Ranked #1333
200 Points
Re-live the 2D platformer games of the 80's: eye-melting colour schemes, pixelated graphics, irritating 8-bit music and grinding frustration - what's not to love? In time-honoured style, our hero wakes up in the bathroom the morning after The Event. The details are hazy, but memories of a wild party, followed by an unwise combination of unusual mushrooms and a ouija board, suggest that things may have gone a bit too far. Something alarming moving in the shadows suggests they went far too far. All our hero wants to do is go to bed, in the hope that a good sleep will make everything go away, however his maid has other plans. The house and grounds are mess; detritus is spread far and wide; strange creatures are roaming the halls and something suspiciously like a portal to another dimension appears to have opened in the basement. This all needs to be sorted out before anyone is getting any sleep. More venerable players will enjoy the walk down memory lane, with subtle - and not so subtle - nods to the worlds of yesteryear. More innocent players will get to experience what life was like when they were not so much as a gleam in their parents' eyes.
Excellent graphics and music, and I like the idea of the modular craft and the free-roaming nature of the game. The tutorial is also good, however it might be good to have some way to refer back to the instructions outside of the tutorial (are you meant to know what the specialisation of each drone is, or is part of the game to work this out?).
Two suggested improvements:
1) Maybe make it clear what the goal of the game is and why you would want to do certain actions at specific points (why would I want to attack a guardian when I can just fly round it?).
2) Is the plan to include more locations in the map? Do more appear as the game progresses? As it stands, it is not clear what the purpose of the map is (if the only location is Beacon Bay, why not simply have a "jump to Beacon Bay" command?).
Finally, I think I may have encountered a bug: after my initial drones all died, I revived them and also bought additional drones, however the game kept insisting "You have no drones to battle/mine" - was I meant to do something else to enable the drones?
Yes, I will see what I can do about the difficulty; this is a common complaint. With regard to the gravity/reactions of the character, I get conflicting feedback on this, but I will see what I can do to make it more balanced (since something is obviously not quite right).
Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks; yes, the graphics are all high quality developer art ;) . I agree this story is a little slight, although the vagueness is partly intentional to reflect the "wtf!" situation the main, hungover character finds himself in. In any event, I did at one point consider fleshing out the back-story/creatures a bit more, so maybe I will revisit this.
Thanks for your time!