The gameplay was fun, the environment was neat, the music was nice, but the climax was very bad in my opinion...it was very anticlimactic... Really.. I had all the accomplishments and ran 1108m before giving up. [Spoilerish] The ending wasn't even pictured as being fearless it ended same as exactly every other run where you look terrified except this time there's a poof and happily ever after. I expected the girl to show some bravery and stand up against her nightmare(as suggested in the author comments), not her nightmare just disappearing randomly after getting all of the achievements. I even thought a game like this would have an even better ending if you avoiding killing any animals along the way, but that seemed impractical with how some of them are placed and gave up on it when there was a wolf standing right under the skulls in that giant fire way. I found it strange that in order to defeat death you have to kill animals to do so.
I feel the ending would have been better if the sun just slowly started coming up and clearing the fog as you ran to encourage players to try harder as theyre getting closer to winning.
The meaning in this game feels like "Give up and you win." as the run after the 500m is completely doable but doing them results in... nothing and i didn't seem to see any indication that i finished. OR another end i suggest is like a secret end where if you run 1000m with complete achievements you will run into a dead end, but the girl will turn around and start chasing the nightmare with her sword cause... you know.. she isn't scared now or something.
Overall its really good, but i just didn't like the end.
Reviews for "Fear Less!"
Wow, this game is really intriguing.
I really like the vibe of it all. Kind of a Little Nemo thing going on with the dream situation and such.
Even the graphics are reminiscent of the old NES title.
Loving it, keep up the awesome work!
usum! can't stup playing it >:D
Nice. Graphics were very basic, but that didn't take away from game play. Controls weren't as smooth as I might like, but they were more a matter of getting used to. The upgrade pace seemed well balenced, and enemies were progressively more difficult without a sharp curve. Rather, the foes remained simple, their placement got more difficult. The music I enjoyed. SImple, but very suited to the game. The ending was a bit of a puzzle, but not too tough, and in all enjoyable. In all, a fun game, though I don't think there will be a great deal of replay value having seen the ending now.
It took me eleven deaths and a record of 1693 metres until I made it... I actually screamed out loud.
But onwards to the actual review. I was positivly surprised how long it was possible to survive with minimum upgrades. Many other games of this kind ramp up the diffilcutly so quickly that it takes several minutes of grinding to actually make a distance, whereas here it was mostly dependant on your skill.
On the first hundred metres or so.
After that there were obstachles that could not in any way be beaten if you did not have the sufficient jump ugrade, and I personally think that it should at least be theoretically possible to... well in this case not BEAT the game on the first try, but at least go as far as your skill lets you.
The way the enemies had to be beaten was something I don´t believe to have seen in a game like this before and was at some points pretty challenging. I had a bit of a problem with the way obstacles worked. For once with the triple jump, it could happen that there was no sensible place to land once you made your first jump but maybe that´s just bad timing from me. Another point is that whilst getting hit will make you lose control for a second and make you go flashy, it doesn´t actually give you a moment of invincibility. Very often I found myself hitting an obstacle and then immideatly hitting the one after it as well, since I couldn´t dodge after being hit.
The grande point here is of course the ending, I presume that nobody who has not either finished the game, or is the author will read my comment to this point so I´ll allow myself to talk about it:
Everything the game gives to you, from skills, over information up to compliments, prefferably in the form being told to have defeated something powerful, having saved something important ect. Is important to the player because he earned it.
If I am trying very hard towards getting a specific reward, in this case the ending scene then I want the reward to be a direct consequence of my skills.
Winning by dying on purpose is just about the opposite of that.
Thanks for the in-depth review! The Fighting Back medal was the major reason we couldn't let you play the whole game without upgrading - I often get over 150m on my first play, and you need double that to unlock the medal. The game should generate 'fair' levels almost always, particularly when fully upgraded with triple jump. And yes, short invulnerability has been requested, but the distance highscores over 9000 make me think that hp recovery overcompensates for the multi trip-ups that can happen at higher distances.
The ending is a little strange, I know, but you did mention that you screamed out loud. And that is exactly the point! You have to master all of your abilities and defeat every medal challenge to win, but more importantly, you have to 'fear less'. When Death becomes a less of a fear and more of a frustrating nuisance, the recurring nightmares end and the girl can sleep. And from a more practical 'game' perspective, it also allows highscores to reach infinite distance and flawless time. =)
...WHAT, 9000!? (sorry, I had to do it...)