Reviews for Dravalanche

[Jamesness]

72 hrs? Good job for that time.

Sure, you rushed it. It didn't look rushed, but more like it was incomplete or needed improvement. Even better gameplay would have made this game great. Like villagers that were actual challenges to unfreeze, or bosses that werent beaten by moving between the left and right side of the screen until all 3 (or the same boss? they looked the same.) of the bosses were dead. Also: the first medal's description was confusing, I thought it meant to fall a certain height, but I fell around 7 blocks and it didn't work. So I had to reset the game, and die to one of the bosses (if you get hit more than once, the first to know how the boss attacks, godspeed.) before I got the medal. I also didn't know I got the medals till the page was refreshed. no medal popup thingy.
Pros:
-Decent game, but for this kind of game, There's been a game out that blows every other game like it away, just can't remember the name.
-The boss took strategy to beat. Even if it was just to move left and right, at least you stimulated the young minds to think for once instead of mashing buttons till the boss died.
-The mining sped up after each boss, because holy crap if it stayed that slow throughout the game I was going to rage in this review.
Cons:
-No skill in the ice digging, just left and right to get to the villager, down to villager, next.
-Bosses (boss?) didn't switch sides, or breathe fire (Was it a dragon head or some kind of ice worm? I honestly am confused. Even if it says dragon, what is a dragon doing underground in an ice cavern?) It was a boring boss fight.
-You won! 7 second music loop and Paper Mario esque endless Game Over screen! (that's a bad thing, I hate those.) It didn't have credits, or a reset button, or anything. (Yes, i know how to use the right click menu to rewind the game. not the point.)

Overall? 5/10 for keeping it simple, sweet, and to the point. -2 for the boring boss, -2 for the annoying amount of time to dig, and -1 because you could move through blocks if there was an empty space diagonal to where you're going. (And the character gets stuck in the block if you move too far to the left or right and dig down.) But hey, Try again, Make a good sequel or something like that.
AND TAKE YOUR TIME! :D

[makemymonstergrow]

Has potential, but one playthrough was enough

I like games that do one thing, but do it well. At first, I thought Dravalanche would be one of those games. Sure, all I'm doing is freeing people with a pickaxe, but there's a certain puzzle element thrown in and it's a bit fun.

But then here come the boss battles, which felt entirely out of place in this game to be honest. Up until that point I'm using the pickaxe to move around the screen and now suddenly it's a weapon? I had no idea how to even USE it as such at first and was frantically searching my keyboard for a hidden attack button I didn't know about.

Eventually I did get killed from the dragon, but mostly because I wasted my first two hearts figuring out what the hell I was supposed to be doing. And let me just say, when you die and start back from the beginning, you don't want to go through it all again.

Why? Because it's tedious.

While the concept was fun and there was plenty of potential, the gameplay itself was bogged down by the repatative digging. Add an irritating BGM to that and you have an experience that is more irritating than anything.

But then again, I can recognize the time frame in which this game was made put severe limitations on your ability to make it as best as it could be. I think if you were to make a sequel to this or if you redid the game to have some more challenge and cut back on the repetitiveness (or at least added powerups so that you could eventually break the ice faster) you'd have a better game.

[BobTheSnowman]

its ok

This game is pretty boring. Add action, exitment ,adventure! Maybe...make a second... and dont spend 72 HOURS ON IT! At least a week of creation. Good start though.

[mastercheddaar]

Ok?

It's cool you made this in under 72 hours but it's boring. There is seriously Nothing about this game that would make me want to play it ever again. Only reason I checked it out was because it was on the first page and Large Bold Letters.... and it looked shiny.

[TraceofHatred]

I'm going to have to be completely honest this game wasn't very good.
The animation and how it looked was fine, and the music was very retro and enjoyable.
But the sheer lack of control and repetitiveness of the boss fight(s) was rather... irksome.

The battles with the Dragon were way too repetitive, and very slow paced.
I found the battles with the dragon really, really boring, and really slow paced.
All you'd do is walk into him, walk away, wait 2 seconds, walk up to him again, repeat.
And you had to do it 3 times with no variation whatsoever. Made it feel even longer.

Having only arrow keys for controls was somewhat boring too,
I know some games are like that, but this one just didn't cut it for me.

My advice if you were to make something similar.
- add variation/difficulty in boss encounters/battles, or don't implement them at all.
- make the game a bit more of a challenge, I got all of the villagers with ease.
- make your game have a bit more to do (more moves/controls, more levels, longer, etc)

It looks and sounds good (music and drawings are good), but it needs a lot of polishing.