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"Mäh!", sagte das Schaf

  • Kylaila
  • 06/24/2015 01:35 PM
  • 1065 views
Dinner Run is a very cute minigame in which you dodge oncoming objects.
While charming in story, artwork and setting, the actual minigame falls very flat.

So, what does this game offer?

You will create a named profil for you with which you will have a high score counted during your plays. It also has its own background
Strangely enough, though, while you can start the game and view your profile, there is no option to end the game.

When you hit the start-button, you will have some sort of "difficulty" setting, which really just comes down to the distance you will have to travel. One tile equals ones meter, so except the few thousands to take a bit.


Cute!

The premise is solid - but the dodging really is not that hard. As long as you stay awake, and keep paying attention, you will easily blast through this.
You dodge stuff left and right, you can pick up orbs which make you invincible for a limited amount of time. You cannot jump, you cannot gather anything, nothing in your screen changes, bare the new already-seen obstacles coming your way.
I really adore the starting and ending narrations, though.

Now, what does this game lack that all these all-so-similar, completely pointless games have to make people want to play them? (I am not even suggesting making worthwhile)

First, there is no sense of wonder nor of progression.
That is to say, nothing new ever comes your way. There could be, after a certain amount of distance, a changing background, changing obstacles or even just something popping up in your screen.

This not only raises your expectation to "anything is possible to appear", but also makes you look forward to making that happen.
You have cute cuddly sheep on the side - why not make them appear one after another as you run along?
Why not make a bird appear after say, each 1k mark and follow behind you?

Just anything will make you see the progress you have made, rather than just wondering where all that time has disappeared to. Even adding some weird items that turns your sheep into something else would be incredibly fun to see.


I run and run, and I they still won't budge..

More on the idea-pile side of things, the sheep does not change at all during invincibilty and just passes through objects - why not turn it into a flying super sheep (red scarf) during the time?

Second, the mechanics are both stale and almost too simple.

The different modes could - as Cashi already proposed on the gamepage - have a different walking speed. The speed could slowly increase as you go along, you could introduce the art of jumping over single objects (with a few seconds cooldown to make dodging still useful) and more.
You could add collectibles along the way as well.

Skip counting sheep, play Dinner Run! You will be fast asleep.

Posts

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Omg! Thanks for giving very detailed review over such a tiny game!

Please check it out again when we update this game :)
You are very welcome!

Of course, I will be looking forward to some cutesy additions. I may not be a fan of minigames in general, but cutesy is always worth the little time.
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