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Showing 3 reviews for Avery's World Destruction. all reviews

Avery's World Destruction
by DownloadMyHeart
all reviews of Avery's World Destruction

Review by Alvren all reviews by Alvren

Didn\'t play it. How the hell do you play it? What is a CSV?

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 1

Review by kenmasters1976 all reviews by kenmasters1976

This game doesn\'t seem to be completed. The provided readme.txt isn\'t helpful in explaining whether it is even playable or not.

The game features a presentation with the title of the game and a working menu. All menu entries do work but it\'s not clear how (or if) is possible to play. I even tried to create a file using the \"Editor\" menu option, which again, there\'s no clue as to how to use it; but after saving the file, trying to load it in the \"Play\" menu option resulted in an error.

So, there\'s not much to review since the game is not playable. Not to mention that it is nowhere near to implementing the TINS rules.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 1 Genre 1

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

\'Avery\'s World Destruction\' looks like a fair attempt at a game. Frustratingly, and sadly, every step in investigating it was difficult, and the game didn\'t even work when I finally managed to get it to start.

My first observation was a distinct lack of level files, so I went into the editor available from the main menu.

The editor interface makes it hard to place individual tiles - I found myself either using the menu or dragging a rectangle around the tile I wanted to change - but it did enable me to put some pieces together in the hope of then trying the level and seeing what would happen.

In order to play the level, I had to select \"Use Wildcard Specification\" from the main menu, which was hardly obvious. I almost gave up before trying it, and when I finally did, the game locked up.

I did get to see all the enemy ships facing towards the player - obviously the atan2() usage - and some music started playing.

Some other frustrations got in the way. Each time I returned from a sub-interface to the main menu, there was a slow fadeout I had to wait for. Periodically the game would appear to lock up, and would only resume working when I obscured part of it with another window. Before I created an allegro.cfg file to let me run it windowed, I didn\'t even have this option. Finally, the game logo disappeared for about 1/4 of the time, which looked a bit shoddy.

Unfortunately I am unable to give this game good scores since it just didn\'t work for me, which is a shame as an attempt was clearly made.

Overall: 1. Sorry, it was too frustrating.
Artistic: 1. There was a world map but no other evidence of world domination, and I found no dialogue.
Technical: 2. I did find the atan2().
Genre: 1. I didn\'t find any evidence of destruction.

There are two things I would recommend for future competitions.

1. Keep the user\'s experience in mind. Whatever else you do during these competitions, make sure your users will see the fruits of your labour without much effort. For example, include some pre-made level files, and make the route into the game is clear and short. This is difficult, but the more times you participate, the better you\'ll get at it.

2. Failing that, write some end-user documentation. The readme file should explain any extra steps needed and draw my attention to the good work you\'ve done, compensating for any shortcoming on the first point.

As the developer notes, an existing game was taken and tweaked. This is certainly a valid skill for rapid development, and I\'d like to encourage it. (I got criticised for doing it myself in a previous TINS.) However, do make sure that you add a reasonable amount of new content, and make it clear what parts are new, so that the voters can judge how much work you did. The enclosed readme didn\'t make this particularly clear.

Kudos for the name \'DownloadMyHeart\'. It\'s heartful :)

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 1 Technical 2 Genre 1