wow, 6 hours to get all those medals but it definitely was fun. The medal that gave me the most trouble was beat the game with no coins, it's really frustrating when you come across jumps that need either the double jump upgrade or coin jump and I also came across some 1 square gaps that were blocked by a coin and I had no choice but to restart. Oh, i also had an idea about that, since you are collecting zero coins and get the upgrade, the coin shooting upgrades should be deactivated when you have zero coins. One more thing, I had no idea how to activate stealth and had no idea how it worked.
Reviews for "PLEASE REMAIN CALM"
CTincknell responds:
Good job getting all the medals, and thanks a lot for playing. I attempted to balance the no coins medal by giving the player a free reroll, but you still do occasionally get screwed. Stealth makes enemies that chase you less aggressive and makes you immune to lazers.
As soon as I started the game, I noticed that it just FELT right. This game is absolutely flawless, at least to my tastes. It's so simplistic that everything works amazingly, and it escapes the downfalls of similar games by this aspect: With extremely rare exceptions, everything is your fault if something goes wrong, not impassable/unfair obstacles. Also of note is the enemies, which all are well balanced, yet provide an excellent challenge. The simplicity goes farther with the aspect of coins, as this one item acts as a weapon, double jump, cash for buying upgrades, and even very difficult obstacles when trying to not get any. The randomly generated stages all feel fantastic, but I started to notice around level 6 it became nigh impossible to avoid coins without greatly enhanced mobility (e.g. wall jumps, high jumps, double jump, etc.), and sometimes I started the very first stage and could not escape the spawn area at all because the walls were positioned too high. Very rarely does the latter one happen, and that can be remedied by respawning, but the first issue really ruins runs where getting no coins is the goal. That truly is the only issue I have with the game, as everything else is fantastic. I've spent at least 4 hours playing the game so far, and it still hasn't really gotten stale, thanks to it's quality and challenges (especially the no-coins achievement). Truly, truly an amazing game.
CTincknell responds:
Wow thanks a lot! I'm glad you liked it. The no coins challenge was hard to balance, I hope it didn't end up being too difficult. Thanks for the thoughtful review.
An extremely competently made and generally fun roguelike platformer. The idea is solid and straightforward, and the game is well presented with charming retro graphics, sounds, and physics that have no visible issues. Have to give serious kudos on the random stage generation too. It comes out with some really nice maps. Really can't argue with this game at all. I dare say it's a game I'd pay real money for. I'd love to see this game get expanded, maybe even an offline release.
You really proved with this that flash gaming isn't losing it's share of great, free games.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to try jumping with coins, your game gave me bad ideas. :V
CTincknell responds:
Thanks a lot! I really tried to make it into a game, and not just a Flash game, so I'm glad you feel that way. The feedback has been very positive so I have been considering expanding it into a non-web based game. We'll see where that goes.
I actually ended up really liking this. I think "10 enemies" refers to ten different enemies. I really appreciate all the hard work put into making this. It seems like there was a lot of detail. While not too colorful, still very good. I was afraid you'd have to collect all the coins to advance. I'm glad you don't.
I also like how your health can be replenished level after level. It's still pretty difficult. I had no idea slime could kill you in a game like this. It kind of reminds me of something like "Blue Ball Machine" with how small everything looks. That's a good way to show off detail.
CTincknell responds:
Thanks! I changed the description to say "10 distinct enemies" now :P
I tried to make it easy to die if you make a bunch of mistakes, but easy to recover from one or two mistakes. Hopefully the difficulty feels balanced.
I can definitely see the Binding of Isaac influence here. The one-resource system makes it easy to manage what with the coins and everything. It also keeps people interested in the coins regardless of their strategy, whether they prefer using coins for jumping or fighting. The powerups are few, simple, but powerful, making it very easy to keep track of what does what, a pitfall that annoyed me a lot when playing Binding of Isaac (you needed a Wiki of all of the items, honestly). The random item in the shop seemed a little gimmicky to me, since the game itself is so short.
Anyway this is a really great roguelike. Nice and short, much more casual than others. Like all roguelikes there are a shitton of cheap deaths, and that took away from the experience for me. The graphics could have also used a boost and maybe some different music as well.
Also, I think something could be done to make the final boss a little more fair. I've lost to it maybe eight times now, half of them due to grunt enemies. It's also way too easy to fall into him. Instant death is far too harsh of a penalty. No other game expects a player to cope with that kind of insanity.