games like this are one of the reasons i still fuck around on this site. it was engaging, intuitive, FUN, upgradable, just well done. plus, if wasn't some shitty demo crap like more and more interesting concepts are. i get people want and should get reimbursed for their time, but wasn't the reason for making a game or movie or whatever a labor of love? there's balance there somewhere....anyway, thanks for reading my blog. i still got no medals. good job.
Reviews for "DARK SWORD: The Light of Ainn"
I still can't wait for this to come out on Steam. It's still an amazing game that fires the imagination. EVEN THOUGH THE BETRAYER BLADE LEFT ME DEAF AS A FRIGGING POST!!!
You might want to fix the sound for sword wielding evil Toucan Sam, or at least post a disclaiming about the dangers of playing this with headphones. Still an awesome game.
Amazing game, I remembered playing the original a couple months back and was amazed by how much it was expanded. I'm looking forwards to the Steam release. There are a couple changes I'd like to see: the first is having the inventory showing the amount of items you have, the current setup makes it so that when you run out of an item you lose access to it's flavor text; the second is having a description of what the spells do.
Well, here’s some feedback and possible bugs/things that could be fixed:
- When you grab the two collectibles from the beginning of the game, the shadows underneath them remain.
- Why does the game sometimes take you to the upgrade area whenever you collect stuff? Just leave the player where they are. The only except would be the dungeon.
- I managed to glitch past a section of the wall with no way to get back (it was to the right of the necromancer area where the book was, away from the enemies).
- You added more collectibles yet you don’t actually tell the player what they do (the descriptions in the menu don’t always help), and a giant picture of them will appear on screen, blocking the screen. Why not just have some text in the corner tell you “you picked up…” with a small picture maybe?
- Why can’t I skip the opening cutscene?
- What happened to the sword bosses music? There was a horrible bass-y overlay. I had to turn off the sound completely because just lowering it wasn’t enough.
- You have regular enemies scattered throughout the game. Why? They aren’t a real danger and killing them does nothing. I can dash passed them. Having them appear in boss fights is interesting though.
- Why did you have to add bonfires for saving? Why not save before fighting the boss? You can still have bonfires if you want, just make it so the game saves at a boss room and you appear outside a boss room if you lose.
- Once the boss is defeated, make it so all the enemies they summoned die as well. Otherwise, the player might just be killed.
- Why does the red flash indicting you’ve been hit appear during the tutorial of the game?
- On the left side entrance (the area that’s covered in blood), just as it switches to a regular floor, it still makes the squishing noises/
- Should the music that plays when you’re near the girl continue to play while in the common area? Because it continued to play.
- Maybe make it so common enemies will stop pursuing you when entering miniboss rooms.
- Upon switching to the hammer, you need to press the right mouse button before it will appear and work (I switch to the hammer and the claws were showing until I did this. Before equipping the hammer, I had the sword equipped, but, in the past, I had equipped the claws)
- A piece of the castle wall isn’t appearing properly on the right side of the map (to the left of the pile of rumble you can hit)
- Maybe make it so if you stop using the healing spell, the sound for it cuts off.
- No choice to change difficulty (that’ll come into play down below)
- Why does the timer have a “:” on the end?
- I thought the whole thing with the “heart of the corrupted core” was to take out it’s minions, but while you’re doing that, it gets stronger or if you take too long, it will wake up. Now it wakes up as soon as you attack it so you can just go after the minions first. You could have had it where it slowly gains a second health bar or something. Speaking on this matter, my “partner” woke up the heart when I didn’t want it to; not sure much can be done about that though.
- After beating the “heart of the corrupted core”, it showed the statue, but it didn’t break; it screen just stayed on it (the game wasn’t froze because I used the “2” spell).
I’m sorry, but every time you’ve updated the game, something always seems to be broken or just off in general and it’s usually pretty obvious. It’s important that you play your own game extensively before release to catch this stuff, otherwise it just makes you look bad and upsets the players. Either that, or get way more beta testers.
Personally, I think you’re making this too complicated in a way. The first version of the game was simple; you just fight bosses. It was great! Further updates added more bosses, which was good, and changes to combat (I was a bit non-plussed about that, but it made things interesting), then you started adding exploration, upgrades, a bunch of lore (a bit of lore wouldn’t be bad, but the lore you included comes off as meaningless as it just feels like generic confusing fantasy writing. The gameplay isn't influenced by it; knowing it doesn't change anything, reveal any secrets, change our interaction with the surrounds, etc. Less is more when it comes to writing. You want just enough to get the player to fantasize about the meaning. As it stands, it just doesn’t feel interesting because, me personally, I just want to get to the fights). It feels like you went from emulating Shadow of the Colossus to Dark Souls and now you’re stuck in-between them and you’re burying your game underneath stuff that doesn’t need to be there (weapons that most people won’t use, lore people won’t read, small enemies that are just distractions when not fighting bosses, extra graphics that might look nice, but add nothing to the game, etc.).
The upgrade system is killing the difficulty. I upgraded the standard gun to max and I started tearing through the bosses easily, sometimes in less than a minute (granted, I’ve fought some of them in previous versions so I knew generally what to expect, but it has been awhile). Then I upgraded the sword completely, I killed the boss in the upper right corner on the first try and that one was always difficult, even when I knew what I was doing. Another thing, when I came across an actual tough boss, like the witch queen, I thought “I’ll come back later after I’ve upgraded more”. It discourages players from taking on challenges. Another personal thing, some of bosses are far too easy since you included the healing function because, if you’re patient enough, you can just hit and run away from them until they die (my biggest concerns were stray bullets that I didn’t see coming). Maybe the enemies could do with being more aggressive, or a smaller area. Now, I get this is just my experience; others might be saying “it’s too hard” and the truth is you’re never going to please both crowds. The question is which crowd do you want to please? Keep in mind, a person who finds the game hard can become better at the game if they play it longer while, if the game’s too easy, skilled players will find it boring and will stop playing and won’t talk about it. It'll be a glorified art gallery.
I think it’s also important that you keep in mind the perspective. You can have so much happening on screen that attacks and special effects overlap (even the enemy can block sight of the attacks) and players can miss this, end up getting hit, and wonder “why did that happen?” because we’re looking down on the action, we’re not actually close up to it. I'd say keep this in mind when including special effects.
While the graphics are good, they can blend together at times due to the limited color palette. My beef the graphics is that I can't interact with the environment much at all; you put all this work into it (and I'm astounded by the effort and detail) and it's just a backdrop; it’s like having a tray of desserts in front of you and told not to eat them. And the environment only influences gameplay minimally. You can hide behind objects and some objects can be destroyed, but there's no environmental dangers, no way for you or the enemies to use the environment their advantage, like shooting through fire to light your bullets on fire. Or cold weather slowing you down. It just doesn't feel like a living breathing world.
I’m being negative, but you have done good in the game and in the previous version (otherwise. I wouldn't have spent so long writing this review). The way you hid the key (new hiding spot) was clever, some of the bosses really do present a challenge, and, I enjoy the combat. The music is great and the graphics are good.
I'm sorry to say I've beaten about six main bosses and I’m just bored now (I stopped after the game got stuck on the heart statue not breaking. You put so much area in-between the bosses that it can feel like a slog sometimes. This kind of thing worked for Shadow of the Colossus because it built anticipation and there was generally nice scenery and you could look for small upgrades. Your game, despite having well put together scenery is pixelated and the upgrades are large and require that you return to the main hub to upgrade (same with changing the weapon). Please take my review with a grain of salt as I’m just one voice here.
Great game! I agree with user OWD5238 that, after completing the game, it would be great if you didn't have to start all over if you wanted to explore other areas. This wouldn't necessarily mean changing the fact that the ending happens immediately after you kill the final boss, as instead you could set it up so that, the save for the player is right before they enter the "no going back" point. That way, after they complete the game, they can just go to the menu and hit "continue" and be back to before they finished the game and be able to explore the area more.
This would also make it easier for people to see the secret ending and the normal ending, as they would be able to get one ending and then try to get the other ending with the same "levels" they had before.