• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS

Strange, difficult, and unrewarding.

Introduction

Adventures of Ladislau is an adventure/platforming game made by Scalytank. It features an amusing introduction followed by platforming puzzles.

Environment

The environment is well-drawn, but it doesn't exactly match up with its theme. The maker was trying to make the game cute and funny, but the environment is not drawn as cute, it's more murky/dark/subdued.


Screenshot by Scalytank.

Even the basic "pony" enemies are drawn with subdued colors. Because of this, the "cute" stuff like the hearts and multicolored sheep seem slightly out of place. The blocks are also.. problematic, as they seem to have a larger collision than they actually look like they do. There will be more on that later.

Besides not fitting its theme, the environment is quite nicely drawn. It's reminiscent of older 8bit games which is cool.

Gameplay

The game play is - essentially - a bunch of difficult jumps and platforming in a row. You get three extra lives, and enemies kill you in one hit. If you die, you restart at the beginning of the stage.

The problem seems to be the difficulty. Games should generally start easy and get hard as you advance, but the maker seems to have thrown all the hard stuff in the beginning. For example, having to time a jump precisely and then jump off again before a huge jumping sheep kills you. Or having to run into a tiny alcove and dodge the pony who tries to kill you.

There is no saving. Upon dying, the game records your score and then closes. I also don't understand why you would make your game close after you lose - what happened to "Do you want to try again?" or going back to the main menu.

The collision detection is problematic. It is quite hard to jump through open areas, or fall down holes. For example:


Great work game maker, you broke physics.

The screen designs also seem strange, as there seem to be hearts you can't get without dying. There are also falls where you can't even see where you're going until it's too late to fix your fall direction.

Summary

Adventures of Ladislau could have been a fun game, but there are many problems such as the difficulty, environment, collision detection, and stage design.

2/5