Reviews

Review by ReefCitizen all reviews by ReefCitizen

This is just a visual novel, with no interactivity. It looks like the author's intention was to make some sort of Frogger clone.

Overall: This is not a game yet, so it gets the lowest score.

Artistic: Some interesting pre-rendered 3D graphics, but the speech balloons are just dialog boxes and the iridescence is just a small detail in one scene.

Technical: As there is no interactivity, it is technically just a sequence images and animations.

Genre: It fits the genre well, but it has not been fully developed.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 2 Technical 1 Genre 3

Review by elias all reviews by elias

Scores: Overall None Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by sanderovich all reviews by sanderovich

Scores: Overall None Artistical None Technical None Genre None

Review by awergh all reviews by awergh

Genre (Fable)
=============
The fable was the Scorpion and the Frog.
This was a nice retelling of the fable and as far as an implementation of the fable I'm not going to fault. A playable game would be nice but oh well.

Technical (Overall and use of chart)
====================================
I wasn't aware of any chart within the game.

Artistical (Generally and Iridescence)
======================================
There is an iridescent hat and artistically it looks nice as it tells the story.
There is good use of speech balloons within the game to tell the story.

Conclusion
==========
Interesting entry in that it is a non-interactive game telling a fable. It is successful at telling the fable, it would have been nice if there was some sort of game in there, maybe included a game of frogger in there somewhere.

Scores: Overall 2 Artistical 4 Technical 2 Genre 5

Review by victorwss all reviews by victorwss

Yes, it is a really and definitively a fable. Other games just had a poorly made-up fable or a poorly executed fable or were no fable at all, but this one is a real fable. However, it is a bad fable. Either be a "racist" for refusing the scorpion or take the scorpion and then it kills you. This might imply that being a "racist" is good.

Also, this it not even a game. There is no gameplay whatsoever.

The iridiscent hat isn't really iridiscent at all. It is just a hat with flashing colors instead of iridiscent colors. And it is there for no reason at all.

There are animal characters and speech balloons (well, sort of) at least.

There is no 2-player stuff. There isn't even 1-player stuff.

Also, no audio.

Some graphics are good, but some were joined together poorly.

The code is complicated, to say at least. The code shows clearly that it intended to be a game, but unfortunately, it was not.

It was also difficuly to run due to some missing DLLs that I needed to grab elsewhere.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 3 Technical 1 Genre 2

Review by KillerWasp all reviews by KillerWasp

Despite fulfilling the genre expectation of fables, it can barely show a fixed story without the possibility of playing.
It has bugs in the bitmaps, it can't even show transparency and the bitmaps don't fit correctly because of (possibly) bad variable conversion, I had to fix bugs like missing math.h header, and compensate for missing lines by recreating your own, say that it was easy to compile a single source file.

In general, it's not attractive, it seems more like a desperate attempt to complete all the rules and give something done for the competition. It has resulted in a visual disaster.

The complete line of compiling, if anyone want one fast:
g++ FrogandScorpion.cpp -o FrogandScorpion -lallegro -Wno-narrowing -lallegro_primitives -lallegro_image

Don't forget include math.h in the first line. I guess VC add the header automatically, but not are included for other systems or compilers.

Scores: Overall 1 Artistical 2 Technical 1 Genre 4

Review by Gassa all reviews by Gassa

This is apparently a non-interactive prototype of a would-be game.

A frog leaves its parents and goes its own way. The frog gets a job, which is to carry other animals across a river. There is a demo of what the game might have perhaps looked like, if the author had time to finish it: animals come and offer money for carrying them across the river.

Apart from that, there is a long intro, and a case of taking a job which did not end well. The latter actually recites the titular fable.

The presented story scenes look 3D-rendered, but as there's no interaction, how much of these would hold up in the actual game remains an open question :) .

Character art looks minimalistic for a 3D world, but the animals are nice, in their own peculiar way. I like the last job scenes: despite simple graphics, their overall design suddenly made me believe the world of the fable.

All the TINS 2023 specific rules are touched--well, except the game being interactive :) .

Scores: Overall 4 Artistical 4 Technical 4 Genre 4

Review by Yubi all reviews by Yubi

Frog and the Scorpion is a entirely uninteractive slideshow-movie rather than a game, presenting minor twists on the classic fable "Scorpion and Frog." The plot is almost identical, but the dialogue and imagery presented is a bit more contemporary, a bit more human, and a bit of a crude, yet wholehearted chuckle. I don't recall finding the original fable fun or interesting when I encountered it long ago, so I thank you for putting it in a new light.

The retelling starts slow, but but the pacing and expression in each slide really picks up toward the end. It's decently well expressed through the colours you've chosen. I especially liked the scorpion's sinister aura and eyes in the scenes leading up to the sting. That scorpion looks like he had a good time (if you know what I mean, eh?) and I admit that I did as well.

Some music or sound effects would have added to the experience, though.

Concerning the competition's rules, that iridescent hat couldn't have been more shoehorned in if it were an iridescent pair of boots or something. I guess it is funny because it's so unabashedly out of place. I must have missed the chart, and the dialogue wasn't in speech bubbles. Ah well. I'm not the rules police.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical None Technical None Genre None