This was an interesting day for DigiPen blogging. I played one game that I was genuinely intrigued by, one game that was broken, and one game that I wish was broken.
Oasis Ostinato is the broken one and that's all I'll say on the matter.
Oculus is my favorite kind of game to stumble across. Aesthetically, this game is ugly. Maybe that's what they were going for, but even on a technical level, this game is just unimpressive in every way except what matters. In terms of mechanics, this game is intuitive, innovative, imaginative and immersive. Those four "I" words make up one hell of an experience.
You play as a mummy whose goal in life is to collect all the Anubis statues (or what I assume to be Anubis statues. They just look like dog heads). Unlike most platformers of this nature, the levels are not conveniently designed to make a perfect albeit difficult route to your objective. Instead, you need to manipulate the levels to your advantage using a bunch of magical lenses that can magnify or remove walls depending on how cleverly you place them.
These kinds of puzzles are, in my opinion, the best. They really do make you think like you're thinking outside the box and proving your intelligence. The one and only solution is not apparent, if it even exists. On top of that, I just love the uniqueness of the mechanic. It's creative and original and it's exactly the reason I play these games in the first place. This one gets my seal of approval.
And now let's get to Oggo Poggo....uughh.....
somehow I knew this was a senior game just by playing it. It has the same problem as A Series of Tubes. It's just barely functional and, more unforgivably, mindless. It's as if they just threw it together over a weekend without even thinking "would this mechanic make the game good?"
I'm not even going to delve deeply into why such mechanics and design choices are so asinine. I'm just going to list some of them.
-one hit deaths
-lack of save feature or checkpoints
-infinite consecutive jumps that allow you to rocket into the sky at will
-hitboxes the size of elephant hotels
-unrefined textures
need I go on? Stay away from this game. Sorry to be harsh, but sometimes things are just bad and people just fail.
Links
Oasis Ostinat-nope: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=573
Roculus your Soculus: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25113
Bing Bang Boing: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=16267
