It's was annoying to get past the levels using your trick 3 times. Otherwise, an enjoyable game.
Reviews for "D-Pression"
LucidShadowDreamer responds:
Yes, I can undertand that. Part of the puzzels are meant to demand motoric skills as well, though. If you've mastered what you call 'tricks', it's really easy, so I'm still thinking people have a hard time doing it right :p
Thanks for the review!
Get rid of the annoying square levels, don't use that glitchy mechanic in any other levels, and include more varied levels and this would have been a much better game. Such precision as those require should never be required in any game. I'm surprised this has as high a rating as it does, including those. I consider those levels a troll to the player and a cheap gimmick. It's not a game I would consider replaying.
There are "legit" and "cheap" ways to make a game hard. This is a "cheap" way. It falls in the lines of pixel-perfection required, arcane knowledge required, etc... Don't do that to your players. If you want to make a hard game, make it "legit" hard.
I guess my advice would be go ahead and leave it as-is since you already did it and people have already toiled through it, but don't ever do anything like that again on any future games. It's bad design and puts people off from playing your games.
LucidShadowDreamer responds:
Well, I think it's a little late to get rid of those specific levels, but I certainly would have liked to include more varied levels! But you need to realize that I was under a lot of time pressure, since I needed to reach the deadline XD
I'll probably still update this game at points.
"Such precision as those require should never be required in any game"
=> They actually don't really require that much precision if you really know what to do though...
"a cheap gimmick"
=> Speaking of varieties in levels, those two you mentioned were primarily meant just for that. Instead of relying on normal puzzle solving, you need to use different game mechanics to slove them :)
"I'm surprised this has as high a rating as it does"
=> That's okay too! From what I've read, it seems like most of the high scores are due to the athmosphere, although some like the level designs too! I think you might be focusing too much of the entire game on only those levels, while ignoring other aspects :) Which is okay of course; everyone likes different stuff :'D
"There are "legit" and "cheap" ways to make a game hard. This is a "cheap" way. It falls in the lines of pixel-perfection required, arcane knowledge required, etc... Don't do that to your players. If you want to make a hard game, make it "legit" hard."
=> Whoah; still you compleated the entire game, which is quite admirable! Again, in my defence, I don't fully agree with your "cheap" versus "legit" logic. This is, since those levels are extremely easy if you know how to complete them, which means a process where you need to come to the solution is required. Granted, there can be a few different ways of beating these levels, and since you're speaking about "such precision", I'm thinking maybe you solved them in some more difficult way? Lets just say, if I really wanted to use a cheap gimmick just to make a game more difficult, I would never do something SO obvious. The levels are not primarily there to make the game difficult, which you seem to have presumed :')
But oh well, you're partly right as well. They turned out to be A LOT harder than I intended!
"I guess my advice would be go ahead and leave it as-is since you already did it and people have already toiled through it, but don't ever do anything like that again on any future games. It's bad design and puts people off from playing your games."
=> I think I might take your advice on this one, since I've gotten so much negative feedback over this (but note: some positive too!). I don't know how I could do something similar again though, since I think that those levels are pretty unique situations, which are difficult to redo with games that use different logic :)
Thanks a lot for your review!
D-Pression is a hard game. Some of the board are near impossible. However, I managed to defeat this game and collect all of the medals. If you make a sequel, please lower the difficulty. My hand still hurts from rapidly pressing the up key on my computer.
LucidShadowDreamer responds:
Yeah, sorry for that; it seems as though I was blind to the difficulty, since I made the game. I really was in quite a hurry too though :p
Sorry for giving yo such a worthless reply PM, as it seems you already beat the game!
Thanks for the review ;)
Huh, had to look up a tutorial for the very last level and it would appear I took the long way around for the two 'blank' levels.
Anyway you did a really smooth job with the programming. I really like the slipping and sliding and the wall jump mechanic is just comfortable to use. The obligatory puzzle element was fun, although sometimes frustrating and a little gimmicky due to it having the whole physics flair going on - sometimes made things harder than they should have been.
You really could have stood to improve the graphics. They're simple, they're cute, but they're OVERDONE.
The real reason I'm docking so many points is because I'm sick of programmers dick riding The Company of Myself with these simple 'symbolic' puzzle platformers with crummy graphics, melodramatic and even more melodramatic one-liners scattered throughout the levels. At least The Company of Myself and Fixation had a plotline. This is just a bunch of drivel.
Another really big thing that bothered me is that with such simple games you really lose a lot out of the experience when it's just one level after another. There's a heavy puzzle element, sure, but it would be nice to see some new mechanics partway through the game, or even an open-world kind of environment.
This is not a bad game but conceptually it is the most infuriatingly jump-on-the-bandwagon game I've seen in a while.
LucidShadowDreamer responds:
Thanks for the long review, Kwing! I agree with most of the criticism, and most of them can be explained by the lack of time I had when making this. I made it for the Stencyl Jam 2014, but I had my most important school exams in between :)
The programming is pretty smooth, but could still be improved, I think. Stencyl made it somewhat easy though (even if it took a lot of time for me). I'm glad you're happy with the movement though! The physics thing was probably too difficult for most people to realize for themselves. I should've hinted on it more, and made it a bit more obvious that you had to use friction :/
I agree with the graphics too. Then again, I was in a real hurry while making this! I finished this game in the last minute, but I still had time to make small updates later. There's still a lot that needs to be done, I think.
I actually had to make pretty much all of the "story" or text in the game in about 5 hours, and only 10 minutes or so went to actually thinking about what I wrote, as it was time consuming to place the text. If (when) I make a huge update to this game in the future, there will be a lot of changes :D
I would've wanted some new puzzle mechanics too. I originally wanted to make some levels where the "shadow's" movement was inverted from yours. I also waned to include some with many "shadows", and some with upside down gravity, to confuse the player. Alas, I had no time, as I earlier said. The only thing I had time for was to include two levels where the "shadow" couldn't touch you, but had a very similar room to yours, as you might recall.
Thanks again for the long review, I'm grateful that you took some time to write out your thoughts! :3
Trying too hard to mean something... but it takes more than making your unoriginal platformer black and putting some piano in it to relate it to depression.
LucidShadowDreamer responds:
Hahha, alright. You're entiteled to your opinion :p
Then again, you only beat 14 levels at most :)
And if you think it's unoriginal, I'd have appreciated it if you would have let me know what is the original? But I looked through some of your other game reviews, and they seem to be pretty similar to this one. Oh well, you gave it a shot!
Thanks for your thoughts!