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

An inconsistent puzzle game with a cool theme and some excellent coding showcases.

  • Decky
  • 01/18/2011 12:31 AM
  • 4938 views
Befuddle Quest 5 is the latest in the series of puzzle games made by the RMN community and assembled into a nice little package by Kentona. This installment, like the last one, has a central theme: time travel! Not all of the puzzles use time travel, but most are set in past or future time periods. Personally, I like the idea of community puzzle games: they allow everyone to chip in and show off their talents in a bite-sized format. This allows the participants to gain valuable experience with game design without being dragged down by a full-length project. Often times, people will bite off more than they can chew with projects; by the time they're halfway through designing a 20-hour RPG, their skills have already reached such a high level that the first areas seem amateurish. Thus begins the cycle of polishing and re-polishing, and this is something I'm all too familiar with. Avoid it at all costs by getting a few of these community events under your belt; you'll gain valuable feedback and won't have to go redo your segment! But I digress.

After a brief introduction—in which Zack’s damsel in distress, Broomhilda, gets in trouble again—players select their puzzle of choice by calibrating the legendary Chrono Trigger time machine. Once calibrated, the telepod will warp the player to the appropriate puzzle/time period. To save Broomhilda, Zack needs to collect 137 Dilithium Crystals to give the machine enough power to send him to a special time period! Of course, the only way to find these crystals is to tackle the puzzles. Each puzzle yields a different number of crystals, based loosely on their difficulty. Not all puzzles must be completed to finish the game, and—trust me—this is a very good thing. You’ll see why.

Without further adieu, let’s review the puzzles. I'm going no frills here, since there's a lot of content to sift through. The final rating will be a simple average of all puzzles plus Kentona’s overall presentation (which gets a 4 out of 5, by the way).

***


My rating scale: .5 = unplayable (usually hypothetical), 1 = very poor, 1.5 = poor, 2 = mediocre, 2.5 = average, 3 = above average, 3.5 = good, 4 = great, 4.5 = excellent, 5 = perfect…a hypothetical score.

***


Prehistoric Zack, by Kazesui

This isn’t really a puzzle—it’s more of a difficult platformer than anything else. Kazesui submitted three puzzles for this game, and each is quite difficult. The platformer requires Zack to traverse lava pools, climb giant cliffs, and avoid various dinosaurs while collecting various coins and necklaces. My only major issue with this puzzle was that my computer kept lagging when the giant dinosaur popped out of nowhere to pursue Zack across the map. Thus, I was unable to finish this puzzle. Some of the jumps were a little annoying, especially the ones where Zack hits his head on the rock ceilings. The timing and space is just a little too tight in those instances. Overall, though, the level is nice and big, and there are plenty of things to collect (perhaps TOO many). 3.5 out of 5.

The Great Kaboom, by VideoWizard

This is a bit of a disappointment, and isn’t even much of a puzzle. The first thing we are given is a choice to pull a switch; if we don’t, we simply restart the cutscene. That seems like a pointless way to begin—Zack should just pull the switch by default. What happens next is pretty cool though. It’s a nice little plot twist. Sadly, the puzzle itself is just following a very straightforward series of arrows. That’s it. Fortunately, there aren’t any glitches. 2 out of 5.

Lost Way Chapel, by Dudesoft

This is strange and creepy, but the literal puzzle is fun to put together. Basically, Zack must converse with various chapel boys—learning of their sad, sad stories of rape, molestation, and other woeful tales—so that he can gather enough puzzle pieces for a sexy image. But what will he do with this sexy image? Simple: give the pastor a little reminder of what it’s like to look at the female body. I won’t go into details on what the kids actually say, but needless to say some of it is pretty raunchy. Still, I found it quite funny, and enjoyed putting the block puzzle together at the end. Some of the pieces/boys are also hard to find, which is a nice touch. 3.5 out of 5.

Don’t Feed the Troll, by TheDigitalMonk

I liked the puzzle: it was short, challenging, well mapped, and glitch free. Basically, it’s Zack and a troll on separate sides of a forest—the troll matches you step for step, and you must use obstacles and other tricks in navigation to guide the troll to his rightful spot. There are loops and other things that add to the challenge, but it’s neither frustrating nor overlong. The background music is also a nice selection—I believe it’s the forest theme from Super Mario RPG. Nice job, TDM. 4.5 out of 5.

A Hole in Time, by Desmo360

This is a gauntlet of simple puzzles. Basically, Zack must evade ghosts, travel across arrow conveyer belts, light torches in the correct order, and so on—there’s nothing really mind blowing about this one, but there aren’t any glitches or blatantly frustrating areas either. Yes, it’s conservative, but it’s not bad either. Just slightly above average for an Rm2k3 puzzle. 3 out of 5.

Space Station of IQ, by ldida1

Trivia gauntlets can be fun, but only when they are 100 percent correct in both grammar and content. This one fails on both counts. Questions repeat, and some are even blatantly WRONG (St. Patrick’s Day is in March). Grammatical errors are common, and the space station is not particularly well mapped (it doesn’t even use the Future RTP chipset!). The actual question checkpoints are strange—they’re usually just a rock or something similar. This one needs a lot of work, and is below average in almost every sense. Oh yeah, and some of the questions are either too challenging or too easy. Difficulty balancing would have been appreciated. 2 out of 5.

The End of the World, by Gibmaker

My hat is off to Gibmaker: this is a VERY clever puzzle. It requires players to use a special camera to see into the spiritual realm after an apocalypse totally destroys a town. Players must manipulate objects to create patterns and find spirits; this one is sure to baffle almost everyone at first, as you must explore everything thoroughly.

The puzzle starts coming together when players start to get frustrated. Just when you’re ready to quit—right when your desire to continue falters—you will find a thread to the next phase of the puzzle. Pull on a few of these threads and everything will come together to a somewhat solemn ending. A hint or two would have been ideal, but it’s still well designed. I can’t really give more away—you have a few things to work with—a general goal and some tools—and you just have to work from there. This one’s a solid 4 out of 5.

Another Portal, by Kazesui

This puzzle is another great coding job by Kazesui; however, it’s way too challenging. I’ve talked to quite a few people around RMN, and the only people to finish it are portal enthusiasts. I’m not a portal enthusiast; once I got halfway through the puzzle, I figured I had seen everything it was going to throw at me, and decided it was not worth the frustration to continue.

The basic concept is the same as Portal: you create portals and manipulate objects to create paths and unlock doors. There are some obstacles thrown in, and some of the rooms are really annoying. You’ll have to come up with some clever solutions just to get yourself to the next room. Plus, you’ll need to move blocks from one side of the puzzle to the other—man, it’s so annoying! This just isn’t my type of puzzle. I’ll still give it a 2.5 out of 5 for being well coded and clever.

Horus Hours, by Kazesui

This one had the potential to be the greatest puzzle of the entire Befuddle Quest series, but—once again—its just too hard! This one requires the player to use special gems to slow, stop, or speed up time within a small radius. Players must navigate a pyramid full of traps, using pretty much every gem they come across. As you probably expect, there’s quicksand, sand flows, spikes, enemies on set patterns, and lots of switches!

The problem is that some of the timing is too tight. Gems have set uses and must be activated at precisely the right location—if you’re a single tile off with a slow-down gem, for instance, you will not be within the gem’s radius long enough to evade an enemy. There’s a lot of trial and error here, especially since you may have to stockpile three or four gems before you can evade a single trap! There just isn’t enough leeway or checkpoints to justify having to replay huge segments of the pyramid. The most annoying part is trying to navigate a giant sand flow using the slow and stop gems—boy, you have to be laser sharp there! If Kazesui had included better checkpoints and widened the margin of error just a tiny bit, this would’ve been the best puzzle in the game. 3 out of 5.

Offspring Paradox, by Calunio

I never beat this one. It’s basically a rock-paper-scissors dueling game; you get 5 action points per turn and can use them in any combo you want. The catch is that your opponent will also string together a combo, and you’ll take a ton of damage if he just happens to select moves that trump yours. It seems to rely heavily on luck, and that’s not really a good thing for a puzzle. Perhaps Calunio should have taken the Suikoden route by having the opponent utter subtle hints as to their intentions. It just seems far too random for a puzzle. Still, it’s a nice concept, well coded, and pretty cool looking. 2.5 out of 5.

Switch It Up, by hali

I liked this one quite a bit, though some parts were too challenging. Basically, you have a room full of colored lights of two (sometimes three!) colors. The goal is to match all colors by hitting the lights—doing so will also change the colors of the adjacent lights, so the trick is finding the right order and mixing up your strategy. It’s a little tough to explain, but it’s been used before in games like Zelda. The problem is that some of the rooms are a bit too complex. One of the puzzles has three types of lights and took me an eternity to figure out! Maybe I’m just bad at these puzzles. 3.5 out of 5.

Pit of the Pendulum, by auroren_sky

This one was basically a series of cave areas with a story and exploration/mystery theme. I don’t really remember much about it, but you basically have to examine every item and pay careful attention to what you’re finding. I’ll be honest: it’s not really my thing, and I skipped most of this one. I’m a horrible reviewer, but it seemed pretty neat. And it was well mapped…overall. 3 out of 5, I guess.

The Ice Age, by Dragoon12

This one’s a clear newbie level. The grammar, spelling, and syntax are pretty poor, and there isn’t much challenge. You just examine items, memorize a number and clear the path to the crystals. At least The Great Kaboom had a cool concept. 1.5 out of 5.

Time Warrior, by Kentona

Kentona is one of the most competent designers on the RPG Maker scene, so it is no surprise that his puzzle is on the top tier. He did go conservative—it’s one of those “liar liar tell timer” things, where you have to figure out the only time not being told. What’s neat is that you get to explore a cave, town, castle, over world, etc. on your quest. Get out of the ‘ol pencil and paper! This one’s well mapped, well written, and quite satisfying when it’s all over. My only beef is that there aren’t many “puzzles within puzzles” to break up the tedium of talking with NPCs—it’s a fairly lengthy puzzle, and it can get frustrating if you mess up, so a few other bonuses would have been nice. 4 out of 5.

Zone of the Endings
This is a silly little ending in which Zack reunites with a certain somebody. I won't spoil it, but it's pretty goofy. The ending song was a nice choice.

***


Well, there you have it. Everything averages out to a 3.1 out of 5, so I’m giving this game three stars. That means it’s slightly above average for an RPG Maker game (and about average for an RMN piece). Why not give it a try?

Posts

Pages: 1
Thanks for the review!

About my puzzle, the thing is... the battles weren't the ACTUAL puzzle of the game. Your enemy has 3 forms, a hard one, a super-hard one, and an easy one. You basically have to give his mother a potion to make him easy. I guess there is a way to beat him in the hard form, but you're not supposed to. It's not random, it's intentionally hard. But you missed like... 80% of that stage. The real puzzle was the potion brewing. :D
Thanks for the review Deckiller! I like how you've reviewed each puzzle individually.

I actually beat Calunio's puzzle right off the bat with you fighting the hard boss, and I only discovered the other part of the level when I opened it in the editor. So I played it again and purposely lost - the second part of the puzzle is pretty slick! It had a great story, too. Overall it was one of my favorites.

Also, Kazesui helped with the presentation - he made the nifty menu for the telepod device.

EDIT:
Oh, you didn't talk about the ending :<
Decky
I'm a dog pirate
19645
Oh yeah I should probably do that. I'll have to update the review.
Yay, I feel like an elementary school kid who got picked for the football team!
Decky
I'm a dog pirate
19645
author=TheDigitalMonk
Yay, I feel like an elementary school kid who got picked for the football team!


?
Prehistoric Zack was much too hard. Though it is relatively well-made, Rm2k platform games do not belong.
I got sick of it and never had the chance to play the other puzzles.

It's a pity.
Decky
I'm a dog pirate
19645
Yeah, skilled designers tend to forget that difficulty balance is CRITICAL to a good game.
I honestly don't see how the platform level could have been too hard aside from when having trouble with lag.
there's very few "mandatory" difficult instances, since you only need to gather a certain amount of gold pieces.
This is of course my own biased oppinion though as the creator of the map, so it should of course be taken with a grain of salt.

as for the other two, it's very true that I've thought of exact ways to solve the puzzle as to only leave one valid way to solve, which probably is bad aside from certain instances, at least with the nature of my puzzles.
Will probably have to work with giving players more leeway and possibly design the stuff to have multiple solutions.
Just need to get it into my head (and keep it there) that what I consider easy might just be the right difficulty for everyone else

Thank you for the review btw.
always nice some of the ups and down put into words
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
author=Kazesui
I honestly don't see how the platform level could have been too hard aside from when having trouble with lag.

Not everyone is hardcore good at pc Gaming, especially on a laggy, critically accurate button input RPG Maker. I liked the level up to and a little past the giant dinosaur chase, after that it felt like I was being punished. I think as a level and for estetics it would have been best to end the level more or less after some platforming after the dinosaur. The memorization puzzle is forgivable minus the platforming required for it, but the mandatory item collection? Totally NOT. That should have affected the score from the level maybe. It was torture getting all the stuff, I had to eventually give up and alter the variable numbers.
author=Ginseng_Tea
Prehistoric Zack was much too hard. Though it is relatively well-made, Rm2k platform games do not belong.
I got sick of it and never had the chance to play the other puzzles.

It's a pity.
You don't have to play them in order :\

author=Dudesoft
Not everyone is hardcore good at pc Gaming, especially on a laggy, critically accurate button input RPG Maker. I liked the level up to and a little past the giant dinosaur chase, after that it felt like I was being punished. I think as a level and for estetics it would have been best to end the level more or less after some platforming after the dinosaur. The memorization puzzle is forgivable minus the platforming required for it, but the mandatory item collection? Totally NOT. That should have affected the score from the level maybe. It was torture getting all the stuff, I had to eventually give up and alter the variable numbers.


That's just it though. I don't see the need to be hardcore good at pc gaming to beat it. there weren't many jumps which required critical precision, and most who were, were optional since they were mostly just for getting the additional gold / necklaces. I figured normal traversing would almost lead to having aquired the 30 gold neccessary.

Then again, I won't say it's not hard, cuz I'm not quite in a position to judge it well enough, I'm just saying that "I " don't see how it could have been that difficult.
though I recognize that the path between the memorizing crystals could have been made shorter after the first visit or so
author=Deckiller
author=TheDigitalMonk
Yay, I feel like an elementary school kid who got picked for the football team!
?
I think he meant that he got the highest score from you, and so feels validated!

EDIT:
Also, Prehistoric Zack was hard BUT I thought it was the most fun. I played it a lot (almost to the detriment to the entire game, because I didn't test out the other puzzles very much).
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
author=Kazesui
author=Dudesoft
Not everyone is hardcore good at pc Gaming, especially on a laggy, critically accurate button input RPG Maker. I liked the level up to and a little past the giant dinosaur chase, after that it felt like I was being punished. I think as a level and for estetics it would have been best to end the level more or less after some platforming after the dinosaur. The memorization puzzle is forgivable minus the platforming required for it, but the mandatory item collection? Totally NOT. That should have affected the score from the level maybe. It was torture getting all the stuff, I had to eventually give up and alter the variable numbers.
That's just it though. I don't see the need to be hardcore good at pc gaming to beat it. there weren't many jumps which required critical precision, and most who were, were optional since they were mostly just for getting the additional gold / necklaces. I figured normal traversing would almost lead to having aquired the 30 gold neccessary.

Then again, I won't say it's not hard, cuz I'm not quite in a position to judge it well enough, I'm just saying that "I " don't see how it could have been that difficult.
though I recognize that the path between the memorizing crystals could have been made shorter after the first visit or so

Hmm maybe I was trying to hard. Some of those top level jumps were killers lol
I think also that I had the majority of the gems and then died to start over.
author=Dudesoft
Hmm maybe I was trying too hard. Some of those top level jumps were killers lol
I think also that I had the majority of the gems and then died to start over.



Yeah, I suppose getting most of them and then dying could be a bit frustrating.
And yeah, some of the jumps are true killers, probably with the floating platforms right above where the giant dino stops chasing you being of the hardest, but fully optional, since it would only net you a few extra gold pieces and a necklace.
I "think" the hardest mandatory jump would be the last jump while being chased by the dino, and maybe the jump back from having talked with the mage with regard to the spikes. In hinsight, I guess I could have removed those spikes
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
Oh yeah... Those spikes!!! Those were the killers!
Pages: 1