I thought that the concept and story were both very interesting. It just moved too slowly to keep my interest. The way you have to keep running the boy back and forth along the same path grows repetitive and boring very quickly, and makes completing the game seem more of a chore than having fun. But three stars for the concept and story.
Reviews for "The Guardian"
Hi VOEC, I think you made an okay game, tho it feels more like an interactive story to me. The speed of the game (or more - the lack of it) forced me to think about the storyline. So my focus wasn't on getting to the giant anymore. This was even more so the case when I was playing the giant itself - the game grinded so slow that I kept thinking about the storyline.
But to me the storyline was way, way too thin to fill up the slow gamepace. A kid feels different, doesn't have a lot of friends, finds some giant, the kids get thrown out because he leaves the village a lot, the kid gets killed and now the giant is angry because he lost his friend and kills everyone. Not very much a an original plot there but it still is a touchy story - i'm sure a lot of people feel different then the rest from time to time so they can identify themselves with the maincharacter (main pixel... :-p )
It's a very good thing you put in beautiful music! It filled up the gaps caused by (what I believe) a lack of storyline or gamepace. And that combination (music, slow speed, bit of a simple story) makes this game feel more like a poem or some piece of art then a 'real' game. I mean (to be blunt, no offence whatsoever intented) - the only thing your character does is run to the giant a couple of times and then you smash the village (or peacefully walk by). So to me, the focus didn't lay on what I did as a player, it's what I read, hear and saw happening that intrigued me a bit. Much like I would look at a piece of art.
I find it hard to rate this game because your intent with this game is unclear to me. A straigtforward action game is easy to rate. The more things I get to kill/destroy with fancy graphic and smooth gameplay, the better the action game (humor and anime-boobs are bonus). But with your game, I don't see any point of reference to rate your game (or work of art) on. A bit more of a description about the game could help so I would get more of a feeling what I should expect.
This game reminds me a lot about the game "The Company of Myself (by FreeAsANerd). That game also had a dramatic storyline but had more storyline, better graphics (but the black/white one also has it charms!) and more fun in the gameplay. Also it was a lot faster. The thing was - your game was so slow that it made me think during the game and in The Company of Myself I did the thinking-part at the end, which gave me more of a feeling of satisfaction about completing the game. The thinking-thing felt like some sort of reward to me because it gave me a new insight about the main character in the end. That doesn't apply to your game tho and that might have given the game (or art!) more depth.
Thanks for making this and good luck with your Japanese writing :-). Do with this feedback what you want - it's your right to discard it as you wish.
Not a bad idea overall, but as a game this was rather poorly executed. More directly to the point, the controls were just plain bad. Movement as a pixel person was hampered by the need to make an overabundance of very annoying boomerang jumps, leaping backward and then rebounding to climb many objects. Similarly frustrating was the overly-dramatic and pathetically slow walking mechanic for the giant. Improvements in these two areas could have really helped the flow of what is ultimately a ponderously slow-paced game. On the plus side, it's almost blessedly short.
The story isn't bad per se, but it is terribly cliché, and the whole thing felt like it had been weirdly inspired by Shadow of the Colossus--including some of the landscape elements. It's a classic story idea, but the dialogue was trite, riddled with grammatical errors, and generally kind of dull and lifeless. Case in point: it's been done, and done better. Nevertheless, I appreciate the idea for what it is, and once again the execution is what ends up leaving so much to be desired.
The music was...actually pretty good. In fact, the music was kind of the best part. It was well integrated, and seemed to go along pretty well with whatever was happening at the moment. There were no sound effects, and that seemed to work pretty well, simply allowing the music to come and go without interruption.
In conclusion, although I really wanted to like this more, I just couldn't bring myself to honestly rate it higher than three stars. It is a good attempt at an artistic story/game, and an average score of around three stars is certainly by no means a bad thing for a submission like this. It was interesting enough to see through to its conclusion. Once. The desire to earn that second medal is overshadowed by my complete lack of interest in playing through this entire game again, and that's because there won't be anything new to see or do. Much improvement would be necessary in order to make this a good game, but that doesn't mean that the experience was an entirely negative one.
I was casually approaching the village and then.... it froze
Art:
In my opinion, the art is aesthetically pleasing and does a good job of conveying the ambience of the story. It was also a nice experience to play a pixel game, without being blinded with bright neon-colours, or the classic 'black and white.'
Music:
Like the art, I thought that it suited the story very well, and there were enough variations to avoid it becoming annoying or repetitive.
Gameplay:
I did really not enjoy the gameplay, due to two reasons: The character is barely one pixel, making the control of him very frustating (despite the fluid movement) and hard to find when you do not know where to look or what to look after, and the overall gameplay was so repetitive that I considered to stop playing.
Story:
Well, the overall story was simple but good. The alienation, prejudice and fear of the unknown/unfamiliar is always a relevant and interesting subject. However, I failed to see the relevance of the main character's name. Also I found the lines between the "scenes" to vary in serioussness. In the beginning I thought them to be... meek? Or a bit self-conscious, as if you tried to back down from your story. But it became much better as the story progressed.
Rating: 3
If the gameplay had been more varied (instead of 'walk from point A to point B' on the same terrain) and the main-character a bit more detailed, then I would have rated this game 1, or 2, stars more. I apologise if any of this sounded harsh, but this is just my personal opinion of the game. Keep up the good work.