After the owner intentionally crashes the game, I can't play it on my mac without it crashing after almost every interaction I make (I can keep pressing ignore, but it gets old real quick).
Plasmarift
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A member registered May 27, 2016
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I'm sorry, but I'm not sure why people are praising the game (I noticed the other commenters don't actually mention much of what's happening in it). While I will say the graphics are pretty good, the music is creepy (that's good), and the story (from as far as I've gotten) is intriguing, that's about as far as I go with praise.
Here are some of the flaws I've found:
- During the beginning, you put up force fields to keep the player from progressing when explaining the mechanics; was this really necessary? And if you felt it was, why couldn't you explain the most important mechanic; dealing with monsters. They're literally the main obstacle of the game and you don't even address them in the tutorial. In many areas, they'll just stand in one place waiting for you, usually blocking places you need to get to. Is there a way to sneak by them without attracting their attention? If they're standing right next to some objects you need to break to search for an orb, how are you meant to do that without them taking away half of your health?
- The character infrequently keeps getting stuck when moving through tunnels (this especially happens in the small entrance that leads to the stairs); I'll usually have to jump (multiple times in fact) to get free. This is extremely bad in a game where you need to run away from enemies to survive. I ended up dying with 6 orbs on my way to the exit, because I got stuck on something while enemies beat me to death. This is inexcusable. I also was stuck inside a wall for a minute.
- It's also bad design to have the enemy be solid objects that can block your path; this makes it so the enemies can basically corner you and beat you to death and all you can do is futilely try and escape.
- It's never explained what the gold bars or totems do (based on the fact that a dark aura generates after picking up the gold, I'm guessing it causes the game to get harder?
- Whenever you find keys, I've seen them float away, sometimes up to the ceiling or just away from the character.
- You've randomized the orb locations in the game (are there actually more than 6 orbs in the game)? Due to this randomization, I found 2 orbs in the initial cave you start in and found the rest fairly quickly. I'm also under the impression that the more orbs you find, the more monsters that appear.
- While exploration based horror games can be good, randomized ones are usually not. This can lead to enemies spawning in extremely bad or tight places that are unavoidable and/or enemies almost literally spawning on top of you. It also leads to imbalanced gameplay where one playthrough can be severely more difficult or frustrating than others. Part of what makes exploration based horror games work is the idea that there is a small measure of control on the part of the player or a short respite from the horror or even a warning when something scary is coming, but having the knowledge that enemies can come running at you out of nowhere in places where you've already been constantly distracts from the exploration portion of the game because when an enemy finds you, you have to run and the player doesn't know where or how far to run to get to safety because no place may be safe. Consider Resident Evil 1 for example; there were rooms specifically with no zombies (the creators kept true to this) and while there were enemy surprises with nothing to give the player a heads up like enemies bursting through a window, these were limited events. You could have made it so there were a set number of enemies in the game or you could have designed the catacombs to where you could lure an enemy away from a spot so you could circle around and look for stuff there (enemies just teleport back to their spots when they're done chasing you or they get stuck). You could have made it so the enemies moved slowly toward you or you could have also just not included the monsters at all and the game still would have worked. Maybe you don't agree with this setup for horror exploration, but from what I've seen, your game is less scary than it is annoying. Whenever I saw a monster, I thought "Oh great, I guess I'll go look in some other area then." The only thing that's really scary is when an enemy literally runs around a corner extremely fast and punches me. I have yet to experience a haunt because I haven't lasted long enough to.
- I also think it's bad design that you added a stamina bar to the game. Running is a REQUIREMENT in the game to stay alive and in some playthroughs, you'll have to run more often. I may have also suggested that health regenerate on its own since there are situation where you can't avoid damage.
- The voice acting could use a lot of work. The main character's voice actor sounds bored and the lines don't come across as convincing, even when she's joking or sarcastic. The quality of the orbs' voice actors seems low, even with the added audio alterations. Also, the sound of the main character dying seems to be distorted at times, like it's bugging out (though I do commend you on adding multiple dying sounds).
- It seems there are puzzles in the game. Puzzles are good. The problem is that when you come across an object that is unfamiliar, you get "???" with no explanation or even a comment from the main character. For the angel statue, you could have had the main character say something like "it seems like it can be pushed, but something's locking it in places". I was never able to explore enough to find an actual interact-able puzzle.
I don't want to discourage you from making games, but I do hope you take this review into consideration. Good luck with your future projects.
One more question concerning that; when the driver is in the process of falling asleep (the eyes start closing), I've tried messing with the radio, but it doesn't do anything (once the eyes start closing, they're going to close). Do I need to tune it to a specific frequency to keep the driver awake? By the way, thanks for the response. I appreciate it.
I don't understand how to keep yourself from closing your eyes.
- I understand that you need to keep the door locked to keep from getting dragged out (I only learned that from one of the comments).
- You also need to drag the steering wheel to steer yourself back onto the road, especially if you look away for too long from the road.
- I don't understand why the driver's eyes sometimes close faster at times compared to other times. Changing the radio station doesn't seem to do anything.
- You don't list the controls or how to do anything in the game. This can be nice to figure at sometimes, but not when you place the player in a situation where they have a time limit to figure it out before losing (plus, the fact that it takes like 7 seconds each time to reload the game is kind of annoying).
The maze part is stupid. You place the player in a situation where they can't see where to go while an enemy is after them. The intolerable part is that you give the player a finite number of lives. The only way you can beat this part is by trial and error and you punish the player for doing this by making them restart the game from the beginning after a few deaths. After the third or fourth playthrough, I'm sick of it. It's not worth.
The "Protect vs Gain" mechanic seems messed up. I select "repair" and "handling a dead body" from knowledge and gain goes up? Why wouldn't protect go up? There are plenty of other incidents like this though I'm guessing that none of the stats actually go "down", it's just showing the balance. Regardless, it doesn't make sense why the ratio would change in this way on some of these.
Still, I enjoyed the game. I've gotten to where I can basically beat it almost every time since the game always boils down to two scenarios:
She can't stay here, I can't secure her enough before I die, etc.
- Focus on training her to survive in the wild, as well as getting a map/GPS, a bow, and a tent.
There are too many threats outside, she'll have to get by with what I find for her, etc.
- Focus on gathering supplies (canned food, water) and increasing the defense of the cabin by boarding it up and digging a shelter.
I basically ignored the cooker and generator. I even stopped teaching her how to farm since it seemed to affect the stats strangely and it seemed counter intuitive (she can't farm if she is on the move and going out to farm would be dangerous if she need to stay inside).
I wish you luck in your future in game design.
Is there anything special that happens after beating new game++? I'm not saying it is impossible because I think with enough time I can beat it, but I only have so much free time to spend (and I'd like to know if it is really worth investing my time in beating it. I'm thinking of making a walkthrough video for the game).
As for a review of your game, I think it is great! The movement is extremely smooth and fluid, which allows you to go as fast or slow as you want (I would like to point out though that playing the game on this page made it run slow, but it worked just fine when I downloaded and ran the game). Originally, I thought that the levels were all randomly generated (and that impressed me because there were no design flaws that would prevent me from completing the level), but now I think that you made a specific number of maps and the game randomly picks from one of them (how many, I don't know, but enough to where a casual player would be unlikely to catch on to this).
The enemies were unique and equally challenging depending upon where they were located, which made ever replay feel new and interesting. The arrow system was also good as it made you feel that much vulnerable going up against enemies when you only have maybe two arrows or none.
The boss was kind of too easy though after getting through all the levels, I would hate to lose to him and have to replay it all over again so maybe a super hard boss was a good thing to leave out.
New game+ was pretty easy for me, but new game++ is a pain, not only because it allows no room for mistakes and has no checkpoints, but the thing that chases you is faster. This wouldn't be such a problem if not for one thing; it seems to always come at you from a random direction. As soon as you grab the key, you'll want to start moving toward the door so as to put as much distance between you and that thing as you can since wall jumping up ledges and such slows you down. However, if you start moving immediately and jump down, you might land on that thing if it spawned close to you and it is below you. This was one of the only things that seemed unfair to me since half the time, the player will need to move down the level to reach the door.
Naked in the Desert - An adventure sandbox game comments · Posted in Naked in the Desert - An adventure sandbox game comments
So how do you beat this game? I've lit five torches (four of which are at the corners of the game), found a door, a building I can't enter, a bus stop?, a screen that shows what I am seeing, a fountain, and a gas cloud that hurts me, and a radio. What am I missing? Also, it takes a long time to reach those torches.
A Game About Pirates and Space Marines comments · Posted in A Game About Pirates and Space Marines comments
I'm aware. I got the crystals, entered the rocket, and got the text (then the vehicle thing started falling through the rocket for some reason). I just wanted to ask if something was supposed to happen or if I needed to press something to initiate it. Thank you very much for the mac port and for taking the time to answer my comments.
That's not a cost; that's a punishment for playing the game. The player can't control (with accuracy) where the flame will appear plus it seems like more than one flame is summoned when all I wanted was one. Lastly, it seems like the only way to beat the boss is to get close to draw him to you, which leads to him taking away your health (and it takes a large amount of flame to bring him down). I had to recharge myself at least five times. Recharging yourself in the game is basically required to beat it so you are punishing the player for playing your game.
Sorry for the wait. I tried the mac version. It seems to work fine. It seems to lag a little, but I don't think it's a problem with the game; for some reason, my computer will lag on some games even when they have simple graphics and nearly everything that would cause it to run slow is taken care of.
As for game feedback, it wasn't what I was expecting to say the least. Based on the pictures, I thought it was going to be about floating and that the gameplay would be slow. The mechanic of light being the platform was pretty interesting and has a lot of potential (I was expecting for the game to reset if I touched darkness); how did you manage to program that?
By the way, are there multiple ending? I was wondering because I was unable to reach the ledge where you first see the butterflies.
The National Library of Geometric Impossibilities comments · Posted in The National Library of Geometric Impossibilities comments