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A darker shade of green.

  • nhubi
  • 06/18/2014 02:37 PM
  • 2578 views
This game opens in silence, no opening music or effects, which is an unsettling choice, though I almost appreciated the silence once the music does start, if it’s not an old world midi it plays very much like one and sounds terribly dated. After about 15 minutes and three different themes (world map, first dungeon, battle theme), I switched off the music and played my own. It made the experience much more tolerable. The game page boasts of an old-school aesthetic and an original soundtrack, I think perhaps those should be swapped as it’s an old school soundtrack and an original aesthetic I experienced.


Hear ye, hear ye!

First thing you notice about this game is the colour scheme, it’s green, and a sickly nasty bilious chartreuse it is too. I believe the developer sought to create the impression of a world seen through those night-vision goggles you can get at military stores, or in the military for that matter, as a representation of the eternal darkness into which the world of Luxria has been placed by an arch-villain, a vampire overlord who appears to be called Vampire (or at least he wasn’t given a name when I finally got around to fighting him). Whilst I appreciate the thought and the sentiment, I’m not sure it works. Since even without the moon reflecting the sun’s light olive drab is not the colour of a moonless night, and artificial light sources such as candles would still shed ‘white’ light.

The sprites, tile-sets and face sets are all technically custom since they don’t come in purulent pistachio normally, but the resources under that shamrock-wash are all the default.

Save is only freely available on the world map, which is never a plus for me , but there are save crystals interspersed at regular intervals, and helpfully always before you are about to face a boss so the restriction is only irritating in the sense of the real world, not the in-game one.

Battle takes place via an ABS which is a game mechanic I’ve never been particularly fond of, but at least you have the ability to place it on the wait dynamic which allows a little flexibility. The encounters are random and invisible with some areas relatively lowly populated and other which must have been sitting at 10 step average, which is much too frequent. There is an interesting little tweak to the battle menu; you have the ability to change equipment in battle at the cost of a turn. I am not sure why this is offered, but perhaps if a monster has the capacity to disarm or break a weapon it could be a very useful addition, though I never did run into a monster that had that skill.

In the first dungeon that I attempted, the Tower of Dawn, there is a series of spike/lever puzzles which are well constructed and incorporate a timed element so you need to judge your movement, which adds a fine level of challenge. However the random monsters are still active in the area which means you can be hit with a battle as you are passing over an area of spikes you need to clear before they rise up and nail you but the delay of the fight prevents you from clearing the danger zone every time. This needs to be addressed, as it is especially frustrating as there is a very slow walking speed, even with dash on automatic.

Also a big no-no in regard to battles is to inflict states on players when they have no ability to remedy them. In the case of the first boss I encountered he spammed blind and no-one has a potion or spell that would alleviate the condition. Luckily it appears that no states persist post-battle.

There is an uncommon ability to change classes at any point in the game, if you don’t like being a plain old Warrior, go for a Paladin or a Dark Knight


Hmm, who do I want to be today?

Though the choices are less diverse for the ‘support classes’ with really only Priest or Paladin for your healer type, as Monk has no MP and therefore no spells, and as you top out at level 10 in this game the Paladin doesn’t actually get the most important of all healing spells, revive, until the very end. It appears if you wished to you could make a party of tanks and survive via the use of potions, not sure why you would wish to do so, but the option is there if you would like to play with an additional challenge and the flexibility offered is to be applauded..

There is an fascinating dynamic with the class change options, as this game is capped at level 10 once you reach that point you cannot advance but you can change classes, whilst you lose your stats, you do not lose your skills/spells, so you could conceivably cycle through the available classes as you reach the maximum in each and end up with a group of characters with middling stats but a huge repertoire of skills at their disposal.

The developer has made at least one interesting narrative choice which is a trifle confusing. When you bring back the two components of the sun-song to the sun shrine you’ve been informed by the King that the path to the vampire’s lair will be opened, but actually the sun shine appears to turn into an airship instead. I’m not certain if the developer intended for the airship to be hidden under the sun shrine but as I flew away there were no ruins so I can only assume the shrine transmogrified into a Zeppelin. That’s probably going to annoy whoever was looking after the place. Then again the world is almost completely devoid of people, so perhaps not. With the exception of the castle, with what looks like about 15 inhabitants, a lone salesman encircled by mountains on a secluded isle and a tiny pirate cove complete with a bandit, a rogue, two highwaymen and the obligatory pirate, all of whom are now dead; this world is empty of anything but one deserted (now disappeared) shrine, two monster and puzzle infested towers and the castle of the bad guy. I really don’t know who the vampires are going to feed on once they take over the world. They’ll be starving in a week.


Oh, it’s talk like a pirate day!

There were no game breaking bugs in the game, no glitches or errors that I could detect so the game has obviously been play tested well, which I appreciate as a player, but overall the feel of the game is unpolished, it has some pleasant little additions but taken as a whole it’s pretty much a standard fare game with a simple quest objective and a coat of virulent asparagus paint applied.

Posts

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Was this, by chance, the game where you were playing Enelysion's soundtrack in the bg, nhubi? :p
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
That would be the one :)
Thank you for the review! I intend to address your concerns about the game. I've messages you a more detailed description.

Although I do not think I will change the green, I should have given some context earlier; it is intended to mimic the original Game Boy, not a night vision goggles. The soundtrack is composed with OrgMaker, a chip tune program by Studio Pixel, which is why the music sounds old school: it is! Though I suppose I can't change an opinion, I'd hope it's not terrible c:

I will release a new version shortly to address these concerns and others.
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
Gamesfreak I responded to your PM, sorry it took me a little longer than I would like but my beloved laptop had a small motherboard issue so I've been less on-line than normal.

Ah that explains the old world music then, it's a design choice you are happy with, it simply didn't appeal to me.
this doesnt look gameboy at all, mainly due to resolution
I tried to do something different with the graphics. I'm not very skilled at making graphics or writing stories, so I edited the RTP as I have no money and in the context of this contest no time to commission custom retro graphics which would be more accurate. The retro theme was an idea so I could avoid a complex plot. I could have used NES colors, but it didn't look different enough from the regular RTP.
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Too many green games out now...

And the other ones do it better by having mainly original graphics and not just color sat VX ace sprites.

Not trying to be a downer, I actually like the simplistic approach you took and want to give this game a try.
Soo keep up the hard work and best of wishes to you!
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