Reviews

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

[These are short notes, not a full review]
The game reminded me of good old Jump 'n' Bump.

[+]
It is an actually playable puzzle! Everything is in place but very minimalistic. Characters jump on the heads of each other. The player has to shutdown and then kick the opponents.

[-]
Rules of TINS 2012 are hardly touched. An option to save and load progress would be nice. Collision detection is faulty. It is not very convenient to kick a robot in the desired direction. The sprite editor is a mystery.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 3 Genre 3

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

[These are short notes, not a full review]
Excellent art but poor gameplay.

[+]
The hand-drawn images are very good. The animation is also nice. Anachronism is in place.

[-]
It is hard to make an actual attack or to take actual damage. No real progress seems to happen.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 5 Technical 3 Genre 2

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

[These are short notes, not a full review]
Original but not complete.

[+]
The wheel whale is crazy enough to be fun. Anachronism, dragons and parallax scrolling are present.

[-]
Does not seem to have a clear goal. The controls and detection of moving onto lava are not very friendly.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 3 Technical 3 Genre 3

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

----- Description -----

In this game, you control a dragon. The dragon can walk, jump and fly around a small cyclic world. There are some huts on the ground. Sometimes humans pop out of the huts. The dragon can then attack the humans by moving onto them. The humans are destroyed and contribute to the dragon's score. The score can in turn be used to upgrade the dragon. The current score is factorized into primes, and bigger primes mean better upgrades.

The game is only partly finished. Perhaps in a finished version, the dragon should be able to breathe fire, the opponents should be more versatile and have some way to counter the attacks. Right now, the game does not provide any challenge at all, so it is more like a sight-seeing tour than a battle. However, the game has some potential and can be made actually playable rather quickly if the developers decide to put some more time into it.

----- TINS 2012 Rules Coverage -----

[Genre: creative anachronism.]
The anachronism declared is aztecs and aliens versus the dragon. However, aliens did not get implemented in time, so there's not much about anachronism in it.

[Artistic: here be dragons.]
The player character is a dragon.

[Technical: record progress.]
The player can continue a previous game, restoring all purchased upgrades.

[Technical: parallax scrolling.]
The clouds and far mountains move "further" than the world, providing a nice visual effect.

[Technical: prime numbers.]
The upgrade system is highly dependent on prime factorization of the current score.

----- Evaluation -----

[Overall:]
The game is technically playable but does not provide a challenge. It is capable to hold the player for perhaps 10 minutes until he or she sees all the content and realizes there is no resistance to player's actions.

[Artistical:]
The dragon animation is OK. The world details are fine, too. The humans, on the other hand, have too little pixels in them. There sounds and music are fine.

[Technical:]
The things which were actually implemented work fine. It is a bit funny how the dragon follows the mouse in flight and can actually fly in the direction of its tail; on second thought, why not?

The game includes about 130,000 bytes of readable C++/Allegro5 code.

[Genre:]
The anachronism genre rule is hardly implemented. The genre part of the game is not finished (in all senses of the word).

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 3 Technical 4 Genre 2

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

----- Description -----

The game is a 2D scrolling shooter. You control a guy with a gun. There are four levels.

In the first three levels, the aim is just to move to the opposite side of the level. This involves running, jumping and dealing with simple opponents. These levels can be played in any order. Upon completing each of them, you receive an extra gun.

The last level becomes accessible once you complete the first three. It is about killing the dragon. The dragon is more tricky than opponents from previous levels, yet beatable.

If you recieve too much damage or fall down, it costs you a life. In the case there are no more lives left, you lose the game but receive a passcode which restores the state of the player character (levels and guns unlocked).

The game includes a menu allowing to change keys, animated sequences at start and end of the game, and an option to enter a passcode.

----- TINS 2012 Rules Coverage -----

[Genre: creative anachronism.]
I found some anachronism in using a slingshot along with a rocket launcher and in the look of game heroes alongside a washing machine.

[Artistic: here be dragons.]
The boss opponent is a dragon.

[Technical: record progress.]
There is a passcode system.

[Technical: parallax scrolling.]
The scrolling interior of the washing machine fits in the game niely.

[Technical: prime numbers.]
The number of lives, hit points, boss hit points, levels open at the start are all prime numbers. Primes are used in the source code as object dimensions and also in the passcode system.

----- List of Uncomfortable Bugs -----

1. The intro and outro sequences can't be skipped.

2. When you jump while moving left or right, releasing the arrow key does not stop you from moving in that direction. However, pressing the opposite direction key does change the direction. It is a bit annoying that you can fly left or right freely while jumping but you can not nullify horizontal speed in flight. Jumping would be more fun if the player character stopped moving in horizontal direction as soon as you release the key.

3. When I first tried to kill the dragon, it got stuck in the wall above the level, and I had no way to kill it and had to start playing again.

4. If you jump up to the ceiling and hold the up arrow key, the player character hangs at the ceiling, and the jumping sound is looping. You can then move left or right while still hanging at the ceiling.

5. You don't receive a pass code if you win or quit, so you can't start again from the last level then.

----- Evaluation -----

[Overall]
There are a few issues listed above. Nevertheless, the game is playable and contains enough content to be fun for the 10-30 minutes it takes to learn and complete if nothing goes too wrong.

[Artistical]
The graphics are nice, especially the in-game opponents. Animated sequences are minimalistic but fine. Level interior also fits the theme. There are sound effects for jumping and shooting, rather minimalistic though.

[Technical]
Apart from the bug list above, everything seems to work nice and smooth. The main menu, level selection and input preferences are a plus.

The game includes about 150,000 bytes of C++/Allegro4 code, half of which is library code, and a significant part of the other half is the code reused from other projects. The code is clear enough, at least for a 72-hour contest entry.

On one side, I think code reuse was fine to save some time for creating actual game content. On the other side, sticking with Allegro4 does not fit well with TINS 2012, at least as I see it.

[Genre]
The anachronism genre rule is implemented nicely: weapons, heroes and levels are obviously from different eras.

As for the 2D shooter genre, the inconvenience of jumping is an unnecessary difficulty.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 3 Genre 4