Reviews

Review by MarkOates all reviews by MarkOates

"Fole & Raul: Capylandia Eco Rescue" takes players on a delightful cat-filled (you can never go wrong there) adventure on a charming island. The task of saving capybaras offered a unique and heartwarming concept that me and my game review partner enjoyed. We liked the capybara graphics, and felt sad to see them tied up, and that became a main motivator for us to play the game.

Despite the concept, I found myself wishing for a more relaxed pace to truly soak in the game's world. The constant presence of a timer heightened the anxiety and prevented me from fully immersing myself in the surroundings. We felt rushed in a way that degraded our experience of the game.

From a technical perspective, I appreciated this game. The idea of re-used code was a smart approach that I think more hackathon participants should adopt (it's a more realistic strategy for 72-hours and makes for more interesting games, less stress and less disappointment). The inclusion of auto-generated dungeons was one of my favorite twists, and as someone interested in the technical side of game development, that piqued my attention. So, from a technical perspective, good strong marks for this game.

Visually, the game showcases a vibrant iridescent art style. While the concept is intriguing, the abundance of visual contrasts and fixed scrolling mechanics made it visually noisy and aesthetically difficult to parse. This resulted in the biggest hinderance in our ability overall to enjoy the game. The game could be improved by addressing the visual design from a global perspective, by creating a clearer, simpler visual hierarchy among different elements, such as the HUD, player characters, environment, items, etc. For future projects, you might start with a restrained, single color, 4-shade palette, and focus on the visual elements and their role in creating a cohesive presentation of the game's information. So, though the artistic *rules* were met well (artistic rated a 4), it hindered the game overall (overall rated a 3).

Overall, one of the stronger entries technically, so thank you for making this game 😀.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 4 Technical 5 Genre 4

Review by victorwss all reviews by victorwss

This game concept was very interesting. However, it gets repetitive quickly.

The characters are all animals. But if they were humans, aliens or robots instead, the game would still work (and possible even better than with animals). So, maybe it was somewhat lacking in this department. However, it is still good as is nonetheless.

There isn't really any fable other than a generic "let's save the world" motif, or more specifically, "let's save capybaras while avoid or killing people who litters the beach, ride cars or are just walking around".

The time sometimes runs short too easily and may ruin the game. Specially after defeating a hard level, you will possibly have too few time to have any hope in the floolwing level.

Also, the chart isn't really a chart, it is a map. Making an excuse for that based on wordplay and exploiting ambiguities of the English language to call it as a chart don't really work. However, at least the map is an important concept of this game.

The oil iridiscence isn't very convincing and is just cosmetic. If it was not there the game would either be the same or slightly better.

The speech balloons are very underused.

There is a 2-player game part and it is really well done, being a truly 2-player game.

Got only one bug when playtesting it: When one of the player dies and the other still manages to finish the level, the dead player will be ressurrected in the following level and can still play, but its map will be invisible and unable to navigate rooms. Other than that bug, everything just works perfectly.

The code is pollutted with a lot of code inherited from previous games that were not properly cleaned. But it was competently developed nonetheless.

The game is very promising and bear a rich playing experience. My suggestions to make it great are those:

* Add more different enemy types.

* Fixed time per level. Remaining time of the previous level should be either meaningless or converted into money perhaps.

* Be more generous about time, so people would appreciate more the puzzling and enemy-killing aspect of the game and less trying to speedrun it.

* Most enemies are avoidable and worthless to kill due to time constraints and you might kill a few only for money. Make it mandatory to kill some enemies in some areas for things other than money (like keys, for example).

* Improve the puzzling aspect of the games. Different key types to different doors is a way to do it. Another way is to add switches, buttons, force fields, etc.

* Either make the oil-over-sea more convincing and gameplay-interfering or drop it entirely.

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 5 Genre 4

Review by KillerWasp all reviews by KillerWasp

ery good action game, but very slow. I suppose that an 8K screen has been used in a small window, otherwise I don't understand why a game that should be smooth works so slow.

Various characters doing random dumb things getting in your way until you get killed. A cat making illegal sales and capiabaras that need to be rescued. Simple but remarkable animations. I like how the bird has different actions. There are blocks with locks and keys, pure capitalism, teleports, and auto-generated maps. Quite a few things made in 3 days, although I think having a team and recycling codes is more beneficial.

There are no charts. Low on dialogue and very poor on iridescence (or is it iridescence with the 4 CGA colors?).

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 3 Technical 1 Genre 5

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

A day in the life of a feline eco-tourist! Delivering capybaras from the snares of inconsiderable fellows who throw improbable volumes of trash and run you over with racecars.

Capylandia Eco Rescue was the most original entry in this competition, and yet the easiest to just pick up, learn the ropes of, and play. I'm not used to adventure games where you get things done without having to collect things, read between their lines, and plug item-Xs into item-Ys. This game is simple fun that drops you right into the action without unnecessary preamble.

What I most appreciated about Capylandia was its random generation, which kept exploration fresh over several playthroughs. The game's most challenging aspect is an unforgiving time limit that keeps the player laser-focused on charting the lay of the land, with each level adding to the size and complexity of the levels. A generous helping of locked doors, hidden keys and teleport pads strains your short-term memory to its limits; there is no time to indulge in super-soaking the tourists for petty spending coin when every wasted second, every distraction leading to a wrong turn brings you that much closer to an instant failure by time-out.

It's a surprisingly high pressure experience for a game that takes place in a nature preserve.

Given that your rapidly dwindling lifespan is so critical in this game, it seems strange for the time limit to be communicated in a hard-to-read white text in the bottom left corner of the screen, when there is so much free space in the blue overhead HUD. The first few times I played the game, I did not even realize there was a time limit.

Then again, I was thoroughly trounced by trash-throwers and racecar-drivers the first few runs, not realizing there was an water gun button I could use to defend myself. Thanks to Amarillion for informing me of this.

Defeating tourists with the water gun drops a pittance of money, which isn't really enough to benefit your run much in the later levels where time grows tight and tourist enemies take increasing hits to defeat. You can buy time limit extensions, hitpoints, soaker upgrades from rabbit merchants, but it's better to run past enemies and focus on not getting lost than to risk losing time and health to collecting coins. In either case, I found that all my items get purchased unconsciously when I accidentally run into the rabbit. A button to confirm purchases would be welcome.

My eventual strategy was to treat the water gun like the emergency pistol from Metroid, using it only to stun and push enemies out of the way. I'm always especially vigilant around teleport pads - it seems a bit off that tourists and their projectiles are able to hit you partway through the teleportation delay while you are stuck in place. I'm not sure if this is a legitimate flaw or my bad for expecting to be invincible for some reason, but I'll whine about it here.

So - Concerning the competition's artistic and technical rules.

Animals: I had criticized the animal in other entries for lacking character, complaining that they did not exhibit the physical qualities associated with each animal. But I feel this doesn't apply in the case of Eco Rescue because the characters are sufficiently and convincingly anthropomorphic that I see them as animal-people rather than animals-that-talk. This game has an excellent selection of enemy types, and I would love to soak them all.

Speech bubbles: Sometimes, the rabbit merchant's "you don't have enough money" bubble will obscure the text that advertises what is being sold. Other times, the bubble advertises the wrong item. There was one playthrough where I desperately tried to collect the last few remaining coins to afford a time extension, but the time merchant sold me the soaker upgrade instead and watched as the timeout erased me from existence. Maybe the merchant's offered item changes depending on some condition and I happened to be very unlucky?

Iridescence: Of all the entries, I feel this is the only game where the iridescent effect made the experience worse. I get that the amorphous rainbow rings were meant represent be oil slicks in the ocean, but they are painful and garish to look at. I managed to tune them out though, and enjoy the game despite them.

Charts: "Nautical charts?" Sure, I'd give that a pass, though I don't see much sea around these islands.

Finding the chart early is an enormous boon on the later levels. Not finding the chart is, on the other hand, cause for anxiety. I kind of wish there were sub-charts or some alternative way to get useful map data to even out probabilities, but winning or losing by a stroke of fortune has its charm, too.

Co-op: I didn't have anyone to play with this time around, but will update soon on this.

Parting thoughts:
This is a excellent game - fun, challenging, funny, original, and easy to understand. I regret having done Capylandia a disservice by playing and reviewing it last, when I had the least attention and energy to get into its nuances. It's possible that it would have been my favourite game of TINS 2023 in a parallel universe where I downloaded the games in a slightly different order.

Scores: Overall 5 Artistical None Technical None Genre None