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Reviews

Showing 3 reviews by amarillion [2008]. all reviews

Entry of allefant
by allefant
all reviews of Entry of allefant

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

In this game you control a population of little beings in a small but fertile meteorite floating all alone in the vast empty space. You can build up a society with farms, lumberjacks, defenders and healers while you have to stand back and watch how your island is destroyed bit by bit, slowly at first but then at an alarming rate.

When I first saw the screenshots of this game I had to think of Easter island. You know it is said that Easter island once housed a large population until the islanders cut down their last tree? Unlike the Easter islanders, the inhabitants of this game are not the cause of their own destruction. This comes at hand of something that looks like evil purple space mana. This mana drops down from space and seems harmless at first, but after a while it literally punches holes in your island, and destroys your buildings and inhabitants.

You can build defenders to defend, but housing the defenders costs a lot of wood. You can get wood by attracting woodcutters, but cutting down trees makes your land more exposed to the evil mana. Construction takes time as well, you can add an extra constructor if you\'re willing to gamble that you can make up this lost time. The purple infection spreads at an alarming rate and usually one defender is not enough to cope.

Most of the time you don\'t have enough time or wood or people to do all these things and your land is quickly turned into swiss cheese by the purple menace. Only one time, probably by luck, I succeeded in building an extra constructor, two lumberjacks and two defenders before I got a single infection spot. As long as there is little purple spots around the defenders can cope easily and this was sustainable for a while, until that moment that for some reason both my lumberjacks got stuck near a construction site and before I noticed I ran out of wood, both my defenders were struck down by a descending piece of evil and I was back in swiss cheese mode again.

For the sake of the competition I have to note that this entry lacks atan2. Hence, low score for the technical part.

But other than that this entry is great. The game has cute graphics. I especially like the way the land slowly corrodes and black space appears through the gaps, it really makes you feel concerned. This game is too difficult as it is but all the tunables are there: if there were a little grace period without purple falling from the sky while you build up, if the infection would spread a little slower and if the defenders were a little quicker this could really work. I haven\'t seen an RTS game in TINS or speedhack yet, they are technically really hard to pull off in a weekend so the fact that this game is so close to complete is a real stunt. Please Allefant, tune this up a bit and release again, I would really love to play more!

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 3 Genre 5

Raid 2: Saddam Hussein's Revenge
by stevenvi
all reviews of Raid 2: Saddam Hussein's Revenge

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

It\'s often true in TINS that simple gameplay leads to best result and this is a good example. In this game you man an anti-aircraft turret and you must fend off a barrage of incoming bombers as long as you can. You get a clear 3D view over your city which has a set number of buildings. If the main building gets destroyed you lose. The bombers pick a random building to bomb, presumably as your buildings are turned to rubble one by one, the chances get higher and higher that a bomber targets your main building and ends the game.

To help you there is a radar overlay with blue dots representing bullets or bombs and red dots representing bombers. You can shoot and destroy everything (even your own buildings) and all that goes with a satisfying noise from your speakers.

Simple gameplay doesn\'t mean a simple engine. I think the 3D engine for this game is really a nice technical achievement. Having said that, I found a number of glitches. Making the game download music at runtime is a nice way to get around the 400k limit, however the music system has a glitch that makes the game crash, so unfortunately I had to review this with music turned off. I also noticed that the rectangular transparent area of all sprites shows up, presumably this is a glitch that depends on settings on my computer because I don\'t see this in the provided screenshots.

Another unfortunate point is that the artistic rule is not implemented. There is some attempted self depreciation, but it doesn\'t really go all that far...

Destruction is a strong point of this game. It\'s very satisfying to shoot around and litter the sky with explosions. All in all a great entry with a few minor negative points.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 3 Technical 4 Genre 5

Failure
by FalseMasterJ
all reviews of Failure

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

Given how incomplete this entry is, the screenshot looks kinda slick.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 1