Reviews for Alphaland

[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.

[Kensaihindo]

Typical Art Game

Pixels: Check
No gameplay: Check
Random sentences: Check

Finished it, look like an art game parody. Everybody hop in the art game bandwagon ! Woo !

"Additional Code": really ? That take two people to make something like this ? Wow, I could make one of those game every hour.

[syswhocares]

i...

didnt really respond to it, thought it was stupid.

[rufnux]

so "deep"

Making an "art" game seems like a pretty easy way to get high scores. For example: I can just draw two circles, code it so they can never actually touch each other and say that the objective of the game is to make the circles connect. That way minimal effort was made making the game and because the circles represent life, and the fact that life is an endless struggle to make the ends meet, it get's considered as "deep", "thought provoking", and let's not forget "art".

I'm not saying this is a bad piece of work! What you've made works, but it's just that it is so shallow. This "deep art" technique you're using might work with people who have MAC's and think apple is the greatest thing since Jesus, but us normal people will see it for what it for what it is: Unfinished work.

[SkyeSlipstream]

Metaphors < Basic Gameplay and Narrative

Making an artistic game is good.

Making a fun game is better.