Reviews

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