Static Head

Hello
Another review, another sci fi game... well sort of! Static Head is a game about two monster hunters that fight using musical instruments (!) against monsters that are transformed humans! The strong Ross Guarglia and the young Michael O'rourke are our two heroes, supported by their associate Domino Taylor, and the adventure, after a short prologue, will bring them to the lost Onora laboratory.

The game is short and simple: our heroes will explore dungeons looking for loot and keys, killing wandering monsters for experience.
Here it is where the game differs from most other games I played so far: characters do not earn levels automatically, instead experience has to be spent to learn new abilities, increase the amount of equippable badges and improve characteristics like Hp and Mp (each character has different cost for that, for example Michael has a discount increasing Mp while Ross has an inferior cost to Hp, and they can learn different attacks).


Oh Static Head, who are you?

Then there is another difference: gear consists mainly in badges that can be equipped by the characters to temporarily get some abilities or improve their skills. There is a limit to the badges you can equip, anyway it's a good thing that you can always change the setup, but don't worry combat is pretty east and avoidable in most cases (wandering monsters aren't aggressive at all!).

A final new idea is the absence of shops: items and badges are forged exchanging some items (obtained killing monsters) for them. To do this you have to find and activate some yellow pentacles on the floor. Green ones instead just offer extra dialogues, black ones are used to completely heal the party. The purple ones are teleporting devices (to go back to the airship), blue ones are used to reset some rooms with puzzle and the only azure one is on the ship and is used to upgrade the party members. Oh no, there are no save points at all because you can save anywhere!

Our protagonists have also some special exploration skills: Michael can jump to cross some spaces of the maps, avoiding gaps or climbing slopes. Ross can instead pull large heavy objects that may block the passage. The control between them (in order to use this special skill) may be switched freely.


These are all ground enemies... hey guys, prepare to be destroyed!

Good & Bad
This game is a short pleasant game, but despite that there are two strong points: there is a lot of party banter among the two protagonists and informations about the world and their past. Many dialogues and a lot to read (that someone may not like but hey, that's their fault since it is all well written and in some cases interacting is optional!).
Then there is combat, that is easy (bosses are a bit more difficult, but not too much!) but tactical and uses low numbers. Do not expect characters or monsters with tons of Hp or 999 attacks, this is a game of low numbers and this contribuites to make the combat look fast and agile. Also the various abilities and statuses (like Flying that makes enemies or characters immune to normal ground attacks) makes the game interesting without adding too much complexity. I also liked how you are going to "cure" the humans that were turned into monsters!

Then what there is that I did not like? Well the game is a bit "rough", there are some duplicated sprites, some mapping errors and even without them the maps still would look rather simple and empty, lacking details or other features that would make them look less generic (but appreciate the presence of different height levels even if Ross' jump ability makes this a meaningless detail!) and clarify the accesses and exits to the various rooms. Also combat feels sometimes quite optional and sometimes too easy (instead the fight against Michael's father seem impossible!), plus there are some typos ("...please Leep Ypur tongue..."). I also found a bug: if you try to switch characters in the rare istance in which you are alone the game will crash!


This sounds strangely familiar................

Verdict
This is a little game that despite the mapping flaws and the easy combat introduces some interesting likeable characters and a fast combat with simple but still strategic features (that is not the usual element-vs-element).

My final rating, ranking in account that this was made for an event (so not a game with years of development behind!) is 3.5/5. A pretty nice short game about dungeon exploration and combat (time to complete: 1 hour and 20 minutes).