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Galneda

122 Game Reviews

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Atmospheric and brutal! Great work, you guys!

This is a really cool game, and a treat to sci-fi horror fans everywhere. While it's a little bit Space Hulk, a little bit Dead Space with Ripley "Aliens", it takes many clear references to it's appropriate genre, but maintains it's own identity pretty efficiently.

The art is fantastic. Little details everywhere that pop out and paint the environment really well, without repeating itself too much at all. It's ABUNDANTLY clear a lot of effort was put into this baby. It even has one of the coolest game over screens I've ever seen when you run out of lives. Little effects like the occasional lens flare or the amazing night vision level succeed in dazzling an already lively game.

The SOUND is top-notch. There's some REALLY cool monster noises. The first time we encounter the red kind was actually pretty exciting, that excitement doubled with the loud bark of the assault rifle. The gun sound effects lend empowering immersion to the game, right down to the "Aliens" pulse rifle (I always loved how that thing sounded) to the Valve Minigun.

Basically in the story, some shit went down on this thing in space, it's overrun with bug monsters, and you're a SPESS MEHREN, OORAH! Kill stuff! Something about bio-engineered species, and for some reason they're called Owlmen, even though they hardly look like Owls OR men, and all of this chaos was essentially orchestrated by some psychotic asshole who eventually mutated into becoming the final boss fight. The Doom 3-like PDA's you pick up along the way do little to advance the plot, and there's not many opportunities to explore around the facility.

It's paced well and thankfully in the later levels, creatures can spawn behind you so it doesn't feel like you're emptying the place dry. What disrupts the pace is everything you use has to start up for some reason. The PDA's boot up every time they're whipped out, why doesn't he just leave it on? Weapon selection has to load out the display for each gun one at a time. At least the computer, while sounding nice, can be skipped.

All you really need for the campaign is the Assault Rifle and SMG, both with Full Metal Jacket and Rapid Fire. They're powerful, they chew 'em up quick, reload quick, and stretch out ammo pretty nicely. The laser sight is useless since you already have a red dot to indicate your mouse. For Swarm, same thing, maybe also a Bazooka and Pulse Rifle. The other guns seem to have a negligible power difference, but they aren't as efficient as those two. The Vulcan is just bad; (not PISTOL bad, but it ain't good) you can't just spin the barrel to keep it ready to fire, so every time you stop (in a futile attempt at preserving the ammo it dumps freely) you have to WAIT for it to start back up. It empties itself into these things with no real indication that it's more powerful or efficient at killing as the most expensive gun in the game. It looks like the same size as the Assault rifle (though I guess every gun looks the same from above. Even the bazooka), but it makes no sense for the spin time to be that long.

Swarm seems to be aware of where the player is, and has a tendency to not spawn at distant points. 9 lives is WAY too much for a survival mode, especially with access to supplies and medkits abound. It also makes it clear that there are only four aliens: roaches, lurkers, spitters, and reds. In the future, more variety would be welcome. Spitters are hardly a threat at all. The boss fights are easy, just moving out of range from their acid and emptying clips into them from afar does the job. Even the final boss fight, though he took a while to take down, was pretty much killed offscreen as I fired from the doorway.

It's difficult to tell where walls and doors are at a few parts. Maybe if the flashlight shines against the wall surface like a thin, realistic highlight. Casting shadows from boxes and objects. The light bouncing around as you run. A lighting mechanic could only add to the intense atmosphere this game provides, and adds potential for cool effects from muzzle flashes, explosions, and fire.

GG thanks! :D

I REALLY want to give this a 10.

I read your news blog the explains a lot of the plot behind the game we're playing. It clears A LOT of things up, and it succeeds in making an interesting game even MORE interesting.

But without it, there's just a lot of confusing details. Without any explanation, we don't know who this decapitated being is descending to the earth, or why our shielded white warrior is doing what he's doing.

There doesn't necessarily need to be scrolling text exhibition to keep the player up to speed, but even a cinematic, visual opening cutscene to SHOW us all tastefully; show the love between Oyeatia and Gyossait, the presentation of the gift of man, the poisoning of the earth, the apocalyptic cleansing, the banishment, Oyeatia's motivation to undergo all of this pain over and over again...all of this could be shown without a word of dialogue, and it would immerse the player deeper into the story......or they'd just skip it, I dunno. The effort wouldn't go unnoticed, however.

But without the backstory, our hero just randomly collapses and weeps. Sometimes people attack us, and sometimes people don't. These green creatures... Are they aliens? Monsters? Living guns?

The other negative point I have with this game is his inability to do anything other than sort of steer while jumping. A lot of the problems with this could just be attributed to timing; if one is jumping up to a platform where there's an enemy, of course the logical solution is to wait for it to shoot, and then you move into place while there's an opening...but this problem is never more evident then when you're trying to get the Altruist medal.

For those who don't know, it's completing the game without killing anything with the gun.

Because we're reliant on defense, we have to maneuver around wind-blowers and vertical flying fairies with guns. SO MANY DEATHS could have been prevented if we could deploy the shield in midair. Waiting to plant on the ground and face them to throw our shields up sometimes takes too much time, and what's really cool for a gamer is mobility.

It's already empowering that we can leap into the air with the height of a superhero. It's already empowering that we can blast away enemies with a Spawn-like machine gun bloodlust...but all of that empowerment is detracted when the reality seeps in that we're actually really vulnerable. Sometimes I'll have my shield up and I die anyway. Sometimes I'll be jumping to avoid those sporadically moving crawly things and they kill me when I'm three body widths away from it in midair (confusing hitbox consistencies). I'm facing the wrong way when I land. I can't see below me, I'm getting blown into the sides of the non-sharp part of a spike pillar, oh shit! Water! MY SHIELD WAS UP WHEN YOU SHOT ME, I die, I die, I die, I die, I die, I die, I die.

It's a good thing that rebirth sequence looks and sounds pretty cool because sometimes we'll be seeing it a lot, but with this degree of trial and error, and some parts of the map essentially just having us run back and forth along a relatively small stage meant to look big, it leaves me wanting something much, much more.

The medals were wonderfully earned, and they'll be decorating the bottom of my profile for quite some time. Though there's only two endings, I enjoyed them both. Though there were one way tunnels, and big open spaces to traverse back and forth, the art was WONDERFUL. Even the sounds and soundtracks lended to this really cool atmosphere, that its inspired me to make some fan art.

I implore you to make a more complex sequel. This game is REALLY, REALLY COOL!

...But for a Halloween flash, I expected something a lot scarier. It was always on the verge of creepy for me...alllmost crossed that threshold a few times.

First time I dropped into that pit before entering the crucible of Uzaza? Didn't expect it. Was pretty neat.

When the flower girl was crushed and it silenced everything. The tension was intense...getting warmer...

The subliminal faces before the upside down black pyramid stage...COOLEST DETAIL...but I only wanted more.

GG. Voted 5!

Creative idea for a game jam submission.

I've always been left with the impression that because something is a Game Jam submission, or it's an entry to a contest where there is a strict deadline, it dodges the content of a lot of fault. I mean, we both know that art is a time consuming form, and here it's stressed into a compacted time-frame...so anything I criticize about it, in my eyes, would be funneled to the all too familiar time category.

But I know the pains of deadlines all too well...my most lacking flashes were completed in under 72 hours. So I understand, and to a certain extent, I empathize with you four having a greater challenge in flash than I've ever know. Actionscript or programming a game in general is a wholly complicated ordeal that I've accepted is beyond my comprehension.

I'm getting side-tracked. Where I was trying to go with that is, as far as the faults of this submission is concerned, I liked it enough to want a sequel to this where greater time was spent on it...but the constrictions that were placed on the team has left us with a product that feels half-digested.

I like the idea of a game that's going to take creative license on a whacky drug induced trip, and I'd like to see the extent of where it could go. What I DIDN'T like was the flying mechanics behind our guy. I understand that the more recently he's taken something intoxicating, the more agile he is in the air...but it's rather difficult to gain that agility or dodge obstacles when he slugs through the sky like a brick. Holding up is like struggling with water-logged controls, and sometimes it takes a full couple of seconds before we realize we're sinking and there's no means of recovery.

As if dodging the enemy hallucinations wasn't jammed enough from his weightedness, our character's hitbox seems to extend beyond the extremity of his face. Because of this, sometimes dodging the creatures feels like an exercise in futility. Good thing he has a massive health bar and health is bountiful, otherwise this would have severely hampered the game's score.

But I DID like the artwork involved, and I especially liked the Ed Roth/Rob Zombie lookin' eyeball. The theme of the artwork kept the visuals interesting. As it SHOULD be, since this game carries a concept that's not bound by anything but the limitless oceans of imagination.

The music (both tracks) were excellent, and easy on the ears, but the absence of any other audio; sound effects, voice overs, seemed to dampen the overall experience...think of it like a food dish that's missing that critical spice.

But other than the frustrating mechanics, unique to the game or our character suffering from a very specific vision, and minor faults here and there, I'd say this was an overall well put together Game Jam submission, and you four should be proud. :D It kept me replaying a couple of time, and I earned a couple of medals in the process as a momento of my experience. So thanks!

I'd like to reiterate that I would welcome a version of this game that had more sophisticated detail and fluidity. Perhaps it tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end. In the future, an addition of medals beyond a forced Dave Chappelle reference and something more fulfilling to the audience that is spending time playing y'alls game. Either way, I voted 5.

If y'all had a team name, what would it be?

-Review Request Club-

Brilliantly entertaining!

You've always had a knack for bringing character and charm through the perspective of the dark and doomed. My first impression of your work was through the Grim Reaper show years ago; back when I was still new to NG and the site was mostly black and yellow and orange, littered with hentai ads.

As time progressed, though, you're definitely spending your time on more sophisticated work; this time through the disgruntled and unfortunate plight of the evil spirit, Cthulu.

The banter between him and his pathetic minion is hilarious, and equips the flash with an assload of charm and likability to the characters. It allows us as the audience to relate to them and plants us to our seats to see it through to the end.

It's really difficult not to love this terrible, omniscient evil beast as he loses his patience with having to deal with the predicament. I had to crack up whenever they had intelligent responses to their problem ("Oh yeah, let's just hope they don't send in ONE single guy with a shield then." "NOT SO LOUD, my Lord! Don't let them hear you!") and it even broke the fourth wall with charm. ("It almost feels like I'm being trained, or I'm going through a...tutorial or something...")

The environments are nice and colorful as they vary between the four sections of the house; my favorite detail being the changing face above each doorway. The characters are animated well, so visually everything was up to par to carry the game along. I found no bugs on my end worth mentioning, so it's evident the actionscript must have had some...ASSISTANCE behind the scenes...perhaps some OTHER WORLDLY assistance, YES ylekilnu sti hguoht

Which reminds me, the sound effects were great! (Was that a Doom Hellknight as the Rival?) I loved the sinister voice overs from time to time, and some of them were just within the thresh hold of incoherence, that it kept me listening to confirm if they said what I thought they said...so, they're not very clarifiable, but in some instances I know for a fact its english...did one of them just say "Phobotech!?" D: lol,

It would be neat to hear the trivia of what some of the things you hid in there were, like the backwards whispered chants whenever Cthulu possesses someone.

The gameplay was incredibly satisfying. In mid game as I was playing, I initially thought it was a fault that the game didn't let us know, in a linear fashion, where we were in the game. There was no concept of stage select or "YOU'RE ON LEVEL 18 out of 25. IDIOT." ...but as I finally beat the game, admittedly, that lack of information made the final couple of stages that much more exhilarating; when I correctly guessed the order of things to do in some of the harder levels the FIRST time, I was actually pretty pleased with myself.

You have set up for us a challenging happening; an interactive event loaded like a puzzle with a tongue in cheek satire / biography of Cthulu...and I dug the hell out of it :D. I DID beat it in one sitting like Culmination...and UNLIKE Culmination, I achieved all the medals for this in one sitting too...but I walked away from the experience with such positivity that it's really difficult to find that as a score-altering fault. Where it lacks in replay value it makes up in character.

Seeing as how fun and entertaining this flash game is, and how fun and engaging "Spike - A Love Story" was, all I can ask is for you to keep doing your thing, man. Since I really don't have anything to criticize, this review serves as a needlessly lengthy affirmation that what you're doing is good, and we'd love to see more of it. Pay no mind to the idiots that don't know how to criticize or review in the first place; their opinions don't matter. Any future work of yours would be welcome with open arms here in the NG community, and you'll have a vote of 5 waiting for me for your next project too! Can't wait to play OR watch it.

Cheers from an old fan :D

Not bad for a game jam!

I can appreciate a game that tries to teach the player patience under circumstances of urgency...while I was frustrated about tapping "A" in the wrong order, (repeatedly swinging 1, 1, 1, 1! 1!! 1!!!) I quickly learned to pace myself for the first volley 1...2-3...then, luckily, Grandma can spaz out and I can unleash a flurry of 1111111's until even Flour bags don't stand a chance.

While that game mechanic was unique to me, I'm also all too familiar of the character not wanting to turn around in mid attack. Poor timing on my choice when I initially began an attack in the wrong direction? Possibly...but it seemed "sticky" to me when she wasn't responsive enough to turn around after a finished attack, and cover her back.

The introduction gets the point our clearly, Even though this seems to be a predicament where Grandmas seemed to have forgotten her meds moreso than just drinking expired milk. But what was daunting was the game's method of showing us our progress.

I just beat the game, and I'm still unclear as to how it treats the wave / round / level increments. Is it...five waves = +1 round, 5 rounds = +1 level? Just before the explodey carrots came in, I was beginning to wonder if the game had an end... after the explodey carrots, I wondered if I was near it. As I zoned out, it seemed the waves of baddies after the explodey carrot was introduced was thinning...it actually got less challenging, even though there's more enemies, and this could be attributed to mastering Grandma's combo patterns. Then all of a sudden FRIDGE BOSS, but it turned out to be more a survival mode...held out, defeating the baddies, and we got a neat pose and a sort of underwhelming ending. One play through, I never even saw what the Game Over screen looks like.

By being a Game Jam submission, that alone seems to dodge it of fault, but if I were to criticize anything, I'd sum it up to it just lacks depth. Even for a Grandma tripping out in her kitchen not unlike a cartoon interpretation of the mother in Requiem For a Dream, it lacks deeper mechanics, clarification, and payoff.

A breezy, fun timekiller, the music was excellent, and so was the art. The wide-angled background looked awesome, though there seemed to be missed opportunities with changing the sky outside of the windows. Grandma's floppy titties did so with grace. Good job, y'all!

Mattster responds:

Thanks for the review!
All round has 5 waves (except for a few which seem to have 6 -.-), level 1 has 2 rounds, and each level after has 1 more round. The waves were quickly put together last-minute, so that's why they seem unbalanced. Most of the time was focused on gameplay rather than wave design.

There were lots of features and ideas for this game, but time became an issue since as it is a Game Jam game.

MC was pretty proud of those floppy tits.

Fantastic!

I was blown away by the art. The shadowy style of everything translated beautifully through this flash game. With each swipe of the sword drawing patterns through our foes and enemies turned the combat mechanics into art as our hero wades through the stream of demons. With a balance of anime themes and dark shading, nothing was overblown visually.

Though the dialogue was anime cheese, such is it's destiny.

The clouds between pillars of stones gave us the illusion of height. The shadows of the caves disrupted by beams of light blended with the atmosphere. The gears and machinery throughout even gave it a dash of steampunk. I absolutely love this game's style.

I even love our character's fighting style...and I kept finding myself waiting for the enemy to get up, like a patient samurai badass would. While the double swipe "S" specials worked well when surrounded. it excelled when used in patterns as your chaining combos off of our Firebat friends. The mighty "D" swipe proved to dispatch those Zerg Lurkers efficiently in succession...in fact, in hard mode, there's a moment where we have to kill two Zerg Lurkers who are right next to each other, constantly streaming a volley of underground spines.

Landing in between the two closest spines, one could jump up and do a downward "D" swipe over and over again until dead...My health was low after fighting the variable army moments before it, so I felt this cheap loophole was justified (But to YOU, the Author, I'm informing you of this in case you decide to make this harder in sequels)

Really, though, our hero is amazing. Combining the powerful "D" or the complex "S" specials in the middle of a combo wreaks impressive havoc on any number of enemies we'll encounter. But by far the most stimulating gameplay was the boss himself, Vandheer Lorde.

It took me off guard when I realized in easy mode we were controlling the boss instead of the samurai rebel...but this is actually, pardon my french, FUCKING. BRILLIANT.

Why? Not only does this give us an empowering and satisfying finale to the difficulty we're playing on (because we know for a fact the Rebel Samurai is no pushover), but it's literally a guide of knowing exactly what Vandheer is capable of...well, at least a rough IDEA of what he's capable of; I had no clue that his flurry of teleports that ended with a pose was an attack and not just evasive maneuvers...I only found out in hard mode that the pose he strikes at the very end from teleporting all over the place sends our guy SOARING through the sky. What a clever bastard.

But in all actuality, it's also brilliant because the whole game looks and sounds awesome, the gameplay is fun and stylistic, and after seeing first hand the ending that happens when the bad guy wins, it IMMEDIATELY makes us want to play hard mode in search for an alternate ending.

This is where I would have deducted a point in the score of my review, if only this game just wasn't so damn pleasing: there doesn't seem to be an alternate ending for beating it on hard mode. I don't know is this is a glitch or what, but after the eighth or ninth time fighting Vandheer, I finally beat him. I had a SLIVER of health, but I managed to get him all the way down, and received the exact same ending as it was an easy. So there's nothing we do can prevent the bad guy from winning? Granted, our hero goes out honorably with a good death, but...BUT....

...I cannot express how much I want a continuation of this.

Even if you take a page from other NG greats in the game-making community, there needs to be a huge version of this for Xbox Arcade or Playstation Network. People would buy the HELL out of this...especially if there were:
-More enemies than just our basic grunt, firebat, and Zerg thing
-More bosses
-More of journey
-More capabilities as time progressed.

The art, the environment, style, sound, the gameplay, the CHALLENGE...IT'S SO Refreshing. Definitely one of the Top 50 Best Flash Games I've played on NG in a long time. Though I beat it in one sitting, it was a wild, wild ride. Thank you. Fived and Faved!

Hit and Miss in some areas

As far as turret defense games go, this is actually pretty damn fun.

The dialogue and animated cutscenes aren't very frequent, but that kinda worked out for the better. The voice actor for our tuff-n'-gruff burly man was trying waaay too hard to sound tuff-n'-gruff...and it wound up sounding strained.

The animation was fine, the subtle nod to Duke Nukem by forgetting the "kick ass and chew bubble gum" line was worth a smirk. Or hell, I don't understand why he ditched a perfectly good motorcycle like that early on, it seemed kinda ridiculous lol. But the ending screen? Just a big collective of pop-culture robots and droids while he gets blown by a fembot.

What's worse is the name of the achievement for beating the game gives away an already underwhelming ending before we even earn it...so it was sort of a let down, especially with the "if yer a fembot, yew can jyust suck off..." line. Also, what does this ending imply about our engineer's manhood? That fembot doesn't seem to be covering a whole lot of distance in that up and down motion, if you catch my drift.

...But what WASN'T a let down was that damn challenge. A cheesy fembot bj was at least confirmation that "we did it." Ignoring that he can build these complex structures in the blink of an eye, so long as he has a pocket-full of ore. Ignoring the infinite amount of ammunition both in his guns and turrets. That made it so we could handle the challenges.

It was an interesting twist that we could blow up rocks to collect necessary HUGE collections of scrap, but I hated how long the fuse was on those things. Granted, that was meant to be a challenge for us as we managed our time and position, but being an engineer, one would hope he could do some fuse altering with simply a snip of some scissors, or punching in a different time-limit. While we're on the subject of practicality, why doesn't he just take his fuckton of metal and create a mech-suit?

It's all about positioning your turrets in the right spot...and with a few of those maps, it was trial and error, but it kept me glued to my seat. Yes, it would have been great if our Engineer could move faster, but I ain't going to argue with the man lugging around a rocket launcher and enough scrap metal to build a sturdy bridge. Thankfully you can armor him up, which I try to do early on in those city levels, but it upped the difficulty by not being able to replenish health...finally a game that has done away with the regenerative HP bullshit.

Visually, the art was great, custom maps translate well with the palette we have to work with. The robots were as interesting as they could look from the GTA/birds-eye view perspective, and their slow trudging movements provided tension to the environment when they amassed in numbers. The one thing I hated visually was in the city level there's this haze around the border to emulate dust I suppose. It makes me feel like I'm developing a cataract in my eyes, and it fucks with my vision. It's not an appealing illusion.

I love the designs, though. The laser sniper reminded me of an Immortal from Warhammer40K, the coolest looking bot imo was the green machine-gunner. I liked how it was sometimes more economical to upgrade one turret than to build several, this gave the Machine Gun turrets worth when they became miniguns. The Lasers kicked ass, and Flamethrowers next to bottleneck points saved my ass. I never once used the EMP turret. The gun of choice was a maxed out bazooka and nothing else.

The audio was great on my end. The stage music gets stuck in my head, and actually sets the pace VERY well. It goes with the robot's trudging motion, and even seems to emote the theme of building and fortifying. Really appropriate music choice. The sfx were awesome, and I suppose, given the voice actor that was chosen, it's merciful on us that he doesn't make a pained groan while trying to act tough whenever he gets hit.

With the map customization in sync with NG, and medal system, even 100% completion still lends this game some replay value. The ending chopper boss was intense. Voted 5!

Not so much of a time killer as it is time waster.

Our nameless hero has to make it across a dessert festering with zombies in order for him to escape to...somewhere. Truth be told, this game makes my head hurt when I put too much thought into it. I'm mortified by it's complete absence of logic or plot.

He's in the middle of the post zombie-apocalypse dessert and he "needs to escape this place." But there is literally NO TENSION whatsoever. He clearly has all the supplies he needs except for necessary funds. Yes, MONEY. He is clearly purchasing these cars from some other survivor we never see...at least I hope so otherwise this guy is just BATSHIT crazy and enjoys wasting time and supplies. He has a Volkswagon Bug, a Pickup Truck, and Semi, but really you're only gonna have the Semi, because the FULLY UPGRADED Semi is the ONLY THING that will get to your destination. Everything before it is a repetitive waste of time, but doing so in a way that insults our intelligence, and even more incredibly, siphons the fun out of mass vehicular zombieslaughter.

Somehow the lightest car has the absolute WORST gas milage. Somehow the Volkswagon which is very FAMOUSLY converted into dune buggies so it can be the best possible vehicle for this situation, cannot possibly make the cut. So really, you upgrade to a point where you get a decent amount of money so you can eventually buy the pickup truck. Because guess what? It doesn't matter how much you soup up this POTENTIAL DUNE BUGGY, all of that money will have basically been pissed into the wind. Why even bother with the goofy lookin' propeller? This guy has access to M16's and a fuckton of supplies, but he can't just HIKE the distance to the chopper? Our hero is a bitch.

Once you get the pickup truck, you enter the wonderfully liberating world of "Never Being Good Enough" but at least you have some of the most expensive tires I've never seen for a truck. You're also introduced to boxes! Yeah, stacks of empty wooden boxes made into little hollow forts of obstruction in random spots.

"Did that not slow you down enough?" I'll pretend the game asks me, "Well how about some Super Mutant Zombies!" Yeah, BIGGER zombies! There's STILL no tension, they're not any threat. I ran out of gas going uphill, and my truck daintily tapped one of these behemoths and it made an unenthusiastic "Brargh." and died. They just slow us down more. How fun and engaging.

I figured the boxes and super mutants were what these guns were for, but they only carry about 15 shots and they shoot automatically...We can't even get the power to PUSH THE TRIGGER!? They'll lay waste to the first volley of zombies and that's it. Aka "the ones that weren't even a problem for the Slugbug." Completely depleted ammo by the time it gets to the first box fort. Again, a pretty beefy truck makes it a great distance...our guy couldn't just take a wrench, tire-iron, or disassembled the still-cool barrel of the gun, and just club any zombies over the head on the way?

Our hero is also more lifeless than the walking dead itself. Seriously, he is somehow superhumanly stiff as a board when he should be getting whiplashed around like he's at a Slayer concert. He should be having the most fun, and he doesn't make one sound. By having an open door is somehow NO THREAT TO HIM whatsoever. Zombies die on contact with the bumper even long after it ran out of fuel. No zombies crash through the windshield and frantically attack the driver from inside the car like so many Deer do for me on my daily commute. There's not even a way for a zombie to double flip into the bed of the pickup truck. Also, this guy must be strong as hell...because he can LEAN and gain influence to a multi ton machine like a pickup truck or Semi.

Eventually a decked out Optimus Prime will finish the job, even though every time it hits the ground, it looks like it should be game over. The art looks good, the music is appropriate, though it gets old near the end. The zombie voice overs are uninspiring and seem to punctuate the pointlessness of this adventure. The Ending Screen was embarrassingly underwhelming. Voted 2

Difficult to play, difficult to have fun with

It's incredibly flawed.

The goal of the game, to clarify, is to juggle the beach ball. The more you juggle the ball, the more money you get for power ups so you can...juggle the ball the some more...

...

...You're not supposed to let the ball touch the ground. You have three lives that are lost each time it inevitably DOES touch the ground...when you're dead, you're immediately at the shop. Spending your money on one of four categories of power ups, each of which can be leveled up three progressing times.

The First Power Up: Money, gets you more money so you can buy more powerups...odd, but I'll roll with it...
Second? Force. Allows you to knock that shit higher, so you can lose control of it faster.
Third is weight to throw off whatever sense of timing you had somehow mastered after repeatedly clicking the ball incorrectly, making it ricochet off the walls, and fourth is gravity, because the game feels sorry for us at this point, and would like to do anything it can to make the task easier.

It would be a lot easier to concentrate, too, if only THAT MUSIC WOULD STOP LOOPING! It's like I'm stuck in a fan made Team Fortress 2 map that loosely resembles Mario Kart, and they didn't have the decency to put on Mario Music, so they tried to find the most bubblegum techno they could find and just jam it out on loop forever must to the chagrin of everyone else in the room who never asked for it. There's no way to change it or mute it, I have nothing else to distract me from the light pink sky and solid pink, out-of-place 8-bit uneven terrain...why is the terrain 8-bit and pixelated while the ball is clearly vector drawn? That makes no sense.

What also makes no sense is the physics of the ball-bounce. Now I see what the guy below me is huffing about, but I also understand why it's doing it...kind of...basically, if we click anywhere BUT the very bottom of the ball, it's going to send it anywhere but up. Therefore our average life span is going to be five-eight seconds tops. Wanna know why? Here's the real kick to our beach balls; y'see, when you're aiming for the bottom of a beach ball, and it's FALLING, sometimes at an angle after a miraculous bounce, unless you're timing is superhumanly perfect, chances are you're going to hit the dead middle or even sometimes sides of the ball. Crazy concept, eh? This is just on EASY...the game won't allow me to back out to the main menu to try out the other difficulties, so I won't even bother.

It winds up being an incredibly clumsy flash game, that rewards your clumsiness out of demonstrated determination, not trial and error. With a repetitive soundtrack that loops very quickly (1 minute, 11 seconds, to be exact) outstays it's welcome with no means of muting or changing it. Bland visuals accompany gameplay that is at it's core a very repetitive task over and over again garnishing no rewards or satisfaction to a user who can't strive for any goal or end-game. It's a numbing and frustrating dive into simplicity incarnate as far as time-killing flash gadgets are concerned. I'm afraid I can't vote highly on this.

-Review Request Club-

I don't get it.

For starters, "Warned" is misspelled in the beginning...err...warning.

But this isn't very accessible to your audience. Usually, during a point and click adventure, you're pointing and clicking at different things, and typically, sometimes, actually go on an adventure. The idea of which implies different environments, or things of significance to a story going on. While I admire your creative license on the concept, I stand by that it's not very accessible.

You hype it up to be a Halloween, scary type of flash. Yet you have the most non-threatening, calmest, what I can only assume to be anime soundtrack imaginable in the background to a girl staring at a body of water in the dark from a dock...more accurately, the BACK of a girl's head...even more accurately, the back of SEVERAL anime girl's heads. Sometimes she's a traffic light. Sometimes she's a street lamp. Sometimes she's decapitated. This makes no sense.

There's no explanation. Not even for the hooded man walking in the background, and his identical whiter cousin floating in the lake. There's no explanation as to why she turns into C-3PO and changes a color filtered layer over the whole thing. Or the multi-colored amoeba that descends among the sky. Why does she turn into a little girl, that when clicked multiplies herself over and over again until a very pixelated picture of a ghost woman consumes the background and screams? It's all very disconnected...a lot of waiting and clicking one spot, hitting one button, for little payoff. All over an obscure anime that you can't possibly assume the majority of your audience would be familiar with.

I imagine this took quite a deal of programming, and for that, I admire it's craft...for I KNOW THE HORRORS of Actionscript, lol. But I didn't really connect with this.......

....okay, admittedly, I didn't expect the startle at the end, but the graphic's pixelated quality detracted from what terror it was trying to emote. The sound? That was spot on. If it were louder, it may have made up for the visual quality...but I'm pleased that the jump scare couldn't have happened early on...not sure how it could.

The lack of diversity in interactions hurt it's score a little bit too. What was the point of that vending machine if it didn't do anything? Why make the girl on the further dock a button that does nothing? Why do we only get to stare at the back of the heads of so many characters? The lack of details are frustrating. Though at least the dock itself looked good. The white thing that seemed to be an amorphous blob of limbs coming out of orafices? Well, not to be rude, but that wasn't scary, nor did it look neat. If you truly wanted to go for psychological horror, you could have dug much, much deeper, and not relied on a Japanese Kid's show for influence. ;D As it was, it was a startle at most, and only at the climax. The rest was dulled perplexity.

Halloween is my favorite holiday, so despite all of my criticisms, I'm still voting 5, despite the score on the review itself. Give us more things to work with, and REALLY dig deep if you're going to try and scare us. Keep up the good work! You should aim your next flash into a direction of greater complexity. Challenge yourself, and kick some ass! :D

-Review Request Club-

Pienkaito responds:

Great review from club. Never expected less.

First of all, it's not based on anime. This animation is tribute to a 2005 independently produced surreal adventure PC game by homebrew Japanese developer Kikiyama. (Thanks wiki)

I can understand the non-logical aspect, because... Well, if I am making a tribute to a game that makes absolutely NO SENSE AT ALL in the first place, then I can only say this, even though it's a bit harsh: "What in the fuck is this shit?!"
It will lead to many confusions and endless open questions, so that it will render this animation on itself as uninteresting and boring if you haven't played the game, which is unfortunate. ;_;
The animation contains various sections of the game, so everything you see actually appears in the game in some sort of way.

In short, it's not a japanese kid's show. If it was, then they are seriously fucked up.

This was actually never meant to be scary in my opinion. It's very open to the audience to find it either calm, depressing or scary. (Excluding the last part, which is a lame attempt to scare someone)

I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE PROGRAMMED THAT FREAKING VENDING MACHINE. >=(
It was a nice easter egg in the game...
Speaking of content, yeah. It may seem lacking, but the game itself is exploring world and interactive with objects. That's that.
It would have been a nice jump-scare, if Madotsuki (the main girl) simply twisted her head like in the movie "The Excorcist". I actually planned to do it, but time was faster than me.

By the way, you should check the game out if you have NOTHING else to play. It's...surreal.
I also think that making this in less than 3 days is surreal as well IMO. lol

I really want to thank you for this constructive review. It totally pleases me and at least a few people left their opinion on it now.

PS.: Grammar and spelling mistakes are unintended. (obviously, haha)

-This is Phobotech!-
I've done animatics for Cyanide & Happiness, Purgatony, and WWE Storytime! I'm also a voice actor that's performed roles in One Piece, Gundam: Witch from Mercury, & Smite!
Check out my sci-fi novel, Umbra's Legion on Amazon Kindle!

Geoff Galneda @Galneda

Age 36, Male

Voice Actor/Animator

Collin College

Dallas, TX

Joined on 9/22/03

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