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Detective Waka, cakes and kangaroos!

Hello.
Aaaaaand here we are, reviewing another entry to the 1.44 floppy disk event.
Detective Waka is an adventure game with platform and rpg combat elements aboout the famous detective that everyone knows ,but if you don't... well do not worry, no backstory is necessary, besides the fact that Waka is an awesome detective and he has a mystery to solve in the RMN, Republic of Moist Nightmares! A mystery that concerns the retrieval of three great (these are giant!) slices of delicious cake! Yum!

As you can expect Detective Waka is an adventure game in which you play the wondrous Detective Waka, a great guy that needs no party of supporting character since he's cool! But yeah he has to face various antagonists: evil robbers, evil slimes, evil cattle and kangaroos (that are already evil without need to specify that, from what I experienced!).



LIAR! This was the hardest part of the game and took me a lot of time (this was in the beta version to tell the truth, still it is the most difficult part, so save before attempting it!)


The game is divided into three sections... yeah, one for each stolen slice of cake, clever though, but you will also be impressed that each section will be a different challenge. These are, in random order (since you can complete them freely in whichever order you prefer!):

- A pseudo Zelda minigame in which Detective Waka has to wander some underground areas armed with a sharp detective sword and kill bad guys. Not too difficult since you have some lives (hearts like in Zelda, of course).
- A series of pseudo jrpg combat encounters in which you have to select between standard attack, special attack (that is stronger but consumes MP... magic points, because Detective Waka is also magical) and using consumables. It's pretty easy if you know what to do, but the first time I played I managed to die on one of the encounters... what a shame!
- Finally a pseudo SuperMarioBros platform section set in Australia, that I'm sure will be the hardest part of the game for everyone! This is because it's the only section with one-hit-kill enemies (like in Super Mario, of course) that are cattle and kangaroos, but there are also some difficult passages, luckily the difficulty was toned down with the addition of checkpoints (before that I needed ten tries before being able to win!) that will prevent to play the whole thing from the first section. Still this will make you hate with passion kangaroos, I'm really sure.



No kangaroos were harmed in the making of Detective Waka. After playing Detective Waka... I am not that sure!


Detective Waka is a game where you have a single save slot but no need of save points because Waka is cool. Anyway that's more than enough for this game that is not really long but it has a good variety of challenges considering the limitations of the event.

Detective Waka was made with GB Studio and uses a graphic and music style very reminescent of the old Gameboy color games. Mirak and Avee did a great job because this small game oozes quality, looks good and has many funny interactions, some are mandatory and others are totally optional.
What else? Oh yeah this is also a community game about the people of the Rmn, the ̶R̶e̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶M̶o̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶N̶i̶g̶h̶t̶m̶a̶r̶e̶s̶ Rpgmker.net site!
If you know them, good for you, if you do not you can still have fun since this is a FUNNY GAME with quirky characters and situations, and unlike most community games I played in the past this is not just a walking simulator with some dialogues that can be entertaining just for those who know these people, but also a homage to three classic games of the past. Not one, but three!



Yeah right, this is a FUNNY GAME, I already wrote that! Now read the verdict!


FINAL VERDICT
Detective Waka is a Frankenstein experiment that worked well: mixing humor, the devs of Rmk.net and three different minigames provided a not too long but funny parody complete with cute cutscenes and an enjoyable and sometimes challenging gameplay. Yes, this is much more that your average community game, it has variety, great custom graphics and inspired humorous dialogues.

Simply delicious, thanks I wanted more! This gets 4,5/5 and I hope we'll see again on next Detective Waka adventure! See ya!

PS: do you see this sexy gamepage? Well this game is sexy too!



Posts

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I know I mentioned this on discord, I'm sure this part has been fixed now like you mentioned. But that last part of the Australia level in the beta was total bullshit - But it had the biggest pay off! LOL! I loved it! I really hope Frogge gets to be in more games and I hope he is just as smart and as well written as he is in this one.

This was so goddamn cool, I loved it. Mirak really knows his characters.
author=LordBlueRouge
I know I mentioned this on discord, I'm sure this part has been fixed now like you mentioned. But that last part of the Australia level in the beta was total bullshit - But it had the biggest pay off! LOL! I loved it! I really hope Frogge gets to be in more games and I hope he is just as smart and as well written as he is in this one.

This was so goddamn cool, I loved. Mirak really knows his characters.


From what I know there was just the addition of the checkpoints, and it was not changed much but I admit I did not replay the game fully (anyway I watched the revised/completed version playthrough AND I completed the original beta you mentioned... took me 8-9 tries but just because I had to restart each time!), anyway I was even able to underestimate the kangaroo in Cash part... and be defeated, what a shame!

Anyway making three mini games and fitting them in the same, highly polished adventure is the reason of the rating. Will it be the highest of the event? Uhm I have still to try some and there are some contenders...
Mirak
Stand back. Artist at work. I paint with enthusiasm if not with talent.
9300
Thank you for the review Addict!

I would like to clarify this bit:

author=TheRpgmakerAddict
From what I know there was just the addition of the checkpoints, and it was not changed much but I admit I did not replay the game fully
Actually besides the checkpoint after beating the second screen, all of the maps were modified, with the fourth one (the one people had most trouble with) was completely redone and re-tiled, all enemies were reprogrammed to have a more specific AI that wouldn't take players by surprise as much (originally, kangaroos did NOT move like goombas, they would wait for the player to get close, and then would launch themselves forward really fast, they also had interrupting code to make their movement unpredictable, which means sometimes kangaroos would rush at you, but then STOP a bit before reaching the player, the original intention being making "challenging" gameplay which sadly wasn't challenging, but impossible because then players wouldn't know when to jump and would 9 out of 10 times get killed.

After reprogramming every enemy I removed all of the "collission bumps" on the places where enemies were, since they were necessary to make the previous kangaroo code work. The unintentional effect was that players would bump their heads on those while doing the big jumps and fall on pits, dying from reasons that would seem had nothing to do with player input or skill. After coding the enemies to have a fixed pattern of movement, the bumps were no longer necessary, so with their deletion there was no more danger of bumping your head on a kaizo-like trap.

Finally, enemies were repositioned so they would enter the player's field of vision way before the player had jumped to the "patrol area" of the enemies, erasing most instances where frustrated players who only wanted to rush past the levels would be surprised by an enemy who was slightly off-camera too late for the player to jump over them.

I know when playing the game all of these changes might not be perceptible since most of them are engine-side, but there was definitely a lot more going on to the final version of the game that just patching it with a band-aid. The same way the platformer section was reworked and re-tooled, so were the zelda and rpg sections since those also had quite a few bugs in the beta like some zelda enemies being able to hurt you for 2 hearts instead of 1, the player being able to win the "boss duel" at the end before killing all the enemies, the game not realizing you killed all enemies and blocking further progress, enemies being able to launch several "last attacks" after being killed instead of just 1, etc.

Thankfully, despite GB studio's apparent niggles, it IS quite more benevolent than other similar game engines I've tried, and all of the bugs were correctable provided I kept a cool head. I really liked my experience using it and even though I genuinelly don't think I can do anything more, say, "different" than this game, I do want to play with it again in the future, perhaps in another event!
author=Mirak
Thank you for the review Addict!

I would like to clarify this bit:

author=TheRpgmakerAddict
From what I know there was just the addition of the checkpoints, and it was not changed much but I admit I did not replay the game fully
Actually besides the checkpoint after beating the second screen, all of the maps were modified, with the fourth one (the one people had most trouble with) was completely redone and re-tiled, all enemies were reprogrammed to have a more specific AI that wouldn't take players by surprise as much (originally, kangaroos did NOT move like goombas, they would wait for the player to get close, and then would launch themselves forward really fast, they also had interrupting code to make their movement unpredictable, which means sometimes kangaroos would rush at you, but then STOP a bit before reaching the player, the original intention being making "challenging" gameplay which sadly wasn't challenging, but impossible because then players wouldn't know when to jump and would 9 out of 10 times get killed.

After reprogramming every enemy I removed all of the "collission bumps" on the places where enemies were, since they were necessary to make the previous kangaroo code work. The unintentional effect was that players would bump their heads on those while doing the big jumps and fall on pits, dying from reasons that would seem had nothing to do with player input or skill. After coding the enemies to have a fixed pattern of movement, the bumps were no longer necessary, so with their deletion there was no more danger of bumping your head on a kaizo-like trap.

Finally, enemies were repositioned so they would enter the player's field of vision way before the player had jumped to the "patrol area" of the enemies, erasing most instances where frustrated players who only wanted to rush past the levels would be surprised by an enemy who was slightly off-camera too late for the player to jump over them.

I know when playing the game all of these changes might not be perceptible since most of them are engine-side, but there was definitely a lot more going on to the final version of the game that just patching it with a band-aid. The same way the platformer section was reworked and re-tooled, so were the zelda and rpg sections since those also had quite a few bugs in the beta like some zelda enemies being able to hurt you for 2 hearts instead of 1, the player being able to win the "boss duel" at the end before killing all the enemies, the game not realizing you killed all enemies and blocking further progress, enemies being able to launch several "last attacks" after being killed instead of just 1, etc.

Thankfully, despite GB studio's apparent niggles, it IS quite more benevolent than other similar game engines I've tried, and all of the bugs were correctable provided I kept a cool head. I really liked my experience using it and even though I genuinelly don't think I can do anything more, say, "different" than this game, I do want to play with it again in the future, perhaps in another event!


Whoa I did not expect that! I should play it again, anyway having beat the more difficult version I guess this will be pretty easy now, anyway yeah much of the fault of that section can be blamed on GB studio in my opinion (I had similar issues with the other games of the contest that used it, the only lucky thing is that there you have an energy bar and no pit where you can fall to your doom so THAT's probably one reason that makes that far easier for me! I suck at platforming and I re-did some jumps more than once but yeah, there was no risk to fall!).

My favourite section is the stolen cake part, but yeah, the cutscene with Frogge is gold! :D
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