another 5 star, would give 6 now you have achievements.
Reviews for "'DinoMelt'"
Having played the "Ducks" game found out about "Dino melt" and have been playing it for past 3 days. A truly beautiful and well polished game. The art style is amazing and feels very good playing in full screen. Colors are pleasing for the eyes. The enemies and boss character design is very well done. I have not seen such a long and detailed idle animation for the player character, very well done. Each boss characters initial sound effect animation added with the player pushed back by the force of the sound is executed with perfection.
The levels are filled with lot of details and the various animating plants make the levels look very lively. The boss battles are designed with great care. Took me some time to figure out the different attack patterns and weapons to beat each of them.
Had a lot of frustration after the last boss battle as I was not expecting all the enemies waiting to ambush adding to the urgency of the other background event that is unfolding. During the end game the audio was getting corrupted for me.
Had to complete the game from the last checkpoint till the end 3 times to get the "The End of an Era" medal as the first 2 times I completed I didn't get the medal.
Overall a great game with a huge potential to be made into a successful commercial game.
Butzbo responds:
It's pretty helpful to know players' impressions, especially on the boss' design aspect; This was one of the game elements that took the longest to get right (...or at least closer to right, as they have gotten mixed responses) after so much play-testing.
It seems like the medals have a 'success ratio' issue we haven't been able to optimize. But it's good to know you managed to get that one at the end...
Thanks for the review!
good game. but put auto saves into the game. nothing more annoying then having to back track.
Love this game. It has a very polished and attractive artstyle accompanied by appealing gameplay. 100%ing this game seems like it will take a lit bit to do, but the gameplay is fun enough where it doesn't seem too draining to give it a try. The game also has a rather steady difficulty curve, which seems like a common problem in a lot of metroidvania-esqe games, but not here. Only major problem I can remember about this game is that sometimes, there would be audio issues, but I cannot be sure if that was a problem with the game itself or the website. I am proud that that one person on Newgrounds Arcade recommended this to me, so that I was able to experience this game. Thank you.
(Also, on an unrelated note, is the snail that occasionally spawns nearby the player a reference to Snailiad, or just a regular ole snail?)
Butzbo responds:
Wow thanks for the review! Glad you liked it and also great that the difficulty was on a good spot, it took a lot to find a good balance so it's great to hear it was on a good level for you! I don't recall having heard much about audio issues before, sometimes it can even depend on the browser, but it's something good to keep in mind it comes up more.
Also I do remember Snailliad! but the snail is one I had made orginally for an earlier stop motion animation I did called 'Quaraquol', I've included it in a few other projects as a bonus character.
Amazing game!
Finally finished the game in 5:21 ( I took my time to backtrack and clear respawned enemies just for fun) with 92 % of discovery. I think I got all items except two clay orbs that have something to do with freed owls to get them. Do I have to ride the owls or what? I was not able to catch them and there seems to be only one chance at doing that so I missed that. If someone can give tips as to what you are supposed to do with the owls in top of PLEPUR and HWORB levels to get these orbs I would appreciate that.
About game - this game is unbelievably good for a free game i would be willing to pay for such a beauty about 1 euro per level, you can safely expand it or make a sequel and sell it.
I haven't played either Metroid or Castelvania (putting them on my list now) but this game reminded me of another great old game that has similar mechanics - Soul Reaver ( it's 3d trough). I like similar games with open world where you can go everywhere if your abilities allow it and you unlock new abilities by defeating bosses and return to previous places to search for power-ups. Great concept!
What I liked about this game:
- Bosses! They were both cool and hard like bosses should be. Introduction screen stating name and species was nice. I liked how these bosses had many different attacks at random order so that you could never learn pattern. I hate bosses with patterns, makes it too easy. I also liked how they had multiple stages of anger and attack ferocity that indicated roughly how close you are to defeating them. I appreciate that all bosses had two anger stages and the final boss had three stages to be harder very good.
- Enemies. A large variety of different enemies. Cool!
- Graphics. Absolutely beautiful!
- Fullscreen. All games should have it. I see games made by construct 2&3 predominantly have.
- Shopping. Giving player the choice in which order to acquire the non-essential power-ups is very nice.
- Runs. Running from the huge boulder at stage two and from lava at last stage was fun.
- NPC. NPC's in platformers are optional and a rarity therefore I appreciate that you added them, I was happy when the frog managed to merge with clay.
- Story - minimalistic but flavorful and nice.
- Ending. Some games slack and don't give good ending animations and story conclusions. Not this one. Good job!
Neutral things:
- Music. Not bad but not as great as graphics.
I also have read reviews on this site and I must tell you one IMPOTANT thing. DO NOT LISTEN TO MOST OF THE REWIEWS! You are a very talented game designer and you should'nt listen to some whiny reviews that suggest that you alter game in a major way, because the same thin that some reviewer disliked can be a thing that other players liked very much.
Here is my opinion about some suggestions I saw in reviews that you should (mostly) ignore:
- Making bosses easier. Do not do this! Bosses are there to provide challenge. A game with easy bosses is easy to complete and easy to forget. But a game with hard bosses is a game you maybe get stuck on for a while but then you want to return to it to raise your mastery and to replay that game. Especially the last boss must be hard. I was able to defeat the last boss with some twentieth attempt or so and I love it. Also a strange thin when I defeated it, some extra health started dropping during fight that didn't drop before. Does game starts dropping extra healt when you cannot defeat the boss for too long to make it easier. If so then you should remove this feature. I want to master defeating the boss. I don't want a pity pass.
- Giving a HP bar to bosses. Most games would benefit from this, but not this one. Because you have a much cooler system of bosses showing that they have lost about half their life by getting angrier and throwing attacks more fiercely. HP bar would be redundant and the minimalist HUD is much better for a game with such beautiful graphics.
- Making finding of power ups easier. A definite no no. A game with easy to find powerups would be a game that can be completed fast and forgotten fast. You want hook players up to return ad find treasures they missed the first time. Also since this open world game features backtracking it is much better to leave some upgrades to find to give more what to do during backtracking.
- Increasing the power of charged attack. On this one I agree. As it is now it seems to do double damage. I think it would be better if it did triple damage, but definitely not more. However if you feel that it would make game too easy then leave it be.
Finally some things I believe could be improved. However I trust you know better, don't listen to too much reviews and apply your own judgement, you know better then most noob gamers who post here.
- Third boss not giving a new power was disappointing.
- You should make more save slots available. For instance I would very much like to load games saved directly before boss fights and replay these boss fights just for fun without running trough the whole game once more. But with one save slot I can't. If you make this game downloadable/commercial you should defiantly add multiple save slots IMHO.
- Switching between the near attack and distant attack gained from witches soup should not be done trough pause. There should better be a separate button to do it. Perhaps if you ever expand/sequel this game you could make more attacks to be obtained and make them switchable trough number keys or some other way. Perhaps the spider boss could give some webbing attack?
-Finally medals seem to be working inconsistently. For completing the game with 92% completionI got only one medal - the medal for defeating Plowrp, the first boss. Without consistently working medals I will defiantly not underage the challenge of completing the game in under 50 minutes, because if that doesn't not register then it is an effort in vain. This however is not an issue with the game as much as with the site.
Anyway the game is great as it is, probably he best free platformer game I have played.
Butzbo responds:
Thanks a lot for sharing your impressions in an in-depth review!!
I really appreciate the feedback in many aspects, I was able to beta-test the game enough before its submission, which was great to get a more solid vision of the difficulty and not having to worry much about that kind of feedback after the release. (unless REALLY unfair scenarios appeared, which were mostly fixed on earlier updates).
An interesting thing is that on the beta-testing phase, Bosses 1 and 3 were brutally hard for most players, I kept 'nerfing' them for a while to get to their current states: 'hard' enough by having no 'obvious' pattern, but still programmed in a way that the player could react and learn from its mistakes, I'm pretty glad which how they got to a generally though and also engaging enough difficulty. As you mention, it was a conscious decision to avoid life-bars once I found out that the creature's "enraged" mode was enough to show a sign of progression (I also find it a lot more 'immersive').
I won't 'spoil' it, but regarding the Dweegs (the 'owls'), they are part of maybe the most cryptic 'sidequest' of the game, you can find them in their 'nest' after you rescue all of them, but as you save them there's no other interaction like riding them (I guess they do give that impression since they just fly to unreachable areas) which means that the remaining orbs are just on other hidden areas you should be able to find normally.
There are a few things I hope to improve on in a bigger build of the game, and the reviews have been helpful on that sense; like the consistency of the Spider giving you an additional ability -since it's what you've come to expect from bosses- save slots, custom controls, a slight improvement on the charged ball, etc.
(Just checked and it seems like most medals caught on for you, phew)
Thanks for playing!