Reviews

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

This game reminds me of a part of the SNES classic "Secret of Evermore", where you could make huge amounts of money by buying bags of rice from one side of the marketplace for 2 gold pieces and selling them at the other side of the martketplace for 3 gold pieces. And in both games you quickly get a feeling that being a transporter of virtual goods is a boring job.

It would have been more fun if the buying and selling were less repetetive. For example, I can imagine that it would be great fun to fight yourself a way through a maze of caves filled with space monsters to reach that final outpost where it is rumoured they pay big bucks for saxophones. You'd have to interact with other travelling salesmen to get small hints about the best location to sell your excess lightbulbs. But as it is right now, moving from station to station poses no obstacle other than the time you have to spend on it.

There is one more thing to note about this game: the implementation of the time theme is very poor. This is certainly a weak point in an otherwise very well-polished game.

This game should be commended for it's beautiful, in-game generated ASCII art (in color), it's smooth GUI and help function, it's beautiful graphics (the main character is clearly unpolished programmer's art, but that doesn't really reduce the overall impresson of the graphics too much). Overall a solid entry that is well-polished but slightly hampered by the repetetive gameplay.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 5 Technical 5 Genre 2

Review by Onewing all reviews by Onewing

Good: Planet generation! Awesome-tastic!
Bad: Redundant
Shhh?press 9!
Comments:
Original? Check. Purpose? Check. Functional? Check. Huzzah, I think we?ve got a match! Seriously though, I enjoyed this game and recommend it to all ages. It will keep you entertained at least until level 2.

Overall: Gets old really quick. However, the first bit of item collecting is fun and finding that oh-so-rare item is always exciting. 3 tops.

Artistic: By far the most beautiful game (artistically) in TINS. I present to you the magic number 5.

Technical: I don?t care if the ASCII wasn?t hand made, it?s still better than the others. The help/menu screen is t?ght. Gravity is a little strong, it might be interesting to make it vary depending on the level. Nonetheless, it?s nothing that won?t give this game its second 5!

Genre: I wasn?t convinced. 2.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 5 Technical 5 Genre 2

Review by NyanKoneko all reviews by NyanKoneko

What first comes to mind when play Railroad Merchant is the wonderful presentation. This game quite literally has the best ascii art in any of the games. This is how I felt about the menu anyways. :)

The main game consists of trying to buy your way onto trains. So there's lots of collecting to be done on randomly created maps. Somehow, I would keep getting confused over what I could or could not walk over. My only complaints other than that is that there's a lack of sound within the game.

So overall, pretty good. It could use some polishing up for sure, but a fine entry for a weekend submission. :)

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 5 Genre 4

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 guilt all reviews by guilt

That's some ASCII art we are talking ... This game features some dynamically generated ascii art (from the sprite)... gives a very unique n professional look to the game... I did manage to get a 1000$ after picking up a lot of 'em goodies :) Got 2 Saxophones .. got lucky :)

Nice looking parallax scrolling gfx ... eyecandy!

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 5 Genre 3

Review by Darksoll all reviews by Darksoll

The color ASCII-art of this game was something really good!.
so the game's kinda simple, you control some kinda rocketer
that catch some items and sells them in order to go to another planet.
Graphically the game is beautifull, and the idea is original.
The world generator is something incredible.
the game itself turns kinda repetitive after the first world, yo got $1000, then you travel to another world and get another $1000. regardless it's one of my favourites.

I think this game would be better if: The gravity were not so extreme! ;-).
oh, i almost forget, what happened with music/SFX?

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 5 Technical 4 Genre 3

Review by FalseMasterJ all reviews by FalseMasterJ

Railroad Merchant is an interesting game that with a bit of work could be a very nice game.

In this game you go around trading items to get enough money to progress to the next planet. There are different ways of doing this. One way could be just traveling around collecting inexpensive items to sell. the other way is buying items cheep from one shop and selling them to another to gain profit.

I gave 4/5 for the artistical score, because it really dose have nice graphics. Some things that made the artistical score have a 4 instead of 5 is the character you control doesn't look that great and I don't see how the trains are important.

I gave 5/5 for the technical score. There are some neat technical stuff. Railroad Merchant generates plaints by what name you give it. It has many different looking plaints. cool help menus that are necessary for the game. and some other nice looking stuff, including a ASCII generator. It only has one problem, gravity, but you get used to it.

I gave 1/5 for the genre score. I can't see how waiting for the trains is important especially when you have so many items to trade between shops.

Overall this is a deceit game if you like merchant type games, but it could use a tiny bit of work. Music/SFX/story could be some of them.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 5 Genre 1