![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroSecret of Magia - This is an attempt at making a Zelda/Mana-like game using RPGMaker. On one hand, they did successfully make a playable game. On the other hand, that game fails on pretty much every objective measure. Enemies get stronger as you gain levels, so XP is pointless. There's a crafting system to make Tier-2 weapons, but you can buy Tier-3 weapons for very little money at a town five minutes further. The plot consists entirely of "get the four elements hidden in dungeons" and the sidequests are barely there. The implementation of tools and magic makes it feel more like a tech demo, as they're barely used. I give them credit for trying, but this isn't very good. I'd be upset if I paid more than 30 cents for it.
Eldritch - First-person rpg/FPS hybrid with a horror theme, mostly inspired by Lovecraft. I don't particularly like the FPS style of game, the plot seems limited to "explore and escape the library", and the character is way too fragile for the game to sustain my interest—basically, if there’s an enemy nearby, it’s going to kill you no matter what you do. Which is true to Lovecraft’s monsters, but not actually fun.
Trine 2: Complete Story - I haven’t played the original Trine, and I’m not sure I needed to. This seems to be a slightly more serious version of the old SNES game The Lost Vikings, where you have three characters with different environmental puzzle-solving abilities and you need to switch between them to gather items and proceed. Also stuff is trying to kill you at the same time. Though I may revisit it later, the action-puzzle-platform meld isn't really working for me right now.
Hero Siege - Fast-paced top-down semi-shoot-em-up; enemies come in waves in the action area and you try to kill them and collect gold and items without dying. Dying makes you lose your wave progress, temporary bonuses and any keys you picked up; but you keep your gold, levels and items, so progress can be made. It’s the sort of game where you die a lot of stupid deaths, especially to terrain hazards and traps, which can be hard to see, deal a ton of damage very quickly and scale to your level. Also, the voice acting (at least for the barbarian, who I was using) is ridiculous.
Dungeon Hearts - With its scrolling gems, this looks like it’s going to be a rhythm game. It’s not; it’s actually a puzzle game in which you need to move those gems around the scroll and match them to attack before the gray enemy attack gems reach your heroes. Perhaps a touch-based version would have been more to my liking, but I found the mouse-based controls very hard to use on the fly.
Anodyne - I thought I was going to love this, and I was totally right: It’s basically a Game Boy Zelda game with an Earthbound sort of sensibility and oddness to it. The hero Young (who, upon sudden reflection, is never assigned a gender) is charged with protecting the Briar from evil, so s/he needs to collect various keys and cards that are necessary to do so. And fight monsters with a…broom that collects wads of dust that can block lasers or float in water. The puzzles are really intuitive, the in-game maps are really useful, the difficulty level is perfectly reasonable, and the “Nexus” hub area allows for good fast-travel. Among my favorite moments, there’s a merchant who looks like he has some useful things to sell you, including a money bag that will let you collect money…that you can’t buy, because you can’t collect any money. Totally recommended.
Eldritch - First-person rpg/FPS hybrid with a horror theme, mostly inspired by Lovecraft. I don't particularly like the FPS style of game, the plot seems limited to "explore and escape the library", and the character is way too fragile for the game to sustain my interest—basically, if there’s an enemy nearby, it’s going to kill you no matter what you do. Which is true to Lovecraft’s monsters, but not actually fun.
Trine 2: Complete Story - I haven’t played the original Trine, and I’m not sure I needed to. This seems to be a slightly more serious version of the old SNES game The Lost Vikings, where you have three characters with different environmental puzzle-solving abilities and you need to switch between them to gather items and proceed. Also stuff is trying to kill you at the same time. Though I may revisit it later, the action-puzzle-platform meld isn't really working for me right now.
Hero Siege - Fast-paced top-down semi-shoot-em-up; enemies come in waves in the action area and you try to kill them and collect gold and items without dying. Dying makes you lose your wave progress, temporary bonuses and any keys you picked up; but you keep your gold, levels and items, so progress can be made. It’s the sort of game where you die a lot of stupid deaths, especially to terrain hazards and traps, which can be hard to see, deal a ton of damage very quickly and scale to your level. Also, the voice acting (at least for the barbarian, who I was using) is ridiculous.
Dungeon Hearts - With its scrolling gems, this looks like it’s going to be a rhythm game. It’s not; it’s actually a puzzle game in which you need to move those gems around the scroll and match them to attack before the gray enemy attack gems reach your heroes. Perhaps a touch-based version would have been more to my liking, but I found the mouse-based controls very hard to use on the fly.
Anodyne - I thought I was going to love this, and I was totally right: It’s basically a Game Boy Zelda game with an Earthbound sort of sensibility and oddness to it. The hero Young (who, upon sudden reflection, is never assigned a gender) is charged with protecting the Briar from evil, so s/he needs to collect various keys and cards that are necessary to do so. And fight monsters with a…broom that collects wads of dust that can block lasers or float in water. The puzzles are really intuitive, the in-game maps are really useful, the difficulty level is perfectly reasonable, and the “Nexus” hub area allows for good fast-travel. Among my favorite moments, there’s a merchant who looks like he has some useful things to sell you, including a money bag that will let you collect money…that you can’t buy, because you can’t collect any money. Totally recommended.
