Reviews for Gyossait

[Morph94]

Excellent story, clunky gameplay

Gyossait has a suitably horrific plot line that draws you into the game instantly. I found myself scrambling to read each in-game message I came across, desperate to find some sort of sanity to the living hell that is the game's various levels.

However, I frequently experienced frustrations in the game's horrible design. I died a lot more often than I would have, due to simple jumping mistakes and glitches that pushed my character just a little bit too forward.

The 'weapon' you receive later in the game hurts more often than it helps. There are only a small amount of power-ups each level, meaning if you die too often (which was usually the case thanks to the controls) you just had to deal with it, and some puzzles would immediately become harder and damn near impossible without the 'weapon'.

The concept is wonderful, and the plot is fairly well conceived. The programming? Practically half-assed.

[Veragoot]

Jumping mechanics

Fix em.

[Galneda]

I REALLY want to give this a 10.

I read your news blog the explains a lot of the plot behind the game we're playing. It clears A LOT of things up, and it succeeds in making an interesting game even MORE interesting.

But without it, there's just a lot of confusing details. Without any explanation, we don't know who this decapitated being is descending to the earth, or why our shielded white warrior is doing what he's doing.

There doesn't necessarily need to be scrolling text exhibition to keep the player up to speed, but even a cinematic, visual opening cutscene to SHOW us all tastefully; show the love between Oyeatia and Gyossait, the presentation of the gift of man, the poisoning of the earth, the apocalyptic cleansing, the banishment, Oyeatia's motivation to undergo all of this pain over and over again...all of this could be shown without a word of dialogue, and it would immerse the player deeper into the story......or they'd just skip it, I dunno. The effort wouldn't go unnoticed, however.

But without the backstory, our hero just randomly collapses and weeps. Sometimes people attack us, and sometimes people don't. These green creatures... Are they aliens? Monsters? Living guns?

The other negative point I have with this game is his inability to do anything other than sort of steer while jumping. A lot of the problems with this could just be attributed to timing; if one is jumping up to a platform where there's an enemy, of course the logical solution is to wait for it to shoot, and then you move into place while there's an opening...but this problem is never more evident then when you're trying to get the Altruist medal.

For those who don't know, it's completing the game without killing anything with the gun.

Because we're reliant on defense, we have to maneuver around wind-blowers and vertical flying fairies with guns. SO MANY DEATHS could have been prevented if we could deploy the shield in midair. Waiting to plant on the ground and face them to throw our shields up sometimes takes too much time, and what's really cool for a gamer is mobility.

It's already empowering that we can leap into the air with the height of a superhero. It's already empowering that we can blast away enemies with a Spawn-like machine gun bloodlust...but all of that empowerment is detracted when the reality seeps in that we're actually really vulnerable. Sometimes I'll have my shield up and I die anyway. Sometimes I'll be jumping to avoid those sporadically moving crawly things and they kill me when I'm three body widths away from it in midair (confusing hitbox consistencies). I'm facing the wrong way when I land. I can't see below me, I'm getting blown into the sides of the non-sharp part of a spike pillar, oh shit! Water! MY SHIELD WAS UP WHEN YOU SHOT ME, I die, I die, I die, I die, I die, I die, I die.

It's a good thing that rebirth sequence looks and sounds pretty cool because sometimes we'll be seeing it a lot, but with this degree of trial and error, and some parts of the map essentially just having us run back and forth along a relatively small stage meant to look big, it leaves me wanting something much, much more.

The medals were wonderfully earned, and they'll be decorating the bottom of my profile for quite some time. Though there's only two endings, I enjoyed them both. Though there were one way tunnels, and big open spaces to traverse back and forth, the art was WONDERFUL. Even the sounds and soundtracks lended to this really cool atmosphere, that its inspired me to make some fan art.

I implore you to make a more complex sequel. This game is REALLY, REALLY COOL!

...But for a Halloween flash, I expected something a lot scarier. It was always on the verge of creepy for me...alllmost crossed that threshold a few times.

First time I dropped into that pit before entering the crucible of Uzaza? Didn't expect it. Was pretty neat.

When the flower girl was crushed and it silenced everything. The tension was intense...getting warmer...

The subliminal faces before the upside down black pyramid stage...COOLEST DETAIL...but I only wanted more.

GG. Voted 5!

[Awesomkia]

It was so awesome and the atmosphere really had me dissolved into the world of this game. I loved it, until i came up to that fucking damn wind part; I quit.

[GeKynele]

Splendid aesthetics, and atmosphere, however the controls are very much broken. The movement mechanics of this game are extremely floaty where even what should have been simple jumps became grueling tasks to keep my character on the platforms. This sort of movement worked well in some of the larger areas, but most of the game was spent in tight corridors. However in the larger areas there wasn't enough of the map shown to really be able to tell where you were going or if you were going to fall into oblivion.
I did enjoy the dual mechanics of choosing to either use the gun, and get there quicker, or use the shield and be more "Moral". The problem is that there was no penalty whatsoever for using the gun meaning the only reason not to use it was if you died too many times and ran out of guns. In reality you very much want to use the gun because it makes for less plat-forming so you don't have to deal with the annoying controls.
On a nit-picky note. It was sometime hard to tell which blocks you could jump on and which you couldn't. Example: there are certain squares blocks throughout the game, some silver some bronze some black, but you can only move through the black ones. On a similar note it was also hard to tell what was going to kill me and what wasn't. Most things didn't kill you, but all the flowers and normal humans (especially the ones with guns) looked like they should have but didn't.
All in all a good game, but not a great game. Scary, but wrestling with the controls breaks your immersion.