Addictive game! Beautiful graphics, great controls, and plays smoothly on my heap-o-junk PC...but the music is awful and really irritated me. I love DnB, but having to listen to short loops over and over :/
Reviews for "DN8:Pulse"
Squize responds:
I think the music is either love it or hate it I'm afraid. I'm glad it played well on your machine though, that's always been the concern with doing a stage3D game. Cheers.
Very nice. But it needs more level and the upgrades isn't enough.
Squize responds:
It's just a short little game mate and we have to work within a budget so we have to draw a line somewhere. Thanks for playing, glad you liked it.
It's nice that you made a sequel... but it's more a graphical upgrade than anything else...
For starting, the perks... some are useless, and some usefull... but maybe not as perks but as evolutions of the ship.
- 5 lives: certainly useless, or if the player isn't good but he will go into the defensive way for finishing the game. When you know how to graze, it become useless.
- Double XP: Good perk, but maybe for later in the ranks, when it become harder to level up in rank. I've been fast rank 20 in 1 complete run.
- Double graze: Well, useless (or usefull) if you know how to graze, usefull (or useless) when it's hard. (depends of the player...)
- Double shield: Useless if you don't take the shield...
- Rear diagonal & Homing missiles: Shouldn't be perks... maybe they should be in the evolutions.
Then come the evolving tree... nothing new to the first DN8. And that's a bad point for people like me who played the first one and maybe wanted something new:
- There's, again, the Super Redrum... why don't we got other ultimate depending of the tree line? Like a "Slow-mo mode", "Triple Fire", "Atomic Explosion" or anything else...
- Maybe another treeline like "Utilitary", giving defensive & offensive power at the same time, and there goes the Homing Missile and Rear diagonal, where we can adds Tail Drones firing lasers front/side/back, Pulsating shield that send back bullets for 1.5 second when touched but less charge that the original shield (2 maximum)... only exemples, but it's certainly possible to have more evolutions
- Offensive tree can be defensive and defensive can be really offensive... I'm speaking about the defensive drones and the side/rear drones. Maybe the defensive drones should be in the defensive tree (letting the player having a ship really hard to touch) and the side/rear drones in the offensive tree (more bullets fired -> more destruction).
The challenges... has more challenges, but they're a lot faster to fill compared to the first DN8. The only one not filled yet when tipping this message is the "Combo King" challenge. (but I gonna have it fast too...)
The levels, at the start, are nearly like the first DN8... maybe have an all new serie of levels? (or randomly generated levels... it can be great and make every new game unique)
Well... I think that's al I have in mind. Maybe a next game with all this could be really nice. (it can be risky if the players prefer having the same old tech-tree...)
Also add an "old-school" option... for having the same graphism of the first one. It would be nice. ^^ (Not that I hate the new graphism... but I prefered the old ones...)
Squize responds:
Excellent review, thank you.
Yep, being perfectly honest it was a way to learn the new 3D tech in Flash rather than a full blown sequel. We had no clue what the outcome would be regards compatibility etc. ( Turns out 80% or so of players can actually play it properly ), and we really couldn't afford spending too much time on a game using brand new tech with no knowledge how it would be received.
As it turns out, it was difficult to sell and it's not spread well, so I think it took about 8 weeks to do and that's with re-using a lot from DN8 ( Very little code, but things like the level tree / power-ups etc. ) so I think we took the right decision. If we'd have done a full blown DN8 II and it went like it has then I'd have lost even more money on the game.
So yeah, we were a "Little" bit cheeky with this one as we had to balance out the risk of using stage3D, and I'm glad we did to be honest.
Maybe next year when stage3D games are more common and if we've got enough ideas we could do a proper sequel, but there's nothing planned right now.
Thanks again for the review.
This is pretty good! Yeah, the bgm did get pretty annoying at times. It's in the right genre and sounds spacey, but it's still confused and bloopy and bleepy, y'know? Redundant. Good power-ups, they really made the game easier (though I know a lot of people in this genre like bleeding-hellish-painful-hard-extreme-whatever difficulty, so I could see how a lot might say it's too easy) and I never had a problem with one-shotting a boss or anything but I didn't play through much more than the basics. Nice 3D, too!
I wouldn't recommend it as a timeless go-to game to my buddies, but I'd recommend it for a nice one-time or two-times game. I like it, it's nice and I can appreciate the work put into it. :)
Squize responds:
Thanks :) To be honest it is what it is, a 15 min shooter, there's no real depth to it, sometimes you just want to switch off and shoot things, and hopefully this is what this is.
Compared to the original, which I very much liked, its really nice to see a refurbished version.
The new graphics improve the game a huge deal, the only negative thing to say is, the bullets were easier to spot and avoid due to their sharp edge in the original version.
What I really like more in the first version, was the music and sound effects.
That gritty drum and bass got me going and the old retro sound effects fitted nicely.