Jake the usa dragon... aye.
Reviews for "Dragon Heritage: Demo"
It's not a bad game, with some improvement it could turn out pretty great.
Playability is alright, but it's annoying for enemies to shoot at you off screen. Would prefer they at least stick their heads out before they open fire. The cartoony sprites and the photo realistic background really clash.
Still at the demo/alpha stage - not really a teaser as there feels like there is a lot of work to go.
Playablity: it is playable, but boring - hold down fire, fly up and down the screen, avoid the nekobots bullets - zzzzzzz. Lots wrong with the gameplay: nekobots should only start firing when fully on-screen; nekobots should only be destroyable when fully on-screen; nekobots should come in waves / fly in patterns - the waves can look disorganised - but they should always be the same - randomly generated waves should be reserved for small segments (like a bonus level, or the swarm); the nekobot swarm should have too many nekobots for you to kill them all - i.e. you can only blast a path though them, but anything else is suicide.
How the controls feel: the dragon lacks any weight - you push an arrow, the dragons moves in that direction without hinderance. Ideally the dragon should take a moment to reach peak velocity in any direction, and should take a moment to come to rest (i.e. drifts a little in the direction it was last travelling). Really it feels like I'm sliding the dragon around the screen, never letting go, as opposed to flying him.
Text speed: It is too hard to read the text and avoid bullets. I.e. the player shouldn't need to read text while playing the game. (Yes, you really, really need a voice actor).
Dialogue: It's too cheesy for the self-referential nature to be funny, and it lacks any air of authority for any of the dialogue to be taken seriously. Good voice acting won't fix this - better writing is needed first.
Story: Hard to take a story seriously if you're trying so hard to be funny. After reading the script, it is hard to be interested in the story because lots of tidbits of information are revealed, but nothing is given away, i.e. the only story we get is: young dragon meets older dragon, older dragon is gonna kill younger dragon at a later date. First goal should have been to get the player invested in the fate of the younger dragon.
Graphics: The simply drawn sprites on a photographic quality background has not really worked here. The background is lovely - maybe improve/alter the sprites?
Music: It's OK, but it gets old after a while. Hard to tell if it matches the style of the game (since there is so little game).
Sounds: RAWR!!
Consistency: Is the dragon flying? Looks like it. But the nekobots look like they are running... need to draw little jetpacks on their backs, or flames coming out their behinds, or give them wings.
Overall: Currently feels like a side scrolling shooter - an over-crowded genre: you will find it hard to do anything that hasn't been done before. Because of this, everything needs to be done better (plenty of great examples out there). Feels like the story wants to be the main driving force for this game - so the dialogue needs an upgrade to make the story work. Or maybe you've got some fantastic idea for your game tucked up your sleeves?!? Here's hoping.
um... did you just rip off a Jake lookalike from 'American dragon' cartoon?