, and CUB3 did not have much variety.  The only real difference in the gameplay is that CUB3 let you use missiles as well as lasers to take down your enemies.  In Project3, it's lasers or gtfo.

Really, there's a very simple way to determine whether I recommend this game to you.  Didja like the space shooter sections in Star Wars: Battlefront II?  Yeah?  Then you'll like this.  End of story.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay spacey.

Links
Third Project: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1409

Project Zeit

Well, this was different.

Project Zeit can best be described as Chibi Robo meets Grand Theft Auto.  I'll give your mind a moment to stop imploding...you good?  Alright.

you play as a robotic Vietnam veteran who is strapped for cash and has to take on a job at a delivery service.  That delivery service is in some serious financial trouble as a result of it being a generally terrible service being located not too far from a vastly superior one which you, in all your robotic, logic-processing glory, decided to forego.  

Then again, maybe it's for the best you don't try offering your services to a place that can actually afford to fire you, because since the various surfaces of the overworld all have the same amount of friction, you're going to be barreling through roads, sidewalks, and lawns alike just to get to your next objective.

Pretty soon after you learn the ropes, the game decides to give you a gun, at which point all bets are off and you, as the bloodthirsty player, decide to just go ape-nuts bonkers.  Soon enough, by doing missions that come right the hell out of nowhere (such as 'sploding cars with c4), you get more weapons and are able to go even more lollipop loony.

Actually, this game ends up being kind of similar to Attack of the 50ft Robot. Except you're not 50ft, you're just a robot who uses conventional means to tear up the city. 

Aside from all that, the game's design is preposterously sloppy, but I actually think that adds to the charm.  For example, while walking around on foot, the entire city may as well be built on an ice rink, because you slip around like mad.  I think that's kind of fun, though. It's not so bad to the point where getting to where you need to go is impossible or even frustrating.  It's just funny.

One sloppy design choice that I didn't care for, though, was the completely arbitrary placement of checkpoints.  No wonder the delivery service is doing poorly, the routes you have to take make the US Postal Service seem efficient.  It's not too terribly inconvenient to just drive back to where you were once you go through an obnoxiously out of place checkpoint, so it didn't bother me too much, but still.

The thing that bothered me most, though, is that there is only one save point in the entire overworld (or at least only one that I could find).  This means that you not only have to remember how to get back to that save point, but you actually have to put in the travel time to get there before you can quit without losing progress.  Whyyyyyy.

The whole game just kind of smells like "don't give a damn," which I find to be a quite appealing fragrance if applied to an appealing surface.  In some cases, it can be a death sentence for games that are designed to be taken seriously.  Project Zeit is just a silly little adventure that's a great relaxation tool.

That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay predominant.

I have no idea what they were going for with this title: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=504

Project Starfighter

I tried, I really tried to come up with some clever analysis of this game, but I just couldn't think of anything.  The only thing that strikes me about this game is that it's CUB3 but worse.

Everything is gray, there are no sound effects, the controls are floaty as hell...actually, on the subject of controls, you guys all know that I love WASD as a default movement control, but in this game, it's counterproductive.  See, the "A" and "D" keys do the same thing as moving your mouse left and right.  It's not a bad thing, but still...just kinda pointless.  Actually, I guess it's better to have the option to control with the keyboard for players who prefer to do so, but up and down don't have alternate controls, so the whole thing just feels sloppy.

This was a senior game, surprise surprise.  The guys who made this were probably done learning about game design, and they needed to make some sort of game because of educational obligations.  That's what I'm guessing, at least, almost all of the games on this list that have made me just feel defeated and without anything useful to say have been senior games.

Some day I'm going to figure out how to make the senior games interesting...but it is not this day.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay involved.

Links
Project Unoriginal: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=406

Mass Effect 3.

it tired me out, all right.  After plowing through to the end, I hopped on the DigiPen gallery, saw that the next game in line was a 3D space shooter, and said "that is a big fat nope."

Project Pathogen

Project Pathogen is an interesting little platform game.  You play as a little square computer virus thing(?) and you have to make it to the end of the level, all the while killing other computer virus things(?).

Other than your super mega face pea shooter, you are armed with 3 weapons, a remote mine, a trampoline, and a teleporter.  You cycle through these things with "A" "S" and "D" while using the arrow keys to move, "C" to jump, and "X" to charge up and launch your weapons.  Now, I want you all to thing about this for a while.  Put your fingers on the keyboard as if you were about to play this game.  Now, record how long it takes for you to be able to perform the following actions:

-jump.

my guess is you had to think about what you were doing for at least a fraction of a second before you realized that "C" was the jump key and not "X," the one that, oh, I dunno, feels like a jump key.  And lo, herein lies the main problem of the game.  There are a million things happening on the screen at any given time.  I have neither the time nor the patience nor the health bar to have to think about what I do before I do it.

Other than that, the game is good.  The controls are solid, the music is catchy, and the mines behave pretty well.  If only the controls were more intuitive, this one would've been great.  I mean, it's tough for me to call any particular platformer "great" since its such a common genre, but I don't think anyone would deny the greatness of Megaman or Super Mario Bros.  The difference is that those games didn't make mistakes, and even when they did, they were minor enough to ignore.  Never once while playing Megaman (which this game was quite clearly influenced by) did I have to think about which button to press, and that game had like 13 different powers.  Project Pathogen only has 3.

That's all I got for today.  Until next time, stay intuitive.

Links
Proj-*cough* uh, Path *cough* gen *wheeze*: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25874

Project Mayhem

Can someone please explain to me what these "NOT REAL EXEs" are about?  I'm just so confused...

Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=600

Project Albatross

If you're a frequent reader of mine, you'll probably have picked up by now on some subtle to not-so-subtle hints that I'm not entirely fond of the American education system, or at least parts of it.  One part I hate in particular is how much weight is put on simple memory tests, some of which are presented at random and, thus, test nothing more than how absorbent a student's brain is.  That said, here's a pop quiz on my blog so far, free of consequence:

In which review did I say the game was "a demonstration for a brilliant engine for a really unique and intuitive game with no soundtrack, unrefined visuals and unreasonable health system."

Here's a hint: The game featured gravity puzzles from a first-person perspective.  Give up yet?

Of course, it was my Gravitation review!  Here's some extra credit: name one other thing I said in that review.

If you answered, "Without the combat, Gravitation would simply have no challenge," congratulations, your mind has ascended into clairvoyance and you already know exactly where I'm going with this, so you may as well stop reading now.

Before I get even more sidetracked than I already am, let me spew out my one-line review for Project Albatross:  It's Gravitation with an emphasis on puzzle solving, the complete eradication of the combat and health systems, and much more obnoxiously glowy lights contrasted with completely back floor tiles.

And, much like in that review I keep waving in front of your faces, that's that.  You now know all that I'm going to say about this game.  Of course, just like before, I'll keep writing just in case you feel inclined to keep reading.

Project Albatross showed promise but lost my attention early on because of its aesthetic.  I don't think they executed a single element thereof very well.  I mean, the game looks okay if you're one of those people who can stare at a Lite-Brite board being spun by a power drill in a pitch black room for 4 hours, but for the rest of us, it's a one-way road to eyestrain with a very stressful speed limit.

I also seem to remember having a decent amount of control over where I landed in Gravitation, but here, my character and I always end up disagreeing on how to interpret my input.

I think the biggest problem is that, without a combat system to keep people from getting bored, Project Albatross was tasked with designing the puzzles in such a way that players were challenged, but still felt the need, or want, to keep going.  That's where this game really falls short.  Instead of asking myself "how am I going to get to that glowy cube?" I usually end up asking myself "where the bloody hell is that glowy cube?"  And that's not fun.  It's annoying.  Couple that with some really obnoxiously slow block-stacking physics and you've got yourself a game that just doesn't feel good to play.

Valiant effort, guys, but this one didn't wow me.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay referential

Links
Project AlbatWRONG: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25908

Potawatomi (kinda) and Primordial

My friends, before I begin today, I would like to note that I've made a horrible mistake.  I bought Mass Effect 3.  I know, I'm a monster.  It's just that the original Mass Effect was such a beautiful piece of artwork that I felt compelled to try out the other two.  Don't worry, though, the only thing more human than making mistakes is the ability to rise above those errors and become better off for it.

That said, I could have just done Potawatomi today, declared it broken (which it is), and left you all with that, but I simply wouldn't feel right clicking on that red square with the number "3" in it until I've delivered at least some kind of real review.

Now, let's talk Primordial.

This is a side scroller from DigiPen Singapore.  Quick thing to note before I start, this game actually led me to play it to completion, so on that merit alone, it should be given some kind of praise.  Granted, it's not a very long game, but still, it gave me no reason to ragequit.

Let me get the praise out of the way first.  Yes, this game is insanely linear, and yes, there's not much room for thought when solving the puzzles, but those are both good things.  That's what the game is designed to be; it's a slowly paced journey through the game's universe that values fun above all else.

I really appreciate how some of the puzzles force you to stop thinking in "game logic" and approach the situations as if you were in the real world.  Instead of conveying a few mechanics and then trusting the player to remember them and forget all else, it almost seems as if the designers started the game as just a straight path, threw in a couple obstacles, and then thought "what would my first instinct be when approached with something like this?"  Then, they designed the level accordingly, and the final product feels great.

Now, there were, of course, areas of the game that were not all good.  The aesthetic is a good place to start: the sound direction is great.  The music in the background is immersive, fun to listen to, etc.  All the sound effects feel satisfying to listen to.

The visual style has its ups and downs.  On the one hand, the characters are all drawn quite lovably, but on the other, both background and foreground objects are sometimes colored in pitch black.  That ain't cool.

And then there were the real problems: two in particular.  First, some of the jumps are a bit unfair to make.  If I demonstrate that I know how to solve a problem (e.g- jumping over a spiked gap), solving that problem shouldn't be too difficult.  Second, the loading times make P.U.S.H seem lightning fast.  I mean my god, I thought the game had crashed when I got to the first loading screen.

Oh well. Final verdict: it's a competently put together game that's worth checking out.  I will say, on a more personal note, that I would have been willing to accept this game's flaws and issue it my seal of approval if it had had some sort of narrative or themes or something to make it more than just a running and jumping spree.  Certain design elements, specifically the ending wherein you fall into a bottomless pit which brings you to the credits, are very similar to those in Oniro, which had far and away the best narrative of any game on this list so far.  Perhaps it's only for that reason that I ended up craving some sort of exploration into the world portrayed, but as it stands, the game just kind of feels like a demo rather than a completed project.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay primeval.

Links
Potawadoesn'twork: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26616
Eat all the bunnies: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25987

Polaris

I'm going to establish a new rule: any game that tells you to go to a "menu" and then closes out when you press the "esc" key has no right to ask that I start it up again. That said, I'll comment on the limited experience I had with Polaris before I decided to retire it to the depths of my hard drive.

First, the controls are good.  Great, in fact.  You move around at a nice speed, your jump arcs are just as you'd expect them to be, and your weapons take just enough skill to use to make the game not feel like a button masher but not quite enough skill for the game to seem exclusive to hardcore gamers.

The visual style is nice, too.  It's clear that these guys weren't using the most intense of animation programs, but they worked very well with what they had.

The main premise of the game is this: kill baddies, find new weapons, use those weapons to kill more baddies, rinse and repeat.  I approve of this formula.  It incentivizes while remaining simple.

The only real problem I had with the game is in the details.  The 2-second music loop that plays throughout gets very annoying very fast, for example.

All-in-all, this game is worth checking out if you like side-scrolling platformers with swords and fire.  If it were a tad more polished and didn't make such silly mistakes as making "esc" close the whole thing, I might have even played it to completion.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay slashy

Links
Jump'nSlashMan: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=480

Polar Flux

Polar Flux is another attempt to make a platformer with an original concept.  While I'm not a huge fan of this idea in general, I must concede that the idea of allowing you to magnetize your character on command in order to move blocks and traverse the levels is, while not incredibly original, at least a competently thought-out starting point.

Of course, the real sticking point for a game like that is the execution, and I'm sorry to say that Polar Flux was one of the few games I've played that has ever frustrated me to the point of eliciting a vocalization like "are you kidding me?"  The main problem is that even tapping an arrow key for a fraction of a second will cause your character to go flying across the screen.  This may be my fault for playing on a keyboard instead of an xbox controller, but come on, guys, this isn't the XBLA, this is the DigiPen Game Gallery, a website that people access using computers.  Computers have keyboards.  Know your audience!

Anyway, the aforementioned problem might not me too horrible if the levels weren't designed for very precise platforming, but between the jumping physics and the lack of friction on the already too-small surfaces, there are maybe 2 or 3 magical pixels that you can land on for any given platform that won't result in your demise.

This game does have its perks, of course.  The animation is framerate-tastic, the sound effects are satisfying, and the particles you emit while magnetizing yourself are joys to behold.  Some elements of the visual design were sloppy, like the fact that the spiked walls are just rectangles with a filled in black squiggly pattern, which becomes really apparent when they slap them in front of red backgrounds.

All-in-all, this game is a good start, but it's too frustrating for me to recommend.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay slippery.

Links

Actually Correct Usage of the Word "Flux:" https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25892

Stuff I played at my grandma's house

Well, turns out there was way more stuff to do at my grandma's house than I planned for, so I didn't get to play as many games as I had hoped.  Plus, I had a party to go to after work today, wherein I got hit in the eyes, making looking at the computer screen not quite painful enough for me to take the night off but just painful enough to make this experience very annoying for me.  So, now you have a post that's anemic and overly grumpy.  Enjoy:

Photon Bunny

Well the first thing I noticed was that this game had the courtesy to start me out in windowed mode so that I can talk to my friends or browse the internet while I play.  Of course I would play the game that does that while I was in the middle of nowhere with no internet access.  Much like the Dial-up I would have had to use to surf the web from where I was, the pace of this game is sooo sloooow.  They try to fix that with a new mechanic early on, but I'm going to talk about all the things I noticed beforehand first.

-black platforms against dark purple backgrounds.  Why, god, why.

-pixel art.  nuff said.

-useless tutorials are useless.  The game conveys instructions just fine, so the tutorials pretty much just get in the way.

-then they use a “dark room flashlight” mechanic on top of the already hard-to-see platforms. The devs are drugs.

And then we are introduced to the light dash.  It only helps the slowness of the game so much due to the cooldown time, which is just long enough to be annoying. Also, you can go through little hoops to increase the duration of your light dash, but there's no sound cue or anything.  Game feel? What’s that?

It was only after I took note of all these minor frustrations that I asked myself tyhwhen does this game get even the slightest bit hard? Nothing about the design makes you think; levels are linear yet somehow still annoyingly roundabout.

All in all, just a forgettable platformer.  Granted, I didn't play it to completion and it seemed to introduce new mechanics rather steadily, but it didn't hold my attention long enough to introduce anything too intense, so I'm going to go ahead and say give this one a miss.

Pixelcraft

this is the part where I started to get too distracted by my grandma's pool table to write anything meaningful. I could expand upon the bullet points I wrote, but I think I'll just leave you with what I wrote, and then add in a concluding statement.

-interesting premise.  Keeps tower defense not excruciatingly boring.

-decent conveyance even without how to play tutorials

-what is going on with the graphic design?

-lots of things to consider (angle, etc)

-difficulty curve is a bit steep.  I quit within 5 minutes.

This was simply not a game to play under my conditions.  It requires boredom, patience, and free time.  If you have all of these and like fast-paced strategy type tower defense games, give it a shot.  If not, hold off.

Pixi

When I played this, I had only one bullet point to myself:

-just wing it, I guess.

 Of course I'm not going to leave it at that, but the reason I didnt write anything meaningful down is because Pixi is a really unique game.  It's not fantastic, but it's interesting.  I'm just going to give a quick summary and then a very quick review:

There are Pixis in bubbles.  You click the bubble to free the Pixis.  You then click and drag the Pixis to Boxi that are trying to steal your stars.  Each Boxi has a weak point and if you miss it, you're going to lose a lot of Pixi really fast.

The game is innovative and stylish enough to warrant a play from anyone curious, but the game simply didn't feel good enough to hold my interest for very long.  Something about its playstyle just makes it seem like the game plays itself and what you do is largely meaningless.

Plight of the Penguins

from here on, I wrote nothing and played each game for about a minute before deciding to put them down.  Plight of the Penguins at least feels damn amazing with explosions going off everywhere, but I really wish there was a jump feature rather than just needing to throw a grenade at your feet.  The game is challenging and has terrific feel, but just didn't have much substance.  I think if you just look at it for what it is, a much more fun and exciting yet less intelligent alternative to Minesweeper (and by that I just mean a game to play when you're bored and want to kill a few minutes; the two games actually have nothing in common), you'll enjoy it just fine.

Pocket Park

this one, on the other hand, I don't think anyone can enjoy.  When you do finally figure out how to control the damn game, you'll find it to be a constantly frustrating puzzle game that just leaves you yelling at the computer.  Essentially, you have to flick marbles into a goal ring, but your opponent (the CPU) can knock your marbles right out of the goal ring, and they well if you hesitate for more than a millisecond.  It's like trying to play shuffleboard with an elderly person.  It just feels like an exercise in futility.  It's so frustating, in fact, that in this particular scenario, the elderly person also has a gatling gun that shoots an unlimited supply of pucks toward your own.

and that's all I was able to do in this 4-day span.  Yeah, I fell a little behind schedule, but hopefully I'll make it up soon, one way or another.  That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay productive.

PS- I totally forgot that I tried to play Pirates of Oceaneus as well, but that was one of them not real exe thingies.  

Links

Bunny: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25876

Pirates: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26013

Pixels: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26014

A Thousand Mini Navis: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26000

'Guins with Nades: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26700

Just Play Marbles: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=463

Phobia

eh...nothing much to say about this one.

I think this game's only real selling point is that it looks pretty as hell. Everything is stylized really well, but poor optimization and weird graphical glitches keep it from getting the gold star in even its strongest department.

The basic gist of the game is that you are a little night demon (which is what my Physics teacher calls his dog) whose goal it is to scare every last person in town.  In order to scare them properly, you must creep up behind them before delivering the big "boo!" You can lure people into auspicious positions by dropping candy or money, but other than that, you're just a purple bat-creature who sounds like a dying cat.

Candy is used to lure kids, whereas money is used to lure adults.  It's a cute little detail, but whether you drop candy or money is completely random, so all this adds to the game is the fact that sometimes you'll end up with no choice but to drop a stack of candies with a dollar bill on top.  Luckily, you have an unlimited supply of candy, or this would've been really frustrating.

The game as a whole is just kind of dull.  The "proper" scares that you need to accomplish in order to progress trigger cutscenes that hang around just long enough to be annoying.  In addition, the dead zones created by lampposts are not very well distinguished, meaning falling into an inescapable death trap is way too easy.

All in all, this is a cute looking game that needed a lot of polish before it was ready to be called playable, and a lot more design brainstorming before it was ready to be called fun.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay scary

Links
meow of terror: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=8727

expectations going forward

so tomorrow should be a regular blog day, but I'm spending Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at my Grandmother's house, which has a grant total of 0 internets.  Don't worry, though.  I'll still be playing and reviewing.  You just won't be able to see them until Friday, when I post all of them at once.  So yeah, expect that...

PhaseShift

Hmm...a 2D, top-down space shooter featuring two worlds to shift through...Apparently the guys at DigiPen love them some Ikaruga

Alright, well this game isn't quite the same as Ikaruga.  Instead of your ship shifting colors to suit its environment, in PhaseShift, you use wormholes to travel between two different colored dimensions.  Most of this game's problems come from a mishandling of the concept, not a mishandling of design elements.  So let me talk about design first before I activate whine mode.

The game, especially the stills used in menus and whatnot, look gorgeous.  Rachael Downing, the lead artist for the game, has some real talent; and apparently she knows it because her name appears twice on the game's description page...wait a minute, everyone's name appears twice...what?

The game feels decent enough.  When you get hit, you hear that classic electric-y burn-y noise that's just begging to be accompanied by a rumbling controller.  You do move rather slowly, but your movement speed is just quick enough to be able to dodge enemy fire efficiently, so that's not the problem.  I think the problem is that since there are 2 worlds on the screen at all times, only one of which you are in, you're always going to be limited to a very narrow area, meaning even when the game doesn't decide to earn its name as a "bullet hell," You're going to feel very confined.

Which of course brings me to this whole "swap worlds with wormholes thing."  First, let me say that I do really like this idea.  The two worlds are varied enough in design to make the game's nonexistent narrative rather interesting.  One world features mechanical enemy starships while the other features organic lifeforms. It's a joy to behold, but is it worth all the frustrations this concept brings?

First off, let's talk about the wormholes.  In games like Ikarguga, you're able to swap between polarities at any time.  in PhaseShift, you have to wait for a wormhole to come by.  I don't see the point of this; it just seems like an unnecessary invitation for frustration.

Also, there's no reward for going through a wormhole.  Each world typically has the same amount of enemies and firepower at any given time, so the only differences between the worlds are the visual style, the music playing in the background, and the firing patterns of the enemies.   The visual style's novelty wears off in like 2 seconds, and while it never stops being fun to look at, it's hardly enough to influence your decision on which world to stay in.  After all, this is a bullet hell.  You don't have time to appreciate the aesthetics and you certainly don't have time to analyze your enemies' firing patterns, especially on the screen that you're not in.  So, you're probably going to end up staying in the world with the best background music, making the entire mechanic pretty much pointless.

I'm guessing someone noticed this while this game was being playtested and that the ensuing conversation went something like this:
"Guys, we need to influence the player to switch worlds every now and again, otherwise the entire game is just a shoot 'em up that only uses half the screen."
"Alright, how about rewarding the player with points every time they use a wormhole?"
"Good start, but points are kind of arbitrary.  Why don't we give them a powerup for every three wormholes they use?"
"Excellent idea, so should I get rid of the powerups that we hid inside the enemies?"
...and it was all going perfectly well until...
"Guys, guys, what are you thinking?  Don't you know that punishment is a more powerful incentive than reward?"
"Um...well, yeah, but-"
"The player doesn't deserve more poewrups, he or she should be punished for not playing our game the way we want"
"But doesn't that seem a little-"
"Here's how we do it.  Every so often, completely at random, a big "warning" will flash in front of the screen, followed by an undodgeable insta-kill attack that the player has to use wormholes to escape."
"That doesn't sound fun at all"
"Well it's the way I want it, so either program it in or I'll upload that embarrassing video of you to Youtube."

And lo, a good game was ruined.  Luckily for me, I already have embarrassing videos on Youtube, so my shame is totally gone and I feel free to criticize this game for the misguided project that it is.  It's not a bad game by any means, but the flaws are tough to overlook.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay dichotomous

Links
Shifts Don't Phase Me: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24649

P.S- If you want to see that embarrassing video of me, you'll just have to find it on your own :P

PhaseOut

I want you all to use your imaginations for a sec:  Imagine Ikaruga as a voluptuous young woman.  Now imagine Megaman X as a spirited young man.  Imagine the two find each other at a bar one night and Megaman X takes Ikaruga back to his place for a bout of energetic young passion.  Now, imagine what comes from that about 9 months later.  The answer is PhaseOut.

Now that I've thoroughly confused and probably disgusted you with that delightful bit of imagery, let me explain.  PhaseOut is a fast paced platformer involving wall jumping (there's the Megaman X) and polarity between red and blue, making certain things intangible and others not (there's Ikaruga).

I really don't feel like running down the list and complimenting every aspect of the design, so just imagine the best case scenario given what I told you so far.  Now, imagine that with minimalist yet still charming 2.5D visual style that takes a turn for the unnecessarily confusing when the background changes from green, a color reserved only for background, to blue, a color also utilized by sometimes intangible platforms.  Other than that one very confusing design choice, there's not much to complain about in the looks department.

The biggest problem with the game isn't even a problem with the game.  It's a problem with my computer.  When I'm pressing both the up and left arrow keys, the space bar doesn't work.  The space bar is what you use to switch between red and blue.  The levels are all designed to be very challenging when you're able to switch colors mid-jump, so imagine how frustrating it gets when half of the time, you have to stop moving for a split second in order to change color at the right time.  It's kind of if like Super Meat Boy simply decided not to hold onto walls while he was facing left unless you were pressing some arbitrary button like "left crtl" or something.

Now I know what you're thinking:  Dean, if the only major issue you took with the game wasn't its fault, then you've got to give it your seal of approval, right?  Well, as much as it pains me, no.  I want to give this game my seal of approval for its brilliantly challenging yet doable (in theory) design.  I want to give it my seal of approval for having a competent level select.  I want to give it my seal of approval for its aesthetics, sound design, feel, everything...but I just can't get past that one big ol' flaw.  See, I still think the devs share some blame here.  The "WASD" keys are never used in the game...why not?!  Maybe my computer is the only one with the arrow keys problem, but I'm pretty sure it's a common problem.  I know they designed the game mostly with an Xbox controller in mind, but I don't have any of those.  Sorry guys, but for your lack of consideration for the keyboard warriors, I can't in good conscience give this game my seal of approval.  Still, though, to my audience if I have one, check this game out.  It's one of the most fun platformers on this list.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay intangible

Links
Red/Blue Shift: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24672

Perspective

Alright, this one was interesting.  Really interesting.

You remember when you were little and you would play with action figures or dolls or whatever you want to call them?  Remember how you would make them jump around on cabinets and tables and whatnot?  Now, did you ever have one of those moments when you were really tired but you still wanted to play with your toy, so you kind of unfocused your vision and made the action figure jump around on the outlines of cabinets and tabletops in the distance?  Well, that's kind of what this game is.

In case that explanation was a bit too asinine for you, I'll try to use more technical terms.  By pressing LMB, you can switch between controlling the camera and controlling Mr. Blue Jumpy Man.  If Mr. Blue Jumpy Man, to be hitherto referred to as "MBJM," touches orange, he dies.  He can only stand on blue platforms.  Even if he dies, he can respawn infinitely in almost the same position, making this game's frustration factor almost nil.

The game gets interesting when you control the camera.  See, the platforms that MBJM can jump on aren't all immediately accessible.  You have to move around to manipulate where the blue platforms seem to reside in space.  MBJM apparently stands on the perception of an object rather than the object itself.  This gameplay mechanic is really unique and clever; it makes you think outside the box and I see this game as another successful attempt to push the boundaries of what game mechanics can do.

Of course, with a game like this, the primary determinant of quality is whether or not the central experimental mechanic works, and in this game, it's flawless.  It does exactly what it's supposed to 100% of the time.  On top of that, the game controls like butter.  This game looks fantastic, feels fantastic and sounds fantastic (even if the background track can get a little repetitive).

My only real criticism is that this game spends a little too much time exploring its one mechanic, but that's not really a bad thing.  I doubt there's some super sentimental ending that'll make me want to plow through the levels to see, so who cares if the game is too long?  Besides, it has an autosave feature, so you can put it down when you get bored.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay perceptive.

Links
Now You See Me, and You Always Will: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25930

EDIT: The autosave doesn't work, so nevermind.  No seal of approval for you.

lame excuses

heyo.  I was out all day today, and while arriving home late has never kept me from powering through a game before, the game I played today left me a little confused.  If I were to try to write up a review tonight, it would probably be the most pathetic review I've ever contrived; and given some of the content I've put out in the past, that's saying something.

Until tomorrow, friends...

Pentaflux and Perplexed

whoo-ee, it's 10:44PM as I begin writing this.  This has to be a new record for me.  It might not sound that impressive, but I am not a night time worker.  Early to bed, as late as possible to rise; that's my motto.

Anyhow, Pentaflux is another platformer whose big hook is its weapon-unlock system.  Every now again, you'll come across a little station that lets you upgrade your weapons and unlock new ones.  The game this reminds me most of is Bulletstorm, but in a 2D platformer.

The game almost gets a little bullet-hellish at times.  Aesthetically speaking, this game couldn't be trying harder to be Contra.  Just look at the first level.  It's practically a carbon-copy.  I am thankful that they didn't decide to go the route of most games that call back to the "good old days" and use outdated pixel art, but the MS Paint aesthetic doesn't do much for me either.  Nothing to scoff at, I suppose.

The biggest problem by far is that the weapons are terribly balanced.  You wanna know how to win in this game?  Pick any weapon with the word "homing" in it.  Congrats, you win.  To be fair, I fiddled around with most of the other weapons and found them to be fun and, mostly, relatively effective, but why would you bother learning how to use other weapons when you can have homing missiles do all the work for you?

Ah well, that's forgivable, I guess, because even if the homing weapons were the only ones offered, I would still have had fun moving down baddies.  I can't quite recommend this game, though, because it kinda broke on me at the end of level 2.  The screen scrolled too far for me to be able to see the boss.  That and the design elements in general just reflect a lack of polish.  Once again, we have a game with good roots and mediocre execution.

Alrighty then, let's talk about Perplexed.

Yeah, I'll tell you who were certainly perplexed: this game's marketing department.  The game is advertised as a "relaxing puzzle game to relieve stress."  Now, let's play word association.  I say a word, you say the first word that comes to your mind.  Ready?
Perplexed.

now, what words came to mind: confused? Flustered? Frustrated?  How about relaxed?  I'd be willing to guess that word isn't exactly on your top 10.

Of course I'm just nitpicking for the sake of comedy, but then I opened up the game and was practically assaulted by the menu screen's unbearably bright and highly contrasting colors.

Alright, I'll stop beating around the bush.  Perplexed really is a simple puzzle game that's fun and has potential to be relaxing.  Keyword: potential.

This game would have been relaxing for me were it not for 2 things:

First, there is no music.  Some people may find this calming, but for me, it's just unnerving.

Second, rotating the blocks along certain axes is a little confusing. Though fiddling around with the camera fixes this, fiddling around with the camera is not relaxing.  It's aggravating.

Oh well.  Both of these games do what they set out to do.  Both of them showed competent steps toward meeting their goals; and both of them lack the kind of polish that would make them truly good games.  In the case of Perplexed, there are really simple issues like the "esc" key closing out the entire game.  I'm sorry, but that kind of stuff is just lazy.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay shiny

Links
Pint of Lucks: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=431
Confuzzled: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=396

parChord and PenguinPanic

Ever played Bit.Trip Runner?  Well, then, you've played parChord.  The only difference between the two games is that in parChord, you get to choose the song to which you evade obstacles.

For those of you who've never played either game, here's a brief synopsis:  you are running.  There are obstacles.  You dodge said obstacles.  The music gives your ears multiple orgasms.

aaand that's it.  The two games are identical.  ParChord does a very good job of putting the player in the zone with its simple controls and whatnot.

It's a damn rhythm game, alright?  Is there anything else I really have to say?  Play it yourself if you're curious, but otherwise, it's just another Bit.Trip Runner.

So let's talk about Penguin Panic

uuughh, God, those pixels hurt.  Yeah, this game right off the bat seems to be trying way too hard to replicate the "good old days."  They even set this game in the year "20XX" and used that atrocious pixel-text that makes "M"s look like "H"s and whatnot...ehhh, this one's going to be a challenge for me to get through.

Well the game starts off reasonably well.  The controls are a little complex and you're given very little time in which to learn them before your penguin minions start dropping like flies at the hands of hungry seals, but the levels are quick and there's a lot of room for error.

Even the aesthetic isn't horrible (for the most part).  The characters have enough life and charm to them to keep me from being too harsh toward the visual style.

Until I got to my ragequit moment, the game was very meh with a side of frustration.  Certainly nothing to make you scramble to the DigiGallery to get your hands on it.

"Uh oh," you must be thinking, "Dean used the word ragequit again.  What happened this time, no save feature?" No, actually, this game actually respects your right to ragequit, and it damn well better considering what it just pulled on me.

One level was shaped a bit like a "W."  There were two shafts leading down to the bottom of the level.  In order to progress through the shafts, you must use your penguin weight to make the ground give out from under you.  Inevitably, you're going to end up with yourself and a bunch of your penguin pals in one shaft and the rest of your crew in the other, doomed to become pterodon food because their almighty leader isn't standing by with a blowtorch.  So yeah, that's insanely frustrating in and of itself, but as long as the two shafts lead to the same place, everything's okay, right?  Well yes.  Sadly, though, that's not the case.  The shaft I happened to be in lead to a death trap.  There was no warning, no rhyme nor reason, nothing earlier in the game to even convey that such a thing could happen.  The game punished me for playing it.  That's like the #1 rule of game design: don't do that!

So yeah, nothing too impressive today.  ParChord is at least worth checking out if you've never played Bit.Trip Runner or if you want the same experience with your own music.  Stay away from Penguin Panic, though, unless you like to make snap decisions at a ridiculously stressful pace whilst being arbitrarily punished.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay frosty

Links
hardchord parchord: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24648
breakin da ice: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18870

Paper Titan

not much to say about this one...let's get this show on the road.

Mmkay so the first thing this game had me do is draw my projectile.  Yep, you read that right.  In my opinion the greatest innovation this game brings to the table is that it lets you draw your projectile.  Remember how gaga I went over the customization in Coreship because it let you pretty much draw your own flying thingy?  Well PaperTitan does that, but without the "pretty much." You literally draw your projectile from scratch.  Of course, I took this as an invitation to play as "Phallor: the Summoner of Penile Destruction," but my point is that it paves the way for creativity, which is a beautiful thing for a game to do.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much the only way I can use "beautiful" to describe anything about this game.  That's not just because the game looks less than appealing, even though it goes for that "crude pencil drawing" look that stopped being original around the time I played Mighty Guy on Funbrain.

Your projectile is pretty much the only useful thing in your inventory, so the novelty of shooting flying penises at your enemies is going to run out about a quarter of the way through this two-level game.  The only other thing in your arsenal is a "draw it yourself barrier" thingy, another unoriginal concept.  At least in the games PaperTitan rips off, the drawing mechanics are executed decently (for the most part).

You can only draw like 2 inches worth of line on the screen, so unless you really take your time to place the barriers where they need to be, they aren't going to be effective.  On top of that, whatever you draw disappears almost immediately after you draw it.  The cherry on top of this emotionally devastating sundae is that the only enemies that the pencil barriers would be useful against come at you so blindingly fast that luck is pretty much the only factor determining whether or not you'll stop them.

Between the limited drawing time, oppressive cooldown times for your projectile and the dissipation of barriers, it seems like the makers of this game were told in one of their classes that you have to place some restraints on the player in order to make the experience rewarding, but totally zoned out when the fact that the restraints must not be completely arbitrary was being explained to them.

There's also something weird going on with the lives system.  Every time I died, the lives counter would go down by one and then immediately go back up to where it was before.  Does that mean it's impossible to die in this game?  Eh, whatever...

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay black 'n' white

Links
tightened paper: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18533

Pandemonium

well, this was interesting.

Pandemonium is an arcade-style shooter wherein you zap different colored balloons in order to keep fishes, which are scattered about the map, in water.  It's a very interesting concept that made me scratch my head and think "where do people come up with stuff like this?"

While it is really refreshing to see such a new and interesting idea being brought forth, such springboards can be very dangerous unless the pool it leads to is filled with water (or jello or something, but now this is getting out of hand).

That said, Pandemonium doesn't do too many things wrong to keep it from being fun.  It's quite challenging and everything is conveyed to you reasonably well, so if you need something to keep your attention for a while, this might be it.  However, there are some things that need mentioning.

First, the scoring system is a bit unforgiving.  I toiled away at this game for ten minutes, zapping balloons and saving fish to the best of my ability, and I got a grand total score of 0.  I honestly don't know what this game wants from me, but it's apparently not something I can give.

Get past that though, and this certainly is a game of ideas.  One idea this game tries out is rope-swinging mechanics.  To get to different areas of the map, you have to deploy a rope, or grappling hook or whatever, accordingly.  This mechanic has a bit of a steep learning curve; and even when you do learn how to use it, it's still easy to get caught on an invisible wall.

Pandemonium is ambitious to be sure, but that's pretty much its only outstanding quality.  If you're into experimentation, go ahead and give this game a try.  If, however, you're a more conservative gamer who prefers tried and true methods of entertainment, perhaps you should hold off.

That's all I got for now.  Until next time, stay wet

Links
Appropriate Title: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=422