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Zombie does not live on brains alone

  • nhubi
  • 09/28/2014 06:33 AM
  • 1448 views

Steve was an entry in the Ace Nugget Crash Course competition and therefore had to work with the restrictions of that competition, mostly in the fact the makers had about a fortnight to produce something that could be played, with the final day of the event being April 1st. Trihan, the developer of Steve, appears to have decided to take that end date as a theme and created a joke game, and not a bad one at that. Humour is very subjective, and many games both on RMN and elsewhere that purport to be funny, humorous or a joke rarely are. Steve in the other hand actually managed in a fairly short space of time to make me smile quite a few times. This isn't laugh out loud funny, but it's more than slightly amusing and quite clever in some places. Though some are most definitely in the RMN house.


Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks.

As far as the aesthetics go it's almost all the default, with the exception of a particular aspect of the main character's sprite, but as that is used in game as both a joke and an almost plot point it's perfectly acceptable. Using the default is to be expected due to the length of the game and the time frame in which it was completed. I should probably in all fairness sample other games in the same competition to see if the defaults were used there also, though as this game didn't actually rank in the top 5 I imagine it makes little difference. Either way I don't consider the lack of custom graphics to be a detriment, and since there are two fights in the entire game, I would not have expected anything other than the default for the combat system either.


Why am I not surprised?

The majority of the game-play happens off-screen, no really, but you do get a nice little scrolling synopsis a la Star Wars intro letting you know that Steve managed to fight his way through an epic quest for the saving of his people where tears were shed, friendships were cemented, relationships were tested, brains were devoured and do-gooders were vanquished. All in all it was really quite beautiful and had hours of game-play. Still as the special effects budget for this game was measured in the micro rather than macro, the end result was a moment of drunken reflection on the scale of the story that had been experienced by our two undead heroes and an instant level up from 1 to 99.

So now that Steve is all that he can be he is sent by the ultimate agent of the undead, Mr FinalBoss to infiltrate the enemy using his special power, which I will not reveal here as it would ruin the *cough, splutter* plot. He manages to outwit the fiendishly clever door puzzle in the castle of the Imperial Army and come face to face with the Commander in Chief and...well, you'll just have to spend the 7 minutes it took to find out for yourself. Seriously it takes longer to download and install the game than it does to play it, but it's worth the effort for a few laughs.

Don't expect Steve to be anything more than it is, a short amusing little game that lampooned itself as much as the genre and never apparently expected to do too well in the competition. It succeeded on all counts.

Posts

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Trihan
"It's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...timey wimey...stuff."
3359
Thanks for the review! Any stars in a review for this game beyond 1 are automatically placed into a brain conversion machine to provide food for Steve, so he appreciates your contribution.

Incidentally, I am eventually (that is to say "Trihan eventually", not the eventually defined by normal people (which is to say it'll probably never happen)) planning on expanding this project into an actual game, where the braincell-eating mechanic will actually serve as a genuine character progression method instead of just being a throwaway joke. I hope you will review it when this happens, assuming you haven't died of old age by then (which is extremely likely).
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
No problem, it was a fun game, and I would like to play it again when you have expanded (and included that quite nifty braincell mechanic) but you will have to make the extended version match the hype of the cut-scene synopsis. So I shan't hold my breath (since that will, y'know, actually kill me quicker).
Pages: 1