Reviews

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Some nice use of ASCII art but overall not very exciting and the gfx make my eyes hurt.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 2 Technical 3 Genre 3

Review by miran all reviews by miran

This game could be a lot better with a good movement scheme. As it is, it's very difficult to play, although I suppose you get used to it after a while. The graphics and the ASCII art is nothing special. The one thing that stands out in this game is the help screen which is quite good.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 2 Technical 3 Genre 2

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Quite an average game in all respects. Some of the minigames are actually fun but others are almost annoying. The ASCII art is minimal but nice - I like the train :)

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 2 Technical 2 Genre 3

Review by miran all reviews by miran

I couldn't figure out what you're supposed to do (move Tetris blocks from point A to point B?). What does the train have to do with this? I couldn't find the in-game help screen and there's no readme to explain things. The fact that the rectangle you control keeps getting stuck and the plain graphics made me not try for very long.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 2 Technical 1 Genre 1

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Not bad. The ASCII art is nothing special, but unlike in most other games, it looks like it was actually hand crafted (as opposed to being generated with a tool or something) and has a major role in the game. The game is also a nice finished product with a menu screen, end credits and it even has some music. The gameplay however is where it lets us down. There are only two levels which are both easy to beat first time in less than 30 seconds (combined) and there's nothing to make you want to come back for more.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 2 Technical 3 Genre 2

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Well, this game is a bit different from most others. Whereas in most games you have limited time to complete an objective or something similar, this game uses the time requirenement in a different way. Here you travel in time! Unfortunately this idea is not terribly well implemented as you just get some text message saying you've been sent to the future and then back and the map changes to something that's not too different from the other time period. Still, this deserves an extra point in the genre category :)

Graphically the game is rather poor. Some sprites were harvested from various other games but the author really should have done a better job with the visual aspect of the game. Solid bright green for grass is especially annoying. Also there's no mention of trains in the game and although there are some railway tracks, they don't seem to serve a purpose.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 1 Technical 2 Genre 3

Review by miran all reviews by miran

This game probably has the most impressive ASCII art of all games in TINS '06. OK, the helicopter looks more like a pig with a rotor and CCCP written on it than a real helicopter, but everything else looks really good. The smoke is an especially nice touch. But the ASCII art is unfortunately the only good thing about this game. The gameplay is minimal at best, you just press right and wait until your helicopter reaches its destination. The help screen is less than brilliant, the train and time play no major part in the game, the whole engine doesn't seem very advanced and there's nothing extra special, like sounds or music or something like that. Overall it's not a very good game, heh it's not even a little good, but I have to say it again, the ASCII art is really nice.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 2 Technical 4 Genre 2

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Playing this game for long enough to be able to give a competent review was an extremely painful experience. This alone tells a lot about the game but let me explain why I really couldn't give it more than 1/5 in most categories.

The gameplay is very simple. You use the arrow keys to move a sprite from one part of the map to another. That doesn't sound like a fun way to spend a few minutes and indeed it isn't. But then it's made even worse by the fact the the sprite you control (which by the way looks like a toy steam powered train engine) insists on getting stuck at every obstacle. Also the fact that you control a train engine has no impact of gameplay whatsoever. The engine can be freely rotated and moved around and there's not even a hint of railway tracks that can usually be found under trains. It could just as well have been a picture of a squished tomato instead of that train engine.

Speaking of graphics, the sprites in this game are rather good, but as I understand from the readme they were not made by the author of the game for this competition, but instead were taken from some internet site, so I think their quality shouldn't count towards the final score. At least not in a positive way. By the way, the MIDI music is also very good, even though it doesn't really fit the theme. But I suspect its story is similar as that of the sprites. It was probably taken from the internet or a commercial game or something.

ASCII art seems to have been artificially stuffed in this game just for the sake of complying to the rules. As I understand it's a small photograph of the author's face, converted to ASCII art, presumably by an external bitmap-to-ASCII converter, and displayed in the middle of the game for a second or two for no apparent reason.

The in-game help screen is equally minimal. When you press enter, the screen turns to black with a couple of lines of text in the middle that attempt to explain how the game is played.

Time is an important part of the game, because the goal is to reach your destination before the time runs out, and that's where the only mark higher that 1 comes from. However there's actually no real explanation about why the time runs out so that's a very generous 2/5 in the genre category that I gave.

Overall this game is not very good. Thumbs up for making an actual finished game, but a lot more would be required for me to not want to forget it as soon as possible. There is one good aspect of this game though - the mildly humorous in-game dialogs. But all the positive points those bring in are cancelled out by the fact that they can't be interrupted and you have to sit through them every single time you want to play. But then on the other hand, that won't be much of a problem.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 2 Technical 1 Genre 2

Review by miran all reviews by miran

In my quick little "first reactions" review this was my favourite game. It has a good game engine based on the MASkinG library, implements all the rules reasonably well and seems fun to play at first glance. Overall it's a solid base for a more complex game if the author wishes to develop it further.

But the competition version lacks in many areas. There really isn't much to the gameplay. You just build a couple of train stations, connect them with tracks and add trains. Then as the cash starts to flow in, add more stations, tracks and trains and wait. The game plays by itself, your money goes into the stratosphere and all you have to do is add enough trains and then wait until the game mission is reached. In fact that's about all you can do.

As far as the artistic side of the game goes, it's OK for a quick engine test I guess but nothing special and if the development continued, none of the graphics would survive until the final version. There aren't any terrain tiles, the tracks are minimal, the trees and buildings could be a whole lot better and the trains look more like buses to me. Also the game uses the default MASkinG skin with the default Allegro font which doesn't make it the prettiest thing in the world.

All the competition rules were satisfied. The game is all about trains, time is an integral part of the gameplay, there is a good in-game help screen and reasonably good looking ASCII art is used. However the author has not used any of the rules in a particularly inventive way and everything as far as that part of the game goes is quite average and predictable. Also to note is the fact the game has no sound effect, music or any other nice touches you'd normally associate with a well polished and finished product.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 3 Technical 5 Genre 4

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Good use of ASCII art, good gfx (for its size), good menus and help screen. Pretty much everything about this game is good. But there's just one little thing: what are you supposed to do? I only played on the "for dummies" level and no matter what I did, I got fired after some time. I moved the train from station to station but nothing happened.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 3

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Good game but a little hard to control. Technically it looks amazing with all the nice 3D stuff but it's more frustrating than fun to play and the competition rules were very loosely implemented.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 3 Genre 3

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Extremely nice looking menus, good graphics and great ASCII art (although some might argue that real ASCII art should be painstakingly created by hand). The player is a little difficult to control though (too much gravity?) and gameplay is generally not very exciting. You just go from station to station, buying goods where they are cheap and selling them where you can get more money for them than you paid, all until you grab enough cash to move on to the next level. The trains have a minimal impact on the gameplay and I don't see how time is involved at all. But overall this is still one of the best games of this year's TINS.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 1

Review by miran all reviews by miran

This is another promising puzzle game. The graphics are very good, they are even different from level to level and the game even has some music which isn't bad, although it gets old rather quickly. The game has a nice help screen in each level which explains everything and it uses some basic ASCII art to demonstrate. The game is obviously all about trains (although the "train" looks more like a minibus to me) and you have a limited time to complete each level, so all the competition requirements were met. But the gameplay could in my opinion be a lot better. The first few levels are more like tutorial levels and are very easy to beat, but then all of the sudden when you have to build tracks, it gets almost impossible. The outcome of the game depends on luck more than skill.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 3 Genre 3

Review by miran all reviews by miran

This game is not good. But the maker found the courage to post it, which at least makes him better than 40 or so other guys who couldn't manage to do that.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 1

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Nice game with a very retro feel. This is one of the few complete playable games this year. The implementation of the train requires a bit imagination and the fact that text was used to represent the railways barely qualifies as ASCII art but I think all the rules of the competition were satisfied. The gameplay is simple, you drive a train around a map and shoot squirels with acorns (does that make sense?). Controlling the train is a bit difficult as you don't always see where the squirels are, so most often you end up making the choice between turning left or right arbitrarily. Still, it's moderately fun to play through a couple of times. Extra points for sound effects and music. Even though they're not particularly good, they do add a lot to the retro atmosphere.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 2 Technical 3 Genre 3

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Looks quite polished and it might even be fun to play, but I don't quite get it. The white dot doesn't seem to want to move in the direction where I want it to move.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 4 Genre 5

Review by miran all reviews by miran

Some of the graphics look very nice and retro. But the game is hard to control and not very fun to play. Also it seems to run too fast, at least on my computer.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 3 Technical 2 Genre 2

Review by miran all reviews by miran

This is a very solid looking puzzle game where you have limited time to move sections of a railway in such a way that the train visits all the stations. It's simple to play but challenging to beat and the fact that the levels are randomly generated, it even has some replay value. The midi music is a bit annoying but adds a sense of completeness to the game. It's an average game, or perhaps a bit above average for this competition, the only reason I gave a 2/5 in the technical category is because there isn't much ASCII art in the game and you get an access violation if you click in the wrong place.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 2 Genre 3