Reviews for Land of Enki

[alalo]

Thank you very much for the game. I like almost everything about it. There's ONE issue other than the slow slash: the game maybe too short. The problems about it are:

1. It's a very enjoyable game, so players would want to play a bit more, and the levels are too simple to have replay value;
2. I finished the game, but I'm far from reaching the resource gathering goals (have all swords, all health updates, 999 kupons). Because of nº 1, I don't feel like replaying until I reach those objectives, and because the kupons are painful to gather.

Maybe nº 2 happens because of an unbalanced difficulty progression? I don't know, but I defeated the final boss with the the second sword. Now I have the magical sword and less than 100 kupons to buy the third sword. That was kind of a broken aspect, imo, because final players may not guess the best way to beat the game in as less runs as possible.

Anyway. Congrats for the great work and thanks for sharing here :) It was very fun!

TheEnkian responds:

As far as the game goes, it can easily enough be finished in one sitting. If there is a second one, which is still a hypothetical, I'd like to double the level count and have a few longer ones in there. Maybe make five zones out of it for some nice level style variation. Give people a reason to play the game a couple of times rather than playing it once, beating it and then forgetting about it.

Another idea that I like the sound of is having maybe two exits to some levels so that you could take different paths to the end of the game. Maybe one path doesn't lead to the final level, but to a new weapon rather than having to save up a lot of money for the shop?

People seem to like this game in spite of the commonly mentioned flaws so it'd be nice to expand on the concept and make it the best that it can be :)

Thanks very much for playing it and leaving this review!

[Pierfrank]

Nice game..maybe a thing that can be modified is the retard to hit but is a good game

TheEnkian responds:

People do indeed seem to agree that the speed of the slash is a little slow.

[chaosbot]

A perfectly fine 8-bit platformer. Nothing specifically unique - but sometimes a little bit of solid platforming is perfectly fine! Music is great!!

Story is a little meh - and the use of text is a poor way of delivering story in an 8-bit game. Some cutscenes might flesh out the story a little - I only realised Kon was cursed when I reached the end of the game (clearly wasn't paying attention on the opening text - it is a little "yada yada yada").

Surprised anyone had problems with the controls. For the record, I had no problems with the controls. Initially a little flustered that I couldn't swing my sword while jumping - but got over it. Jumping between vines was a little tricky - but when was it not?

Having to go back to levels to grind to get more kupons to buy stuff at Sheepadeep's is annoying - what did I miss some kupons? I know I didn't spend any on hearts or bombs or purples - you can collect all these things in-game (well purples only if you're grinding...). I know many of the old games do this to increase replay value - but maybe modern retro games can get over this?? If you don't miss any kupons and don't spend kupons on other items - then its like a little reward to be able to immediately afford that shiny new sword!!

Hint to those who haven't played yet: once you get sword number 2 of 4, do the Pigasaurus level until you have 999 kupons (make sure you destroy all the grass too - you get about 50 kupons per level). This way you shouldn't have to replay too many more levels.

And once you realise there are hidden areas, they are really obvious... I suppose you didn't want them to be too hard to find? I accidentally found the one with the purple kupon - then when "hah!" I know where another one is!

TheEnkian responds:

The controls are a common complain, but I personally never found them awkward. Everybody likes to play things a little differently though so having it suit the majority would be for the best.

Yeah, maybe giving some text at the start wasn't the greatest idea. An NPC similar to how Nayra is handled at the end (perhaps the King himself?) could have handled it so it felt more like a dialogue than a wall of text.

It was definitely a mistake having prices so high and a lot of the kupons in chests not being high enough values. The vast majority of people seem to be earning the final sword before they get the third! The last one is more for having a bit of fun with, it lets you decimate the bosses in only a couple of hits, but we could have made a bonus level once the player beats the game that has all of the bosses in succession without a chance to heal or something. Just an idea though.

The purple kupon positioning was an intentional clue in itself. Once the happyrocks fall into the pit, I expected the temptation to bomb them to be too much, haha. The rest is all up the player to work out for themselves, they'd be trickier to find by accident :P

[Rhonanthor]

Beautiful homage to Zelda II, my favourite zelda game of all times. I think putting some villages, spells or some other things can be mentioned. I plainly loved your difficulty setting, very well done on that. But as you may know, this game is a tad bit bland in its current state. But I can see a masterfully done sequel in this game. Keep up the good work.

TheEnkian responds:

Thanks a lot, those are some really awesome things to hear! The more that people say that they'd like a sequel, the more tempting it gets to make one. Having a non-hostile village, more secrets, NPCs and different abilities would be a must. Probably twice as many levels too as well as some longer ones and perhaps multiple paths to reach the end.

[jumbijumbi]

Totally unplayable for me with those key layouts. Horrible! Enable user defined keys! Please!

TheEnkian responds:

What key layout do you think would be good. Let me know in a PM if you don't mind. The more feedback, the better :)