Reviews for Pokemon Campaign

[candalas]

very nice, i hope you'll make a bigger version of this.
-1 star for being too short.
-half for having no mute button
- half for weird camera and motion
- half for having a very not inducting interface.

PS: i found a bug.. after i finished the campaign and capture the last pokemon, my drifloon (3rd slot) turns into a lotad when i click it, although his icon stays the same, and he turns into a drifloon normally if i press "3" instead of clicking it.

my team is charmander - pikachu - drifloon - racecar - last campaign poke.

everything else seems normal

OrangePylon responds:

Thanks for the Drifloon tip; I'll look into it. I'm surprised you found the game short; I thought it was quite large for an indie Flash game.

[Nerd-02]

Glad to see this game come to completion! Valve could learn a thing or two from you about seeing a project through to the end (heck, I could learn some of that too!). This game has great voice acting and music, and it's nice to see everyone credited so explicitly. It also carries your signature art style, though it was missing a bit of that signature writing! I was waiting for a sarcastic one-liner, but like a poorly treated wife, it never came.

The world contained a great compliment of environments and Pokémon which allowed it to feel bigger than what it was. I'm sure it must have been hard choosing the few you put in the game out of the 721 possible choices. The attacks also had a good amount of variance to them too, with a mixture of strength, speed, and precision. I'm also glad to see that you're continuing to update the game based on reviews! It's always nice to see edits based on the feedback rather than have the game released then forgot about.

Not being the most avid Pokémon player out there, I found myself wondering which attacks and Pokémon would be the best to use in different situations. The Pokédex helped but was unfortunately lacking in information on the boss characters--the ones I wanted to know about most!

It was also not uncommon to find yourself verses a wild Pokémon that could move and attack faster than you could, leading to some frustrating situations of smashing the keyboard in an attempt to break free of Eevee's merciless barrage only to find yourself warped back to the nearest Pokécentre. Oh, that's another thing. A bit of a death animation would have been nice! I was freaked out the first time I died, thought it was some kind of glitch!

In the end I'm glad I got a chance to play this start to finish. It was fun exploring the world, trying to capture the best Pokémon and then leveling up to fight a difficult boss. Great work on this one and I'm of course looking forward to seeing future projects!

OrangePylon responds:

Thanks, buddy. There are exactly two snarky one-liners in the game:

1. One of the loading screen hints suggests that if you're having trouble running Pokémon Campaign, to "use a system newer than Bill's model." It was supposed to be a cute reference, but it turned out that a lot of people actually had trouble running it, so now I look like a jerk.

2. Try talking to Juniper in Canvas Town, then asking her how to talk to people.

Also, when I still had the Professor as Oak in the script, I had him remark "Oh, damn!" as you tell him about the final boss. You of all people would have appreciated that, I'm sure.

The type effectiveness in the Pokédex was an afterthought, and was only added a few weeks ago. Since the Pokédex was originally for looking up where to find Pokémon, I never thought to include bosses' weaknesses. You're right, it would have been nice.

Mystery Dungeon sprites don't have a death animation (I know, right?) so I did the best I could with a quick fade.

Thanks for the meaty review!

[Mallokai]

I enjoyed it immensely, interactive, adventurous, challenging, AND THAT TWIST! Great job, one of Newground's best.

OrangePylon responds:

Oh wow, very kind. Thank you so much.

[KneeGrows6969]

Worse game I've played in a while. Very generic, 30 minute game that wasted my time. Lagged constantly and WAS NOT FUN. Very disappointing in my opinion. I was hoping for a lot more of pokemon related things like EV training, some sort of network battle with my friends, and maybe even a gym trainer to fight. It didn't seem like there was much thought to the concept of the game. Very good 1st game tho.

Sincerely,

Terb <3

Sincerely,

KneeGrows6969

OrangePylon responds:

Oh my God, Todd, you had me going for a second. A+ account name.

[Sandling]

I like that you took the time to finish a game like this, 3 years to keep working on something is really admirable/inspiring, i've wanted to make a pokemon game in the past too. (I had a project i'd been working on for years and keep going on hiatus' from it.). I like how diverse, and expansive the world to explore was.

I think my favorite parts of this game where the voices, being able to get racecar, the surprise fight, and the boss fights, honestly the boss fights were so cool and impressive in a technical sense. This game played a lot like pokemon mystery dungeon to me.

Also I think some things that would make its current features better would be preventing the AI from going over walls, and then adding code to make flying pkmn go "over" walls and water, and letting water pkmn go through water.

In any case nice job man! I look forward to the other things you make.

OrangePylon responds:

Thank you! A very nice review. It feels good to be appreciated after three years of uncertainty. The wild AI is a result of me making a shoddy engine in 2012, not knowing the game that it would eventually become. It bugs me, too, but it's way too cumbersome to fix.

I obviously had to take a few hiatuses myself (the final one being eight months due to Flash not being to export for some reason); all I can say is that after this much time, it's better to just get it out there, because even if the payoff can't possibly make up for the time you spent on it, it'll feel much better to not have it looming over you. Get it out, and even if a lot of things have to be cut, it'll feel better when you're finally available to work on other projects again. And most importantly, you'll learn a lot regardless.