Reviews for Martin: Samantha's Blood

[kcho99]

I am completely conflicted about this game.

To start with the good, this game looks *great*. It's stylish, starts with a set of real video clips to set the mood, and it has an opening title sequence that is reminiscent of a minimalistic TV show title sequence. The house is detailed, and the way you can sort of lean side to side to look around gives it a very real feel to it. Clearly, someone took a great deal of time to make this game.

On the more grey side, the gameplay isn't very intuitive, deep or particularly interesting. You don't really interact with any of the lovely rooms you are presented with. Certainly, you aren't meant to look around for objects. If there is anything to do, you'll get a prompt in the form of a gear icon. The 'skill' parts are buggy and not especially fun, working against a timer. And the layout of the house, while well detailed, is difficult to navigate because the icons that allow you to navigate are very arbitrary. Sometimes, the icon you'd think would take you back actually takes you to a new room entirely. One icon seems to point up a set of stairs, but actually takes you DOWN a different set of stairs, which is especially confusing because you are then expected to click down to continue along them.

But the thing that really gets me is how fucking ugly the story is. I get that serial killers have some kind of cool mystique in modern culture, from Hannibal Lecter to Dexter, but this guy isn't some complex antihero with dark psychosis, this is a plain old murderer. He hates a woman a woman, thinks she's an ugly bitch and doesn't like how she dances, so he murders her and makes it look like an accident. An assassin wouldn't be so emotionally involved with his target, and a maniac wouldn't just kill someone and make it look like an accident. This is a guy who has emotional problems and no concept of when he's going too far. I didn't like playing as him, and I didn't like playing the game.

I wish you'd make something slightly more sympathetic, or at the very least, interesting. But whatever you do, it would be good if you put a little bit more effort into the gameplay elements. The visuals deserve it.

Ganderoleg responds:

Thank you for playing and thank you for the objective review.

You've hit the nail on the head, this is actually the first right-down-to-the-middle, 50/50 review.
The thing that is at the core of your disliking the game is actually the core of the game itself. You are right, protagonist of this game is not Hannibal Lecter, Dexter, Joker, Patrick Bateman or any other fantasy 'antihero' character. What I was going for is a more realistic type of killer, similar to Norman from Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) or Henry from Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). I didn't create him as a highly intelligent, weirdly funny, deadly but successful, trying-to-fit-in-with-the-moral-code guy :)

There are lots of different tastes, Taylor Swift, Slayer, Elvis Presley, Cher, Fantomas, Buddy Holly, Laibach... but your review was excellent. You didn't like playing as a main character and you were still objective in your reviewing.

There is a billion games where you can play a villain, or soldier, or assassin, and they all have some sort of moral/psychological/fantasy/historic justification. Here there is none. Protagonist is just a psychopath and that's all. It's not everyone's cup of tea but neither is Varg Vikernes Burzum :)

It's really important when people can set a side their own tastes and have an objective viewpoint and, in my opinion, this is such a review.

[KamenRiderStick]

Okay, so I've played the game, beaten it (with some help from a youtube video), and now I'm giving out the review.

I feel that this game is rather clunky, as in having to move around was difficult. Sometimes the direction keys are hard to see and sometimes you miss them altogether. It also doesn't help me that the camera moves when you position your mouse from one end of the screen to another.

The timer was difficult to deal with. Sometimes you have seconds to forcibly do something, and sometimes you have to know what to do in a split second.

You have some stuff in the inventory that's completely useless. Most flash games make it so that every item you use has a purpose, that they are used at least once somewhere.

Finally, I understand that this Martin guy is a serial killer, but I want to know why did he go after this girl. Was he supposed to be like a hitman and bump her off? Does he has some sort of sick fetish? I don't get this guy at all.

Your story is original like others have said, I don't recall a story like this for a point and click anywhere else, but I feel that the other factors have taken away some major points. Not trying to be a jerk here, I just feel that it could have been better.

Last thing I wish to point out: none of the medals are working. You and one other person have unlocked them, but no one (not even me) has them unlocked as well.

Still I give you an A for effort, and wish you luck in your future works.

Ganderoleg responds:

Thank you for playing and for the review.

I'm sorry you didn't like the game, it is a bit unrefined in a technical aspects. I am glad, however, that you didn't get the protagonist of the game, that would be a small sign of mental deviation :)

Protagonist is meant to be a classic psychopath, I wanted to portray a person with no other motive to victimize then his own deviant drives. He's not a hitman or killing to save someone else, he kills Samantha because he 'fixated' a random girl and attributed his own delusive obsessions on her. Without any cause.

Unfortunately the medals stopped working after my second update :( If I don't manage to solve the issue I will have to delete them and then re-create them later when I make additional tests.

I know that the inventory was a bit off but he actually didn't need anything else except the signal blocker, Tetrahedrane and a knife :) I could have made a four-item inventory but I thought that it would be more interesting to place few everyday things in his pockets, smokes, money, lighter, that seemed cool :)

[mattnav]

The game had a bunch of flaws.

The direction buttons were a bit too translucent. You can't really see them at the start of the game. And even after playing for a significant amount of time you still have difficulty. I got stuck for a bit because I missed a few rooms. And the reason why I missed the rooms was because I couldn't see the arrow pointing to it.

Of course the most obvious flaw was that some of the scenes were upside down. Little things like that, in my opinion, show how much a game developer cares about his consumer.

And the game really had no buildup to it. I think I might have understood how to play the game better if I knew what I had in my inventory... what they do... Etc etc.

All in all, I didn't like the game. But I do believe that there is potential. I'd like to see an improved version.

Ganderoleg responds:

Thanks for playing, I'm sorry you didn't like the game.
About the flipped scenes, it seems that Mozilla has changed something recently in it's openGL handling that caused few of the scenes to be flipped. Game worked/is working normal on Chrome and Opera and I just uploaded the non-openGL vesion of the game so the Mozilla problem is now also fixed.

I must admit that I had a version with more visible directional buttons but it made the game look too... colorful. The game was meant to be an old-school adventure, not really a 'Pixel Hunt' kind of a thing but close to that. I believe that modern games treat players like idiots, everything is marked, obvious, underlined, repeated at least 3 times during gameplay... I have respect for game players and I think that games should be less of a help-file and more of a get-in-with-all-you-got thing. Like in Commodore, Amiga and early PC era.

[Exedor]

I'm having some trouble playing the game.

While the picture shift effect is cool, it doesn't always work. On some images, it goes to a grey-black static when I get all the way to one side or the other. Some rooms didn't work at all, and went straight to static. Example: Yard>rear patio>bedroom>static room.

Also, it would make it easier to navigate if the movement arrows also told where you were going upon putting the cursor on them. Example: "Hallway", "Lower Main Stair", "Samantha's Room", etc. I came to the kitchen; it said there was a guard, but I couldn't figure out how to return to Sam's bedroom- probably due to multiple static rooms, but still. Those identifiers would help.

What's with the ads?! The screen stopped responding and after a moment, I noticed "Close Ad" in the upper corner. Once clicked, it said "Closing in 9..." and I had to wait. Twice, this happened. I'm ok with ads at the beginning of a game. I plan to make some games eventually and I understand an ad click helps all that happen. But to interrupt gameplay is unacceptable, as is multiple ads. If I wanted a commercial every 10, I'd be watching TV.

One suggestion; make a ffwd and a skip option for the opening. I skipped the whole thing and I don't know why I'm after this girl or who she is. I read fast and can go thru text quickly, but sometimes, gamers are short on time (as now) or patience, and just want to get to the game, and the nice, but slow, video parts seem unnecessarily long. It would be an improvement to be able to ffwd thru piece by piece, and have the option to skip all. That way, you can watch it all, or speed thru it all, or skip it if it a replay.

The game looks interesting, and I'll try again later. I hope there are some helpful tips and suggestions here, tho.

Ganderoleg responds:

Thank you for playing and for your review, it was very helpful.

It seems that I did overdone it with ads, I will cut down the number to one at the begging and one in-game. The reason for 'Close Ad' in the corner (without the ad) is because they don't seem to work on Mozilla, only Chrome and Opera browsers.

I am not sure why you are having problems with room animations, they functioned normally in all of my testings. Maybe it has something to do with your OS, I tested only on few of them :(

I know that intro movie is a bit long and slow but I wanted to introduce player to Martin in a more cinematic way then just informative. Actually you didn't miss anything crucial, the abstract of the whole intro is that you are a serial killer and that Samantha is a girl you followed for a while and decided to make her your next victim :)

The tips when mouse is over arrows is a good idea, I will try to implement that. However I will resolve the ads issue in the first following update.

*UPDATE: I reduced Ads to one at the start (while game is loading) and one in-game Ad in the room of no gameplay significance (right room from the kitchen).

[aalex05]

Too many ads.
Thats not the proper quality game to add there so many ads.

Ganderoleg responds:

ORIGINAL: Thank you for playing and for good score.
...but it seems you changed your score to zero for some reason so:
EDITED: Thank you for playing.

There are only two ads in the game, one before the loading screen and one in the gameplay none-relevant room.
I'm not sure what you mean by proper quality. If a game has coherent storyline, visually acceptable artwork and it's gameplay-functional then it's in the proper quality for two small ads :)