Reviews for Alphaland

[AvesAkiari]

Indie mode: ON

Well, you really didnt introduce anything new in this game. collect powerups, jump around and such.
oh yeah- and the cryptic and alleged "deep" and "meaningful" text scattered about the screen. Yeah. havent seen that one before.
If you want to make an emotionally touching game, thats fine. But cut the bullshit, and give your audience an actual message you know?

like, what emotion are you even trying to convey? you probably know about as much as I do when it comes to that. and I dont have any idea at all.

JonasKyratzes responds:

As far as I'm concerned, it's precisely about what it says it is about - what goes on inside an unfinished game. To me the plot seems rather straightforward, really. It's fully within your rights not to like it, but the text isn't just random pretentiousness (because I don't really like that sort of thing myself).

[Poplolz]

Didnt like it :(

the graphics were bad and i was expecting some twist where something happens. if there is a twist then sorry but it comes too late. i found it boring

[darkestnightmareEX]

dude... why?

uuuuhhhhm.... i got stuck, and then ran around for twenty minutes wondering why i'm still playing this.

[SwashieB]

mehhh

What can you say, it's one of those unexplained art games. Only this one is not creative and not very deep, either. Here's the premise: You're a blue dot wandering around trying to find the button that opens the door to the next area. This game should probably be titled "Navigate This Mess" because that's what you do. Eventually you learn you can jump high and eat clouds and stuff. There's all these showing variables and pretentious lines like "Who am I?" Finally you learn that the enemies are not enemies they're actually bugs in the program (I may have used my imagination to make the game more fun) so you eat all the bugs and leave the bad game. I thought maaaaaaaaybe I wasn't going to be looking at giant pixels the whole time and stuff like this has been done before (ever hear of ZZT? google it). I do feel like I wasted a little time, both on the game and this really long review.

JonasKyratzes responds:

Honestly - it's not that I can't deal with negative reviews, but why is "What am I?" a pretentious line? The game's plot/concept is pretty straightforward, and the question is there because that's what the game is about. It's your right to hate the game, there's certainly enough games in the world that annoy me, but I honestly can't see lines like that as pretentious when they are intimately tied to the story the game is presenting. Assuming that because something is an "art game" (a term I've never liked, because I believe that all games are art) instantly means that it's "pretentious" and that its writing consists of nothing but obscure pseudo-philosophical stuff meant to impress is... well, it's assuming a bit much.

I understand that it's easy to get pissed off. It's certainly true that in many artforms there are people who will throw together some nonsense and pretend it's earth-shakingly deep philosophy. But not everything that is minimalistic or that attempts to have meaning must therefore subscribe to such a silly idea of art, and not everything that appears cryptic at first is hollow pretentiousness.

Alphaland tells a very simple story. I honestly believe that it's anyone's right to hate its graphical style, its gameplay and its storytelling. But the kind of thinking that simply classifies something according to a perceived genre (indie game, art game, whatever) and then dismisses it on that basis is more destructive than helpful.

[modestdecemberist]

oh so artsy

just as "thought provoking" as every other art game.