I really enjoyed this game, even though this sort of game is not my normal cup of tea. The story is simple enough, you must retrieve the water of life from the cave of trials to help save your wife who has fallen ill/cursed.
Firstly, I did enjoy the graphics used. I liked the face-sets and busts. I found the mapping inside of the temple areas to be really well done considering it is all RTP, but I did not like the mapping of places like the forest which did not seem very forest-like. For the most part, visually everything was well-done save some of the mapping. The music was very well-chosen and I think this is one of the biggest parts that I enjoyed. Game-play wise, I enjoyed the various different puzzles encountered, something that is lacking in most of these IGMC entries. The puzzles are a bit on the easy side, but considering the game needs to be only roughly an hour, I think their difficulty level is well-chosen.
The overall vibe I get from the story itself reminds me of the movie Never Ending Story - it's fantastical filled with a myriad of interesting, strange characters. I felt that the beginning went on for too long with a lot of text, which falls into the realm of telling and not showing. But once past the beginning and you get to actually start playing, the game picks up. One thing I did not like was the fact that I was punished for exploring, wherever there was something interesting to see/interact with, it ended up being a trap that took away some of my HP. I found that there were too few healing items, but luckily there was not a ton of combat so I suppose it's not a huge deal. Combat is pretty basic - you get a regular attack, a heavy attack, and parry. What frustrated me was the seemingly random nature of parry, it did not seem to work very often for me, but luckily alternating heavy strike with regular attack did the job for the three or four encounters I ran into.
Conclusion: I found this game to be fun and endearing with a great choice of music. I would really love to see a full game by this developer some day when not constrained by a 30 day time limit and a 1-hour play time.
Wow, it's great to see you had those impressions of the game. Thank you for the notes about the intro, mapping and everything, I'll definitely keep them in mind.
The fact that the story reminded you of Never Ending Story is awesome, I loved the movie back then
I am planning on making a sequel, now with less of a rush.
Hello, I'm one of the co-creators of Goblin Noir, thanks for giving our game a shot and for the review.
I'm sorry you were unable to complete the game. You guessed right, in that the version currently linked to in our thread requires the RTP to run. I forgot to make note of that. However that version is a beta and the 1.0 version of the game, due to be uploaded by the end of this week, won't require the RTP to run.
I really enjoyed this game. It has a unique premise which involves continuously shifting back in time and using the knowledge you gained from the future to achieve your goals. There is a strong mixture of Back to the Future and Groundhog's Day here - the uncle has Doc Brown written all over him.
This is one of the few games that had me playing past the one-hour mark (I think, I lost track of time) and I made sure to play it to completion. You can't really 'lose' in this game, because every time you do something 'wrong' like get your brother killed, you just go back in time and do a little bit better the next time around. I found the game to have a lot of clever witticisms and the dialogue was very enjoyable. I really liked the whole memories system, which is how you find out new information that will help you achieve your various goals. I wish some of the tasks you have to do over and over were a bit quicker - like robbing the bar and getting the ID badge, because after doing these for like the third or fourth time it sort of lost its charm. I feel like I missed some things in the game, or possibly alternative routes to achieve objectives. I feel that there was more to the Boundary than I had initially explored since I learned the names of the thugs, but was never able to do anything with that information.
Graphically, I enjoyed the main character art. I found the mapping in some places to be well-done, like the bar, but the town itself was very bland and expansive with nothing in it and three-quarters of the buildings you can't enter or do anything with. This made the constant running back and forth time and again a bit more tedious than it ought to be.
Conclusion: I would most likely give an even higher score if this game was further developed, more alternative ways to achieve various goals, and more, longer, expansive gameplay (I understand the 1-hour limit, I just could foresee myself playing even more). Overall, this game is certainly worth checking out!
Hello, I'm one of the co-creators of Goblin Noir, thanks for giving our game a shot and for the review.
I'm sorry you were unable to complete the game. You guessed right, in that the version currently linked to in our thread requires the RTP to run. I forgot to make note of that. However that version is a beta and the 1.0 version of the game, due to be uploaded by the end of this week, won't require the RTP to run.
That is great to hear When you guys get it uploaded, feel free to toss me a link, i'd happily do a new review for it since I would actually be able to play more of the game
(I'm going to only respond to the criticism, so I hope people already read the whole review, heh)
I wish some of the tasks you have to do over and over were a bit quicker - like robbing the bar and getting the ID badge, because after doing these for like the third or fourth time it sort of lost its charm.
Yeah, I did update Sarah so after calling twice, it will skip the dialogue, but I need to do that for other sections, or add quicker ways to get things done after you've done it once. After you have the safe combination, you obviously don't need to go through all that again--so that's the type of thing I need to add more of.
I feel like I missed some things in the game, or possibly alternative routes to achieve objectives. I feel that there was more to the Boundary than I had initially explored since I learned the names of the thugs, but was never able to do anything with that information.
I'm sorry to say that at least for the thugs, there's nothing else yet. There are multiple dialogues that play out depending on if you have a gun, or if you run in unarmed, etc. But I didn't have time to do more with the names.
Graphically, I enjoyed the main character art. I found the mapping in some places to be well-done, like the bar, but the town itself was very bland and expansive with nothing in it and three-quarters of the buildings you can't enter or do anything with.
As you may have guessed, I ran out of time to add more. I do intend to expand the game and basically change all the houses to businesses or other buildings you can enter and get sidequests. This will also help with traveling, since there will be a lot more to see/do! Also, the "autodrive" system was going to be in the game which would fast-travel you around, but I didn't have time.
Conclusion: I would most likely give an even higher score if this game was further developed, more alternative ways to achieve various goals, and more, longer, expansive gameplay (I understand the 1-hour limit, I just could foresee myself playing even more). Overall, this game is certainly worth checking out!
Hey Jesse, glad that you took the time to review my game, not so happy that you had a hard time of it though( Guess It's the masochist in me, lol).
The difficulty can be attributed to whom you play as since each survivor is different and has slightly different encounters as a result. I couldn't do much with the face and character sets, due to what was included with the Zombie pack, but I worked with what I had and was satisfied with the results. I'm sorry that the game seemed too dark for you, those that played during play testing assured me that it wasn't too dark, though I did adjust it slightly to be brighter in the end.
Brianna is one of the more difficult characters to play in the outset, though the fight with the mutated zombie is adjusted to be slightly easier with her. Her ability to heal would best be used outside of battle since it only heals a bit, which attributes to her having the highest ammo count. Though outside of battle she can heal at 50% of her total health as well. Guess you weren't too fond of the mutant zombie, but it was meant as a sort of mini-boss, and again, it's stats were decreased for Brianna to compensate for her lack of power( I'd imagine that you didn't find the two military treasure chest that were in the same room as the mutated zombie, those items would of helped immensely).
In the file room at the computer it does state the Boss's birthday, but you had to use a bit of math to figure out what the pass code is( you didn't actually have to fight the fat zombie in the room, I only put in about three instances where you are forced to fight).
In the end, combat is not suppose to be rewarding and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, though with some survivors it is more forgiving, such as Franklin or Andrew. If you held out a bit longer you would have gotten another party member with Brianna, making the trek towards the roof much more bearable. But again, I seem to be a masochist with games it seems since I tend to make things hard for players whether I try to or not. In this case, with starting late in the month and having very little time to polish or implement what I wanted I'm still glad with the results and hope you find time to give it another try.
Thanks again for your honest review, I will continue to improve and do plan on adjusting and perhaps enhancing he game once the contest is over.
Now, for my review of your game Ashworth!
I've got to say wow, this game is very polished, I've barely come across any grammatical errors at all and only a scant few graphical anomalies. Such as, the body of the mugger I fought near the supplies store changed position when I reentered the area( though that's just minor), getting in and out pf the menu takes a few seconds as well as using the map( and what a nice map indeed!), whenever I walked underneath some NPCs such as the fortune teller it looks like I'm peering under their skirts, lol.
Near the end, as Alice, it looks like she's floating above the door to her cell when standing directly above it.
I absolutely love the fact that you can gain stat boosts simply by searching around and engaging in some battles. Brilliant game, can't wait to see what others you have in the future.
Although I haven't found all the pieces to that scepter, I was wondering if there were multiple endings? If so, does finding all the pieces to the scepter fall into one such ending? Did the ending matter that I lost all of my sanity once and continued on from the asylum?
Regardless, I loved the game, now it's time to check out some others in this contest.
Yo thanks for the review of our game! Im sorry you couldn't finish the game because of the missing graphic files! THe game you played was just a beta, so my associate didn't feel the need to upload a version that didn't require you to have appropriate files allready installed, a decision I think he will probably have regretted when he sees your review.
We've been working out some of the kinks in the game over at our end and we should have a stand alone version before the end of the week. It will also have some updated expressions, more NPCs (not a lot though), and an edited ending. Thanks for looking at it!
This game surprised me, to be quite honest. I took one look at the main image for the game and thought that it did not look professional and figured the rest of the game would follow suit. However, that was not the case, to my pleasant surprise.
D is for Dungeon has a quirky premise: the big bad evil forces that appear every 500 years has arrived 20 years too early, thus the chosen one is merely an infant. As said chosen one infant, you crawl through dungeon level after dungeon level killing baddies and finding loot and treasure. It's the sort of story hook that people gobble up on steam when they buy indie games there.
So, aside from the main image which now feels horribly out of place quality-wise, the graphics in this game are really quite nice. I love the retro pixel art, it looks and feels perfect. The music is similarly retro and fitting to the theme and premise of the game. I particularly enjoyed the area where you can buy/sell items and such - everything about it was awesome from the music to the spinning merchant person thing. The whole game felt like such a throwback to the 90's and it was great. Combat in this game is fun and very fast. I did not mind getting into so many battles as I crawled around looking for loot because I could quickly dispatch my foes with my poking stick. There are a lot of skills to acquire, and unfortunately I did not need pretty much any of them at all because battles were very easy. I could just mash the attack command for the most part and the battle was over in 5 seconds. This is a bit of a downside as well, but I suppose you can't have both quick AND strategic battles. It is a dungeon crawler, so quick battles felt like it was the way to go. I also really enjoyed how you acquired new party members - this really added a great layer of customization, along with how you can choose to set your own parameters. Overall the level of customization was perfect - not so little that everything felt static, but not so much that I felt inundated with too many choices. Progression through the game felt very organic and natural, the balancing of items, skills, and monsters felt finely polished.
If I had to give some criticism, it would be that I wish there were sub-bosses on each floor, and better loot in the chests. I don't get pumped when I keep finding potions and 5 gold, so maybe something a bit more exciting there.
Conclusion: This game (or more accurately, perhaps a longer, more developed version) I could definitely see up for sale on Steam, and for a few bucks I would consider getting it myself. I had about as much fun as a baby in a dungeon.
Looking at the screenshots, I was kind of looking forward to trying this game out. The premise is simple: you are sent into the jungle to rescue a kidnapped doctor who is being forced to make weapons for a terrorist organizations. The gameplay revolves around you sneaking into the terrorist jungle compound, finding the doctor, and escaping.
The gameplay mechanics revolve around two things: trying to avoid being detected by enemy guards, soldiers, and dogs, and fighting enemy guards, soldiers, and dogs. The first part, that of avoiding detection, is good in concept but very buggy in reality. There were times a guard was pointing the opposite way with its cone of light away from me and I still 'got caught' and was forced to fight. There are other areas where you pretty much can't avoid fighting because of how bottle-necked the maps can be.
Combat itself is not particularly fun for me - you have a handful of options during combat - using your gun which consumes ammo and raises your alert level (the higher your alert level, the more enemies are aware of your presence and will come attack you), using your knife which has three options, only one of which seems useful, using a tazer which in the times I have used it proved to be useless, and healing with a very small limited supply of medkits. Combat is not forgiving. You have 100HP total - an officer will hit you for 50 HP a whack. Soldiers tend to hit for 20-30 a whack. needless to say, you can't really fight well, and I found myself consuming all of my medkits very quickly, even though I avoided most combat and the combat that I did get sucked into was either because of a bug or because I was forced.
Another aspect of the game that really killed it for me was the menu. You press shift to get into the menu and spacebar to exit - this alone is so counter-intuitive, but on top of that ... the game is still running when you are in the menu! I accidentally wandered into an enemy because I thought I might be able to heal myself outside of combat with a medkit in the menu - nope! Just face full of soldiers.
Conclusion: The *idea* behind the game is good enough, and the Metal Gear Solid style sneaking could be fun if it wasn't buggy, but the overall execution of the game really prevents it from being particularly fun for me.
Also, revised Goblin Noir's score based on their new upload.
Just now saw that you'd reviewed my game a while ago -- appreciate the feedback!
You're absolutely right about time constraints affecting my finished product. Originally, there were supposed to be more main characters, more exploratory autonomy and more chases/stealth segments, but I only barely finished scripting the game engine roughly a week before deadline (full-time job, moving to a new house, various irritating exigencies of being a human being, etc).
As far skipping the initial hospital dialog goes -- was it just not engaging, or would you have been more inclined to read my self-indulgent walls of text if they were broken up by, say, a chase segment in every nightmare instead of, y'know... more text?
And the mapping is something I hadn't even considered -- I didn't even realize how many key elements (the hole you crawl through, the laser grids, the master control panel) were on the bottom of the screen, rather than the top. Good point!
Cartoonier cloud cover that better fits the art style, as well as (slightly) improved blending/fading... fading clouds when there are larger patterns is still somewhat abrupt for some reason.
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