Dr. House* Grades Your Papers

Housekeeping · Jul 12, 2014

*Not an actual doctor.

So, I've been editing my post in the "rate out of five" thread, but that thread's so glutted and getting increasingly ignored that I thought I'd make my own review thread. I've definitely written quite a few. Since there are so many reviews, I'll keep these as simple little blurbs for the most part--especially with the ones I've already played at the time of writing this. Since I have an actual thread now, I'll probably add more to any new reviews, which will be added in subsequent posts. The master list will be updated in this post and will remain alphabetized for ease of viewing. I'm not taking any requests unless you want to do a review tradeoff with The Heart Pumps Clay, in which case I'll play your game after seeing your review of mine, and I'll make sure to give you more personalized and detailed feedback in your own thread than the blurb that appears here. Them's the ropes.

The master list (A-O):

Account Mu (2.5/5):

This was actually a competent little puzzle game. The mechanics were introduced naturally and built on themselves, but the game is incredibly short (my save file is just over thirteen minutes), and the puzzles aren't breaking much new ground. The ending feels like it's trying to have a message but it either doesn't or is intentionally muddled to the point of nonsense.

Ability Lab (1.5/5):

Ability Lab is an RPG in which you play five adults with special powers who look and sound like teenagers as they infiltrate a lab for some reason, ostensibly to destroy it because it mistreats others with similar powers. Battles employ a timing bar, and the first enemy graphic was simplistic but stylized, and my initial impressions were more positive than I expected. As the game goes on, though, there's major enemy repetition--there's the first mob and two recolors of it that basically operate the same. The game is also incredibly easy; my guess is that even if you're bad at the timing bar, you'll have no trouble with this one. Speaking of the timing bar, it was never really utilized; I would have liked to see riffs on it like status effects that obscure the bar or equipment that improves stats at the expense of reducing the harder hitting areas of the bar. Equipment did modify the bar, but only in positive ways, so the game actually got slightly easier instead of ramping up in difficulty. I also would have liked a greater penalty for hitting in the worst areas--a miss would have been nice, but instead you hit for what seems like a little more than half damage of a "perfect" hit, so the entire gimmick felt pointless. I did like how defeating the enemy leader on the map destroyed all the mobs on the floor, though; that was a cool gimmick that encouraged exploration and avoiding mobs in an almost stealth-game kind of way. The story is poorly conveyed--mostly just through dialogue--and the ending uses a stock plot device in a really nonsensical way. The "what" was conveyed, but the "why" left me scratching my head. Some of the dialogue is pretty cringe-worthy--especially the relationship scenes.

A Deadly Understanding (1.5/5):

This was a detective game, in which you play a derivative of Sherlock Holmes named Conor. While Conor isn't exactly unique, he at least attempts to be charming, and the writing was better than I expected--I didn't have high expectations, though. The murder-mystery setup is pretty stock, and the player goes about solving it mainly by searching everything and reading through a lot of wry jokes from Conor, most of which don't land. There aren't many puzzles at all, and the game is incredibly short. The ending isn't so much of an ending as it is a "to be continued," but it introduces a supernatural element that might make future installments more interesting or it might venture into the ridiculous--my gut feeling is the latter, but the writer could surprise.

Aesperia: The Fallen (2.5/5):

This is a pretty average RPG with excellent presentation. Most of the game is spent fighting battles, but the battles themselves don't require much strategy, provide zero difficulty, and end up being more repetitive than interesting. The melodramatic plot seems designed to get the players interested in the politics of the game's world, but the bland characters don't provide a strong foil for this. Veteran players won't get a lot out of this, but younger players will be more forgiving of its sins.

A Monster Appears (2.5/5):

This is an rpg/microgame hybrid that's actually pretty fun for a few minutes--I'm not sure the enjoyment will last longer than that, though. The game is only battles, which look very much like Super Nintendo era Final Fantasy games, and each enemy requires the player to perform a little microgame to defeat--the slimes are defeated by a mouse click, whereas later enemies require typing out words, clicking in a certain order, circling them, holding down two keys simultaneously, and so on. Your true opponent is the clock; the enemies will slowly take down your life if you don't defeat them fast enough. Different combinations of enemies provide a frantic order-of-operations feel to the combat, but the game was missing a level of depth, as this wasn't enough to make me want to play after I was slain by the mighty Tonberry (who I couldn't figure out fast enough). Perhaps some more rpg elements--equipment, experience, upgrades of some kind--would have encouraged multiple playthroughs. This one might be worth checking out; you're probably not going to spend very long on it, though.

Anaudia (1/5):

Anaudia is probably best thought of as a visual novel, but, even then, player options are very limited. The game is mostly dialogue with a few binary decisions that affect the flow of the game and determine your ending (there are three). It's also quite short, so you can breeze through this and get every ending pretty quickly, though I personally didn't find the endings very satisfying. You play as a psychologist working in an insane asylum, and the game begins with a quote from Philip K. Dick, so you know that sanity is going to be questioned here, and it is. The problem, though, is that when that does come into play, it almost feels like a non sequitur. Too, the dialogue often feels a bit fraudulent; I don't buy that the protagonist has an advanced degree, for example. The decisions don't naturally lead up to the ending, but that might be because I happened upon the true (third) ending first. My friend's description of the first ending sounded like it gives you a hint to get the true ending, so there might have been meta reasoning behind the schizophrenia that I didn't catch since I went straight to the true ending; either way, I don't think this would have been very satisfying.

Arbiter (1/5):

I think Arbiter might be an art game, so maybe I just didn't get it. In Arbiter, you play a ball of light that looks around a maze. The maze is initially invisible, but when you hit a wall it shows up permanently, so most of the game is about running into walls like every remote control car I ever played with as a kid. Along the way, you'll run into balls of light that play clips narrated by a man with a golden voice. So, the voice acting was great, even if the narrative was too abstract to really connect with or even follow. There are a few small puzzle elements, but there's nothing in the gameplay or story that makes this game memorable.

Archadiem (0/5):

Here were my thoughts about this game in chronological order as I played: Wow, a lot of pomp and circumstance before the title screen--maybe a little self-righteous, but at least they're proud of their work. Neat, mapping looks pretty detailed, HUD looks alright, dialogue is awful but it's a non-native speaker, so I'll let it slide if the gameplay's alright. This one might be interes--and it froze. Total game time: maybe two minutes with no actual gameplay. HOW DO YOU MISS A GAME-BREAKING BUG THAT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID?!

Ashworth (3.5/5):

It's a Lovecraftian horror game, and it manages to get its atmosphere pretty close to perfect. There are a couple of cheap jump scares and cheesy moments that threaten to spoil the mood, but it kept together pretty well. Battles are more fun to avoid than actually participate in. The characters are bland, but the plot provides enough intrigue to pull you through, though the ending will seem too by-the-books for people familiar with the genre.

A Simple Life (.5/5):

This is another life simulation game with an emphasis on dating. Despite its emphasis, I found the potential girlfriends to lack a lot of character, and very little game time is spent talking with them, which I felt strange. Most of the game can be spent on the life sim aspects: foraging, fishing, milking cows, etc. You're given a five day limit, though, and you actually only need very little money in order to get everything you need to beat the game, so a player who knows the ropes can probably finish within ten minutes. I felt like this game really lacked focus; it was a game about dating in which you spend most of your time exploring the too-large setting and doing menial tasks that end up not being necessary. There were also quite a few typos and glitches, and I'm not sure that it's even possible to land a woman in the current build, though my in-game romantic life might just be as sad as it is in reality.

Big Bada Boom (3/5):

This was an arena run and gun similar to Smash TV that was actually pretty fun and chaotic in a good way. Instead of spawning from gates, enemies can spawn from anywhere, including under your feet, but they have a short animation beforehand which gives you enough time to get out of the way. Since enemies are constantly coming at you from EVERYWHERE, the action ramps up pretty quickly, and dying usually feels like your fault rather than the game's. Enemies explode when they die and new enemy types constantly filter in throughout the game's short play time, which further adds to the chaos. You only have one life, though, and one hit will kill you, so you'll probably be replaying the first few "waves" quite a bit before you beat it. You have an energy shield bound to right click that pushes enemies and projectiles away, which should help with controlling the field, but I found it a little finicky. Probably my biggest complaint is that you have to click for every shot, which will wear out your index finger quickly. This was a fun little game, though, and it adds enough small touches to its genre to engage you till you beat it or your finger aches too much to continue.

Bones Chat: The Game (0/5):

This is a game made for what I assume from the title is a chat group. This is the kind of game that's only fun for the people who are a part of the community it spawned from, as the only enjoyment comes from in-jokes that you're not going to get if you're part of the rest of the world. The community seems pretty infantile, though. Most of the random encounters consist of the rtp bandit renamed as "Jew," so I suspect this game will be something the developer will be profoundly ashamed of when they grow up. The gameplay seemed to consist mostly of random battles, and the humor consisted of infantile meme-spouting and in-jokes, so I put this one down pretty quickly.

Clad Generation (2.5/5):

This was an NES-style RPG that I actually found a little charming. The basic story arc involved a standard hero-saves-the-world plot, but it's done in a stripped-back way that makes sense with the aesthetics, so it doesn't get in the way, even if it's not offering much intrigue. The characters felt out of place in a nuanced, cool way, but they're (most likely intentionally) flat, so don't expect much out of them. The gameplay is mainly hit trading, and there's a high chance you'll get destroyed by the first few random mobs, so expect to grind a little. Once you overcome this early speed bump, the game's fairly easy. The magic system involves equipping spells, but you only have two equipment slots on your mage, one of which will probably be eaten up with a weapon, anyway, which further limited combat options. The experience still gelled for me, and it was a fun little throwback, but don't expect the story or gameplay to do much that hasn't been done before.

Cliche' RPG the RPG Game (2/5):

I'm going to be honest: I didn't have much hope for this one. It's a satire of RPGs, which is something that I've seen quite a few times, and taking jabs at the silent protagonist, the hero's journey, and so on have ended up almost as cliche as the cliches themselves. That said, this game still had some jokes that landed, particularly with some of the equipment descriptions (Iron Claw: the blades of this claw are made of steel) or the overly blunt character names (Henchman of the Demon King Who's Wearing a Mask). The dialogue and some of the situations had some jokes that landed, too, but most of the jokes fell flat. This game also needed a considerable amount of polish; expect to see lots of minor glitches and poor mapping. The battles are designed to be easy, which is fine for this kind of game, but sometimes they're overly long. I think the developer is funny enough to produce something sharper than this if they filtered their ideas more and put a little more effort into the finished product.

Cloudfall (3.5/5):

Cloudfall's a puzzle game, the hook of which is as follows: the player is given very little direction and the atmosphere is peaceful. The lack of direction wasn't an issue at all, as the gameplay area is small enough to explore quickly, and completing tasks is fairly intuitive. You're a cloud that changes its properties based on the different weathery things you touch--water gives you the ability to make rain, for example. The puzzles are set up to be fairly nonlinear, but certain powers are unlocked that allow you to solve other puzzles, which threw me for a loop for a while, since my assumption was that I should be able to use the basic environment to complete everything. The graphics and atmosphere work, but "peaceful" can turn into "boring" pretty easily, but the game was short enough to not wear out its welcome. It's also not quite unique or engaging enough to be an amazing game, but it was definitely well put together and might be worth downloading if you're looking for a short but well-crafted puzzle game.

Corruption (1.5/5):

Corruption's a shoot em up, and it's a pretty bland one. Controls are responsive, but there's not a lot of enemy variety or exciting weaponry, so it slogs pretty quickly. There's an upgrade system, but the choices are limited and don't offer any interesting tradeoffs. You can upgrade your shield, but shields need to be picked up, and the only enemies that will give you trouble are bosses, who don't give you shields. You can improve how quickly your health and special weapon energy recharge while under the F-Zero-like charging strips, but those strips don't occur at the bosses, who, again, are the only enemies you'd actually need to charge your special weapon for. The only thing that matters upgrading is the cannon, so the upgrade system seemed kind of pointless. Oh, and no continues, so if you die, get ready to rerun every boring level. There's also only one music track and it's a bland techno song instead of sweet power metal, which should be reason enough to avoid this one.

Crystal of Alruur (0/5):

I thought about giving this game half a point since the balancing is alright, but I think that would just be some of the other games lowering the bar. In Crystal of Alruur, you play an amnesiac hero that you won't care about who slowly pieces together his story that you won't care about as you progress through several mazes populated with random encounters that you will hate with every fiber of your being. You'll use the same strategy for every battle, and part of that strategy is avoiding using magic, since it's uniformly terrible. If you're going to have a single-person party in an rpg, you better do something to make it interesting. This game did not.

D is for Dungeon (3/5):

This is a pretty by-the-books dungeon crawler despite its absurdist hook. The battles run pretty smoothly for the most part, and there are some puzzle elements that were a welcome change to the formula, but the game tends to drag a bit, especially in the middle, as enemy encounters are frequent and enemy types are limited. You'll be fighting the same monsters quite a bit. The class and stat progression systems are functional but not particularly rewarding--neither is item hunting until the final few floors. Enemy evasion will make you scream at some point during your play through. The core of this game is still good, but more could have been done to freshen up the experience.

Dark Angle (1/5):

This was a space shooter sort of in the vein of Asteroids only with more straightforward movement, a limited upgrade system, and squares and triangles that represent enemy ships. The gameplay was incredibly easy for the first several minutes, and then you'll be swarmed by red squares, which will probably catch you by surprise since the pace is so slow prior to that. After dying there, I tried to upgrade my ship, but I found the interface to be a little clunky and I wasn't able to return to the game from the upgrade screen. I was probably missing something simple, but the thought of playing through those first several minutes again was distasteful enough not to continue any further, and the upgrade system is limited to rate of fire, move speed, and number of bombs you can accrue (or maybe it was the speed at which you regenerate them). The gameplay actually felt a bit worse than Asteroids since it takes so long for it to get interesting, and, even then, it's pretty by-the-books.

Darkness of Hope: Save the Heart of Painful (1/5):

This game is kind of beautiful in its own right--think "The Room" in video game form. The dialogue is incomprehensible in the best way imaginable, and there are some bizarre moments that I can only classify as being able to glimpse into the mind of a deranged pervert. The battle system is completely custom, which almost floored me, but the battles require very little strategy and are also very seldom--they sure look neat, though. Most of the gameplay is centered around a series of puzzles that are fairly easy to figure out but sometimes a little aggravating in their execution, particularly the three-lever puzzle. The nonsensical plot, characters, and dialogue both sinks the score and somehow ascends the game to a place of beauty that should be experienced by everyone. I highly recommend this one--just not for its intended purpose.

Dark Thorns: Genesis (1/5):

Dark Thorns: Genesis is an RPG in which you play a warrior from a Mayan-esque civilization that's being destroyed by a giant patch of thorny, black vines. I found the ground situation to be kind of cool, mainly because the civilization felt like something that isn't covered very often in RPGs (or media in general). Once you're past that, though, the game plays like a pretty traditional RPG, and the fights are generally won by mashing attack. There aren't any healing spots, so you have to get items from treasures and monsters to survive, but there's enough so that this isn't too difficult. The storyline ends up being pretty bare bones, and the characters are flat. The poor grammar makes this game have an unintentionally surreal feel, and the ending doesn't make the experience feel worthwhile. There's also a very bizarre use of sound effects--swords clinking for confirm, doors opening for cancel, boulders falling for loading--this kind of broke the otherwise serious feel of the game. The voice acting in the intro sounds almost horrifying. The game only takes about 20-25 minutes to beat, so it at least offers a bizarre experience and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Deadly Beauties (.5/5):

This was clearly another game made by a kid, this time I'm guessing a young British girl based on some of the slang and the art style. There was a lot of custom art and music in this one. The art was colorful but clearly amateur and will instantly remind you of Bratz, and the music was actually kind of interesting, though I'm pretty sure the developer didn't compose it, and the lack of a credits screen doesn't offer any guidance. The premise of magical flower girls from Flowersville who, upon graduation, go out in the world and literally poison bad guys is sweet in that demented childish kind of way, but the execution will make you think about how the kid that made this is probably sweet and funny instead of offering gameplay that really engages you. There are a lot of little glitches, including a game-breaking passability issue right at the end, but you can open this up in the editor if you're really interested in playing this. There's also some balancing issues in the battles--most are too easy, and then some you'll get status-locked. At the beginning, you'll be asked to pick two characters from a very large cast, and some are absolutely worthless while others are overpowered, and you'll have no idea which is which. Overall, this isn't really worth playing, but I would like to say that I think it's really kind of great to see so many kids making games with RPG Maker, and this one, while not particularly good, is showing a lot of imagination.

Dear Red (1.5/5):

Dear Red is a short horror(ish) game revolving around a knife-wielding girl with a silhouette for a face who's out for revenge against the man who killed her mother. The game can be completed in as short as a couple of minutes, but there are quite a few endings, so the game carries a punchy choose-your-own-adventure kind of vibe. Most of the endings are pretty abrupt, though. The mystery of the game is to piece together the protagonist's past, which, once you do, is honestly kind of pulpy and uninteresting. The game is presented well, though, and I do like the idea of subtly hinting at a narrative by seeing fragments of it on multiple playthroughs, but the narrative itself is lacking substance. The highlight of the game was getting to stab all of the flat characters to death.

Dendron (1.5/5):

I'm a bit on the fence with Dendron. This was a defense game in which lumberjacks try to chop down a tree, and you have to use your mystical tree powers to stop them. I found the interface a little clunky and needlessly complex, and I didn't last very long once the action started. There are also large gaps in between the action where you get to roleplay as a tree, i.e. sit there as the weather changes. Once a lumberjack started climbing me and I was out of mystical tree magic points, I couldn't figure out a way to shake him. The graphics are lovely, though, and I may just not have gotten a good enough grip on the mechanics to be fair with this one. It's definitely not for me, though.

Dust to Dust (3/5):

This one has really strong presentation, but the story tends to focus on a government plot instead of seeking out an emotional core, so there's little to connect to. The gameplay has some interesting adventure game moments, but it also has several different mechanics that felt underutilized, which sadly includes the battle system. While Dust to Dust is pretty to look at and has an interesting ground situation, the mechanics are downplayed to the point of seeming almost pointless at times, and the story doesn't take advantage of its ground situation and becomes less engaging as it progresses.

Eden (1.5/5):

Take this feedback with a grain of salt. I'm usually pretty good at puzzle games, but I could never get a grip on this one. I think part of this is the tutorial--it introduced a lot of concepts, but I feel like it didn't explain the ones that actually mattered. Eden's about balancing an ecosystem, and you do this by placing tiles next to other tiles--grasslands next to rivers, for example. I got my ass kicked pretty bad on this one, so it could just be that I'm an idiot, but maybe the concept needed to be better telegraphed to the player. You still might check this one out; there's a lot of micromanagement involved, I think, so if you like that kind of thing, this might be your cup of tea. I wasn't interested enough to really go for it, though.

Entity (2/5):

The art for this game is excellent, so I understand why it's getting so many votes, but, man, the gameplay doesn't do much for me. In Entity, you play a girl with sleep paralysis (which I guess is the disorder du jour since I've been hearing about it so often recently) who is accosted by several monsters that can be killed off by the player in numerous ways, mostly involving clicking. The fun of the game is figuring out how to kill each monster, but this fun is killed by introducing new monsters too slowly and penalizing the player with too much waiting between games. This is alleviated to a degree with the monster book, which gives pretty straightforward hints on how to beat each monster type. Then, the game becomes a juggling act about killing each monster quickly before they build up. A game over means wading through a lot of boring gameplay before you get to the interesting bits, so the game slogs a bit, and, even at its best, it feels like a pretty standard flash game.

Escape from a Haunted House (0/5):

Traverse a featureless maze with limited visibility! Beware the ghosts, that will pin you to a wall and scream in your face until you shoot them or, barring that, die! This game is a must download for people who like mazes, shoddy gameplay mechanics, and getting screamed at by otherworldly entities.

Ethereal Nexus (1/5):

Ethereal Nexus is the kind of game that has a bunch of whistles and bells, but they don't come together in a thoughtful way. You play as what can only be described as a developer's dream concept of himself: a super-intelligent, handsome hacker who always says the right thing and solves all of his problems through his knowledge of computers; I found him flat and a little hard to connect with, though. The storyline follows him as he infiltrates a building in order to steal some blueprints. The game becomes about getting a MacGuffin instead of using that as a base for character development. The weird thing is that we don't even come to understand what the MacGuffin means in the narrative; it's just about getting the blueprints and leaving. Roll credits. Like I said, there are a lot of whistles and bells here, so expect almost as many tutorials as there are battles; I felt like I read about fighting more than I actually fought. The battles were actually pretty simple, and I never felt in danger of losing, though some of the hacking fights are unnecessarily long. You also have a very small skill set with each character, so there's not much in terms of variety despite all the tutorials. There are also several passability issues, though I didn't run into any game-breaking bugs. My friend tells me that there were a lot of sound effects taken from Elsword that weren't credited, which kind of makes the aspects that were good--like the graphics and music--kind of suspect.

Everton's Deck (1.5/5):

The card gimmick in this RPG was fairly interesting. A lot of the enjoyment came from building decks with each character. The problem, though, is that the game only offers a few booster packs via treasures; I wasn't aware that I had to buy booster packs from the item shop until the end of the game, and the price tag was pretty steep. The game expects you to grind a lot to get several booster packs, which is unfortunate, as, like I said, building a deck is the fun part. Luckily, random battles are very easy to run away from, and I beat the last boss without any trouble despite my mostly-garbage decks. The core mechanics in this game would have worked better in a longer format; in a short game, you don't really have the time to reap the rewards of building great decks. The early battles were overly long, so balancing was a bit of an issue, but there's no real danger in battles (outside of an optional superboss battle). The storyline is focused on a group of developers who are stuck in their own game; this began with a nice subversion of my expectations, but there's basically zero development after that, so the plot and dialogue won't offer much intrigue. This worked better as a showcase of possible mechanics for a longer game than a standalone game.

Fhenerur (0.5/5):

This is another by-the-books RPG with way too many random encounters and a story that's been drained of all its pathos despite having subject matter that should invoke it. You'll spend the first ten or fifteen minutes exploring the way-more-than-necessary towns before you begin your quest for revenge. You only have one character in your party, and his only abilities are physical attacks, so battles are necessarily simplistic. You also might want to stock up on antidotes, as there are a couple of mobs that poison and you have no reliable means to heal it. I made it to the end of the game, which requires going through an overly long dungeon, only to be told that I didn't do a side quest somewhere and had to backtrack and complete it first, which was enough for me to put it down. On the plus side, the dialogue is unintentionally hilarious. What sound does a dog make? If you said "bup," you're probably the developer of this game.

GT Mythra: The Beginning of the Sword (1.5/5):

In this rpg, the player and their party are miners (there's also a ballerina for some reason) who have to delve into a monster-glutted mine in order to get lots of money, I guess--the story and characters were on the back burner. The gameplay is pretty standard, too: expect lots of random encounters. The balancing feels fine for the most part, though, and there's a roguelike element of randomized ores that appear throughout the dungeon that you can mine. This replaces treasures, which kind of sucks since the loot pool is narrowed, but it's also kind of cool since you can replay levels and still get shiny prizes. There are pretty huge gaps between save points and bosses, though, which will kill the game for some class combinations. Luckily, I had a lancer in my party, and status effects work on bosses, so once I had an instant death ability, the game posed no challenge--including the last boss (I'm guessing this was an oversight). The ending reveals that this is a prologue to a larger series, but it's also kind of absurd in a way that I probably shouldn't reveal--it reminded me a bit of Trolls 2.

Hardly Working (1/5):

The nonsensical plot was tacked on just to hold together the game, so this is very much an rpg about battles. The gameplay introduces a card system, but the cards require gold, TP, or MP, which make the cards just function like any other spell, only you have a limited number of charges. Since your skills are limited and you gain no experience through battles, you'll actually be avoiding every battle; I only fought five, but I could have gotten away with three. The cards could have been an interesting mechanic if they were implemented better, but, as it stands, the battles didn't offer much intrigue since my resource management skills were never actually tested; the game was more about how to run around enemies on the field, which was easy for the most part. Its saving grace was that it was only ten minutes long.

Heartless (2.5/5):

I actually played this game last night and forgot to write anything on it for some reason. This is a run and gun that pretty much tows the line, and anyone familiar with the genre will get bored of this one. You travel through ten different stages populated by around four or five different enemy types total, so variety was really missing from this and it was overly long to boot. The game controls well, though, and you'll unlock weapons that offer a little gameplay variety, though you can't switch between them outside of the hub area, which seemed like a major oversight. There aren't any weapon types that think outside the box, though, so this game will feel like old hat to veterans.

Hero for a Day (2.5/5):

This probably has one of the best soundtracks I've heard in this competition in terms of originality and appropriateness. It's a joke game, and the mechanics support that, so it's a fun little send-up of MMOs that has a few legitimately funny moments among a lot of jokes that might fall flat for certain audiences. Other people will find the zaniness more funny than I did, probably. The game doesn't overstay its welcome, either, and can be completed in less than half an hour. The game doesn't explain the jump mechanic, though, so keep in mind that you can hit A while running with shift to jump, which you'll use early and often. The score is fairly low because there just wasn't much meat on the bone, but it'll probably put a smile on your face.

Hikikomori (1.5/5):

The premise of exploring other people's nightmares in order to fix their problems could have been pretty sweet, but this game had major flaws in its execution. Why the main character can do this is never explained, even in a "well, he's always been able to" sort of way; he just wakes up one day in his mid-twenties and starts helping people out in their dreams. You play through two dreams: in one, you walk through a maze fighting ridiculously easy battles, and, in the other, you solve a quick, poorly implemented puzzle (the developer mentioned something about them leaving one of the hints out by mistake) and answer a bunch of questions about former president Richard Nixon. Speaking of Nixon, I should say that this game is almost fully voice acted, and while the voice acting sounds uniformly amateur, the awful Richard Nixon impersonation (yes, he's a minor character that appears in a dream) will make you laugh for all the wrong reasons, so the game might actually be worth downloading just for that. The sound design also bears mentioning: it's really wonky. You'll have to turn the volume up in order to hear the voice acting, which was still sometimes recorded at very low levels, yet the sound effects are super loud in comparison, and the background music is so low that you probably won't even notice it at first. The characters are unlikable and unrealistic and the gameplay is bearable at best. The enemy graphics in the maze area are actually good, though. This one's probably not worth playing other than the sheer joy you'll experience from hearing the Nixon impersonation.

In Arcem Miseria (3.5/5):

Pretty solid graphics and atmosphere, and the puzzles were interesting without being overly difficult or too simplistic, which is a tough line to tread. The battles, though, were pretty boring, and felt more like a needless addition than an interesting mechanic. Luckily, the emphasis is mainly on the puzzles, but get ready for your progress to be impeded by several essentially identical battles. My rank might be a bit disingenuous, though, since I wasn't able to complete this one. If you have a similarly pathetic graphics card as me, a puzzle based around a moving spotlight becomes basically impossible without lots of trial and error that most people won't have the patience for. The game's rank could probably go down if it doesn't stick the ending, which is a distinct possibility, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Worth checking out if you like puzzles.

I Need More (1/5):

This is another style-over-substance game. It's a sidescroller in which you play a robot that has to constantly recharge with batteries. The robot is only characterized by his never-ending battery lust, and the ending reveals a theme for the game that you probably figured out in the first area, anyway. I won't mention what that is, here, but I will say that one of my least favorite plot devices is when you tell me something that's already obvious (e.g. if you have a moral like "stealing is wrong"). The central theme of this game could have been explored with more thought and nuance and still be interesting, but, unless you're very young, you'll probably find it asinine. The game controls pretty terribly, too; get ready to get stuck on platforms constantly. Oh, and whatever you do, don't play on full screen; for whatever reason, your energy bar will deplete much faster, which makes the game impossible. As a concept, this game could have worked as a puzzle platformer in which the player has to determine the best possible route, or it could have worked as a madcap action platformer if the player's energy bar depleted whether or not they're moving, but, instead, the poor controls and more-than-sufficient energy supplies make this game pretty boring, and the ham-fisted story keeps it forgettable.

Inheritance (1.5/5):

Inheritance is another one of those games that uses a lot of scripts but doesn't do so in a thoughtful way. The battle system has a lot of whistles and bells, including a turn system that allows you to delay enemy turns, but you're often better off just mashing attack to win. There are a LOT of random encounters, but at least the escape rate is close to a hundred percent (I think I failed once). At first I thought all this running would come back to bite me in the ass, but the final boss is a complete pushover, as is every other enemy in the game. The storyline fails to offer much intrigue, either: we follow two sisters, one of whom is trying to cure a disease that's slowly turning her into a werewolf. While the reasons for their quest are clear, it's not really clear where they're going or why that's the place that's going to help them, so it was a little strange to follow despite their overall intentions being clear. The two main characters have distinct personalities, but they don't evolve over the course of the story, and they're distinct in a cliche anime sort of way. The older sister is tough and brash, and the younger sister constantly looks like I chained her to a pipe next to my hot water heater; that's about all you need to know about them. There's no ending, here--just a to be continued, so this felt more like a demo than a complete game.

Listen (2.5/5):

Listen is a game that I wish was better than it was. First off, it's gorgeous: it looks and sounds great. It's also really imaginative. You play as a sick young girl who can see a ghostly figure named the Puppetman, and you follow him through an imaginative journey. The settings in particular felt professional, and most of the joy in this game comes from its visuals. The gameplay mostly consists of small puzzles; I got stuck on one involving a trap door for a while (the fact that it was a trap door could have been better conveyed), but, other than that, the puzzles were simple, if a little shakily designed at times. This game is really more about its narrative; it tried to be emotionally resonant, but I had a really hard time connecting with the characters. The little girl is the only character that gets a substantial amount of screen time, and she's basically every little girl you've seen in fiction: imaginative, plucky, rambunctious--she never does enough to elevate herself to being truly memorable, and, because of that, when the game tries to go for the gut, it just doesn't pan out. I appreciate fiction that tries to really say something the developer finds important, so I applaud the effort, but it didn't stick for me.

Les Visiteurs Dans L'Espace (1.5/5):

While this game had a fairly interesting party dynamic that didn't overstay its welcome, the premise of four medieval warriors in space is somehow less absurd than the game's ending, which will leave the vast majority of the audience unfulfilled and angry. The gameplay leading up to that is decent but not enough to save this one.

Leviathan (2.5/5):

The mechanics and atmosphere work together well to create a game about survival in a harsh world. However, an intentionally muddled and stripped-back plot works against it to provide little intrigue behind the unique world, and the ending will probably serve to anger rather than satisfy. The lack of any means of mp-regeneration for the majority of the monsters that make up your party keeps battle strategy limited, which is another attempt to focus on survival, but here it saps the battles of potential strategy.

Mazequest (.5/5):

What sold me on this one was this line from the game page: "There is no leveling up in this game. Just the fun of solving mazes!" I can't for the life of me think of anything less fun than solving mazes. As expected, this was another game made by a kid, and this kid is particularly zany. Get ready for a bunch of zany stuff that you probably won't appreciate unless you are also a zany kid, in which case, you will probably find it amazing. I'll admit, though, there was one moment that made me laugh out loud because of the absurdity of it, and it was actually MEANT to be funny, and that's been a rarity in this blind searching I've been doing lately. There's a lot of glitches, though, many of which are game-breaking. Your character also starts in the wrong place on the map, so you have to backtrack to see the opening, and there's the unfortunate side effect of the default rain BGS playing throughout the game--even when the weather's fair. I wouldn't play this one unless you happen to be a zany kid.

Meit (.5/5):

Meit is an RPG that breaks a few conventions. Instead of following a traditional level curve, you can select a stage that represents different points in the protagonist's life, and levels are automatically allocated. Each stage tends to consist of cut scenes and a short dungeon in which you can purposefully dodge enemies to retain resources or fight them and level up within the stage. This felt poorly implemented, though, as leveling wasn't that useful, and resources were hard to come by--items can be bought before the stage but not during it, and there's no inns or other heal spots, so you'll likely rush to the boss each time. The story felt stock and a little ham-fisted for the most part, though the ending throws a wrench in the works that will seem odd rather than engaging. Mapping is bare-bones, and most dungeons are just mazes, though there was a bug that allowed me to walk through walls that made the mazes pretty easy to navigate. There are some interesting ideas here about structuring a game and survival mechanics, but they just don't feel executed well enough, and the story and gameplay don't provide much intrigue.

Miopia (2.5/5):

This is an "eat things to get bigger" game in which you play a germ or amoeba or SOMETHING that goes around and eats other such squiggly things. I say "eats" but you really just run into them and absorb them. The goal is to get as big as possible, and I'm pretty sure your size increases infinitely, though I might have just died too early. You've probably played one of those "you're a fish who must eat smaller fish" games, which basically describes this. The "bigger fish" in this instance don't actually pose a threat, though, so you're free to squiggle around like a deflated basketball that has somehow maintained its bounciness. Movement is purposefully unwieldy, which is fine, but you can get stuck in small spaces if you get too large, so make sure to try to avoid that. There are a few hazards: spiky things, bitey things, and even a dreaded spiky bitey thing that will wear down your small health pool. There's an upgrade system, too, but, considering that the upgrades other than speed aren't particularly great and the game seems to continue indefinitely, you're better off ignoring the hard-to-get upgrade points as you'll find all you need, eventually, anyway, and there's no way to restore your lost health. The upgrade system was a neat addition to the genre, but, like I said, most upgrades aren't super useful, and while this game does a decent job of showing a sense of scope, this game doesn't have nearly the same charm or depth as Katamari Damacy, and when you inevitably die by getting bounced into too many spiky bitey things, the gameplay is so slow and it takes so long to get back to where you lost that you'll probably put this one down. You might enjoy this as a one-shot time killer, though.

Mirror Boy (2/5):

This is a short puzzle game made in Unity. Unlike Account Mu or In Arcem Miseria, puzzle solutions are pretty obvious, but they're also more active, so the difficulty comes in the execution of the puzzles rather than trying to determine their solutions. The primary puzzle mechanic is implemented well, but it feels like it could have been more fully explored, and the game is much too short and generally easy. The story feels tacked on and could have been removed with little impact on the experience.

Momentum (.5/5):

I don't mind the idea of Momentum: it's a platformer in which, instead of jumping, your character switches momentum, meaning that however fast you were moving horizontally can be switched to vertical momentum and then back. This could have been cool, but the implementation needs a lot of work. Instead of decelerating, your character will stop on a dime when you let go of the left or right arrow keys, which feels really unnatural. You also can't hold the space bar for very long when you want to switch momentum, as the game thinks you're pressing space bar constantly, so the momentum system feels wonky if you don't figure that out. Graphics were stripped down quite a bit, so there's not much to look at, there didn't seem to be any music or sound effects, and the game was still easy despite its poor controls.

Morningstar: Scourge of Night Terror (2/5):

The art drew me to this one, not that it was particularly amazing, but it was pretty clearly made by a furry, and furries are just so damn INTERESTING to me--the way they have this sort of naivete that's undercut with a layer of creepiness. So, I gave this one a shot. The art emulates the NES, and I found it to be pretty charming for the most part, especially the monster graphics (which unfortunately had a box around them that wasn't fully set to transparent), though the furry characters will probably be offensive to most people's sensibilities. Though there was a lot of variety in enemy types, the battles were all "spam attack to win," so this seemed more like a conduit for art and storytelling than gameplay. The problem, though, is that the storytelling is odd, which was kind of expected. It's designed as an episodic journey through a castle in which each floor tells a story, and this first episode focuses on reuniting two lost souls. There was an odd sexual tension that developed between the male and female leads that felt unnatural and forced, and, in congruence with the naive but creepy quality I mentioned earlier, they're both 17, the main character has never seen a woman--when he finds out that his partner is a female, he literally says "GULP"--and the female lead has ENORMOUS breasts and immediately comes onto the male lead for no particular reason. There's also gratuitous use of asterisk behaviors (*she nuzzles up to his neck*) that will either creep you out or you should question why they're not creeping you out. My favorite moment came when the protagonist, despite having long, winding, inane conversations throughout the game, finds two skeletons and picks them up without really saying anything, as if lugging two skeletons around isn't creepy as hell. What he does with those skeletons later is even more creepy--and not in an intentional way at all--but saying so here would be a spoiler, so I won't (don't worry, it's nothing sexual). I'd play this one more for a weird trip through someone's mind than as a legitimately fun experience, but if you're more forgiving of furries and their sensibilities, you might find this charming.

Music Slider (3/5):

At first, I found this one a little offputting, but it grew on me. It's an avoidance game in which you use your mouse to move your onscreen icon between bars. The gimmick of the game is that the music impacts the levels to a degree, such as sudden bursts of movement or bars that bounce with the beat. Some of the levels are barely impacted by the music, so this wasn't something I caught onto until a few levels in. The further you get in the level, the faster the stage moves, which creates a nice difficulty curve. Like Flappy Bird or other avoidance games, getting a high score is exhilarating, but the multiple defeats will be aggravating. Music Slider has several music tracks that you have to unlock by getting certain scores; I wish these scores were actually shown to the player so they knew their next goal, but this wasn't too problematic. There are a few good music loops, but most of them are annoying, both from how short they are and their general crappiness. What this game really needs is a way to import your own music and have it generate a level based on that, but my guess is that each level was programmed individually around the loops. This was still a fun little distraction.

No Manatees Promised (1.5/5):

The graphics are pretty strong here--basically professional. However, the game is just a collection of four mini-games that are overly simplistic. This could work quite well as a little game for small children (one of the games is a memorization game, for instance), but the average age of this community probably would find the mini-games old hat and too simplistic. Some people might get a chuckle out of the zaniness that bookends the game.

Oh! Ko! (3/5):

This is a polished little adventure game that could have a little bit more direction behind the puzzles at times, but options are limited enough that the player shouldn't get stuck for long (aside from potentially a puzzle regarding reaching the moon). The characters, setting, and music are whimsical, and fans of cute things will find this game lovely, but the game holds off from dwelling on more serious subject matter, which makes the parts that are supposed to be touching lose a bit of their emotional punch. There's not a lot of meat on the bone, but it's a short, satisfying adventure game that might be too simplistic and cutesy for veterans.

Once Upon a Nightmare (1/5):

Once Upon a Nightmare is a traditional RPG focused on a character who can lucid dream, pull people into her dreams, and walk into other people's dreams. The plot focuses on blending the line between dreams and reality, which is a concept that can be pretty engaging--David Lynch, for example, is great at this. However, the plot never really engaged me; I mainly felt like I was going from A to B to C without much of a sense of larger purpose. When the ending hits, it felt like a cheap reversal of expectations with no foreshadowing. A twist ending is hard to pull off; you generally either see it coming from a mile away or it's unwarranted; here, I felt it was unwarranted. The characters also felt uneven. There's a mage character that you run into, for example, that is confident and professional, but when you meet her the second time she comes off as less knowledgeable than the main character (who has just recently acquired her gift). I just never really got a good grip of the characters. The gameplay doesn't do much for the experience, either; battles were all winnable through the same strategy, so combat got stale pretty quickly, and, while the music is fitting and the enemy graphics are cool, the mapping is mostly barren.

One Boss Showdown (2/5):

I think I liked the premise of this game more than the execution in this RPG. You play as a lowly slime who has to fight the last boss so that he can laugh at how weak you are. After you lose the fight, you are given a small amount of money based on how well you did in the fight. That money can then be invested into purchasing upgrades for your character. You then go back, fight the last boss again, lose, upgrade, and the cycle continues until you actually win. While there is some repetition involved, I think that the formula actually works; it's enjoyable to make it another round and watch your character quickly grow. However, the game had very little variety in terms of the battle itself and the upgrading. Too, I think this game would work much better if it were even more streamlined: instead of having to purchase upgrades from a physical shop, just go to a screen where you can upgrade your character's stats, purchase skills, and so on. Also, instead of only being able to upgrade hp or attack, how about upgrading a large variety of stats; the game's about character progression, so give me options. The boss could also have more patterns and forms based on how far you get in the fight with him. So, I think this was a cool idea that just needed some more thought.

Oneshot (4.5/5)

As of writing this, Oneshot is probably the best game I've played from the competition, but I think the fact that it was made in rm2k3 may end up disqualifying it, though it's going to get a big following regardless. It's an adventure game that has several meta moments involving the player themselves into the game, and the end offers a choice that can only be experienced once--you can't start a new game, and if you quit the game prematurely, you'll never be able to continue. This adds a lot of weight to this final choice. The story is very much high concept, but it's a fully realized concept. The game is more about its world than its inhabitants, which worked, but I feel like a lot of the dialogue with the inhabitants ended up feeling a bit wasted. I think I would have liked to see characters have more than one appearance. I also would have liked some more characterization for the main character, but, conceptually, he's fulfilling his role. The puzzles were pretty strong for the most part, but there was an earlier puzzle that involves a machine with three parts that got me stuck for a while; I didn't realize it had three parts, and, in terms of the puzzle, it really only needed one part. A few puzzles were solved just by exploring rather than following any logic; why would I know one person has the ink well I need and how would I know what he wants for it? These kinds of things aren't clearly telegraphed to the player, but the player will still probably solve them because the game encourages exploration. I would have liked to see this game take better advantage of its central mechanic throughout the game, i.e. giving the players more choices so that the player's experience would feel even more personal. These are small complaints, though, as this is a game that really succeeds in its goal, and even if it's a high concept game, the storytelling knows how to convey this concept in a way that feels emotionally resonant. Looks and sounds great, too.

Edit: I've had to break up the master list into two parts since it was starting to get too big. You can find the second half in my next post in this thread.

kartersaint · Jul 12, 2014

Your review is cold enough. But wonder some developers who made those game have a chance to check this forum. Maybe I can inform them there's a review. But it looks like arbitrary so I want your permission.

Housekeeping · Jul 12, 2014

@Karter: The reviews are more for people looking for games to play; for the developers, I like to give more detailed feedback that addresses how to fix problems instead of just pointing out the issues. If they're active in the community, I should have already talked to them barring an oversight. I think a lot of the developers are just making their first game after getting rpg maker through steam, so they might be a little disheartened by a negative review. If you want to tell them, though, that's fine; if their games being on the internet gives me the freedom to critique them, my critiques being on the internet are also free to be criticized.

Edit: Apparently I've played too many games. Here's a continuation of the master list (P-Z):

Painted Heart (3/5):

Beautiful aesthetics, an inventive battle system, but battles can get overly long and require memorization of a convoluted element chart rather than much strategy, and the story is likewise drawn-out and a little shallow.

Peace of Mind (3/5)

This game about exploring an adventurer's mind to dispel his inner demons starts out strongly, but the plot ends up relying on a few cliches that end up keeping the story from being memorable. Gameplay is split between active combat that more or less consists of trading hits until you win and rpg battles centered around choosing the correct dialogue options, which was more interesting but potentially too easy. The rtp visuals early in the game feel out of place with the game's setting and pixel movement, but the final section looks and sounds great. I feel like this was a good game that could have been outstanding with more thought put into the writing and more complexity added to the mechanics.

Perspective (2.5/5):

Perspective's a game about exploring memories, and memories are presented as timed events in which several different people live out that moment of their lives. You have free reign of a mansion, so there's lots of people doing their own things as you search for clues to solve the game's central mystery. This one had some fertile soil for an excellent plot, but instead the main character is instantly forgettable, and the dialogue is often pointless or too focused on the in-game lore and world instead of providing intrigue into the story and characters; if it's not that, it's simple exposition. The mechanics themselves function well, and this is a series that has a lot of potential, but, for now, the story and characters won't grab you, which would have been a central component to the success of this game.

Quantum Ghost (2.5/5):

I really wanted to like Quantum Ghost. The world is pretty well-realized, the graphics are solid, and, more importantly, the protagonist is easy to connect to and engaging. The basic plot is that, in the near future, everything runs on quantum technology, and the titular quantum ghost is an entity that's essentially acting as a virus and rendering most machines useless. You play as a new agent (read: detective) paired up with a veteran agent tasked with investigating the quantum ghost. The dialogue goes a little crazy with increasing and decreasing font size, but it's generally well-written and engaging. Like I said, I liked the protagonist a lot; Agent Sable is crass, a flirt, and a screw-up in a relatable way, and she genuinely wants to become a respected agent, and that makes you want to make her a respected agent. The other characters, though, aren't as well written; her partner has some potential that's not fully realized (I'll go over why in a bit), and the rest of the cast is flat and sometimes comes off as fraudulent (one character as a child literally says "la la la doo de doo" when he's playing). There's a romance sub-plot that felt particularly hammy and fraudulent (writing tip: please don't talk about how beautiful the stars are). The plot also suffers because this is apparently part one of a four part series, and nothing is resolved in this part (including the frame story that begins the narrative). This is why the partner never gets fully rounded out.
I haven't talked much about gameplay because there's simply not much of it. The game wants you to be a detective, essentially, but everything gets resolved via the story. You have to investigate areas, but this boils down to mashing the confirm key on everything in sight in order to get QR, a score that's supposed to identify how good of an agent you are but is really completely arbitrary and doesn't seem to have a bearing on anything. There are some small puzzles that add a little depth to the experience, but a lot of these just involve running around and turning switches on instead of requiring lateral thinking. I didn't run into many glitches, but there's one at the end: if you have a conversation on the beach with someone and notice that your character's sprite is missing, and then the screen fades to black--that's the ending. I had to open the game in the editor to be sure since it was pretty abrupt, but that was the case (the screen just never fades back in for the credits roll). The game is also a little bloated; there was a scene involving finding something for a homeless person that was overly long (mainly because of a strange lag that occurred in that area) and completely irrelevant to the plot that sticks out in my mind. (The entire involvement of the homeless was done more for comedic reasons, and it felt a little juvenile and unsympathetic, honestly, but that's a personal aside.) After the entire series is finished, Quantum Ghost might hone its gameplay and deliver a strong narrative, but, as a standalone entry, this game won't satisfy and might even turn you off towards the series.

Random (0/5):

Random operates on the bizarre premise that your face has been stolen and you have to run through a cave and steal the facial features off of people that you run into. Battles consist of a little combo system with no limits on player turns, so you can hit enemies as often as it takes to burn through the animation for each attack. What this generally means, though, is that you'll probably just trade hits with the enemy--maybe occasionally you'll get a second hit in. The gimmick is weird rather than engaging, and the difficulty ramps up significantly from the first floor to the second, so this ended up being a grind-a-thon that I didn't want to participate in.

Raven's Den (2/5):

The graphics for this game are downright gorgeous, so I was surprised by how flawed the gameplay was. Raven's Den attempts to make an action adventure game in rpg maker, which I'm convinced is a terrible idea. The hit detection is kind of wonky and battles don't provide a very engaging experience, and I ran into some serious slowdown that hurt the game. Reloading my game would delay the slowdown, but a friend of mine was having even worse slowdown issues that seemed persistent through the entire game. The game makes use of an interesting skill system in which the character loses health when equipping new abilities, but this never felt like a tough choice; several skills are necessary in order to progress, so my health always took the hit. I only died once, though, and it was because of the slowdown during a boss fight. The world that was crafted in this game is interesting, but the storyline is stripped to the bones. You might be intrigued enough to play through the game's short 20ish minute play time, but there's not much of a payoff, and it won't be very fun. This game certainly looks gorgeous, though, especially the very professional-looking opening cut scene.

Regalia Alpha (2/5):

This was a sidescroller in which you play the only player character in an MMO that can still move, as everyone else has been glitched into place. The ground situation has an annoying side effect of having dialogue delivered as if it were typed messages in a general chat in an MMO, meaning the dialogue is banal and irritating. This was an action game, though, so I can forgive any issues with the story if the gameplay is awesome. There are some interesting ideas at play here; you begin with several abilities with a range of utility, but you lose them over the course of the game. However, these abilities weren't fully utilized. The ice ability, for instance, fires up and down on its third hit, but you never run into any enemies that this would be useful on, so it ends up being an ineffectual melee hit. The character also stops moving when they attack, so combat feels very rigid; I think this might have been an attempt to more closely feel like an MMO, but MMO combat tends to be awful, and without other players, small-term goals, or long-term progression, an MMO doesn't work. There's also a major lack of enemy variety--you'll essentially fight two enemy types; they have variants, but that doesn't change how you engage them. There's also a boss, who has to be beaten in a way the game hasn't taught you up until that point, which felt bizarre; why set up mechanics when you don't test them with a final challenge? The graphics were gorgeous, though, and the actual movement felt fluid and fun. The gameplay, though, was too rigid to be enjoyable; expect hit-trading instead of dodging.

Remnants of Isolation (3/5):

The battle system is engaging and interesting, but it's lacking much challenge. The story is pretty forgettable, as is the mapping, but some of the assets--like the portraits--are really well-done.

Rock the Crowd (.5/5):

Rock the Crowd is a rhythm game with the rhythm taken out. Buttons come by along the top of the screen, and you push the corresponding keys on the keyboard, but instead of waiting until a precise moment, you can hit the keys at any time. You also have to hit the keys four times for whatever reason. So, instead of being able to play with the music, the game devolves into madly mashing buttons. The game also uses Dream Theater-esque prog metal, so the song (I think there's just one) goes on for a long, long time, and I guess the goal of the game is to keep mashing buttons until your fingers get worn down to bloody stumps. There are also too many men with ponytails in the audience; that many ponytails shouldn't be gathered in one place, but, for a prog metal crowd, this is not overly surprising. The game gets half a point because the music is pretty sweet and it will still play after you inevitably give up.

Rouge Bouquet (0/5):

I can't tell if this is a satire on art games, a joke about how bad of a poet Joyce Kilmer is, or a legitimate ode to Joyce Kilmer. The premise of Rouge Bouquet is that you walk through an uninteresting landscape and see Joyce Kilmer poetry as floating text along your journey. This is set to jangly electric guitar that oozes hipster sullenness. For those unfamiliar with Joyce Kilmer, he's a poet known for producing one popular poem, but his work is overly sentimental, brainless, and trite, and critics nearly universally hate it. If this game is in love with Joyce Kilmer, it's in pretty poor taste. If it's a satire, it still forces you to read his poetry, so you lose either way.

Run Joe Run! (.5/5):

This was one of those games like Bit Trip Runner where you automatically run from one side of the screen to the other while jumping over enemies and obstacles. Run Joe Run's take on this was to cut the run speed in half and have the screen flip at set intervals throughout the levels, which both hurt the experience. Starting over a level feels grueling because of how long it takes to progress through it, so it loses the arcade action quality that makes other running games engaging. It feels a bit more like a puzzle game at times since you have to purposefully impede yourself on obstacles in order to avoid enemies. This would be okay, but you figure out when to do this based on trial and error instead of split-second timing decisions, so it's easy to feel cheated, and the slow pacing makes this one hard to finish.

Ruselan (1.5/5):

This game has some killer mapping, and some players might find the early investigative bits entertaining, but dialogue serves mainly to progress the forgettable plot and make jokes and references that never really landed for me. Likewise, characters are flat, and the battles are simplistic, suffer some design flaws, and are pretty similar to one another. Ruselan also forces you to grind, and it doesn't make it particularly easy for you, as your characters don't have healing or status recovery spells, several enemies can poison, and it's a decent hike back to the inn. Luckily, you only have to make it to level eight or so, which doesn't take too long, but, with no forced battles before the last boss, it's pretty much all grinding.

Sete Ossos (0/5):

I assume this is a horror game, but I'm going to be honest: I never made it past the tutorial. The player is told to push three boxes into three positions, but the positions are only shown to the player for a few seconds, and pulling boxes is difficult. You're also supposed to move each specific box into a specific position, which wasn't telegraphed to the player, and you also have to fight an energy bar that goes down as you move the boxes around. The only way to recover energy is by standing still for a very long time, so this game will quickly test your patience. There's also an internal timer, so you only have so long to push the boxes in the right positions; this also wasn't telegraphed to the player, so the tutorial ended up being incredibly frustrating. This was doubly frustrating since the presentation of this game is pretty excellent, even if the dialogue needed to be gone over by a native English speaker. This one might be worth playing if the developer redesigns at least the first puzzle, but I assume that all of the gameplay suffers similar problems. You might want to keep an eye on this one, but the current build is pretty impossible.

Siestarena (2/5):

While the art for this game seems to be all custom and well-composed, the gameplay was kind of strange. The player is a sandman who accidentally releases a few nightmare faeries that go into four different people's dreams. You have to go into these dreams, which basically consist of four mini games: a short series of RPG battles, a series of three "is he telling the truth" logic puzzles, a game in which you have to collect several plates before the time runs out, and a short exploration game. All of the mini games can be beaten pretty quickly, and the game doesn't build on any of the mechanics it sets up in those initial dreams. The dreams don't reveal much about the dreamers--it's basically pure gameplay, and the gameplay is unfortunately not very engaging, though it does have a lot of variety in the short play time. The ending tries to tie together the experience, but, as there wasn't any foreshadowing, it will feel like a non sequitur and will make you raise an eyebrow rather than blow your mind.

Sky's Isles (2/5):

This was a little exploration-based platformer placed in a world where humanity has been isolated to small, single-person islands. I think the theme of isolation is incredibly relevant to modern society (it's the primary theme of A Very Long Rope, actually), so I was a little excited about seeing it, although the "talk to your neighbor" solution is a bit too clean-cut and idyllic. Movement feels a little floaty, which doesn't get in the way too much, but it's easy to get your hot air balloon stuck on rocks and things. Combat consists of firing a bow and arrow; the longer you hold the attack button, the farther the arrow flies, and there's a sweet spot you can hit that sends your arrow flying with much greater accuracy and speed which adds a fun note of timing to the combat. The pacing felt kind of slow, though; the world is fairly big, and there's no map or other indicator of where you've been or where you need to go. I don't mind having to explore, but I would have loved a mini-map that filled out as I explored so I didn't fly around the same areas. There was only one enemy type, so lack of combat variety made the game slog. The art has a childish charm to it that fit the simplicity of the message.

Slime's Turn (1.5/5):

I'm a sucker for Metroidvanias, and this has so far been the only one I've seen in the competition. While the plot about a generic slime in an MMO seeking revenge against the player who killed his parents for XP is cute, it's not really breaking any new ground; luckily it's put in the background. The gameplay doesn't really do anything new with the Metroidvania formula, and the only upgrades I found were basic changes to your movement: faster speed, higher jumps, double jumps, wall climbing, and the ability to not die from big falls. The wall climbing was the one thing that felt unique to the game; giving the slime other abilities like this that felt, you know, slimy, would have helped this game stand out. Levels also tend to be too open and the music is annoying, which together make the game slog. After beating the game, I was greeted with a message that there's a better ending, but the load function hadn't been implemented yet, and I wasn't motivated enough to play through the entire game again.

Smoking Simulator (1/5):

This game had a pretty funny premise: your job sucks and you have to smoke in order to face your own hellish existence. If you don't, you'll enter RAGE MODE and you get to destroy the office. The idea's there, but the execution really sucks. Oddly enough, actually working was the funnest part of the game. Your job is to accept or decline budget decisions, so you have to scan over each request and reject the absurd ones (like purchasing katanas for the office). The problem, though, is that the necessity to take smoke breaks are too frequent and the controls are clunky, so I ended up entering rage mode before I was even close to figuring out where the smoking area was both times I tried to play this. In theory, rage mode is a fun idea, but because of the stripped down 3-D graphics and lack of interesting behaviors from your fellow office mates, it just turned into knocking over cubicles that somehow managed to get drained of its fun well before the thirty seconds ran out.

Solidarity (.5/5):

The storyline for this game is immediately forgettable, and, while there's an attempt at characterization, my guess is that the developer hasn't had much writing experience, so the characters are also flat and forgettable. There's a large, unnecessary HUD that will often obscure things, the battles require no strategy, and the skills have wild fluctuations in utility, which is something I've been seeing a lot in games made by younger developers. I don't understand the thought process behind hitting level ten and getting a skill that that's worse than my level five skill. The custom art in this is expectedly amateur and conflicts with the rtp in a big way. Breaking the world up into missions that were ranked was appreciated, but the story offers zero intrigue and the ending still manages to disappoint. This one should be avoided.

Soul Echoes (2/5):

The seemingly stock plot, poor mapping, flat characters, and lack of clear direction might be a barrier of entry for players, but after that there's a reveal of a fairly clever design concept that I won't spoil here. The concept is clever enough to push the player to continue until the end, but the game never really rises above that concept in terms of plot complexity or character development. The battle system has some cool ideas that aren't fully realized.

Soul Hell on Earth (0/5):

This game has the distinction of having the worst difficulty spike I've ever seen, and bad difficulty spikes are a running trend in many of these rpgs. The plot is an "angels versus demons" type of thing that is more about the developer coming up with awesome lore (read: lore by itself is never awesome, and in this case, it's really terrible) instead of interesting characters or situations. This was tolerable for a while because there are quite a few typos throughout this, some of which were pretty funny. The game is also stupidly easy for the first couple of levels. The second boss hit me for three damage and I killed him in two turns, for example. But, in the third area, the developer threw in some slimes that could hit you for ALMOST TWICE YOUR MAX HP. They're also faster than you. I grinded for a while, but they were hitting me for about 70-80 and I was gaining three hp per level, so why the developer thought this was sane is beyond me. One day he's going to grow up and become a civil engineer, and there's going to be a road in Brazil that's nice and straight, maybe even slopes downward a bit so you just drift down it without a care in the world, and then all of a sudden it'll curve up into a ninety degree angle.

Space Goblin in a Land of Jello (3.5/5):

This game was a pleasant surprise! It's a top-down Zelda-clone in which you play an alien landing on a planet filled with strange, gelatin-enriched creatures who are under attack by a supreme evil. The storyline doesn't matter, really, though, as it's just an excuse to set up the premise: you only have ten minutes to save the planet. At first this seems daunting, but the game is set up to where you should be able to finish with time to spare (I think it took me about eight minutes). The cool thing about this game is how much it fits into a short space: to save the planet, you have to collect rupees that both act as currency and upgrade your stats. You choose which stat you want to upgrade, which adds a bit of strategy to the early game when it's harder to get rupees. There are also giant rainbow gems that automatically upgrade whichever stat you're building, and, since higher levels cost more rupees, it becomes important to time when you get them so that you can maximize your short time on the planet. You'll very likely die, though, especially on the boss if you're unprepared, and the penalty for death is harsh: you have to start the entire game over. I still found this game to be engaging, but, man, starting back with no stat upgrades is pretty disheartening. I'd give this a shot, but you might end up hating me for it.

Spirit Realm (0/5):

This is an action/platformer that has a number of glaring issues. The game is set in a world that's suspended in mid-air; falling means starting back at the beginning, and your sword has the unusual mechanic of making you charge forward, meaning that while you're getting used to the game, you can expect to fall off a lot. There are a few interesting ideas, such as the bow and arrow that fires a projectile and lets you walk on the platform that trails behind it. Gameplay's still pretty clunky, though. I cheesed my way past the first two bosses and got stuck on the third; there's no reliable way to heal, and reloading the game doesn't recover life, so I got to that boss with just a sliver of health, and the combat's too clunky to really want to master. Sound effects and art are pretty garish, but I have a feeling that the developer is pretty young, so it's neat to see him making his own assets. The music was, according to the developer, recorded from his mom playing a keyboard, and it shows; you can hear the crappy preset drum track and the recording is too quiet and a little watery. The narrative is a collect-the-elements plot line, and dialogue is delivered in a slow, choppy way that will aggravate.

Stormblood (2.5/5):

Stormblood is a game about vampires, and it's pretty competent, so if you love medieval vampire fantasy, then this is probably worth a play. For gamers in general, though, Stormblood's got a few faults. The story is a framed hero plot that doesn't offer very nuanced or dynamic characters, and the battles were much too samey, as you fight most of them with one person, and it's difficult to really give the player enough options to do much in a one-person team. That said, the game is well put-together aesthetically, and it's fully voice acted--and, for the most part, the voice acting is actually good. The battle system felt pretty easy to exploit, and some of the classes felt underwhelming, though the game has been updated since I downloaded it, so take that with a grain of salt. One of the neat aspects of the game was your protagonist's ability to shape shift into people whose blood he drinks; this added a stealth/infiltration element to the game that was cool, but, as a gameplay mechanic, I would have liked to see it developed more in order to provide more challenge to the player.

Stranded (1/5):

This was a puzzle game about being a guy stranded on a desert island. The game sets up a central mystery a little ham-fistedly, and the puzzles were almost laughably simple. You're never going to get stuck on this one. Puzzles include: walking on top of bananas before monkeys touch you, avoiding boulders that have little consequence if they hit you, pushing a cart down a linear path, and, I kid you not, counting butterflies. As with just about every story centered around a mystery, it fails to deliver at the end, borrowing from Lost, the Matrix, and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones rather than providing anything unique or interesting. Avoid this one.

Sunken Spire (4/5):

This game focused on long-term mechanics rather than short-term ones, so the emphasis is more on unique character progression rather than difficult battles. It was kind of a weird choice for this contest, as the game is several hours long (about six if you're a completionist, four if you're not). It had some game-breaking glitches in it, which I imagine will be fixed soon. The storyline didn't have much going for it, but the characters did have distinct personalities that make them likable within the context of the greater narrative that Indra and Fomar are weaving across their oeuvre. As a standalone game, though, the story wasn't that strong. The art and mapping are great, though, and the character progression makes this game really enjoyable in a left brain sort of way.

Super Nuclear Riders (2.5/5):

This was a tactical RPG, which seemed like a dicey choice considering the length of the average tactical rpg battle makes it hard to fit several battles into the short contest time. The game is essentially just a series of four battles with some tongue-in-cheek dialogue thrown in between. The storyline follows the titular Super Nuclear Riders as they fight the Raptor Czar--basically, the game feels like a parody of an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The characters were satirical, but they didn't really differentiate themselves other than a few basic traits, e.g. there's a running joke with one because he needs glasses. The basic combat system emulated tactical RPGs really well, but it didn't do much beyond that. The cooler aspects of the game were the moves that modify enemy placement, but, really, I felt like I didn't need this; the game was pretty easy, and you're mainly going to just walk behind enemies and punch them in the back (or use an elemental technique if it's more powerful). They massively increased damage for side and back attacks, so there could have been an element of strategy involved in side-attacking enemies so that you could cover your partner's back more easily to avoid the next enemy, but the battles were easy enough that I never needed to do this, and, as a result, they ended up being kind of boring. The graphics were lovely, but there were very few different skill animations, which made the combat feel even more sluggish. I think this game works more as a proof of concept for the framework than a fully realized game; if the developer adds more depth to the framework and creates a larger game, it could be pretty cool.

Swipe & Slash (3/5):

This was a nice little pick-up-and-play puzzle rpg. The player is tasked with defeating a chain of enemies, and, to do this, they have to manipulate a board filled with weapons, potions, and gold. For each turn, the player can make three moves with a bonus move in between defeated enemies. The player can either "swipe" the board up, down, left, or right, which will make more goodies appear in empty tiles and smash together items that have the same type and number, or they can double click an item to get its effect. Combining items and saving them for later felt pretty satisfying. My biggest complaint is the equipment system. I like being able to upgrade my different stats, but, to do this, you have to buy equipment at the shop, which has a randomized selection of four items. I would have much rather had a set selection at the shop, as it was annoying to see nothing useful and have to replay the game when I knew I would fail without better gear. I also had an obscene amount of gold, so there needed to be more balancing and thought behind this aspect of the game. The main character being a dog knight existed for the sole purpose of making a stupid pun, and the music was downright annoying, though the graphics were serviceable. Overall it was still fun, but it won't keep your attention for very long.

Sword of the Unkown (0/5):

This is another game made by a kid, so I don't want to dog on it too much, but it's a cliche journey through a world with little intrigue, then there's a surprise twist at the end that would be irritating if you cared about the story or characters in any way. There are quite a few glitches, including one that gave me a bunch of sweet weapons and more money that I would ever need, so at least I burned through this one fast.

Tchoria (0/5):

This one grabbed me because of how little work was done on its game page, so I knew it wouldn't be that good, and I was very much correct. I'm pretty sure this is a first effort from a young person, so I'm not going to bash it, but expect the following: a story based around a fictional political conflict that's overly simplistic and uninteresting, square, empty mapping, monotonous random battles with no interesting character progression, stripped down dialogue that is pure exposition and blunt to the point of strange, and things that occur that make very little sense. The lack of an engaging or at least bad-in-a-good-way story and engaging gameplay made this game one of the few that I actually didn't finish.

Teardrop Distance (2.5/5):

This game has layers and layers of polish, including voice acting, which was delivered pretty well. The script isn't awful, but it's predictable at times and its central premise requires a hefty suspension of disbelief. It's a sidescrolling hack and slash, but combat is a bit more intellectual, requiring blocking as much as slashing, and you can't attack mid-air, so it's more about planning your attacks than going ape-**** on everything. I found the combat engine to be pretty cool, but, in practice, it got boring quickly, mostly because of the short list of enemies: there's old slash, block, slash, slash, melee monster and the projectile monster that's all about block, creep forward, block, creep forward, block, creep forward, block, creep forward, slash, slash, slash. There's a little more variance based on combining different numbers of these two enemy types, but that felt like a bit of a cop out, and it never made me really think harder, which is what the combat system is wanting to do. There are two bosses that, while appearing slightly different, function the same, and part of that includes having way too much life and too simple of a pattern. So, while this game has some great aesthetics and functional mechanics, the gameplay gets old fast, and without a great story, the whole experience sort of fell flat for me.

Tess (3.5/5):

Tess is kind of like Cave Story, except it doesn't handle as well and isn't as action-packed or charming, and it toned down the rpg elements (though you can still increase your hp through leveling, not that it matters). While losing the action, though, it took on a few puzzle elements, which were a welcome change. You can jump down pits and loop to the top of the screen, which adds a certain level of depth to the level design, and there are a few interesting enemy types that kept combat fresh, though the game was quite short. I think this is a pretty enjoyable experience overall, but the titular character is more annoying than round or engaging, and the game builds a mystery that ends up falling flat by pulling one of the oldest twists in the book. There's also a major disconnect between the narrative and the gameplay; why is this little girl running around shooting things? The art direction and music work pretty well, though, and this game could have been pretty sweet if it had better writing chops and utilized the engine to its full potential, but you might give it a shot if you're more forgiving than me and want a competent run and gun with a few puzzle elements.

The Betrayal of Gods (1/5):

This is another one of those not-games, and, frankly, I just don't get this phenomenon. If you're going to remove the interactivity from a game, why don't you just go into making films? To be fair, though, there is a degree of interactivity here. You can make some choices that don't really alter the story in any way, but the game keeps track of them and mentions them at the end. The plot follows a man who loses his memory, and, as he tries to regain it, he learns about the cruel world that he lives in. Using the amnesia plot device might be cliche, but it made sense here, as the developer clearly wanted the player to learn about the world, so having them essentially play as an outsider gave the developer room to talk about the world. The problem, though, is that I think this was written by someone who was much more interested in developing lore than engaging characters, so if you like lore, this might be worth playing. Personally, lore bores me to tears; I like it in the background, not in several pages of dialogue. There's a little girl named Aro who follows you around through most of the game, though, who I found to be fairly well-written and engaging when she wasn't explaining the history of the world; she felt like a genuine kid and not just an approximation of a kid (like in Listen or The Tea Party). The other characters provided much less intrigue, though, and the ending suggested that this was just the first part of the series and things weren't fully wrapped up.

The Day of Reassembly (1/5):

This game pisses me off because of how cool it could have been. It's a puzzle platformer in which you play as two robots, one of which can take blocks and then make them reappear at a whim, and the other can destroy the terrain with his weaponry and propel himself upwards by blowing up the ground beneath his feet. These mechanics were both awesome, but the game has two central flaws: one, controls are not explained, so your first ten/fifteen minutes of playing will be hitting random keys. Two--and this is the big one--you can't switch between your characters. This would have allowed for some cool Lost Vikings moments since your characters synergize in interesting ways. Instead, though, you have to complete the level with the first robot, and then complete it with the second. However, your first robot needs to set up blocks so that your second robot can make it through the level. This means that if you don't set up the blocks correctly, you're going to have to redo the level with the first robot, which gets old really fast. I actually gave up on this one out of frustration, and I tend to like puzzle games that stump me. The problem was that I wasn't stumped for not understanding how to solve puzzles; I was stumped by failing to execute them perfectly and having to wait too long to get back to the point where I could attempt again. I hope this game gets an overhaul, as there are some cool ideas here, but, right now, it's not worth attempting.

The Delusion (2/5):

The Delusion is a horror game in which you play as some miserable creature who has been living in a dilapidated castle's basement for quite some time. The game establishes an effectively creepy atmosphere, and the player is meant to explore the castle and piece together its mystery along with the protagonist's own mysterious past. The developer is a non-native English speaker, though, and most of the story is told through dialogue, so understanding everything can be difficult at times, which was probably the biggest thing that hurt the experience. I liked playing as the creature, but I wish that some of the dialogue had been pared back, as there was a lot of dialogue over things that were already clear from the action. There are a number of chase sequences--some felt well-placed and made me panic, but others felt like they were unnecessary and more irritating than frightening. Sometimes the mapping does a good job of showing a cluttered, dilapidated building, but other times it feels unintentionally sloppy. The game features multiple endings, and the one that I got wasn't very satisfying, so others' experiences may be more rewarding than mine.

The End Saga (0/5):

This was a joke game. The joke is that the game is utterly terrible in every way. Experience awful mapping, constant misspellings and poor grammar, and glitches left unfixed for the fun of it. The fact that someone planned this game out should make you question your faith in humanity. It somehow manages to elicit less laughter than the crappy games it satirizes.

The Fantastical Adventures of Ron the Knight (0.5/5)

I'm going to be honest: I originally picked this game because the title seemed ridiculous and I wanted to make fun of it. After playing it, though, the title makes perfect sense, and it's a cute little story about a kid pretending to be a knight. This seems like it's someone's first game, and they were probably doing it for fun, so I don't want to insult it. That said, there are a lot of passability issues, a couple of glitches, some occasionally bizarre mapping, and gameplay consists almost entirely of fetch quests. This probably isn't worth your attention, but my guess is that the developer mainly did it for the fun of it, so, if you happen to stumble on this little review, keep having fun with rpg maker and we'll be here if you want any guidance.

The Farming One (3.5/5):

This is a Harvest Moon game that's been distilled down to the basics so that it can be completed under an hour; crops grow in seconds, you can build your relationship with NPCs by giving them three gifts in rapid succession, and harvesting anything automatically gives you money. I think the execution of this game is about as good as you can get given the idea; everything functions right, and the developers made sure to vary the gameplay as much as possible, though, at the end of the day, you're still just pressing spacebar on things to get more money and then buying things so you can press spacebar on more things. I feel like I should give this a higher score since I can't really think of a way to improve the gameplay, but, I think at a certain point, I have to admit that I just don't really LOVE this kind of game--it's like country music for me. I've seen some flash games recently, too, that have similar mechanics, so maybe I'm just burnt out with the whole "make money to make more money" gameplay. I have small complaints--the portrait art is amateur, but it's expressive (and it didn't bug me in any way, honestly), too much of the music was rtp (but it fit), and the dialogue was meant to be charming, and it was at times, but it wasn't quite there yet. The catgirl, for instance, can go straight to hell. That said, these were small complaints, and this is a game that was very well executed and is worth giving a try, especially if you're already a fan of Harvest Moon.

The Hero's Adventure (.5/5):

After watching several cut scenes that are focused around subverting the old hero's journey trope--which, by the way, has been subverted so many times that games need to start coming out that subvert the subversion--you're thrust into one of the most backwards battle systems I've ever seen. The player's given no feedback on how much damage they're doing, which is compounded when the mage can determine how much mp he spends per cast--once he's out of mp, he can't even attack. Battles are also overly long. I actually couldn't get past the second one because my attacks were also damaging me, which I'm pretty sure was unintentional. The mapping is pretty great on this one, though, so I'm surprised that a game with decent production values has such awful core mechanics.

The Old Arts (0/5):

This game made very little sense to me. I think that it might have been started with a larger scale premise in mind, and then the developer didn't have the time so they slapped an ending on it. You play as some heroes that have gotten up in the years, and then they have to defeat the evil demon whatever even though they're geriatric. The game has very few battles (I believe three) that are all story-based and I'm pretty sure are all have predetermined outcomes. There were supposed to be choices that matter, but the choices have either completely unclear outcomes or immediate consequences (i.e. death). There are several locations on the world map, but you can only enter a few of them as indicated by giant floating arrows. There's also no music in the game outside of the battles. Everything felt hollow and unfinished. I won't spoil the ending, but it's probably the worst ending I've seen in this contest, and I've seen a lot of bad endings.

The One That Got Away (0/5):

The premise of this game attracted me to it; apparently, the developer came across a dead (or maybe dying) man and wasn't able to help, which made him feel terrible, so he made a game about coping with the resulting mental trauma. I guess this is an art game, so there could have been something that was deeper than what I experienced, but, whenever I run into that question, it makes me wonder if I'm stupid or if the developer just didn't clearly convey something--and I tend to think I'm not stupid. Basically, gameplay consists of making a triangle run into other triangles. Once you run into all the triangles, you'll here a recorded message of the developer talking about his experience. The gameplay really felt separate from the narrative and wasn't engaging, and, though I'm sure this was a cathartic experience for the developer, why he entered this game into a contest is a mystery.

The Postman (2.5/5):

The Postman is a detective game, and I use the term "game" loosely. It begins with an oddball premise about how there are a number of gods in the universe that dictate various things, including the banal, and you happen to play the god of missing letters, so your original goal is to just find a letter and return it to its rightful owner. From there, though, the game turns into a basic murder/mystery. After you get past the ground situation, the narrative doesn't surprise or offer much intrigue; it's a plot that you've seen before. The characters, though, feel genuine, and the dialogue is pretty engaging--mainly because the main character has an outside perspective on humanity. The gameplay, though, is virtually nonexistent; the player talks to several NPCs and is given subjects to talk about, which will slowly reveal more subjects. Since this is part of the detective genre, this style of dialogue was fine, but the game basically ended up playing itself; I wasn't even able to guess the murderer or determine their motives or methods--the game did that for me. So, as a game it felt like the player was removed from it, and as a movie, the plot did little to break out of the well-trodden detective genre. The game does look great, though, and the dialogue might make this a worthwhile game to try if you can forgive its problems.

The Tea Party (1/5):

This was a little horror game involving a brother, sister, and another boy who are transported to an Alice in Wonderland inspired realm filled with talking stuffed animals who are generally evil and several knife-wielding murder dolls. Gameplay consists of exploration and fetch quests; nothing's going to break your brain, here. Why the kids are in this bizarre place is never gone over, so I assume it's just an excuse for the stock horror situations instead of exploring something genuinely horrifying. This seems to be a first game, so it's not surprising that the scares don't really stick, and the characters are flat and say uninteresting things for the most part (I think investigating the stump in the first room makes a dialogue message pop up that says "This is a stump."). The ending is cheap and won't affect you unless you're a horror virgin, and, even then, it probably won't affect you since it's hard to care about the characters.

The Tree of Sun - Spirits of Fate (1/5):

This was another one I played because the bizarre grammar in the title made me think it would be a "so bad it's fun" game, and, to an extent, I was right: the poor grammar and simplistic characters/plot make it pretty clear that this game was made by a child or possibly young adult, and when I saw the developer's name in the credits, my guess is that she's also a non-native English speaker, so get ready for some unintentionally funny moments. You'll explore such exciting locations as Tower of Snow, Dark Mounten (sic), and, my personal favorite: Desert of Sand. Other than the final two bosses, the battles are geared towards incredibly easy, and you'll wear out your space bar by spamming basic attacks. Encounters are random and too frequent, there's an abundance of treasure (all of which is worthless), and the shop's pricing is ludicrously high, which would be an issue if the game weren't so easy in the first place. Mapping occasionally shows some promise, though, and there are puzzles included in the dungeon design that, while simple, show that the developer has some ingenuity with eventing. The collect-the-elemental-spirits plot line is convoluted and cliche, but it's hard for me to really make fun of this game, as there was once a young man with an Ernest Borgnine avatar who made nonsensical RPGs, too. If the developer happens to read this, keep having fun with rpg maker; you're only going to get better.

To Kill a Black Swan (2/5):

This was a detective game that operated like a visual novel for the most part. A lot of the weight falls on the characters, and most of them felt flat, especially the protagonist. There's also a lot of unnecessary narration from him that bogged the game down. Considering the genre, I don't think narration is a bad thing, but I would like it better if it characterized him or added a new perspective; most of the time, he just stated the obvious. The ending also had a pretty heavy-handed message; it's one that I think most people would already agree with, and I hate being told what I already know. Some of the characters did have a little bit of depth, and there was subtext in their conversations, so the dialogue did offer a little intrigue. I also really appreciated how the player has to choose both the murderer and their motive; a lot of detective games in this competition haven't let me solve it, which I feel is really crucial to the experience. That said, even though I solved the murder on my first try, I felt like I was solving it based on my ability to look at story structure and writing from a writer's perspective; it didn't feel like I was solving based on good police work.

Trapped (4/5):

Trapped is an rpg about essentially being stuck in a city during a zombie apocalypse. The "zombies" in the game are actually more stylized than that (they're weird rubbery monstrosities for the most part), but the trope is more or less the same. While the art and music for this game work well, what really sells it is its mechanics. The focus is on survival, so there's no easy way to heal your hp, you have to find most of your equipment and supplies through scavenging dark, dangerous basements, and weapons will break over time, so there's a constant feeling of unease throughout the game. Combat has an added dynamic of enemies slowly moving towards you, which affects your accuracy and their attack options. The game loses a bit of its punch towards the end once you get a full party; I never really felt a threat after that. There's also a few game-breaking glitches, including a missing sound file (devil 2--go ahead and add it), so, if you download this, make sure to save often. I also found there to be a bit of a missed opportunity with player decisions having less weight than they should. For example, it's heavily implied that one of your potential party members is a murderer, but there's no downside to getting her. The ending is also pretty unsatisfying in an NES kind of way--just some congratulation text, more or less. However, the gameplay leading up to that is engaging and downright fun. Give this one a shot.

Troll Over (1.5/5):

It's an rpg where you play a troll instead of a hero--that's the gimmick. Otherwise, it plays pretty typically. There's a definitely weird vibe from this one because of the stripped back art style and frankly bizarre music. The battle system involves lots of attack spamming, but there's a character that has a randomized attack that you essentially select and then back out of until you get the move you want, though I'm not sure if this was intended. The plot is immediately forgettable, but there was a joke in the ending that got a chuckle out of me.

Troop 85: Boy Scouts Dodgeball (0/5):

When I saw how distasteful the title screen was, I knew I had to play it. I also knew it would be terrible, but I had to play it, much like how a bright new scab begs to be scratched even when you know it will bleed. I guess I got what I expected. There was a legitimate attempt here to make dodgeball work in VX Ace, but, as most developers have discovered, hit detection is not a strength of the engine. Added to that, dodgeball is a game about quick reflexes, but here you'll have to constantly open up the menu to equip the ability to catch or throw dodgeballs instead of just setting them to separate buttons. Dodgeballs get thrown so often and in such quick succession that the following scenario will happen frequently: you'll catch a dodgeball, a text box appears that tells you you can use a special ability, and then while that text box is up you'll be hit with another dodgeball that you can do nothing to avoid. The gameplay somehow sucked all of the fun out of dodgeball, which was a real shame. Dodgeball should be about getting an excuse in PE to injure all the little fricks in school that you secretly hate. The whole boy scout thing makes this seem like a game made for this particular troop. All of the characters (and there are a lot) seem to be members of the troop, and there are little in-jokes with their abilities (one kid had a "sugar rush" ability, for example). I'm sure this game was really cool as a shared experience for those kids, but why enter it into the competition?

Unknown Designation (2/5):

The developer for this one has a background in writing, and it shows at times in the details they give during narration. However, their transition from written fiction to games was a bit rocky: there's an overabundance of narration--including actions that could have occurred in scenes and gameplay. The story itself has a nice ground situation, but the storytelling hinders it, and the characters have a little development but not enough to really distinguish them in a memorable way. Likewise, the plot has a few good moments, but overall it doesn't do much to distinguish itself in a pretty well-tread genre. The love story at the center of the plot could offer a bit of heart and nuance, but it felt a bit fraudulent at times, mainly because the characters themselves needing more focus and development. Battles contain some interesting equipment setups and skill sets, but they were also beatable with the same strategy; you'll never feel in danger of losing a fight. Graphics and sound are a mixed bag; some of the mapping is solid, but the enemy graphics don't have a cohesive style, and the music is fitting at times, but, again, the styles shift often and the piano music during heartfelt scenes was cliche to the point of undercutting them. Overall, there were a few good ideas here in the gameplay and writing that needed longer to cook.

Unraveled (4/5):

This game looks, sounds, and plays great. The story is told really well, but it treads into melodrama territory when more specifics about the main character's past are revealed. I also found the gameplay to slow down a lot after I got lost in the jungle area for a while; that made the game's magic sort of fade for me. The battles are generally too difficult, but the developer allows the player to continue after a loss and the ranking system encourages playing the battles repeatedly until you master them rather than just beating them, which were smart decisions, though this aspect of the game seemed to conflict with the game's narrative for me. I think if this game stuck the ending, it could have been a 4.5, but the events leading up to the ending were so melodramatic that the player might come away feeling cheated after the very absorbing first half of the game.

Vagrant Skies (1.5/5):

In Vagrant Skies, you play as a succession of people with bizarre walking animations as they try to escape a labyrinth. The atmosphere of this game isn't bad; it makes use of lighting effects, and the labyrinth is dark and mysterious. At times, though, the graphics make it difficult to tell what's a doorway and what's not. Each character has an ability--the first guy can light torches, the second can push boulders, etc. Most of the time, these gimmicks were just in place to funnel your character down the right path, e.g. there's a boulder in the way, so you can't go there with the first guy. The gameplay was mainly focused on exploration, but the paths tended to be linear. There are some puzzles, but they're all easy (though one boulder puzzle is pretty time-consuming). The game seems to set up areas that are only accessible through using characters who you've already played as previously, but these characters can't be played as again (as far as I could tell). Being able to do that would have added some Lost VIkings-esque depth to the puzzle elements of the game. The story isn't conveyed to the player through gameplay at all, which was kind of annoying. Instead, it was all pushed into books that explain the backstory of the place you're trapped in, and these books are completely optional and can only be read in the hub area after you've collected them. I would have much preferred experiencing the story instead of reading about it; since there was nothing to anchor me to the characters or plot, optionally reading the story felt like a chore, and the gameplay didn't do much to function in its place. The music and atmosphere are pretty solid, though.

Veek (2.5/5):

I was drawn to this game because of the developers' claims to want to make something profound, and I found the art to be pretty decent. This is a good contrast: it's anthropomorphic, but it's in a more tasteful Breath of Fire way than the creepy furry kind of way. You play the role of a bird-man named Veek, who is given strength by his fellow bird-men so that he can go on a brooding quest of some kind. There's no dialogue, and the game did a good job of giving the chick (read: bird, not girl) that follows you some spunk and character, and the tile sets, mapping, and piano music set a brooding atmosphere. I actually found the first scene absorbing, though the lack of much movement made me wonder if the game had froze. Veek's trek through the mostly barren world was engaging, too, as there are lots of things to look at. However, the first battle starts a bad trend: battles are overly long and designed to be won through doing normal attacks and healing when low on hp. I tried using other aspects of my skill set, but this tended to drain my mp, which ended up sinking me on one fight. Punch, punch, punch, heal. Get used to that. Luckily, there aren't that many battles, and the game makes use of a "your character loses levels instead of gaining them" mechanic, which is kind of what I did in my own game, except instead of offering more depth to the battles, which is how I tried to use mine, Veek just gave you a smaller skill set as you moved forward, so battles actually became less interesting the further you went. The piano music works for setting the mood, but when every track is just piano, it starts to sound too samey and will start to drag pretty quickly. Veek began really strong for me, but the battles killed the gameplay, and the engaging opening is killed by the ending, which was more bizarre than awe-inspiring and profound.

Voices Focused (0/5):

I have a theory: solo game projects can tell you a great deal about the developer. I've always felt that way about writing, especially when the writer is fairly new, as they haven't learned the ropes and aren't filtering themselves much--other than filtering how they THINK they should write. Game development, in a way, seems even more personal, since you're in charge of every little minutia. So, sometimes I like to play a game in order to think about the mind behind it. In the case of Voices Focused, I admit that I did this for my own sick amusement, as it was clear from the game page that it was either made by someone with schizophrenia or, more likely, a hypochondriac who thinks he has schizophrenia. What I played was in line with that, but what I didn't expect was a game that played in such a fragmented, underexplained way. Among its many sins are: random battles with an incredibly high encounter rate, incredibly uneven difficulty levels (bosses tend to be easy while random encounters will sometimes stomp you out quickly), item and skill descriptions that don't clearly convey their function, a "search everything to proceed" mechanic, default everything implemented poorly, and several game-breaking glitches, including one that occurred to me around the two-hour mark that I assume makes beating the game impossible. While the bizarre ground situation and item/skill descriptions reveal a lot of potential for an engaging-for-unintended-reasons experience, the gameplay is so frustrating that you shouldn't give this one a second thought.

Vultures (1.5/5):

Vultures is a hack and slash arena game, in which you hack, slash, and sometimes shoot things--mainly wolves. The controls are a little wonky--why space instead of up to jump? Why W instead of down to crouch? I took a few hits getting used to the controls, but you get used to them just the same. My main problem with this one was the pacing. Enemies come at you very slowly at first, and the first two mob types--wolves and werewolves--can be dispatched safely by crouching and shooting them once. The third enemy type is a huge, armored kobold-looking guy that beat the living crap out of me...mainly because I panicked and forgot how to jump. The big issue, though, is that these guys don't show up until several minutes in, so I didn't really want to have to sit through several minutes of boring gameplay just for a shot at these guys. The game looks great, though.

World Remade (2.5/5):

My biggest issue with this one was that it didn't function very well as a standalone game. The story seemed to imply something larger, and the characters, while having distinct personalities, didn't have arcs, so they felt a bit flat. The mechanics were cool but the battles were all won with the same basic strategy.

kartersaint · Jul 12, 2014

Hmp, that's true. I'll save my mind, I don't want to dishearten them if all those games are their first made.

Housekeeping · Jul 13, 2014

I played FOUR more games last night, so I better get to reviewing:

Morningstar: Scourge of Night Terror (2/5):

The art drew me to this one, not that it was particularly amazing, but it was pretty clearly made by a furry, and furries are just so damn INTERESTING to me--the way they have this sort of naivete that's undercut with a layer of creepiness. So, I gave this one a shot. The art emulates the NES, and I found it to be pretty charming for the most part, especially the monster graphics (which unfortunately had a box around them that wasn't fully set to transparent), though the furry characters will probably be offensive to most people's sensibilities. Though there was a lot of variety in enemy types, the battles were all "spam attack to win," so this seemed more like a conduit for art and storytelling than gameplay. The problem, though, is that the storytelling is odd, which was kind of expected. It's designed as an episodic journey through a castle in which each floor tells a story, and this first episode focuses on reuniting two lost souls. There was an odd sexual tension that developed between the male and female leads that felt unnatural and forced, and, in congruence with the naive but creepy quality I mentioned earlier, they're both 17, the main character has never seen a woman--when he finds out that his partner is a female, he literally says "GULP"--and the female lead has ENORMOUS breasts and immediately comes onto the male lead for no particular reason. There's also gratuitous use of asterisk behaviors (*she nuzzles up to his neck*) that will either creep you out or you should question why they're not creeping you out. My favorite moment came when the protagonist, despite having long, winding, inane conversations throughout the game, finds two skeletons and picks them up without really saying anything, as if lugging two skeletons around isn't creepy as hell. What he does with those skeletons later is even more creepy--and not in an intentional way at all--but saying so here would be a spoiler, so I won't (don't worry, it's nothing sexual). I'd play this one more for a weird trip through someone's mind than as a legitimately fun experience, but if you're more forgiving of furries and their sensibilities, you might find this charming.

Stranded (1/5):

This was a puzzle game about being a guy stranded on a desert island. The game sets up a central mystery a little ham-fistedly, and the puzzles were almost laughably simple. You're never going to get stuck on this one. Puzzles include: walking on top of bananas before monkeys touch you, avoiding boulders that have little consequence if they hit you, pushing a cart down a linear path, and, I kid you not, counting butterflies. As with just about every story centered around a mystery, it fails to deliver at the end, borrowing from Lost, the Matrix, and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones rather than providing anything unique or interesting. Avoid this one.

Tchoria (0/5):

This one grabbed me because of how little work was done on its game page, so I knew it wouldn't be that good, and I was very much correct. I'm pretty sure this is a first effort from a young person, so I'm not going to bash it, but expect the following: a story based around a fictional political conflict that's overly simplistic and uninteresting, square, empty mapping, monotonous random battles with no interesting character progression, stripped down dialogue that is pure exposition and blunt to the point of strange, and things that occur that make very little sense. The lack of an engaging or at least bad-in-a-good-way story and engaging gameplay made this game one of the few that I actually didn't finish.

Unknown Designation (2/5):

The developer for this one has a background in writing, and it shows at times in the details they give during narration. However, their transition from written fiction to games was a bit rocky: there's an overabundance of narration--including actions that could have occurred in scenes and gameplay. The story itself has a nice ground situation, but the storytelling hinders it, and the characters have a little development but not enough to really distinguish them in a memorable way. Likewise, the plot has a few good moments, but overall it doesn't do much to distinguish itself in a pretty well-tread genre. The love story at the center of the plot could offer a bit of heart and nuance, but it felt a bit fraudulent at times, mainly because the characters themselves needing more focus and development. Battles contain some interesting equipment setups and skill sets, but they were also beatable with the same strategy; you'll never feel in danger of losing a fight. Graphics and sound are a mixed bag; some of the mapping is solid, but the enemy graphics don't have a cohesive style, and the music is fitting at times, but, again, the styles shift often and the piano music during heartfelt scenes was cliche to the point of undercutting them. Overall, there were a few good ideas here in the gameplay and writing that needed longer to cook.

Housekeeping · Jul 14, 2014

I played way too many games last night--they were all just so short! This time, I still was mainly looking for so-bad-it's-good, but I threw a few promising ones in there so I could keep my sanity. I'm starting to wonder why I'm doing this.

Cloudfall (3.5/5):

Cloudfall's a puzzle game, the hook of which is as follows: the player is given very little direction and the atmosphere is peaceful. The lack of direction wasn't an issue at all, as the gameplay area is small enough to explore quickly, and completing tasks is fairly intuitive. You're a cloud that changes its properties based on the different weathery things you touch--water gives you the ability to make rain, for example. The puzzles are set up to be fairly nonlinear, but certain powers are unlocked that allow you to solve other puzzles, which threw me for a loop for a while, since my assumption was that I should be able to use the basic environment to complete everything. The graphics and atmosphere work, but "peaceful" can turn into "boring" pretty easily, but the game was short enough to not wear out its welcome. It's also not quite unique or engaging enough to be an amazing game, but it was definitely well put together and might be worth downloading if you're looking for a short but well-crafted puzzle game.

Deadly Beauties (.5/5):

This was clearly another game made by a kid, this time I'm guessing a young British girl based on some of the slang and the art style. There was a lot of custom art and music in this one. The art was colorful but clearly amateur and will instantly remind you of Bratz, and the music was actually kind of interesting, though I'm pretty sure the developer didn't compose it, and the lack of a credits screen doesn't offer any guidance. The premise of magical flower girls from Flowersville who, upon graduation, go out in the world and literally poison bad guys is sweet in that demented childish kind of way, but the execution will make you think about how the kid that made this is probably sweet and funny instead of offering gameplay that really engages you. There are a lot of little glitches, including a game-breaking passability issue right at the end, but you can open this up in the editor if you're really interested in playing this. There's also some balancing issues in the battles--most are too easy, and then some you'll get status-locked. At the beginning, you'll be asked to pick two characters from a very large cast, and some are absolutely worthless while others are overpowered, and you'll have no idea which is which. Overall, this isn't really worth playing, but I would like to say that I think it's really kind of great to see so many kids making games with RPG Maker, and this one, while not particularly good, is showing a lot of imagination.

Hikikomori (1.5/5):

The premise of exploring other people's nightmares in order to fix their problems could have been pretty sweet, but this game had major flaws in its execution. Why the main character can do this is never explained, even in a "well, he's always been able to" sort of way; he just wakes up one day in his mid-twenties and starts helping people out in their dreams. You play through two dreams: in one, you walk through a maze fighting ridiculously easy battles, and, in the other, you solve a quick, poorly implemented puzzle (the developer mentioned something about them leaving one of the hints out by mistake) and answer a bunch of questions about former president Richard Nixon. Speaking of Nixon, I should say that this game is almost fully voice acted, and while the voice acting sounds uniformly amateur, the awful Richard Nixon impersonation (yes, he's a minor character that appears in a dream) will make you laugh for all the wrong reasons, so the game might actually be worth downloading just for that. The sound design also bears mentioning: it's really wonky. You'll have to turn the volume up in order to hear the voice acting, which was still sometimes recorded at very low levels, yet the sound effects are super loud in comparison, and the background music is so low that you probably won't even notice it at first. The characters are unlikable and unrealistic and the gameplay is bearable at best. The enemy graphics in the maze area are actually good, though. This one's probably not worth playing other than the sheer joy you'll experience from hearing the Nixon impersonation.

Mazequest (.5/5):

What sold me on this one was this line from the game page: "There is no leveling up in this game. Just the fun of solving mazes!" I can't for the life of me think of anything less fun than solving mazes. As expected, this was another game made by a kid, and this kid is particularly zany. Get ready for a bunch of zany stuff that you probably won't appreciate unless you are also a zany kid, in which case, you will probably find it amazing. I'll admit, though, there was one moment that made me laugh out loud because of the absurdity of it, and it was actually MEANT to be funny, and that's been a rarity in this blind searching I've been doing lately. There's a lot of glitches, though, many of which are game-breaking. Your character also starts in the wrong place on the map, so you have to backtrack to see the opening, and there's the unfortunate side effect of the default rain BGS playing throughout the game--even when the weather's fair. I wouldn't play this one unless you happen to be a zany kid.

Solidarity (.5/5):

The storyline for this game is immediately forgettable, and, while there's an attempt at characterization, my guess is that the developer hasn't had much writing experience, so the characters are also flat and forgettable. There's a large, unnecessary HUD that will often obscure things, the battles require no strategy, and the skills have wild fluctuations in utility, which is something I've been seeing a lot in games made by younger developers. I don't understand the thought process behind hitting level ten and getting a skill that that's worse than my level five skill. The custom art in this is expectedly amateur and conflicts with the rtp in a big way. Breaking the world up into missions that were ranked was appreciated, but the story offers zero intrigue and the ending still manages to disappoint. This one should be avoided.

Veek (2.5/5):

I was drawn to this game because of the developers' claims to want to make something profound, and I found the art to be pretty decent. This is a good contrast: it's anthropomorphic, but it's in a more tasteful Breath of Fire way than the creepy furry kind of way. You play the role of a bird-man named Veek, who is given strength by his fellow bird-men so that he can go on a brooding quest of some kind. There's no dialogue, and the game did a good job of giving the chick (read: bird, not girl) that follows you some spunk and character, and the tile sets, mapping, and piano music set a brooding atmosphere. I actually found the first scene absorbing, though the lack of much movement made me wonder if the game had froze. Veek's trek through the mostly barren world was engaging, too, as there are lots of things to look at. However, the first battle starts a bad trend: battles are overly long and designed to be won through doing normal attacks and healing when low on hp. I tried using other aspects of my skill set, but this tended to drain my mp, which ended up sinking me on one fight. Punch, punch, punch, heal. Get used to that. Luckily, there aren't that many battles, and the game makes use of a "your character loses levels instead of gaining them" mechanic, which is kind of what I did in my own game, except instead of offering more depth to the battles, which is how I tried to use mine, Veek just gave you a smaller skill set as you moved forward, so battles actually became less interesting the further you went. The piano music works for setting the mood, but when every track is just piano, it starts to sound too samey and will start to drag pretty quickly. Veek began really strong for me, but the battles killed the gameplay, and the engaging opening is killed by the ending, which was more bizarre than awe-inspiring and profound.

Housekeeping · Jul 14, 2014

As I wade through the electronic sludge, I feel my mind slipping. What terrors has the IGMC unleashed upon the world? What wretched filth lies in the hearts of man? The truth is revealed one review at a time.

The End Saga (0/5):

This was a joke game. The joke is that the game is utterly terrible in every way. Experience awful mapping, constant misspellings and poor grammar, and glitches left unfixed for the fun of it. The fact that someone planned this game out should make you question your faith in humanity. It somehow manages to elicit less laughter than the crappy games it satirizes.

Rouge Bouquet (0/5):

I can't tell if this is a satire on art games, a joke about how bad of a poet Joyce Kilmer is, or a legitimate ode to Joyce Kilmer. The premise of Rouge Bouquet is that you walk through an uninteresting landscape and see Joyce Kilmer poetry as floating text along your journey. This is set to jangly electric guitar that oozes hipster sullenness. For those unfamiliar with Joyce Kilmer, he's a poet known for producing one popular poem, but his work is overly sentimental, brainless, and trite, and critics nearly universally hate it. If this game is in love with Joyce Kilmer, it's in pretty poor taste. If it's a satire, it still forces you to read his poetry, so you lose either way.

Sword of the Unkown (0/5):

This is another game made by a kid, so I don't want to dog on it too much, but it's a cliche journey through a world with little intrigue, then there's a surprise twist at the end that would be irritating if you cared about the story or characters in any way. There are quite a few glitches, including one that gave me a bunch of sweet weapons and more money that I would ever need, so at least I burned through this one fast.

Tess (3.5/5):

Tess is kind of like Cave Story, except it doesn't handle as well and isn't as action-packed or charming, and it toned down the rpg elements (though you can still increase your hp through leveling, not that it matters). While losing the action, though, it took on a few puzzle elements, which were a welcome change. You can jump down pits and loop to the top of the screen, which adds a certain level of depth to the level design, and there are a few interesting enemy types that kept combat fresh, though the game was quite short. I think this is a pretty enjoyable experience overall, but the titular character is more annoying than round or engaging, and the game builds a mystery that ends up falling flat by pulling one of the oldest twists in the book. There's also a major disconnect between the narrative and the gameplay; why is this little girl running around shooting things? The art direction and music work pretty well, though, and this game could have been pretty sweet if it had better writing chops and utilized the engine to its full potential, but you might give it a shot if you're more forgiving than me and want a competent run and gun with a few puzzle elements.

The Day of Reassembly (1/5):

This game pisses me off because of how cool it could have been. It's a puzzle platformer in which you play as two robots, one of which can take blocks and then make them reappear at a whim, and the other can destroy the terrain with his weaponry and propel himself upwards by blowing up the ground beneath his feet. These mechanics were both awesome, but the game has two central flaws: one, controls are not explained, so your first ten/fifteen minutes of playing will be hitting random keys. Two--and this is the big one--you can't switch between your characters. This would have allowed for some cool Lost Vikings moments since your characters synergize in interesting ways. Instead, though, you have to complete the level with the first robot, and then complete it with the second. However, your first robot needs to set up blocks so that your second robot can make it through the level. This means that if you don't set up the blocks correctly, you're going to have to redo the level with the first robot, which gets old really fast. I actually gave up on this one out of frustration, and I tend to like puzzle games that stump me. The problem was that I wasn't stumped for not understanding how to solve puzzles; I was stumped by failing to execute them perfectly and having to wait too long to get back to the point where I could attempt again. I hope this game gets an overhaul, as there are some cool ideas here, but, right now, it's not worth attempting.

Troll Over (1.5/5):

It's an rpg where you play a troll instead of a hero--that's the gimmick. Otherwise, it plays pretty typically. There's a definitely weird vibe from this one because of the stripped back art style and frankly bizarre music. The battle system involves lots of attack spamming, but there's a character that has a randomized attack that you essentially select and then back out of until you get the move you want, though I'm not sure if this was intended. The plot is immediately forgettable, but there was a joke in the ending that got a chuckle out of me.

Housekeeping · Jul 16, 2014

Unfortunately, I ran into a few game-breaking glitches in a couple of the games I tried last night, so I was only able to play one game to completion. It was actually pretty great, though:

Trapped (4/5):

Trapped is an rpg about essentially being stuck in a city during a zombie apocalypse. The "zombies" in the game are actually more stylized than that (they're weird rubbery monstrosities for the most part), but the trope is more or less the same. While the art and music for this game work well, what really sells it is its mechanics. The focus is on survival, so there's no easy way to heal your hp, you have to find most of your equipment and supplies through scavenging dark, dangerous basements, and weapons will break over time, so there's a constant feeling of unease throughout the game. Combat has an added dynamic of enemies slowly moving towards you, which affects your accuracy and their attack options. The game loses a bit of its punch towards the end once you get a full party; I never really felt a threat after that. There's also a few game-breaking glitches, including a missing sound file (devil 2--go ahead and add it), so, if you download this, make sure to save often. I also found there to be a bit of a missed opportunity with player decisions having less weight than they should. For example, it's heavily implied that one of your potential party members is a murderer, but there's no downside to getting her. The ending is also pretty unsatisfying in an NES kind of way--just some congratulation text, more or less. However, the gameplay leading up to that is engaging and downright fun. Give this one a shot.

kartersaint · Jul 16, 2014

Housekeeping said:
Unfortunately, I ran into a few game-breaking glitches in a couple of the games I tried last night.

It's pitiful the developers who made those game will never know about crash bugs until someone indicated it.

Unless they test the game themselves.

Housekeeping · Jul 16, 2014

Yeah; they should test their stuff as they go along and make sure to have at least a day set aside just for testing where they actually TRY to break the game. It's easy to overlook some things, but in one of the games I played--it was actually The Clans-Cursed Souls, which I was attempting in earnest--enemies couldn't even be targeted in combat, which is a really major oversight. Since the protagonist has a move that hits every enemy, you can work around it, but I couldn't figure out how to save and one of the NPCs pushed me into an impassible tile, so I lost all my progress. Stuff like that is what gives RPG Maker games a bad rap; it hurts all of us.

kartersaint · Jul 16, 2014

RPG Maker games are bad. It's easy to make a game with the engine. The bad things easily followed up. So many people became developers.

But u know, generalisation is not a good idea. Since this forum is RPG Maker forum. lol.

Housekeeping · Jul 16, 2014

Haha, yeah, I actually MAKE rpg maker games, so I definitely don't think they're all bad. A well-designed rpg maker game can be as good as anything else--you just have to put in the time to polish it and work smartly within its limitations.

Housekeeping · Jul 16, 2014

I didn't think I'd get many games in tonight, but I ran into a bunch of short ones:

Archadiem (0/5):

Here were my thoughts about this game in chronological order as I played: Wow, a lot of pomp and circumstance before the title screen--maybe a little self-righteous, but at least they're proud of their work. Neat, mapping looks pretty detailed, HUD looks alright, dialogue is awful but it's a non-native speaker, so I'll let it slide if the gameplay's alright. This one might be interes--and it froze. Total game time: maybe two minutes with no actual gameplay. HOW DO YOU MISS A GAME-BREAKING BUG THAT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID?!

Entity (2/5):

The art for this game is excellent, so I understand why it's getting so many votes, but, man, the gameplay doesn't do much for me. In Entity, you play a girl with sleep paralysis (which I guess is the disorder du jour since I've been hearing about it so often recently) who is accosted by several monsters that can be killed off by the player in numerous ways, mostly involving clicking. The fun of the game is figuring out how to kill each monster, but this fun is killed by introducing new monsters too slowly and penalizing the player with too much waiting between games. This is alleviated to a degree with the monster book, which gives pretty straightforward hints on how to beat each monster type. Then, the game becomes a juggling act about killing each monster quickly before they build up. A game over means wading through a lot of boring gameplay before you get to the interesting bits, so the game slogs a bit, and, even at its best, it feels like a pretty standard flash game.

Smoking Simulator (1/5):

This game had a pretty funny premise: your job sucks and you have to smoke in order to face your own hellish existence. If you don't, you'll enter RAGE MODE and you get to destroy the office. The idea's there, but the execution really sucks. Oddly enough, actually working was the funnest part of the game. Your job is to accept or decline budget decisions, so you have to scan over each request and reject the absurd ones (like purchasing katanas for the office). The problem, though, is that the necessity to take smoke breaks are too frequent and the controls are clunky, so I ended up entering rage mode before I was even close to figuring out where the smoking area was both times I tried to play this. In theory, rage mode is a fun idea, but because of the stripped down 3-D graphics and lack of interesting behaviors from your fellow office mates, it just turned into knocking over cubicles that somehow managed to get drained of its fun well before the thirty seconds ran out.

Teardrop Distance (2.5/5):

This game has layers and layers of polish, including voice acting, which was delivered pretty well. The script isn't awful, but it's predictable at times and its central premise requires a hefty suspension of disbelief. It's a sidescrolling hack and slash, but combat is a bit more intellectual, requiring blocking as much as slashing, and you can't attack mid-air, so it's more about planning your attacks than going ape-**** on everything. I found the combat engine to be pretty cool, but, in practice, it got boring quickly, mostly because of the short list of enemies: there's old slash, block, slash, slash, melee monster and the projectile monster that's all about block, creep forward, block, creep forward, block, creep forward, block, creep forward, slash, slash, slash. There's a little more variance based on combining different numbers of these two enemy types, but that felt like a bit of a cop out, and it never made me really think harder, which is what the combat system is wanting to do. There are two bosses that, while appearing slightly different, function the same, and part of that includes having way too much life and too simple of a pattern. So, while this game has some great aesthetics and functional mechanics, the gameplay gets old fast, and without a great story, the whole experience sort of fell flat for me.

Housekeeping · Jul 17, 2014

Today was PRETTY MIDDLING, but at least it wasn't MIND-NUMBINGLY AWFUL.

Corruption (1.5/5):

Corruption's a shoot em up, and it's a pretty bland one. Controls are responsive, but there's not a lot of enemy variety or exciting weaponry, so it slogs pretty quickly. There's an upgrade system, but the choices are limited and don't offer any interesting tradeoffs. You can upgrade your shield, but shields need to be picked up, and the only enemies that will give you trouble are bosses, who don't give you shields. You can improve how quickly your health and special weapon energy recharge while under the F-Zero-like charging strips, but those strips don't occur at the bosses, who, again, are the only enemies you'd actually need to charge your special weapon for. The only thing that matters upgrading is the cannon, so the upgrade system seemed kind of pointless. Oh, and no continues, so if you die, get ready to rerun every boring level. There's also only one music track and it's a bland techno song instead of sweet power metal, which should be reason enough to avoid this one.

Eden (1.5/5):

Take this feedback with a grain of salt. I'm usually pretty good at puzzle games, but I could never get a grip on this one. I think part of this is the tutorial--it introduced a lot of concepts, but I feel like it didn't explain the ones that actually mattered. Eden's about balancing an ecosystem, and you do this by placing tiles next to other tiles--grasslands next to rivers, for example. I got my ass kicked pretty bad on this one, so it could just be that I'm an idiot, but maybe the concept needed to be better telegraphed to the player. You still might check this one out; there's a lot of micromanagement involved, I think, so if you like that kind of thing, this might be your cup of tea. I wasn't interested enough to really go for it, though.

Perspective (2.5/5):

Perspective's a game about exploring memories, and memories are presented as timed events in which several different people live out that moment of their lives. You have free reign of a mansion, so there's lots of people doing their own things as you search for clues to solve the game's central mystery. This one had some fertile soil for an excellent plot, but instead the main character is instantly forgettable, and the dialogue is often pointless or too focused on the in-game lore and world instead of providing intrigue into the story and characters; if it's not that, it's simple exposition. The mechanics themselves function well, and this is a series that has a lot of potential, but, for now, the story and characters won't grab you, which would have been a central component to the success of this game.

Swipe & Slash (3/5):

This was a nice little pick-up-and-play puzzle rpg. The player is tasked with defeating a chain of enemies, and, to do this, they have to manipulate a board filled with weapons, potions, and gold. For each turn, the player can make three moves with a bonus move in between defeated enemies. The player can either "swipe" the board up, down, left, or right, which will make more goodies appear in empty tiles and smash together items that have the same type and number, or they can double click an item to get its effect. Combining items and saving them for later felt pretty satisfying. My biggest complaint is the equipment system. I like being able to upgrade my different stats, but, to do this, you have to buy equipment at the shop, which has a randomized selection of four items. I would have much rather had a set selection at the shop, as it was annoying to see nothing useful and have to replay the game when I knew I would fail without better gear. I also had an obscene amount of gold, so there needed to be more balancing and thought behind this aspect of the game. The main character being a dog knight existed for the sole purpose of making a stupid pun, and the music was downright annoying, though the graphics were serviceable. Overall it was still fun, but it won't keep your attention for very long.

kraftlawrence21 · Jul 17, 2014

Cinnamon · Jul 17, 2014

kraftlawrence21 said:
Yes.

Housekeeping · Jul 19, 2014

It's good to see that my topic has spurred such heated discussions.

A Deadly Understanding (1.5/5):

This was a detective game, in which you play a derivative of Sherlock Holmes named Conor. While Conor isn't exactly unique, he at least attempts to be charming, and the writing was better than I expected--I didn't have high expectations, though. The murder-mystery setup is pretty stock, and the player goes about solving it mainly by searching everything and reading through a lot of wry jokes from Conor, most of which don't land. There aren't many puzzles at all, and the game is incredibly short. The ending isn't so much of an ending as it is a "to be continued," but it introduces a supernatural element that might make future installments more interesting or it might venture into the ridiculous--my gut feeling is the latter, but the writer could surprise.

A Monster Appears (2.5/5):

This is an rpg/microgame hybrid that's actually pretty fun for a few minutes--I'm not sure the enjoyment will last longer than that, though. The game is only battles, which look very much like Super Nintendo era Final Fantasy games, and each enemy requires the player to perform a little microgame to defeat--the slimes are defeated by a mouse click, whereas later enemies require typing out words, clicking in a certain order, circling them, holding down two keys simultaneously, and so on. Your true opponent is the clock; the enemies will slowly take down your life if you don't defeat them fast enough. Different combinations of enemies provide a frantic order-of-operations feel to the combat, but the game was missing a level of depth, as this wasn't enough to make me want to play after I was slain by the mighty Tonberry (who I couldn't figure out fast enough). Perhaps some more rpg elements--equipment, experience, upgrades of some kind--would have encouraged multiple playthroughs. This one might be worth checking out; you're probably not going to spend very long on it, though.

Hardly Working (1/5):

The nonsensical plot was tacked on just to hold together the game, so this is very much an rpg about battles. The gameplay introduces a card system, but the cards require gold, TP, or MP, which make the cards just function like any other spell, only you have a limited number of charges. Since your skills are limited and you gain no experience through battles, you'll actually be avoiding every battle; I only fought five, but I could have gotten away with three. The cards could have been an interesting mechanic if they were implemented better, but, as it stands, the battles didn't offer much intrigue since my resource management skills were never actually tested; the game was more about how to run around enemies on the field, which was easy for the most part. Its saving grace was that it was only ten minutes long.

Soul Hell on Earth (0/5):

This game has the distinction of having the worst difficulty spike I've ever seen, and bad difficulty spikes are a running trend in many of these rpgs. The plot is an "angels versus demons" type of thing that is more about the developer coming up with awesome lore (read: lore by itself is never awesome, and in this case, it's really terrible) instead of interesting characters or situations. This was tolerable for a while because there are quite a few typos throughout this, some of which were pretty funny. The game is also stupidly easy for the first couple of levels. The second boss hit me for three damage and I killed him in two turns, for example. But, in the third area, the developer threw in some slimes that could hit you for ALMOST TWICE YOUR MAX HP. They're also faster than you. I grinded for a while, but they were hitting me for about 70-80 and I was gaining three hp per level, so why the developer thought this was sane is beyond me. One day he's going to grow up and become a civil engineer, and there's going to be a road in Brazil that's nice and straight, maybe even slopes downward a bit so you just drift down it without a care in the world, and then all of a sudden it'll curve up into a ninety degree angle.

Troop 85: Boy Scouts Dodgeball (0/5):

When I saw how distasteful the title screen was, I knew I had to play it. I also knew it would be terrible, but I had to play it, much like how a bright new scab begs to be scratched even when you know it will bleed. I guess I got what I expected. There was a legitimate attempt here to make dodgeball work in VX Ace, but, as most developers have discovered, hit detection is not a strength of the engine. Added to that, dodgeball is a game about quick reflexes, but here you'll have to constantly open up the menu to equip the ability to catch or throw dodgeballs instead of just setting them to separate buttons. Dodgeballs get thrown so often and in such quick succession that the following scenario will happen frequently: you'll catch a dodgeball, a text box appears that tells you you can use a special ability, and then while that text box is up you'll be hit with another dodgeball that you can do nothing to avoid. The gameplay somehow sucked all of the fun out of dodgeball, which was a real shame. Dodgeball should be about getting an excuse in PE to injure all the little fricks in school that you secretly hate. The whole boy scout thing makes this seem like a game made for this particular troop. All of the characters (and there are a lot) seem to be members of the troop, and there are little in-jokes with their abilities (one kid had a "sugar rush" ability, for example). I'm sure this game was really cool as a shared experience for those kids, but why enter it into the competition?

Nuclear Mosquito · Jul 19, 2014

I see you reviewed my game. XD (A Deadly Understanding)

The weird thing is that I agree with you. It's the first kind of writing I've ever attempted in my life (Except for school essays). Most of the game was also very rushed due to the fact that I had to make the game in a week's time and it is the first ever game I made in RPG Maker. Not that I'm making excuses, your judgement is fair and accurate. I assume most of the better writing for you was at the starting area of the game?

I would like to ask pointers as to where I could improve, and maybe discuss both our games a bit? I've downloaded your game last night, but I've been a bit limited on time, so I'll try to play it by tomorrow night and get a review to you the day after that. Maybe then we can exchange reviews and chat a bit. My vision is to become game designer, so there is a lot I can learn from my game. (Actually the first game I've ever made)

Thanks for taking the time to actually review these games, I can only imagine that it gets a bit dreary at times.

Housekeeping · Jul 19, 2014

Sure thing! I've been trying to give more detailed feedback to people on the forum, anyway, so now that you're here I'd be glad to. Most of the time I just post it in their game threads. If you want to start a thread about your game, I'll put my feedback there, or we can just talk through PMs. Up to you!

Edit: Yeah, sometimes these games are pretty terrible. I've been playing through a bunch with a friend of mine, and sometimes we get games that end up being bad in a funny (see: Tree of Sun or Darkness of Hope - Save the Heart of Painful) or even endearing way (Deadly Beauties, for example, was a train wreck, but you could tell it was made by the sweetest little girl in history). Sometimes we'll run into a real gem, like Trapped. It's been a worthwhile experience so far.

Housekeeping · Jul 19, 2014

Bones Chat: The Game (0/5):

This is a game made for what I assume from the title is a chat group. This is the kind of game that's only fun for the people who are a part of the community it spawned from, as the only enjoyment comes from in-jokes that you're not going to get if you're part of the rest of the world. The community seems pretty infantile, though. Most of the random encounters consist of the rtp bandit renamed as "Jew," so I suspect this game will be something the developer will be profoundly ashamed of when they grow up. The gameplay seemed to consist mostly of random battles, and the humor consisted of infantile meme-spouting and in-jokes, so I put this one down pretty quickly.

Crystal of Alruur (0/5):

I thought about giving this game half a point since the balancing is alright, but I think that would just be some of the other games lowering the bar. In Crystal of Alruur, you play an amnesiac hero that you won't care about who slowly pieces together his story that you won't care about as you progress through several mazes populated with random encounters that you will hate with every fiber of your being. You'll use the same strategy for every battle, and part of that strategy is avoiding using magic, since it's uniformly terrible. If you're going to have a single-person party in an rpg, you better do something to make it interesting. This game did not.

Escape from a Haunted House (0/5):

Traverse a featureless maze with limited visibility! Beware the ghosts, that will pin you to a wall and scream in your face until you shoot them or, barring that, die! This game is a must download for people who like mazes, shoddy gameplay mechanics, and getting screamed at by otherworldly entities.

Heartless (2.5/5):

I actually played this game last night and forgot to write anything on it for some reason. This is a run and gun that pretty much tows the line, and anyone familiar with the genre will get bored of this one. You travel through ten different stages populated by around four or five different enemy types total, so variety was really missing from this and it was overly long to boot. The game controls well, though, and you'll unlock weapons that offer a little gameplay variety, though you can't switch between them outside of the hub area, which seemed like a major oversight. There aren't any weapon types that think outside the box, though, so this game will feel like old hat to veterans.

Raven's Den (2/5):

The graphics for this game are downright gorgeous, so I was surprised by how flawed the gameplay was. Raven's Den attempts to make an action adventure game in rpg maker, which I'm convinced is a terrible idea. The hit detection is kind of wonky and battles don't provide a very engaging experience, and I ran into some serious slowdown that hurt the game. Reloading my game would delay the slowdown, but a friend of mine was having even worse slowdown issues that seemed persistent through the entire game. The game makes use of an interesting skill system in which the character loses health when equipping new abilities, but this never felt like a tough choice; several skills are necessary in order to progress, so my health always took the hit. I only died once, though, and it was because of the slowdown during a boss fight. The world that was crafted in this game is interesting, but the storyline is stripped to the bones. You might be intrigued enough to play through the game's short 20ish minute play time, but there's not much of a payoff, and it won't be very fun. This game certainly looks gorgeous, though, especially the very professional-looking opening cut scene.

The Hero's Adventure (.5/5):

After watching several cut scenes that are focused around subverting the old hero's journey trope--which, by the way, has been subverted so many times that games need to start coming out that subvert the subversion--you're thrust into one of the most backwards battle systems I've ever seen. The player's given no feedback on how much damage they're doing, which is compounded when the mage can determine how much mp he spends per cast--once he's out of mp, he can't even attack. Battles are also overly long. I actually couldn't get past the second one because my attacks were also damaging me, which I'm pretty sure was unintentional. The mapping is pretty great on this one, though, so I'm surprised that a game with decent production values has such awful core mechanics.

Dr. House* Grades Your Papers

Veteran

Ornate Brain

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Ornate Brain

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Veteran

Veteran

Veteran

Ornate Brain

Veteran

Ornate Brain

Veteran

Veteran

Veteran

Villager

Veteran

Veteran

Now what are you going to do?

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