iz not real! :O
Links
https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=602
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Monday, September 16, 2013
Sphere
*groans* I just don't have the energy for this one...
Sphere is a 3rd person shooter wherein you shoot other spheres. It plays exactly like you'd expect it would. There's literally nothing interesting to talk about.
The game is designed...er...simplistically, to say the least. You're a sphere in an arena and that's about all there is to see. The weapons are all different combinations of a few polygons, and the death animation is just your sphere expanding and disappearing. It has its charm, I guess...
The only thing really worth saying is that the momentum mechanics, while appropriate for a sphere, are infuriating. These kinds of movement mechanics would work well in a large, open arena where momentum can be manipulated to your advantage, but here, doing anything but being painstakingly careful not to hold the "w" key for more than a half a second is just going to send you bouncing along walls uncontrollably.
The weapons are fun to use, I guess, but there's not much creativity. I've already thrown enough lasers at people; give me something interesting! Remember Slug 'em Up? That game had tons of creative weapons that made the game unique and fun to play.
Eh....yeah, that's all I got for today. Until next time, stay marbellous (ooh, portmanteaus!).
Links
Sphurr: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=515
Sphere is a 3rd person shooter wherein you shoot other spheres. It plays exactly like you'd expect it would. There's literally nothing interesting to talk about.
The game is designed...er...simplistically, to say the least. You're a sphere in an arena and that's about all there is to see. The weapons are all different combinations of a few polygons, and the death animation is just your sphere expanding and disappearing. It has its charm, I guess...
The only thing really worth saying is that the momentum mechanics, while appropriate for a sphere, are infuriating. These kinds of movement mechanics would work well in a large, open arena where momentum can be manipulated to your advantage, but here, doing anything but being painstakingly careful not to hold the "w" key for more than a half a second is just going to send you bouncing along walls uncontrollably.
The weapons are fun to use, I guess, but there's not much creativity. I've already thrown enough lasers at people; give me something interesting! Remember Slug 'em Up? That game had tons of creative weapons that made the game unique and fun to play.
Eh....yeah, that's all I got for today. Until next time, stay marbellous (ooh, portmanteaus!).
Links
Sphurr: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=515
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Speed Run and Speed Trip (kinda)
Now this is more like it. I was delighted when I saw that the next two games both centered around "speed," which I took to mean I'd get done playing them as fast as possible. Thankfully for me, I was right! One game was over in a matter of minutes and the other doesn't launch. So, let's talk about the one that worked: Speed Run
I gotta say, for a game entitled Speed Run, the default walking speed is pretty pathetic. I guess that's the point, though, because jumping over and over makes you go super fast. I must say, I'm very grateful that the game spelled that out in big white letters, otherwise I would have never figured it out, he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
The levels are quick and simple, which the developers seem to think is a selling point; while it is true that I always prefer more complex and open level design, a game like this has to be streamlined, and if there's one word to describe the level design, it's streamlined.
There are a few simple design decisions that bug me. First off, the camera is way too low to the ground. I feel like I'm in quicksand (which might explain why the walking speed is so low relative to air travel speed). Second, the palate needs at least one or two dull colors here and there, otherwise all the pastel oranges and blues just blend together into this mess that isn't too easy on the eyes. Also, you gain a bit too much momentum when you run, but that's really only a problem in one level, which I'll get to later, after I'm done seething.
Now let's get to the big problems: the abilities. In most levels, you are given three basic abilities to expedite your race to the finish. There's a rocket, a jetpack, and a gravity-switcher. The only one you will ever use is the jetpack. Remember how I said jumping makes you go super fast? Well the jetpack is essentially just a really long jump, so if there's a quicker way to move, I haven't found it. The rockets are utterly pointless. There are no enemies or destructible environments, so the only use the rockets have is rocket-jumping, which vastly inferior to the jetpack.
Don't even get me started on the gravity-switching. It's a nightmare. An absolute nightmare. Maybe it's because of how low the camera is to the ground or maybe it's because the camera doesn't orient itself quite right, but if you ever flip the gravity, you will be confused and nauseated. All that sense of direction that was keeping you moving through the world in a timely manner will be gone, and you'll be lucky if you have enough motivation to restart the level. How could no playtesters have raised their hands and been all "uh, yeah, I kinda feel like a need a bucket right now so maybe clean up this mechanic..."
Other than all those monstrosities, there's only one other problem I had with the game: the last level. Up until then, you'd been programmed to storm through the level with the jetpack as fast as possible, but then, without notifying you, the game takes away your jetpack and gravity switcher so all you're left with is the stupid rocket-jump. Not that that will help anyway, because the level is just a bunch of rectangles that you have to jump on carefully and diligently, lest you fall and have to start all over. It's a frustrating, inconsistent, lazily designed mess of a level. Maybe you'll say "whatever, it's just one level," but this is an entire twelfth of the game we're talking about here. Not only that, but the final twelfth. The grand finale. The climax!
I like what they were trying to do, but Speed Run needed a lot more work before it could be considered fun. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay speedy.
Links
Gotta go fast: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24660
The other one: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=507
I gotta say, for a game entitled Speed Run, the default walking speed is pretty pathetic. I guess that's the point, though, because jumping over and over makes you go super fast. I must say, I'm very grateful that the game spelled that out in big white letters, otherwise I would have never figured it out, he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
The levels are quick and simple, which the developers seem to think is a selling point; while it is true that I always prefer more complex and open level design, a game like this has to be streamlined, and if there's one word to describe the level design, it's streamlined.
There are a few simple design decisions that bug me. First off, the camera is way too low to the ground. I feel like I'm in quicksand (which might explain why the walking speed is so low relative to air travel speed). Second, the palate needs at least one or two dull colors here and there, otherwise all the pastel oranges and blues just blend together into this mess that isn't too easy on the eyes. Also, you gain a bit too much momentum when you run, but that's really only a problem in one level, which I'll get to later, after I'm done seething.
Now let's get to the big problems: the abilities. In most levels, you are given three basic abilities to expedite your race to the finish. There's a rocket, a jetpack, and a gravity-switcher. The only one you will ever use is the jetpack. Remember how I said jumping makes you go super fast? Well the jetpack is essentially just a really long jump, so if there's a quicker way to move, I haven't found it. The rockets are utterly pointless. There are no enemies or destructible environments, so the only use the rockets have is rocket-jumping, which vastly inferior to the jetpack.
Don't even get me started on the gravity-switching. It's a nightmare. An absolute nightmare. Maybe it's because of how low the camera is to the ground or maybe it's because the camera doesn't orient itself quite right, but if you ever flip the gravity, you will be confused and nauseated. All that sense of direction that was keeping you moving through the world in a timely manner will be gone, and you'll be lucky if you have enough motivation to restart the level. How could no playtesters have raised their hands and been all "uh, yeah, I kinda feel like a need a bucket right now so maybe clean up this mechanic..."
Other than all those monstrosities, there's only one other problem I had with the game: the last level. Up until then, you'd been programmed to storm through the level with the jetpack as fast as possible, but then, without notifying you, the game takes away your jetpack and gravity switcher so all you're left with is the stupid rocket-jump. Not that that will help anyway, because the level is just a bunch of rectangles that you have to jump on carefully and diligently, lest you fall and have to start all over. It's a frustrating, inconsistent, lazily designed mess of a level. Maybe you'll say "whatever, it's just one level," but this is an entire twelfth of the game we're talking about here. Not only that, but the final twelfth. The grand finale. The climax!
I like what they were trying to do, but Speed Run needed a lot more work before it could be considered fun. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay speedy.
Links
Gotta go fast: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24660
The other one: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=507
Spell Circle
Yeah, I don't have that much to say about this one. I spent about 5 minutes with it before I decided "well, that's enough of that."
It's a top-down 2D adventurey type thing wherein you play as a wizard who shoots things at other things. Once you kill a creepy forest critter, you can pick up a gem which makes your magic more powerful. Seems simple enough. Well, that's just the word for it. It's simple, ergo, I'm at a loss for words. There's only so much I can say about a game like this.
This game is built a bit like Rouger, but without the hilarious walk cycle. Spell Circle is more streamlined than Rouger, to be sure, which is both a nice way of saying it got rid of 2 of the three attack methods that kept things interesting and an unenthusiastic way of saying it lets you stop that tedious process of picking up and putting down armor and weapons based on their numbers.
The big problem I faced with Spell Circle is the old Castlevania problem that you get knocked back every time you get hit. In Castlevania, this usually meant you'd fall into a well-placed pit after getting hit once. In Spell Circle, it means that if you get surrounded by a long, wormlike enemy, as you'll have to do in order to kill the darn things, getting hit once will start a disastrous chain of events wherein you'll be bounced around the many damaging segments of the enemy and have all your health drained faster than you can say "oops."
Now, I can't say that this is an objectively bad thing. The enemies were obviously deliberately designed to be death traps and utter nightmares to kill, and I know a lot of people who would be gratified by a feature like that. "It makes the game challenging," they would say. Nothing wrong with punishing a lack of skill, right? I agree with that, but there is something that I can say is objectively wrong: the hitboxes. If the air around an enemy is enough to trigger the death cycle, the game goes from gratifyingly difficult to annoying very quickly.
The other main problem is that, simply put, it's not fun enough to kill enemies. Seeking out their one weak spot and hammering them with spells for a minute is the kind of gameplay mechanic that really needs the assistance of hit sparks and satisfying sound effects.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay murderous.
Links
C-I-R-C-L-E, Circle: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24667
It's a top-down 2D adventurey type thing wherein you play as a wizard who shoots things at other things. Once you kill a creepy forest critter, you can pick up a gem which makes your magic more powerful. Seems simple enough. Well, that's just the word for it. It's simple, ergo, I'm at a loss for words. There's only so much I can say about a game like this.
This game is built a bit like Rouger, but without the hilarious walk cycle. Spell Circle is more streamlined than Rouger, to be sure, which is both a nice way of saying it got rid of 2 of the three attack methods that kept things interesting and an unenthusiastic way of saying it lets you stop that tedious process of picking up and putting down armor and weapons based on their numbers.
The big problem I faced with Spell Circle is the old Castlevania problem that you get knocked back every time you get hit. In Castlevania, this usually meant you'd fall into a well-placed pit after getting hit once. In Spell Circle, it means that if you get surrounded by a long, wormlike enemy, as you'll have to do in order to kill the darn things, getting hit once will start a disastrous chain of events wherein you'll be bounced around the many damaging segments of the enemy and have all your health drained faster than you can say "oops."
Now, I can't say that this is an objectively bad thing. The enemies were obviously deliberately designed to be death traps and utter nightmares to kill, and I know a lot of people who would be gratified by a feature like that. "It makes the game challenging," they would say. Nothing wrong with punishing a lack of skill, right? I agree with that, but there is something that I can say is objectively wrong: the hitboxes. If the air around an enemy is enough to trigger the death cycle, the game goes from gratifyingly difficult to annoying very quickly.
The other main problem is that, simply put, it's not fun enough to kill enemies. Seeking out their one weak spot and hammering them with spells for a minute is the kind of gameplay mechanic that really needs the assistance of hit sparks and satisfying sound effects.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay murderous.
Links
C-I-R-C-L-E, Circle: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24667
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Speculum
ah, genre melding. What a noble art. Today, we're dealing with a melding of the platformer and the mirror puzzle. Yeah, interesting, aint it?
Speculum loses points with me from the start by having a tutorial wherein you're only allowed to do what some text above you says you can do. Luckily, this only happens twice and both instances are over in a flash, but it's still a bit irritating to know that this game assumes stupidity on the part of its players...
Once that's out of the way, though, the game goes uphill fast, even in the conveyance department. First, though, let me try and describe how this game works.
You control a little blue ball who can place a certain amount of mirrors anywhere around him in a 3-tile radius. You use these mirrors to reflect a laser onto a door, thus opening said door and allowing you to go through it to complete the level.
At first, I was ready to say that the whole platforming part of this game is completely extraneous because once you open the door, getting to it is a cinch. However, the whole "only being able to place mirrors near you" thing provides challenging engagement, which is my pretentious way of saying it made me giggle like a schoolgirl on ecstasy.
The levels are specked with the occasional hazard, but you need to be near the hazards in order to place the mirrors where they need to go. Honestly, the concept is genius; it's creative and fun from start to finish.
When I was playing this game (with my lovely girlfriend who also maintains a blog at vivalavidaconamor.blogspot.com which you should all totally check out and give boundless love to yay), I kept thinking "every time I notice a flaw, the game fixes itself." Remember that conveyance thing I mentioned earlier? Well during the later levels, you're introduced to this mysterious blue box that you fall through if you try to stand on, but you have to go upward from where it's located. So then you're like "well crap, what do I do now?" So since the act of playing the game and screwing around with lasers is fun, you end up shining the laser at the blue box to realize the laser also passes through the box, but this time it's a blue laser. Out of sheer curiosity, you stand in said laser and it propels you exactly where you need to be. Brilliant.
The game isn't perfect by any means, but it's still definitely worth picking up. You'll encounter the occasional glitch and frustration, but otherwise it's got a very solid foundation and enough bells and whistles to keep you occupied. Check this one out. It's worth your time. It gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay reflective.
Links
Specs: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26015
Speculum loses points with me from the start by having a tutorial wherein you're only allowed to do what some text above you says you can do. Luckily, this only happens twice and both instances are over in a flash, but it's still a bit irritating to know that this game assumes stupidity on the part of its players...
Once that's out of the way, though, the game goes uphill fast, even in the conveyance department. First, though, let me try and describe how this game works.
You control a little blue ball who can place a certain amount of mirrors anywhere around him in a 3-tile radius. You use these mirrors to reflect a laser onto a door, thus opening said door and allowing you to go through it to complete the level.
At first, I was ready to say that the whole platforming part of this game is completely extraneous because once you open the door, getting to it is a cinch. However, the whole "only being able to place mirrors near you" thing provides challenging engagement, which is my pretentious way of saying it made me giggle like a schoolgirl on ecstasy.
The levels are specked with the occasional hazard, but you need to be near the hazards in order to place the mirrors where they need to go. Honestly, the concept is genius; it's creative and fun from start to finish.
When I was playing this game (with my lovely girlfriend who also maintains a blog at vivalavidaconamor.blogspot.com which you should all totally check out and give boundless love to yay), I kept thinking "every time I notice a flaw, the game fixes itself." Remember that conveyance thing I mentioned earlier? Well during the later levels, you're introduced to this mysterious blue box that you fall through if you try to stand on, but you have to go upward from where it's located. So then you're like "well crap, what do I do now?" So since the act of playing the game and screwing around with lasers is fun, you end up shining the laser at the blue box to realize the laser also passes through the box, but this time it's a blue laser. Out of sheer curiosity, you stand in said laser and it propels you exactly where you need to be. Brilliant.
The game isn't perfect by any means, but it's still definitely worth picking up. You'll encounter the occasional glitch and frustration, but otherwise it's got a very solid foundation and enough bells and whistles to keep you occupied. Check this one out. It's worth your time. It gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay reflective.
Links
Specs: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26015
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Spectrum
There's a strange phenomenon I've noticed that takes place in all forms of entertainment media, but in my opinion, is more rampant in video games. That's the idea that quantity and quality are somehow intertwined. I'm not saying the two are mutually exclusive, but It seems that the longer a game is, the more praise it will get. I understand that a 5-minute game can't possibly hold up to a 60-hour monster time-eater, but as long as a game's length is reasonable, I think the game should focus on exploring its mechanics as succinctly as possible. That is, unless the entire point of the game is to provide a nigh-endless amount of the dsame kind of fun, like in Skyrim or Just Cause 2.
I think that's the kind of game Spectrum was trying to be. In it, you enter tons of levels from the vast overworld and complete simple puzzles to unlock the next level. The game was nice enough to add in an auto-save feature so that you can put it down and play it whenever you get bored. It doesn't work, of course, what can you expect from a DigiPen game, but I'm just going to pretend that it did. It's possible that the problem is on my end, after all. Apparently my computer didn't want me using the autosave in Perspective, so why would it allow me to use it here?
Anyhow, as overused as I feel this phrase has become in this blog, Spectrum really is a fun time-waster and nothing else. The levels are almost annoyingly easy, and if it takes you more than 3 tries to beat one, I'd wager you're about 7 years of age or younger. That's not to say they aren't enjoyable, though. The game plays quite smoothly (except in the overworld, where it chugs up like nobody's business) and, with the exception of the blocks that slide along the floor as if their bottoms had been coated in grease, there's nothing in the game to drive you hairless.
If you like platformers, give it a shot. Chances are, you'll have fun with it if the autosave works. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay agile.
Links
Special Rum: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26705
I think that's the kind of game Spectrum was trying to be. In it, you enter tons of levels from the vast overworld and complete simple puzzles to unlock the next level. The game was nice enough to add in an auto-save feature so that you can put it down and play it whenever you get bored. It doesn't work, of course, what can you expect from a DigiPen game, but I'm just going to pretend that it did. It's possible that the problem is on my end, after all. Apparently my computer didn't want me using the autosave in Perspective, so why would it allow me to use it here?
Anyhow, as overused as I feel this phrase has become in this blog, Spectrum really is a fun time-waster and nothing else. The levels are almost annoyingly easy, and if it takes you more than 3 tries to beat one, I'd wager you're about 7 years of age or younger. That's not to say they aren't enjoyable, though. The game plays quite smoothly (except in the overworld, where it chugs up like nobody's business) and, with the exception of the blocks that slide along the floor as if their bottoms had been coated in grease, there's nothing in the game to drive you hairless.
If you like platformers, give it a shot. Chances are, you'll have fun with it if the autosave works. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay agile.
Links
Special Rum: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26705
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
SPARK
SPARK is a 2D puzzle game disguised as a platformer. You are a defenseless robot with three abilities: move, jump and spark. If you haven't already guessed, sparking is the game's unique selling point. By aiming a beam of...erm, something...at certain walls and pressing LMB, you can teleport to that section of the wall. Gravity will then change to orient itself to you so that spiked blocks and things of the like will fall on you if you're not careful. For some reason, when you, a robot, are killed by spikes, the game makes a rather squishy sound more suited to the comically timed death of an organic being, but I digress.
Maybe I'm just impatient or maybe I've been so conditioned by typical platformers that I think platforming should always be fast-paced, but I do find something a bit dreadful about SPARK's pacing. It's not so much that the movement speed is too slow or that stuff doesn't happen frequently enough, it's just that SPARK really really wants you to think of it as a puzzle game, so it punishes any and all thoughtlessness. If you teleport somewhere without thinking of why you're teleporting there first, you're going to get squished and you're going to have to restart the level. For this reason, I didn't make it past the second stage.
Other than that, everything's fine. The hitboxes are a bit too big, and I instinctively hate any game that kills you for touching the perfectly safe side of a spike rather than just for falling upon pointy death; both of these design choices and others, such as your sprite lingering for just long enough to be squished after teleporting somewhere, do make the game a bit more frustrating than I think it needs to be. Honestly, if there had just been more frequent checkpoints, I might have had the patience to play the game all the way through. It's about time game designers learned this valuable lesson, so let me give a word of advice to any prospective designers who may be reading this: gamers don't like to do the same thing more than once. There are plenty of other ways to punish our mistakes that don't involve invalidating our successes as well. Use them.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay sparky.
Links
BZZT: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26704
Maybe I'm just impatient or maybe I've been so conditioned by typical platformers that I think platforming should always be fast-paced, but I do find something a bit dreadful about SPARK's pacing. It's not so much that the movement speed is too slow or that stuff doesn't happen frequently enough, it's just that SPARK really really wants you to think of it as a puzzle game, so it punishes any and all thoughtlessness. If you teleport somewhere without thinking of why you're teleporting there first, you're going to get squished and you're going to have to restart the level. For this reason, I didn't make it past the second stage.
Other than that, everything's fine. The hitboxes are a bit too big, and I instinctively hate any game that kills you for touching the perfectly safe side of a spike rather than just for falling upon pointy death; both of these design choices and others, such as your sprite lingering for just long enough to be squished after teleporting somewhere, do make the game a bit more frustrating than I think it needs to be. Honestly, if there had just been more frequent checkpoints, I might have had the patience to play the game all the way through. It's about time game designers learned this valuable lesson, so let me give a word of advice to any prospective designers who may be reading this: gamers don't like to do the same thing more than once. There are plenty of other ways to punish our mistakes that don't involve invalidating our successes as well. Use them.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay sparky.
Links
BZZT: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26704
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