the game looks minimalistic, but the story is very interesting. I like games with good stories. And I like that you can choose if you want to use violence or not.
Reviews for "Lucas's Quest Backwards"
Good game. As N-Mario mentioned you can jump forever if you press jump on the frame when the guy is at its higest point (the frame before he falls down or some frame near that). You can probably fix that using a yspeed -10 when he starts to jump then yspeed+=something like 0.3 when he is jumping and y+=yspeed on enterframe.
**MILD SPOILER WARNING**....Okay, so I guess the moral of this story is "Time Travel to the future and murder all the stupid worthless self-centered buggers there". Honestly, I hated every single Human, Evolved Being, and Chovok. They were all godawfully horrible people, and I can only hope the survivors of that ending were wiped out by Time Paradoxes. Sorry, but I can only give you a 3.5, as while the game as a whole was fun, that ending was nothing but a repeated kick in the groin to the player, after the pure frustration of the witch's cave. There was no moral, no reason, no POINT to this story. Everyone was either rampantly xenophobic, or fatally self-centered. The only exception was the Boy, and even he was too underdeveloped to do anything. The story as a whole needs work. I hope this criticism is useful, though if it isn't, please tell me how I may improve it in future.
StormAlligator responds:
Sorry you didn't like the story. Stories don't always have a moral or a point, they don't always have likeable characters, or even a reason. Sometimes they're just stories about stuff happening to a bunch of people who aren't particularly likeable, good or bad.
What happens to Lucas is what happens to Lucas. It's not a punishment for the player, it's just the end of the story. You may not like the story, but the fact that you don't like it or that it isn't rewarding for the character you play doesn't mean it needs work. Stories shouldn't be read with expectations on how the ending should be.
I like the game and the story just 1 thing..
People like to make progress, when you're stuck at 1 point or die all the time it gets boring and/or frustrating. Overall good game.
"So the chovoks killed all the humans (they were very good at killing)."
This game is interesting.
Things I liked: the simplicity, the difficulty, the first decision dictating how difficult the first level was (not too much more, but it was thought provoking). I'm not sure why a lot of people complain about the witch level. I found it no harder than the other ones. If you're having trouble with it, straight down is your friend, and timing is important. A really complicated puzzle in the lower left corner can be negotiated with two jumps.
For future games, the lack of things to shoot in the past kind of made the thought provoking question at the beginning moot. Yes, in the first level shooting the Chovoks made the level much easier and fun, but after that, the gun is totally useless. I liked the decision, it made me think for a bit. What were going to be the consequences? I had recently played Ben Croshaw's Poacher, and the morality system is astounding in that game, so I was prepared for a much grander reveal than the one I got. A paragraph, a few lines different, and the fate of a character I really didn't like. And all for the sake of six enemies at the beginning who were as threatening as the clouds in the background of the genie level.
While I understand the difficulty of the Lundum Dare, I also know story development is important to a game like this, or else it becomes just a really annoyingly difficult platformer with no enemies and no sense of accomplishment. Too many questions arise by the story's conclusion, and no character is worth investing in because of lines that come across as arrogant and, more importantly, lack of character development. Lucas is portrayed as a naive idiot, but I don't know if that's because he's from the future, or if it's just his personality. I don't know much about Lucas at all, let alone any of the other characters. And that is the game's critical downfalls. A few people have complained about the ending, and whereas I found it alright, I can see room for improvement.
I enjoyed the thoughts of paradoxes, time travel, and the dichotomy between technology and magic, and I await future projects eagerly.