Pretty nice game, with very nice graphics. However, the village part is a pretty standard "get-this-so-that-X-gives-you-that-so-that-Y-trades-it-for-something-else-that..." long quest, and the rest of the game is pretty straightforward. I got kind of disappointed that everything happening outside the village itself went so quick and with no interaction with villagers whatsoever. More detailed stuff was already written, so that I will not go on forever. Still a beautiful Game Boy game, thanks for making it available here!
Reviews for "Wrath of Nightmare"
TheEnkian responds:
Thanks for the review! Possibly a few more puzzle rooms would be good and more NPCs in the areas outside the village to add more "life" would be a good idea.
I was expecting a twist actually. Apart from the early portion of the game it is pretty straightforward. It is short but a sweet one.
TheEnkian responds:
I did change a few things as I went through the story to simplify it. Possible a mistake on my part?
Considering this is basically a tech demo for your GB skills, I think you did very well specially since it is ported here on the web. Great job on that.
As a standalone game without any context, it is a bit lackluster. It's easy to get lost on what to do next if you stop paying attention, as there are no indicators of what Quest Item you are holding currently. It's also hard to keep track of the names.
I'm not sure if there was a pattern for the Lost Woods esque segment, but it seemed to be about Brute Force and memorizing the path (iirc original Lost Woods had an amplitude shift on the music for when you were next to the incorrect entrance); this made me almost fall asleep. In fact, a lot of the game seemed to have brute forcing and exhausting dialogue options, which is not a design I can say I enjoy.
The audio unfortunately was hit and miss; the snare in music that played in the village felt very grating for instance. I'd complain about no mute, but this is a GB tech demo.
To improve a game like this I'd add more dialogue per event to make brute forcing less painful, a map, a way to show the current item, and maybe a character log. I believe the map and the item display could fit in a "Start" menu. I'd also try to implement the audio cues for the Woods in some way.
TheEnkian responds:
A menu for quest items is something I'd like to add. Definitely a good addition. As for the woods area, there's actually an NPC that Jason directs you to if you speak to him outside of the woods and you can eventually find a guide for the way through. I left in the ability to brute force it if people wanted to rather than make that NPC mandatory.
I think my mistake with the village snare sound is that music was the last thing I added so I didn't spend an awful lot of time listening to the snare during testing. I can replace the song with something more fitting.
Would be great if my character could use that fire spell!
As well as able to read those books from the library to learn more about the lore of the story.
In sequel you can make it more of a Zelda clone where you can use the sword.
As well add a menu system to see items you gathered.
I really enjoyed this game, I like those item fetching games and games like Shenmue where
you talk to npc to progress through the story.
TheEnkian responds:
I could probably fill the books up quite easily using some material from my other games in the same setting, ha. A menu for what items you currently have would be a great addition too. It shouldn't be too hard to implement.
Pretty good, nothing extraordinary, but good. It's really impressive that it can run on a gameboy cartridge. Critiques for the gameplay have already been pretty well written already, so i'm just left to ask why limit yourself to gameboy? Especially the original gameboy, the age of it shows, and I feel like you could create the same thing or better with the same amount of effort on more modern engines.
I just feel like it might restrict you creatively, with the gameboy being such a dinosaur. The only benefit I could see is not having to worry about colors. Still, good job on this game. Fuckin rad title screen.
TheEnkian responds:
Honestly? It was just for fun. It gave me a good chance to experiment with GB style art and it let me break away from RPG Maker for a bit which is where I do the bulk of my work these days. Thanks for the review!