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