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

Extremely good platformer

Introduction

Tess is a platformer made in Java. Your character has a gun, and you jump around slaying enemies and completing objectives. You can get different guns at different points in the game, and the enemies all have different behaviors.

Graphics

Everything is pretty great when it comes to how things are drawn.

There are 3 areas: a grass land, a snow land, and a otherworldly pink land. In each land, there is a terrain on which you walk, backgrounds, and blocks that you can jump on. As I said, everything is drawn well, and the game is even more impressive when you consider that everything had to be drawn by the makers - it was a java game.



The only part of the game I didn't like was the pink, final land. The background was too bland, and it got boring.



Controls

As with most platformers I play here, the controls bothered me. Unlike many, though, the controls were almost completely customizable, so that is pretty awesome.

The original controls don't use the Up key for jumping, which is strange. There is a key already reserved on the keyboard for going Up, I don't know why so many game makers choose things like X or Space as their jump.

It was also strange how the control for Jumping and the key for going up in the menu wasn't tied together. You have to choose two different keys for these two functions even though you would never possibly want to jump when you're in the menu.

After I was able to customize jump to up and shoot to space, the game got a hundred times easier, though. You just need to know about this function.

The rest of the keys are fine. Escape (thankfully) opens Menu, and the keys to swap weapons are close to each other, and close to the attack/jump keys.

Gameplay

You have some amount of hearts, and getting hit generally takes 1-2 of these away. Enemies also have enough health to withstand 3-5 shots. As you kill enemies, they drop white orbs, which upon collection, gives you points. If you get enough points, you get an extra heart container.

There is a nice variety of enemies. You will certainly find things that keep you on your toes here, and you'll probably die on some of these levels. Luckily there are a large amount of save points which heal you, so dying isn't the worst thing in the world.

There is also a large platforming aspect to the game. On the first level, you'll just have to do a jumping tower area, but on the second there is are special mazes where you can fall down through the bottom of the screen and then fall through the top on your way down. And on the third screen, you have to kill enemies in certain locations to create jumping blocks.

The game balance is fine. No enemy is too unfair, and you get many weapons throughout the game which creates even more variety in fighting. The story is also pretty neat, but I won't talk about it here, as nearly anything I say about the story will spoil the ending. Play it yourself and see!

Overall, the game is very nicely done!

I had only two complaints:
- It's very short. It took me about 25 minutes the first time. My next playthrough was 12 minutes.
- Jumping sometimes just doesn't work if you press an arrow key and Jump simultaneously.

Summary

The jumping glitch is very annoying, and it's quite a short game but it's certainly enjoyable for the time it takes you to beat! If this wasa bigger game, it would get a 5/5. As it is, this is a 4.5/5 game. Good job with it!