Oh wow you used your sketches for setting up scenes marvellous hats off
Reviews for "Black and White Escape"
The artwork was awful and the puzzles were pretty simple. Not much here.
Interesting game... it's just a bit complicated (I don't know what I have to do with the Knife) but it's funny.
The atmosphere/BGM is surreal and disturbing, great job on that.
However, I can't tell which is which with the drawings. They seem to look like scrawls from a practice file or a sketchbook... I cannot tell if it's a torture chamber (what with the humanoid plastered onto the wall like that) or a rec room, what with the PC in there.
Plus the fact that I cannot tell which is the foreground and which is the background from these scrawls, because nearly EVERYTHING in it is white, it's disconcerting. A monochrome (black/grey/white) atmosphere could've been done with pencil drawings, but I see none of this! -- the monochrome atmosphere would've made the distinction between the foreground and the background better.
And besides, just because something is hand-drawn doesn't mean it has to be inanimate. Classic example is Snow White (yes, the Disney film) -- EVERY SINGLE FRAME WAS HAND-DRAWN. Now the reason why I'm bringing this up is because the game itself could benefit from some animated touches. The bubbles, for instance. Or even the floating monsters, or the electrical wires, or even the computer screen. While this won't affect playability, it'll have an impact on players' minds and make it stand out as a great game.
What's even more annoying is that there are some items that look like things I can interact with, but turn out to be just things in the background. If anything, the playability reminds me of an NES game produced by Color Dreams....... which should say a lot.
The fundamentals of game design are that you 1) have clearly defined lines, 2) are able to tell which is the foreground and/or the background, 3) are able to tell which things can be interacted with and which things are not. Maybe rule 1 can be bent a bit if you're seriously going for sketchbook-esque graphics, but rules 2 and 3 have been so badly broken.
Verdict: has a LOT of potential but is left really wanting.
1.5/5.