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Reviews

Showing 11 reviews

Peppy Peptide Puzzle
by Max & Amarillion
all reviews of Peppy Peptide Puzzle

Review by elias all reviews by elias

I like this game a lot, very complete with a lot of puzzles to solve. At least to me it also is a unique concept and extra points for also teaching us about real life genetics in the process!

However the very first time I played I couldn't figure out what to do at all - it all seemed to be designed to confuse me. Maybe that was part of the challenge though :P

I love the graphics, even though they are more just an illustration happening in the background.

This entry definitely gets the bonus point of making the morphing actually part of the gameplay!

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 5

tsl7
by Onewing
all reviews of tsl7

Review by elias all reviews by elias

This looks very nice. I wandered around in the space station but couldn't figure out what to do.

In pause mode everyone started dancing to funky music.

In the lab screen it seems I could combine some of the items into... combined items. But couldn't really figure out what I was supposed to do.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 3 Genre 3

Dr Forest
by Allefant
all reviews of Dr Forest

Review by SiegeLord all reviews by SiegeLord

Dr Forest is a fascinating game, you're tasked to save a forest that truly must have offended some deity or karmic force. It has a compelling variety of gameplay, you can save your forest from all sorts of maladies using a number of different tools. Most tools seem to do more harm than good (like the fire one... your fores is basically made of matchsticks), but the tree remover is a reliable and fun solution to most missions once you get it. As always, Elias does not disappoint with his graphical style, and the 3/4 camera angle is interesting. It's a very fun game, not too challenging but not at all boring either.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 4 Technical 5 Genre 3

Heart Disease
by iamgreaser
all reviews of Heart Disease

Review by SiegeLord all reviews by SiegeLord

Heart Disease is a dual stick shooter with a multitude of technical novelties. In terms of the game, it has an interesting puzzle element in the fact that you need to plan your route carefully to disable the spawners before you (or the FPS tanks). In terms of the technical bits, the procedurally generated music stands out. Additionally the choice of language, Chicken Scheme, sets it apart from most compiled languages people typically use for this.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 3 Technical 4 Genre 2

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

This is a promising game of strafing around, shooting the triangles and collecting the hearts. I particularly liked how elements activated and deactivated as I progressed through the level (is this the morphing?).

I use the word 'strafing' because the direction I'm moving (WASD are compass directions) and the direction I'm shooting (towards the mouse) are independent, a control system that might be needlessly complicated or might just not be to my taste. In the finished game, I can appreciate that there might be so much going on that you need this granularity, but for the level included, I'd rather just shoot in the direction I'm facing and have less to think about. I think this is a very personal thing though. (Of course, when the game is windowed, it's also very easy to click outside the window by accident.) Finally I would have liked to see support for the arrow keys as an alternative to WASD.

Unfortunately I did struggle to see how the genre requirements were met: are we inside the heart, or are the hearts just a nod towards the genre? The artistic requirement of dancing seemed a little lacklustre. On the plus side, the silly weapon requirement was Act of YouTubed into oblivion in spectacular fashion.

More levels and a system of acknowledgement when a level is beaten are needed, but overall it's an entry worth trying out. For those who aren't aware, a Windows binary can be found at https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/617116 . It does seem to need force-closing in Task Manager, but I'm sure that's just a symptom of the game being unfinished.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 4 Genre 2

Succubus Sans Frontieres
by SiegeLord
all reviews of Succubus Sans Frontieres

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

This entry is a good looking and playable entry. You are a succubus that has to heal soldiers and deal damage with kisses. This latter part is a nice twist on the health theme, and provides a way to make a healer do damage that is consistent with the fantasy theme.

There are several maps to play through, in fact a rather large amount of content for a speedhack game.

The game is difficult, although I did manage to play through all maps in the end. The best tactic I could find was to try to 'trap' monsters on a corner in such a way that they are not moving around you, thus protecting your soldiers from harms way. This feels a bit like an unsatisfying strategy, because it relies on the path finding of the monsters being broken. Were it that the monsters have better pathfinding, the game would be much harder to play.

For that reason I'm not giving it the highest marks, but overall solid entry!

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 4

Review by SuperSilvey all reviews by SuperSilvey

This was a challenging game. I like a good challenge. I made sure to stick with it until I completed all the levels. It's a bit of a grind and I do feel with maybe just a little more the game play here would've been incredible. It was fun. Also, it was the only game that worked for me in the Mac environment, so I appreciate that.

I thought it was a good twist on the health rule.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 3

Review by entheh all reviews by entheh

This game sees you sent into battle as a medic, sort of. The two sides are the soldiers and the devils, and you are on the soldiers' side, probably.

You can kiss soldiers, leaving them dead over deals with love. You can kiss devils, momentarily pausing them. Or you can kiss your succubus's success goodbye if, like me, it only takes five kisses to give yourself 'Sticky keys' (see what I did there?). Luckily, kissing is not the winning strategy anyway.

You can also heal your soldiers (or the devils) a limited number of times, but this is also not the winning strategy. The winning strategy seems to be to get in the way. You want soldiers shooting devils, which they can do from a distance, with you blocking the devils' paths so that they can't get close enough to fight back. This gets extraordinarily tricky as more devils approach from other directions. In terms of general enjoyment, unfortunately I can't say this game really worked out.

The story might also need further explanation: whose souls am I supposed to harvest? The soldiers', by kissing them? Is that what 'my catch' refers to? But then, I could just kiss them all quickly before the devils get to them, so why do I need to aid my soldiers?

In terms of the technical rules, cross-fading is implemented in the form of cross-fades between different screens. I think something more fancy could have been done in this area, but the game is reliable and must have been competently coded.

In line with the artistic rules, there is a basic paused dancing feature, and although the documentation states that soldiers throwing crosses at devils is silly, I think it's the kissing that deserves the medal of outstanding silliness in a weapon. Either way, this is further enhanced by a lovingly crafted, fairly consistent artistic style.

The title is a play on Médecins Sans Frontières, for whom the lack of frontiers refers to their willingness to work in war zones. I like the idea that the succubus's lack of frontiers might refer to the boundaries she might be crossing if she were to invite all the soldiers round for a little unhealthy indulgence. Maybe that's just me though. Either way, the genre requirement is certainly not unmet.

A little story and game mechanic re-evaluation may be necessary, but certainly a solid implementation. Well done!

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 3 Genre 4

Dr Havoc Shitfan
by Ben 'Bruce "entheh" Perry' Wieczorek-Davis
all reviews of Dr Havoc Shitfan

Review by amarillion all reviews by amarillion

You are running a surgery, and patients come in with various ills. You could try to prescribe some medicine to cure them, but where is the fun in that? Or you could prescribe something that makes the condition much, much worse.

The game cleverly lets you choose between pairs of prescriptions with opposing effects. So you could make the condition better, or you could make it worse. Further twist is that patients can be allergic to prescriptions, which gives them an extra illness that you have to cure with yet another medicine (mercifully, I haven't discovered a patient with an infinite loop yet)

So yes, you might choose to cure the patients. But eventually the timer runs out, and the game positively encourages you to toy around. It's a lot like lemmings, really.

Especially impressive is the morphing effect: it interpolates between animation frames, creating a very smooth animation from a small number of hand-drawn frames.

Brilliant, sick, childishblobotic humour. Love it!

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 5 Technical 5 Genre 5

Review by SuperSilvey all reviews by SuperSilvey

An excellent, complete entry. I often asked my wife, who's a registered nurse, what I should give patients and the game seemed pretty solid. I noticed most of the time it was safe to go with antibiotics unless they were allergic to it.

Regarding the rules, the morphing is very impressive! I loved reading the explanation in the read me. I did feel the artistical rules could've stuck out a bit more. Like, they had the minimum required to satisfy the rules (i.e. silly weapon and funky dance).

Ultimately, I played the game a few times and my family joined in to. Made sure to hide the name of the game from the kiddos. Since we had fun as a family, I'd say this is one of the better speedhack games I've had the pleasure to play. Two thumbs up!

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical 3 Technical 5 Genre 5

Review by SiegeLord all reviews by SiegeLord

No patient deserves the doctor that you can play in this game. While you can play nicely and treat the patient's actual maladies, performing heinous malpractice is where the real gameplay lies. I enjoyed the meta strategy involved to maximize the havoc. A fun game!

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 5 Technical 5 Genre 5