Reviews

Review by tobi all reviews by tobi

The first times I ran this entry, the program just froze - it didn't respond to anything. Fortunately, I remembered a bug somewhere in my system which freezes any Allegro program that calls install_keyboard(), install_mouse() and install_timer() before set_gfx_mode(). I changed the sourcecode, recompiled, and voila, it runs!

First, a nice blue screen is displayed which tells me the name of the game and the author. After pressing the spacebar (it took me a while to find out I had to press the spacebar :-), the main menu is displayed. The menu looks good. I suppose Sander ran out of time, since I can't use the mouse anywhere in the GUI. This, however, doesn't matter too much, since it is easy enough to press space to start the game.

But before starting the game, I enable sound and I read the story. This entry has a quite professional story screen (that is: it scrolls). The story itself is good (although it makes me curious why H+ doesn't react with OH- in this special layer on Mars) because it is the glue to combine the implementations of all rules. It says that in the year 2132 we don't have enough space to live (although the moon has been colonized). However, scientist found a layer on Mars with OH- and H+ ions that don't react. They built a micro-spaceship to collect the ions and combine them into water, which is then stored in tiny gel packs which can be collected later.

The goal of the game is to fly this micro-spaceship and combine H+ and OH- ions to H2O molecules. You get yourself killed by collecting too much of one type of ion. The game starts easy to play but soon it gets more and more difficult. The music is good in my opinion.

The implementation of the rules is fine. There is a GUI, although without mouse, and the game doesn't use any grid at all, so the technical requirement is implemented. The chemical formulae-rule is implemented really good in my opinion, since the formulae aren't just decoration. They are part of the game. The jelly like substance does exist in the game, and it has a functional role (tiny gel packs to store water), but it doesn't really look like jelly (at least not to me).

So, all rules are implemented by Sander. Unfortunately it crashes if I try to start a new game after I got killed. But it has a (good) story and (good) music, and I can't say that about my own entry. A few minor things to improve are: mouse controlled GUI, hiscore list. Anyway, for only 72 hours of coding this is a nice game. -- Tobi

Scores: Overall None Artistical None Technical None Genre None