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Reviews

Showing 7 reviews by amarillion [2012]. all reviews

Space Fortress
by Slartibartfast
all reviews of Space Fortress

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

It's quite fun to with the screen fill up with stars and harpoons. The game would get more replay value if it had a scoring system, and remembered your hiscore.

As for the rules, I think the genre rule and the parallax technical rule are implemented most extensively. The dragons are there only in name, and the save progress rule is implemented in a very simple way.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 2 Technical 2 Genre 3

Dragon Joust
by Timorg
all reviews of Dragon Joust

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

This game stands out for the original concept. After you get the hang of it, it's very playable and quite fun to kick robots around.

This game has a fair amount of replay value in trying to beat your high score. It does get frustrating after a while, because it's just too easy to accidentally let one of the robots slip past and get the best out of you, and you have to start over from scratch each time this happens.

The implementation of the parallax rule is original, although I think it's one of those things that sound cooler on paper than they are in practice. The save progress rule is implemented very neatly.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 3 Genre 4

DrachenVeer
by inde
all reviews of DrachenVeer

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

Invoked the act of guttenberg, and replaced the "save progress" rule with the "Hand drawn" rule from TINS 2010. I think that was a good idea, as the hand drawn graphics really stand out. They are quite well drawn and give the game a unique appearance.

The gameplay feels a bit slow. The attacks of the dragon are often blocked by the caveman, but you can't really see cleary what is going on. I think some form of visual or audible feedback on whether an attack was successful or blocked would make the game feel more smooth.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 5 Technical 4 Genre 4

Wael the Wheel Whale
by SwitchPulse
all reviews of Wael the Wheel Whale

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

Wael is a whale with a wheel attached to it. Using this wheel it rides about and shoots some dragons.

You appear to have unlimited lives, which is a good thing, because you die very easily. At a certain point you encounter a wall of dragons, and the only way to get past is to jump in shooting wildly, die a couple of times, and hope for the best.

It also appears that if you die, you respawn immediately a few blocks back. This is OK, but you often respawn at a spot above one of those red blocks so you die immediately again. Sometimes you die several times in a row this way.

Rule implementation: The anachronism is there, the dragons and the parallax scrolling are there too. It's not very clear if and how the prime numbers rule or the save progress rules are implemeted.

It's a good effort, but the gameplay is too limited to be a real contender. What I like the most about this game are the cute low-res graphics and the color palette. Wael is animated, which adds a nice effect.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 4 Technical 2 Genre 3

Chocozumas Revenge
by Mankarse
all reviews of Chocozumas Revenge

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

I had some trouble playing the entry (see below), but with some help from the author I managed in the end.

Although this game is incomplete, I was impressed with the smoothly animated dragon graphics, and the cute running populace. So it's worth some points in the artistical category. This has the beginnings of a nice game, but unfortunately incomplete.

About the trouble I had running this entry: The provided binary crashed for me on windows. So I tried to compile this myself on linux. There was no makefile, so I created one (now in git). Then there were problems with mismatching case in one of the header files - linux file systems are case sensitive you know. Finally the game crashed on startup because of missing resources. Moving them to the project root folder solved that problem. Definitely not easy to get this game running.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 3 Technical 1 Genre 2

Primal Scream
by darkbits
all reviews of Primal Scream

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

Excellent game, I especially love the gravity gun. There is a lot of contents for such a short competition. The difficulty is a bit uneven, with nothing happening in some parts, interspersed with extremely difficult jumps. But the game is definitely beatable with perseverence.

Implementation of the "prime numbers" technical rule is a bit weak. The anachronism rule is implemented as a background story, but not the strong suit of this game.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 3 Genre 3

Drakes
by Gassa
all reviews of Drakes

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

This is a fairly nice and smoothly animated bejuweled-type game. Click on a block of matching items to make them disappear. Sometimes drakes appear when you click, and it wasn't too clear to me what they do. From reading other reviews, it appears that the drakes have something to do with prime numbers. I guess that is the prime and dragon rule implemented. Parallax scrolling is there, and the items range from prehistoric bones to computerchips, so the anachronistic theme is there too. Nothing major, but it's all there. I think the implementation of the prime numbers rule could have given this game that little extra bit of originality, if it was made more clear what was going on exactly.

Trying to play this strategically worked very well in the first level, and I managed to get such a large block of spools of thread that I was immediately propelled to level 3. But on higher levels it seems that the random clicky strategy is the best, and that hurts replay value a bit.

A decent entry, but it doesn't really stand out.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 2 Technical 3 Genre 2