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An interesting tactical game, but with a few bugs and little content.

Little Wing Guy plays Trick or Treat or Die an Rm2k3 game made by PsyWombats. The Full Version.

Why should you play this game?
- It’s an original idea with unique gameplay and strategy.
- It’s fairly fast paced, there’s no silly dice rolling and the enemy AI doesn’t waste time.
- It supports multiplayer locally and online if you share IP Addresses!

Why should you give it a miss?
- It’s a bit buggy, nothing especially game breaking but it takes away from the experience.
- It’s surprising deep when choosing team members and costumes, this is only bad when you want a quick game or with a friend.
- Enemy AI isn’t challenging.

Review:

The core gameplay of Trick or Treat or Die works like a Halloween themed board game or a tactical RPG. At the beginning of the game you choose a team of four hungry children out of a bunch of randomly generated children to trick and treat around the neighbourhood trying to gather more sweets than an opposing group of children made from some of the rejects who failed to make your team. The game is turn based using a Speed Stat to determine which child goes first, when your turn comes around you can move one space in any direction (no dice or random element here) that is not currently occupied while trick or treating at houses, attacking other kids and using items on house to hinder or help progress. To win the game you must obtain more sweets than the opposition before bedtime or beat them all into submission by reducing their HP to zero (HP cannot be recovered so watch out!).

There is a surprising amount of strategy to this fairly simple concept. Every child has six stats (which are explained in game with the optional tutorial) and starting candy. Starting candy is then totalled and used as currency to buy costumes, weapons and items to equip your team; it doesn’t end there because costumes and weapons have stats too! Jesus! It goes without saying that this game can’t be jumped right into but this could put some gamers outside of this community hesitant to download because it isn’t quite as approachable as it looks.

The problems in this game become apparent pretty quickly. You only pick your first child in a menu interface, the rest of your team are scattered around the board and you must talk to them to see their stats and whether you want to recruit them. You can open up the menu to see their stats all at once but you still cannot recruit them on this screen. Click on Local Multiplayer it’s all done in the simple and effective menu. Why is it separate? I have no idea. Once you’re done and you are confident with your team you now need to stock up on costumes, as although some kids have starting weapons and items unfortunately none of them have costumes initially equipped which are absolutely crucial to play the game. Soooo, where’s the shop to buy them? The game stupidly allows you to start playing without equipping costumes, it should be forced on you; like having a full team of children is because it’s just as important. Oh well looks like we’re going have to walk around town and find it. Again, this is something that could be done in a menu screen. The only benefit I can imagine is that players will learn the layout of the town before they begin to play but there are only about three points of interest and a very helpful (and almost perfect) mini map is displayed during the game highlighting where these things are anyway. I don’t want to talk about the graphics of the game, they set the theme and don’t need any improvement.


You didn't see this in the image tab!


You’ll be pleased to know we can begin to play. Suitable Halloween music starts and the game plays pretty well, the general choices are done in a default message box and we’re zipping around the board. Well after a while you are. Both the teams start of the opposite sides of town so at the beginning you’ll be clumped together with your team and as I mentioned earlier only one player can occupy one space at a time. It’s not difficult to separate from the group because there are many paths to take however children can only move one space at a time and the child in the middle can’t do anything for a few turns, which sucks if it’s the child on your team with the highest speed stat. With the exception of the beginning the game doesn’t drag out, the opposite team act quickly. Now each child can only trick or treat on the same house once (with the exception for the mansion and shops) but the problem is, you cannot tell if you already tricked or treated at a house, you just have to remember. If you had one child that’s fair enough but you have four to remember and there are eight children taking turns. There is a very much needed and excellent mini map in the corner so this could have been implemented. Maybe this was intentionally added to put some strategy because the main attraction is a mansion in the middle but sometimes I went to the same house twice. Ack! When you land on a space next to a child, you get a few choices. If he’s on your team you can switch places with him but if he’s on the opposition then you can attack him with your equipped weapon if you have one. When you do so an attack bar will appear on screen with an arrow which you must stop as close as you can to the red area, doing so will increase your damage and your chance to hit. The speed of the arrow again like most things in this game depend on the stats of your character and your weapon. This allows for some fun input instead of clicking attack and a damage number appears, my only gripe with this is the arrow isn’t synced probably and actually stops just before where you pressed space. In other words lining it up correctly will stop the arrow just before the desired location.

I’ve actually yet to probably mention one of the most important houses in the game. The mansion. It gives out three times as many sweets on the first visit for you child and can be visited and infinite amount of times. While there are a lot of other things to consider, most games end up with you fighting at the mansion as this makes your candy sky rocket. I originally thought this was strange and abuseable decision but when you’ve gathered your candy you still stay standing at the entrance so no one else can access the candy there, you can be attacked from both sides so it‘s up to you to either hold your ground or keep receiving candy. I imagine in a local multiplayer game this may get quite tense with well timed attacks dominating the mansion but the AI here sometimes didn’t come after me or just failed to attack me. The AI was quite dumb in places yet at times did things right, sometimes it teamed up on my guys and matches were tight, sometimes it walked right passed the empty mansion or didn‘t attack. I understand this was coded from scratch so it isn’t something to be knocked without recognition, and I’m not expecting anything amazing, just a consistence level of intelligence. A redeeming factor about the enemy is that they play by the rules just like you do. Their attacks miss or don’t do full damage, they aren’t stupid enough to visit the same house twice like I was but it feels like you’re playing a fair game. The final thing to bring up are the bugs. Unfortunately they plague the game. NONE game breaking but they cropped up in every single game I played, they were unavoidable. The roof of the mansion followed me around, two people occupied the mansion and the game failed to recognise one until I moved off and I got candy when I wasn’t at a house. Naturally I was giving the menus a good work over, changing my decisions and viewing my team-mates constantly. I believe this game was made under a time limit for a Halloween competition which is probably why they exist but I urge you to go back and attempt to resolve as many as possible. The majority of the games works fine, the custom menus display everything you need to know, they are faultless with clear text and are easy to use.


I believe the word is Owned!


Conclusion:

This is a tactical RPG with a Halloween theme but to me personally it felt like a board game with some depth and original gameplay ideas. You know whether or not you like board games don’t you? The general gameplay will always be the same, it’s fun, it’s fast, impressive but buggy and you can’t configure any options to make the game to your liking. Children are randomly generated from a pool of god knows how many and there are tons of different costumes to wear (and they actually wear them, there’s something satisfying about making your male character wear a dress) and combinations and strategies to use. Some effort was clearly made to this game to give it replay value but at the end of the day it is a board game, a unique one at that. It’s a small download and a single player game took me about ten minutes each time. This review may sound heavy on the negative but please remember I am mostly aiming this towards PsyWombats for improvement.

I think the following will improve the game:

- Add in one or more maps for replay value. Mix up locations and aesthetics.
- Add more music, I heard a total of two tracks during the night and I played multiple times.
- I cannot see which houses I have visited. This could be a pain to implement but it will really benefit the game. Unless this was intentional
- Options? Let us create our own perfect game.
- Bugs. I think the game was rushed for Halloween, I’ll let you off but as a complete game they need to be ironed out as best as possible in the future.
- See full review for more.

Posts

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Hey, thanks a lot for this. Next October you can bet this will be updated according to most of these points. I'm surprised about the bugs though... Maybe I did something last minute and screwed up the mansion house code... And certain things like the alternate maps would be easy to create and I never even thought of them. Thanks for the feedback.
You're very much welcome, and I'm glad you'll be picking this back up again with some of my advice implemented. =)
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