Let's try & see it as a game, not an issue.
I have to say, I don’t really know what to make of this at first. On one hand I find the concept of the game a little funny and like the way you have somehow manage to turned it into a game. However on the other hand, you shouldn’t really make games out of a serious issue. I personally think it is not terrible, but you should have some respect and this is a little risky. I’ll try to keep this review simply about gaming though, and not this whole Schiavo case such as many other reviews are doing…
First off, graphics. Pretty bog-standard and definitely nothing special. The way you turned this into a VS match was a little amusing. However I didn’t really like the photograph cut-outs, to be honest this is a flash site and photographs aren’t technically flash, and it shows you didn’t make as much effort as you could have. I can never enjoy a flash or game as much as I potentially should when I know that the author hasn’t reached the absolute full standards that they are capable of. The photograph cut-outs simply look unbalanced when placed with the MS Paint looking drawings that you have produced, for example the picture of Terri crawling along on white tube on the loading screen, and the random heads against the maze on-screen. Try to draw your own graphics not only to show more effort and evidence of your own hard work, but to try and decrease the offence if there is any. Other than that though I thought the graphics were pretty standard, I liked the little animated tubes wiggling about and I liked the complex style of the maze, however it seemed that you could beat the game by only going about halfway through the maze and missing a lot of it out – so you may want to make it so the paths of the maze twist around a lot more.
Next, sound. I was a little disappointed in this aspect, since there was only some background music and no other sounds. It was cheesy and was extremely happy music, a little too irrelevant if you ask me. Try adding in sound effects such as when you move your character along and when you win or lose the game.
Finally, game-play. Probably the best aspect of the flash. I found this fun not because of the actual concept, but the style of game-play the flash uses. I liked the long maze you had to make your way around and the ‘race against the opponent’. This game is one of the first to use enemy AI and I was pretty surprised at how intelligent it was, most times I played this the other character was pretty fast and I only won by a margin because they kept right behind me most of the way through. The tubes dotted around at sensible intervals along the maze was also a nice addition too, it made the game a lot more challenging because the tubes almost took up a whole width of a path of the maze, and at times it made me need to take a different route altogether. However, I felt the controls of the game were a little too fiddly and definitely weren’t as fluent as I would have hoped. The character moved about in a rather stiff manner and you often had to press the button hard to get a response, they also seemed a little picky as there were times I got stuck because I was literally 0.0001 of an inch in the corner of a wall, when my character didn’t even seem to be touching it. I feel you should fix this, and I also didn’t appreciate the message you received when you won the game either.
This flash might be considered as disrespectful for another human being, and an attempt at a joke that is actually something very serious. But this is also a game, and the game is what we should actually be reviewing, and not just writing a review complaining about what this game is unfortunately revolved around. Let’s try to forget about the prestigious issue this game is about and look at it as a game, not as an insult. Call it what you want, I shall refrain by my thoughts about the purpose, but as a game I think it’s near to standard, you just need to make some tweaks, and change the purpose and characters of the game. Reformed this could be good.
You have just been reviewed by
~T_C