The Legend of Blockman

Back in the days, when I started thinking about gam mak for the first time, i didn't know anything about engines. And Sphere was only free engine I could find. It was hard to do anything with it, but i eventually managed to do something. My first game was about a sphere within Sphere engine.
Its really different experience to work within engine like this rather than in RM. Its ruff. It don't have limitations older makers got. You have to script everything, tho. What I am trying to express is ,that some of the games coming from Sphere community are gems for the pure sake of being. I want more finished Sphere games as there are few and I want more Blockman's awe. Cuz It's damn fun.
Demo here seems to be outdated and game itself is on hiatus (I hope so).

Story and World
Radnan prepared some rad background for the game. Its pretty complex and for further info check out 'Storyline' bookmark. The portion of the story in demo is small. You don't get to see The mighty time machine working. Your only goal is to find power supply for it. Nonetheless this simple task learns you some interesting knowledge, gives you nice look at the world you live in an puts you in front of one difficult choice. The world seems to be ravaged somehow and definitely has some skeletons in its closet.
Simplistic writing fits the graphics and even tho it can feel bit bare sometimes, It delivers good portion of atmosphere.
Characters are not interesting partly due to their speech. It seems as they have no personalities being brainwashed over the generations of genetic degeneration.



The Legend of Devo?

Gameplay
Gameplay is the one you can know from The Legend of Zelda series. You fight and explore in semi-open world with on-map encounters. Defeating them depends mostly on your movement and timing. Most of the enemies can be either grabbed and thrown or shot. Bosses can require special strategy or better timing. There are two thus far and giant metal ooze is quite an interesting one to fight.
There are some light puzzles too. They are neat addition to the gameplay but nothing to turn your brain on for. They are partly based on back-tracking, which is no reason for applause.
In towns you should be able to enter all buildings with entrances but wast majority of them has just opening animation with no interior adjusted.
The more interesting part are hidden mechanics, such as equipment system and leveling up. Equipment is pretty bare so far, but there are some interesting possibilities as every weapon brings totally different play style. Leveling up is made in The Elder Scrolls style. You improve your skills as you practice them. By fighting with sword your melee combat is getting better and so on.
There is one flaw, tho. You have to use mouse in menus. It can be really annoying as you have no reason to use it in-game and as they seem to suit keyboard controls



This video sums up game mechanics nicely

Art and Music
The Graphics are fully custom. They are nice and occasionally look great. Bunker chipset has tendencies to blend into itself a bit and there definitely is space for improvement. Maybe use of brighter or more contrast colors would do. Sprites were allready improved in meanwhile and new models are fancy. Animations already were smooth in the old (current download) version. Menus and Dialogue boxes are original, not nice. They can be praised by some, but for general public they are ugly.
Music is mediocre, classic Rpg bore. I guess, efforts weren't oriented this way so far.


Picture shows majority of graphical issues.

Conclusion
It's such a shame, The Legend of Blockman wasn't appreciated enough in the past, so Radnan lost his motivation to keep on development. I'm keen on playing more! It has five star potential. The story sounds original and interesting and what is more important, playing it is super fun. I'm giving it four for now for the obvious flaws game has at the moment and to bring some attention to it as Blockman deserves brighter future than ending up at the junkyard with dat E.T. game.