Konnichiwa!
Pretty great round of gaming this week. I would say the average quality of the games in this episode are probably the best to date. I've begun to really appreciate number of indie games that exist these days. itch.io is such a fantastic platform!!! It reminds me of my childhood and the explosion of free Flash games.
This week my life required me to do another Friday stream at 1700 GMT. This time I didn't code for 8 hours before starting so I was able to go for two hours. It's become abundantly clear that my marathon gaming days are gone. Should be interesting as me and the boys are doing a 3 day LAN party for the first time in 16 years.
Anywho...
- Eidolon Awakened - by Platinum Star Games
- Astro Link - by Zach Losier
- Spoogle Spirit - by otter (kelp krew)
Eidolon Awakened #
Steam Demo | Twitter | IndieDB | Mastadon
I originally thought this was going to be a horrible game (for me). The story is at the forefront of the steam page and the artwork looks like a narative comic book game. I think this does the game a great disservice – MOST people who view the steam page will not understand this game is cyber punk pokemon.
Turns out... IT'S CYBER PUNK POKEMON!!!!!!!!!
Fantastic. It's a well done take on the genre with some good twists. The design and worldbuilding was on point. I was a bit frustrated with some of the tutorials being too verbose. BUT... the story was captivating and the cut scenes were well done.
The Good
Boy howdie did I enjoy the pixel art, music and animations. NAILED a coherent and interesting aesthetic. It's hard to mix high and low fidelity pixel art but this is done quite nicely. The music was fire. I really found it tie the entire thing together.
The demo was interesting and engaging. The gameplay loop was satisfying and fun. It had a good difficulty ramp. With zero experience I didn't feel like I was just walking through going through the motions.
The story was interesting and engaging. I can tell a lot of time went into this and it shows. The cinematic explaining the set and setting in the beginning was pretty dang good! I was a little confused when it turned out I was just watching a documentary as the character... but it works.
The Bad
Every RPG needs the ability to skip text. I would say this is the only "must" fix. I found myself smashing the next button. Speaking of the text, it was too verbose. Economy of words is funny in that one should strive to achieve as much meaning as suscinctly as possible. This does not apply to storyline, only informative dialog.
Minor UI tweak – make the default option yes. Users will accidently close dialogs, which is quite frustrating. Without the ability to skip text this lead to a couple frustrating moments which can be seen in the stream.
The one thing that I think could use some touchups was the animation / screen when a player meets a friend. Maybe even just making it smaller? I dunno it was a bit jarring. Nit picky here for sure.
The last piece of nit picky advice would be to take into account how popular and prevalent this genre is. I understand the urge to cater to the lowest common denomenator, and there are several key differences (which are fun)... but the informative dialogs are exhaustive for anyone who's played a pokemon game (probably 98% of users). One option would be to separate all of the similar mechanics into a rapid fire tutorial that experienced gamers can just bypass. At a minimum all of the informative dialog needs to be shortened, a lot of it could probably just be removed altogether or condensed into one quick interaction.
The Ugly
No bugs or game breaks. I almost put the lack of skipping text here but I don't think that really would turn anyone away. "Ugly" stuff is usually reserved for serious issues that would lose you players. Not so sure there are any glaring issues here.
Conclusion
One of the few games where I went past my 25 minute timer and wanted to keep playing on stream. Fantastic job, I think platinum star games should be happy with the results. I think another pass at your marketing materials emphasizing it to be cyber punk pokemon would do your game good. I also touched on the trailer having a narrative opening as a mistake. I think that can be kept, just in a separate video that isn't played first. Also your game play should encapsulate what it's like to actually play the game, so more combat than is currently showed.
Great job!
Bizarro Portal (I mean Astro Link) #
All that matters is the MOTHER F*CKIN GAME PLAY - Asmongold
A showcase in Asmongold's wisdom. This is... Bizarro Portal. No one who picks this up will care it's a clone. Everyone who liked portal will like this. A developer should impose their unique touch on a project when attempting a clone.
It's kinda like a cover song. No one says, "MMMMM! Jimi Hendrix was so lame for covering Bob Dylan." At first I disliked this comparison because comparing an indie dev to bob dylan or hendrix is a bit insane. BUT... portal is definitely one of the greatest games in history. This is a great take on that game. So maybe they are the Hendrix of game dev??? I dunno. We can only hope.
The Good
Hendrix or not, I really enjoyed this game. The puzzles were the right kind of challenging. The ramp up to difficulty was fantastic. The basic mechanic and twist of this game was clever.
Players teleport by shooting a gun at this plasma ball. The player and the plasma ball switch spots. The ball can be moved directly only by shooting carefully placed devices. When the player shoots a device it moves slowly to it. Players can shoot the plasma ball while its moving. This is a key mechanic.
It's a bit hard to put into words, but dear reader, you can check it out yourself. Once I really got the mechanic I was pretty determined to beat it. I love me some puzzles.
The graphics were impressive. The voice acting was top notch. I thought the level design and world building was fun. Yes, it's portal... but it's like bizarro portal. I like bizarro portal.
The Bad
While I loved the narrator; the narrator wasn't present enough. I really enjoyed in portal how the narrator was introduced as a good character and slowly turned adversarial. Maybe do the opposite? Either way adding some more dialog throughout puzzles would be good.
Additionally the sound design wasn't that great. In particular the levels are a bit off; the gun noise was too quiet and the ambient noises too loud. Part of what made portal special was the top notch sound design.
While the world building is nice and the aesthetic mostly well aligned for an asset pack; some things were under whelming. The gun was not interesting at all. The different cubes confused me – at least my fallable old wizard brain remembers one cube not triggering.
The Ugly
I did not understand the whole shooting the moving ball mechanic. I actually thought the level was broken or something. It took me an embarassing amount of time to grasp this concept. I believe some kind of prompting or... joke about "shoot the moving ball dummy" would be great. I was about 2-3 minutes away from quitting D:
My only other major gripe that would prevent me and other brain broken folk (dyslexic or even color blind) was the green / yellow power switches. Change this to red / green or even better just on/off. This repeatedly confused me and was a major issue for my fragile brain.
Conclusion
Bizarro Portal!!! woooOoOO! Love me a well done "cover song". After speaking with the (actually) solo dev, Zach, I am confident this game will go places. A little bit of polish with the assets and a more "hit you in the face" tutorial and I think it's got some real potential.
Spoogle Spirit #
This was a pleasant surprise for me. Mainly in that the dev was very humble and assured me it wasn't going to take me 25 minutes to complete. This game made me realize how old and bad I am at video games. No Joke. The mind is willing but the reflexes are dull and the carpel tunnel is crippling. Stupid rotting flesh.
I am not really sure how to describe this one; chips challenge (i'm old) meets NES zelda...? I dunno players get this cool invulnerable roll thing and get to whack a bunch of monsters, dodge obstacles and remember how slow their crippling old brain has become.
The Good
The world building / aesthetic was good.. AGAIN... 3/3 on world building this stream. The sound immediately stood out on this one. It felt good. It felt responsive and it was well designed in general. I also felt like the pixel art and animations really added a lot to the game as well. The text and the sounds it made while typing made me happy.
I liked the enemies. They were unique and gave players great feedback with sound and animation.
The Bad
A little more variance in the levels would be nice. There are a LOOOOT of spinning scythes. I think using them in the middle of levels is great, go nuts, but using them as a border felt repetitive and took away from them as a obstacle.
I grew a bit frustrated when I would flip a switch and the wall would raise up and kill me. Not a very intuitive interaction and will be frustrating for new players. It felt like a needless mechanic. Making the collision just teleport the player to a place where they aren't colliding with the wall would be ideal here.
The difficulty was a little boring for levels 2-4. A sliiight lull in the difficulty increase is felt by myself.
Rolling while stopped doesn't do anything. When not moving it should probably roll in the direction of the cursor. There were some semi difficult spots that are artificially hard b/c of this.
The Ugly
The ugliest thing was this developers lack of confidence ;)
Really though, no bugs or game breaking things. I think the biggest area for improvement is the polish and getting more content into the game. I think with some time and effort this has promise.
Conclusion
Otter/legaming dev was in the chat watching the other reviews and under sold this one as a "small game". I think it's worth noting that when sharing a game this attitude is always best.
I think this game is fun and has some interesting mechanics. With just needing more. The combat felt pretty good, the levels were appropriately scaled after the first 4. I was told I was 1 level away from the final boss. I think I will add this to the pile of games I need to go further with off stream.
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