boooring, but could do better.
Incredibly long and easy, I gave you 4 because I think this game would be really good if you made the monsters a little stronger, the power ups fewer, and the maps a LOT smaller. (The ability to go back to previous levels would be nice too.)
i feel like a treasure hunter... at the beach
good idea, but i felt like i was just sweeping through th efog to find random coins, and only looking for enemies that werent a ghost or a skeleton...
I'm sorry...
You know, I'm usually nice and I try to find the best in each game I play... but I didn't find anything on this one.
First of all, the game isn't any story or anything, you just wander around killing paople because you're bored or something, and even if the reason is on the description, you shuold try to put a text to tell why.
Second of all, the moves: I found simple tiles usually practicable in the game suddenly un practicable, you cannot climb up the stairs and there are random doors on the last level.
Then, even if the idea of collecting crystals for a magic armor is good, it's just too simple because you are done when you are done on level 2 and there are way more you can collect but as it doesn't do anything...
For the attack, defense and lives thing, it's a good idea, but I didn't really see the difference between new armors and more defense.
The monsters stuff is just strange too. I beat all the bosses in 3 attacks, but I just dies fighting a flaming thing... Not fair; and the attacking board under the battle isn't explained, so it's not totally understandable for everybody.
You also have the sound problem. I don't know it there should be a music or anything, but if you can hear the flixel sound test when you turn up the sound, you cannot hear any music or sound. I think you should add a backgrounds music, some walking sound, and, maybe, at least a sound when you attack, if you don't want to put a sound per attack.
Then, last but not least, the end. You made a last boss, really easy by the way, which is the end of it, for no reason: you just kill him and then, you win. If you wanted to show the number of death you made, re-read the script, you made a mistake and it just shows the line, plaus if you restart you restart on level four, with 2 attack, 2 defense and 8 lives, and as you cannot go back, it's just impossible.
If I had a question t ask you about this game it is "Did you even test it?!" You should try the game before posting it, and if you cannot test it on your computer, you should at least remove it when you see the mistakes you made...
Thank you for taking the time to write up and explain your thoughts on this. I do appreciate it. I'd like to answer some of your issues :)
The answer to many of your issues is simple: not enough time. This game was made entirely and exclusively for a contest with a deadline. I spent lots more time getting the mechanics of the game working, and ran out of time to balance the difficulty as much as I would have liked. Many things I intended to include or get working had to be left out or removed at the last minute to prevent the game from breaking. Things like: going back up the stairs to previous levels, choosing and implementing sounds and music, adding more areas to explore, a decent ending screen, etc. So, yeah, no music/sound is a feature, not a bug lol ;)
I did make the conscious decision not to add any dialog or story to the game. I wanted to keep it simple and leave it open to the interpretation of the player - based on the surrounding locations, etc. This would have worked better with maybe 2 or 3 more levels and lots more variety of monsters.
In regards to the doors on the last level, I wanted to give it the appearance of a decrepit, decimated hellish area... as if this lower-level had once been full of rooms and corridors until something tore it up a long time ago.
If I had more time to tweak I would have focused on tweaking the mechanics so that it's not so finicky. I've heard people claim that the game is impossibly hard, and others say how easy it was to finish (1-hit bosses, etc). Had I worked on my random numbers a little bit it might have been more sane.
I still really like this game. I think it accomplished what I set out to do with it: make a fun little game with a simple mechanic in a limited amount of time on my own and play with Flixel in the process. It's not nearly as polished as I would like, and I may revisit the mechanics for a future game - perhaps a remake or something.
I encourage you to check out my other game: http://www.blastingagent.com for a more complete game, and I have a few more that are being worked on to be released (hopefully) very soon! Thanks for the comments, and you don't need to apologize - I would be just as critical of any other game! I just hope you can see a little bit of where I was coming from and why I made certain decisions :)
I liked where you were going.
First, what I liked. I really enjoy the old-school feel of Flixel, and I think you really captured a lot of that in a creative way in your game. The game kept me engaged, or at the very least engaged to be engaged (I had a pressing issue I had to attend to halfway through, and came back to the paused game). I actually enjoyed 4-button control scheme, although it did have its downfalls which I will discuss later. I generally enjoyed the dungeon-crawler feel the whole game gave, and the clear image that your bosses were getting larger and larger.
However, without re-hashing Gankachi's review, the difficulty balance was way off - I could easily slip past most monsters without a fight, and the boss battles compared with most monster battles. Maybe that was just because the dice rolled in my favor, but I'll never know.
That leads me to the interface, I know what was *supposed* to be happening, but I felt that without explicit explanation the battle hud was hard to understand, tough to follow, and it really broke gameplay by having it off in the corner. Sometimes I didn't know I was fighting until two moves in because of this. Then when battle finished, I kept holding my finger on the last move I had made (usually up) and I would move that direction a little bit before I could stop myself. There has to be some way to integrate the flow of battles and movement better.
As far as sound, I understand why there was no music - it's not your forte (hehe) and/or you had a deadline, but no sound is inexcusable. You download sfxr, pop out a few sounds you like, convert them to MP3, embed them in the class of your choosing, and then use "FlxG.play(SndVarname);" whenever you want the sound to be played. It is no more than 15 minutes worth of work, and it gives IMMENSE feedback to your players who can hear. Especially when your graphics are so minimalist, you can't ignore feedback.
That said, silence can be just as effective as a sound, but only when it is used in contrast to sound. Example: "2001 - A Space Odyssey" if you watch the scenes where they're in space - they are 100% MOS and it really adds to the effect of the movie. Now watch any silent film (in silence), and the silence isn't a tool nor is it an effect, it's just... there, but I digress.
Finally, it's okay to own up to your mistakes. Don't blame deadlines, search Newgrounds for "Robinson Crusoe: The Game" - that was made ground up in 3 days. Know your limitations, and try to work around them or work through them. Don't stop making games, and don't stop making them better.
No save system
No save system - this kills the game.