Return Of The Yeti

One of the factors that drives me to keep using RPG Maker, as well as something I love about the maker, is that you can make games of multiple genres besides RPG games. Deacon Batista's Game Chill submission, "Return of the Yeti", is a fine example of this. Without a doubt, this game was enjoyable with it's challenge, humor, and nostalgia. Unfortunately, there are just about as many things wrong with the game as there is good.



"Return of the Yeti" is essentially an action/puzzle game based on the arcade game "Donkey Kong". In fact, the story is pretty much the same. You are an explorer who ventures across Mt. Everest to save your girl from a freak Yeti, who laughs like a retard and wears plastic glasses. The twist is that you can play as both the hero and the enemy, fulfilling the "opposites" theme of the contest. There are five levels total in the game. Each single level alternates between "Deacon Messner" and the Yeti. Playing as Deacon (someone has an ego here...) you are traveling through traps to reach the Yeti and the damsel in distress. Playing as the Yeti, your objective is to solve another puzzle to escape from Deacon.



As an added touch, the humor in this game seems very... Interesting. Visually it looks ridiculous enough to render a chuckle, especially with the design of the Yeti and the fact that your damsel loses one piece of clothing every level... If that doesn't offend you. As far as the dialogue in the game, I will not say it's best crafted. Knowing that the author of this game is German, there might have been a slight issue with translation, as some of the dialogue simply doesn't make sense. For this type of game, however, storyline obviously isn't the main focus, as the point is simply to have fun playing. Despite this, there are some factors this game has that prevents that.

The game progresses from moderately difficult, to annoying, back to difficult, to somewhat easy, and finally to difficult. In no doubt, this game isn't for those inexperienced to playing any type of game, but my major gripe is that the difficulty in this game is not due to logical progression, but bad level design and a few other bugs.



To start, it is very difficult to move around the maps, and in certain levels where you need to move around as much as possible to reach your destination, it can be frusterating. There are tiles which you think you can walk through but you can't. The objects feel a little too randomly placed and only clutters the map, with the addition of making moving around feel uncomfortable. To make matters worse, the Yeti levels contain large amount of NPCs that move randomly and get in the way. The result is a difficulty that is overcome more by chance than by skill.



In addition to the lack of movement, the developer has committed a great sin: Introducing fake difficulty. There is a single level in the game which you complete as a matter of trial and error, as in if you mistakenly walk on a single tile, a rock will fall on your head and you die. You basically have no clue where you are going to get hit, and if this game didn't have infinite amounts of lives, I would have stopped playing this immediately. Such type of bogus game play is even present in the last level where you play as the Yeti. It simply needs to be taken out, as it's not good game design. I would expect it if this were a joke game meant to deliberately aggravate people, but this is not the case.

There are a few bugs with this game that I have encountered, which are fortunately not hazardous enough to hurt the gameplay, but they get close. Strangely, in the first level, some of the boulders go right through you while others kill you on the spot... Or on the side of you while going in a completely different direction (seriously!). In the trial-and-error room, the rock seemingly lands to the upper right of the tile you actually step on. Other, more minor bugs include NPC's suddenly stop moving and the credits not showing up.

Now that I got that out, Here is my rundown:

Graphics: 3
It's appears to be default RTP graphics meshed in with custom material. Stylistically everything seems to blend in well together, though some tile placements seem a little off in comparison to the rest of the scenery.

Game Play: 2.5
I would have given this a higher score if the factors I mentioned above did not kill it.

Story: N/A
It has a typical story for this type of genre, and honestly, who cares?

Sound: 3.5
Mostly MIDIs from the Donkey Kong games. Some pieces feel a little bit inconsistent, but they are placed properly.

Overall: 3.5
To conclude this review, I did overall enjoy the game to an extent. It's an absolute shame that something like this, with it's humor and spiritual predecessor, had to suffer from elements of poor game design, which only taints the charm of this game. I hope Deacon can go back and fix some of the issues this game has, because without them, this would honestly be a solid, fun little game.