Chuck's Super-Duper RPG Reviews!

Posted by Charlie Carlo on Aug. 3, 2012, 2:37 p.m.

After a few months of anticipation, I finally get to play the entries for the RPG contest. I didn't get the chance to play too many of them, but I've reviewed the ones I did.

Walk - colseed (3/10)

This is a game about walking right with poorly programmed movement until you reach an omnipotent error screen. At this point you must defeat the screen by removing the game from your harddrive.

Beluas and Castles - Nehemek (1/10)

20 years after the events of Seiklus, Guy-From-Seiklus has become a renowned sailor, sailing on a sailship from Sailville to Sailsburg. But trouble looms over GFS's sailship, by which I mean a storm, and then he wakes up on an island surrounded by giant bees. You are Guy-From-Seiklus. Your mission? Build a shelter 17 times in 5 minutes, and then Gorilla-Glue your ass to a boat.

Mystic Castle - frankie? (??/??)

WTF am I playing?

Exile - Mega (8/10)

This game rules. You play as Mega on a quest to eradicate all Teddy Grahams. You must be quick though, for the world itself is disappearing from existence a little to your left. Mega can't turn too quickly or he gets lightheaded, and must take a break after attacking, but with the right amount perserverence (12mg), you can defeat the Teddy Graham army. Although, I didn't get that far (5mg). The graphics were nice though, and the movement was smooth.

Pixel RPG - MBlaze (6/10)

Interestingly enough, the game started with choosing a server. My mind was blown. Then I unblew it and created a character. You can choose between some variations of colorful armless-mongoose-creatures (some call them Armoncs), to which I thought, "Eh, any character creation at all is pretty spiffy." So I contentedly ventured forth into this unforgiving pixelly world. After doing some arbitrary OOT intro crap, (Props on having an inventory system that isn't massively confusing, btw) I was plunged into the wilderness with a spear and some armor. There was slimes (I think) and different colored slimes. I just hit x a bunch of times until I got past. The game felt like a low-res Maplestory, so the rest of my time playing was spent trying to find evidence that this was not the case. Eventually I got a heal skill, which was gamebreaking at that point. I just ran past everything and healed when need be. I came across some Heracrosses, and was delighted that they weren't mushrooms, then I came across some mushrooms and died a little bit inside. Then I did a 'kill X Xes' quest requesting that I kill 5 of each of the enemies in the previous sentence. I did that, and then I heard word of a bigfoot. "Bigfoot, you say? That's awesome!" So I ran off to fight the bigfoot, but on the way, my character stopped responding to buttons on my keyboard (probably because MBlaze decided to watch a Youtube video on the computer that was hosting the server.) and I was consequently murdered. After a few minutes of debating on whether or not it was worth it to try again, I closed the game.

Dungeonmen: Men of Dungeons - kfharlock (11/10)

After being thoroughly impressed by the title, I was then thoroughly impressed by the titlescreen, I was then thoroughly impressed by the music, I was then thoroughly impressed by the selection of classes available. Naturally, I selected a team of all Bards named Jeff, Lynn, Goldblum, and Brundlefly; and prepared myself to be thoroughly impressed. After naming the characters, there was another screen where I could change the colors of my four bards, clearly put there just for such an occassion. Needless to say, I was thoroughly impressed. After this, there was a thoroughly impressive cutscene featuring dark cultists, cool graphics, and tits. The king and his daughter hired my band (Jeff Goldblum and the Brundleflies {EP OUT NOW}) to take care of the emergent Cthulhu. The story was thoroughly impressive. I purchased 4 claymores and 4 zweihanders because I don't know what the difference is. I refused to buy armor, in fact, I spat in the armorsmith's face and burnt down his store; fuck that pussy shit… also something something thoroughly impressed. The map was also thoroughly impressive. The combat? Thoroughly impressive. My band murdered a whole bunch of mucus to death with two handed swords, then they shuffled their feet, it was ace. I played more, but this is getting long; all in all, I was thoroughly impressed.

The Twilight Realm - Kilin - (8/10)

A game about effective use of particle effects in Game Maker, The Twilight Realm is… actually pretty good. You are Kel, you have to go find Keenan but you can't, so instead you run off with some blonde chick and shoot purple things with whatever weapon you picked. At First, I picked the stabby-sneaky class, but the attack sound effect was so annoying I switched to the arrow-shooty class. There was a boss, who I've deemed impossible to defeat by normal means. I defeated him by using a skill that rolls my character backwards, and I rolled over his defense barrier thing and shot him. I died immediately afterwards, but I still made off with 100xp. After that, the exploit didn't seem to work so I just stood at the furthest wall and shot wildly at wherever his bullets were coming from. It worked, eventually. I didn't get a chance to play it too much, I'll get to it eventually.

The Singularity - sheep biter - (3/10)

Judging by the quote on the start screen, I'm not convinced this game even knows what it is, or what the story is. So allow me to explain it. It's the year 20X6 and Dr. Supreme Taco has just created the perfect robot girlfriend. By perfect, I mean it stares straight through your soul until you shit yourself. In order to defend his electromaiden, he genetically engineers one of his own sperm to shoot lasers. The application of this supersperm is unknown, but I can basically guarantee that he tapped that. You play as the lazerjizz, running around and placing arbitrarily colored circuits that are bound to arbitrary numbers in arbitrary places. These circuits do stuff, I'm told. You also shoot at spheres of binary and models of chemical compounds. I'm not sure what you're actually supposed to do, this game is really boring so I only played for about a half hour. Also, I don't see how this could fall under the category of RPG by any stretch of the imagination. It's more of a puzzle-shooter. Side note: I can never tell if Flash games are running slowly or if that's just how they are.

Abyss Mage - diaeitsch - (2.16/10)

Ehhhh. I couldn't play too far because this game bothered me on so many levels. The game starts off with a long unskippable intro credit sequence, creditting about 3 people and scrolling over the in-game "forrest." The font is entirely illegible. You are soon revealed to be Zalgo Xylfo, a member of Organization XIII who, by the way he talks, is probably 12. You are confronted in the woods by four douchey mall-crawlers that want you dead for some reason. You attempt to escape and come across a group of bears (that are later revealed to be boars) and bitch about not being strong enough to fight, you then proceed to beat a man to death in his cottage. Now that the story's out of the way, I'm happy to say that this game is actually an RPG. Unfortunately, that's the only thing it has going for itself. The Graphics are disgusting. The grass tiles are alright, I guess, but everything else is horrible. The menu is just giant squares of the nastiest use of gradients I've ever seen. The sprites of every character are completely pillow-shaded, in ways that doesn't even visually make sense. Moving on, the concept of the game is just stupid. It's a classic case of how 15 year olds misunderstand what makes something cool. Like, how so many online usernames are things like "AssassinMan666" or "xxNinjaxxPandaxx." The protagonist(?) seems to be designed for one purpose, to be the coolest thing ever. It just gives off the sense that the creator was trying way too hard. I don't know, chalk it up to me being cynical, but I feel gave this game it's fair due. Gameplay was meh.

Dungeon Rusher - kasarun - (3/10)

What do I even say about this? There's no story, and it's not an RPG, it's more of a rogue-like. You're plopped down in the middle of a dungeon with no instructions. The dungeon has two bosses, the main boss, and a mini boss. The mini boss is some strange dragon coming out of the ground that summons enemies around you, you fight this boss at the end of the dungeon. The main boss is a slumbering Sumerian spirit that prevents you from walking correctly, this boss you must fight throughout the whole game. When you press left or right, the character only goes that direction occassionally. When you walk, the character just stops sometimes for no discernable reason until you press another directional button. The only thought on my mind was how this crap wasn't fixed. Surely the creator would notice something like this during play-testing. The graphics are… weird. Not good or bad, just weird. The room tiles have that strange Zelda style to them, where every wall is the same angle but rotated and your character is at an upright angle. The sprites seem to be taken from other sources, not that I can cite the sources, the sprites just don't match. The player sprite has no outline, and then there's like some sort of wizard thing with a black outline, and a giant that looks like something out of Doom, and some munchkin skeletons. The combat was alright, albeit primative. The game seems like it'd be pretty fun after an extensive makeover/bugfix.

Kevin Rudd Farming Generations - magicdweedoo - (8/10)

This game is great. It's simple, it's fun, and its funny. The graphics are pretty terrible, but I can tell that was intentional, as if the game is making fun of itself, or the genre as a whole. That's the way the entire game is. You play as Kevin, and later Xavier, Krudd. You are a farmer, and later a punk kid, who is under the boot of an oppressive organization that is unfriendly toward giant onion people. The game is strange and surreal, which makes it more interesting without even needing to try. The music is pretty catchy, although theres one bit, in the song playing on the farm, that makes me think I just solved a puzzle or something. A bit confusing. There's a few bugs, one was that I spoke to the bums who invaded the farm as Xavier, but the dialogue was with Kevin, it threw me off for a second. Another glitch is the reason I'm not playing right now, which is that I was trying to solve the mystery of the anonymous note and I seemed to have entered the Ikytu (I think that's how it was spelt) base entrance at the wrong place and became one with the fence on the other side. All in all, it's a fun game, exactly what I was expecting. I didn't finish it but I really want to.

I had fun. :D

Comments

Iasper 12 years, 2 months ago

Your reviews thoroughly impress me.

colseed 12 years, 2 months ago

Ohyay I got my favorite number for a score :D

wait how did i not get lowest score

charlie you messed up

i'm trying to get 15th place dammit

(good reviews though)

Charlie Carlo 12 years, 2 months ago

Quote:
wait how did i not get lowest score
I gave you an A for effort because the idea was interesting.

More than I can say for that second game.

Edit: Also, fuck you, MMORPGguy.

Castypher 12 years, 2 months ago

Quote:
who I've deemed impossible to defeat by normal means.
Why is it that nobody reads? =(

I laughed at how you actually killed him though.

kfharlock 12 years, 2 months ago

Haha! Thanks, man, I've been laughing about this review all afternoon. I'm happy that you liked it. We're gonna release a sorely needed bugfix patch in the next 24 hours or so, and I'll post a blog entry when we do.

colseed 12 years, 2 months ago

Quote:
I gave you an A for effort because the idea was interesting.
okayface.jpg

Any specific areas for improvement on the movement mechanics btw?

(I've been thinking about reprogramming my GM platform engine's code for a while now, just curious if there's anything obvious I've been overlooking besides most of the collision checking being horribly glitchy)

MBlaze 12 years, 2 months ago

Thanks for the review :) I loved reading all the reviews, very entertaining.

Charlie Carlo 12 years, 2 months ago

@ Kilin - When have you seen me comment on a blog that's more than a couple paragraphs long? Reading sucks.

@kfharlock Yeah the game's great. I just suck at RPGs, which makes this whole blog a bit meaningless, unless you take into account that your game is the only one I played that is actually an RPG. Just a suggestion, you should throw a "the" symbol into the character naming, kinda like how Pokemon has "poke" as a string. I just wanted my character to be named "the Brundlefly." Also, that'd pave the way for parties of guidos.

@colseed - When you attempt to jump and move at the same time, and come into contact with a wall, you just stay there until you let go of the move button. Do you use speed variables to control horizontal movement? Because that gets to be a pain in the ass. When I code movement for platformers I initialize a 'walk' variable with a max value in a different variable 'maxwalk', and use that to find how fast to move with jump to functions and stuff. I do use speed for vertical movement because it works fine.

Astryl 12 years, 2 months ago

Loved your reviews. :P

colseed 12 years, 2 months ago

It seems I used speed and hspeed in a few places, so I replaced all the hspeeds with myspeednows and put in some rectangle collision checks in the wall collision event. Looks like the wall sticking and such is gone now at least.

Though for whatever reason jumping at stairs at high velocities a certain way causes the character to stub his toe and bounce 10 feet into the air from sheer embarrassment.