Vermicide

Vermicide Review
(Do not take my scores too harshly - a 7 is pretty decent from me)

Story

Pros: Vermicide is fairly minimalist as storytelling goes. This is understandable due to its short-length, and due to it fundamentally being a dungeon crawler. It establishes a fairly neat setting(even if it is basically Fallout's/Wasteland's/whatever), but keeps things simple, relying on atmosphere and ambiance to get things done. No fancy cutscenes, and while the dialogue is fairly dry, it is consistent and maintains a good level of quality. The flavor text present in the various machines is good, as well.

Cons: As for the downsides? Well, Lamont steals the show completely. This is both good and bad, because while he is more interesting than the other two, he is also incredibly irritating. You can argue that this makes him distinct, but it honestly just means I would never have him in my party were he to be present in Everything Turns Gray. This also brings up Vector and Ai - Vector was basically Lamont's counter-point straight man, and Ai had no real personality at all(besides being the mage babe, anyway). On another note, the captain's suicide note, which was the largest portion of story introduced into the game, was rather over-dramatic, to the point where the result was the reverse of what you intended. I just couldn't take the note seriously as it went on and on.

Summary: Despite my issues with the character direction and suicide note, you portray a neat setting here. It left me wanting to learn more about the place, which I am sure was your primary goal.

Score - 7/10 (good)


Gameplay

Pros: I personally love tough games, so I was pleasantly surprised that enemies actually hit pretty hard. The characters are your typical genre cliches - fighter, mage, rogue - and I could appreciate the work that went into out-of-battle mechanics. The distinction between organic and mechanical was very clear so abusing elemental weaknesses was more useful here than most games.

Cons: I had a fair few problems with Vermicide's, however. My most significant complaints are related to the CRPG attempt. It just isn't very fulfilling having characters spam attack over and over again. All the important choices were left to Ai until the end, where Vector gets a grenade launcher and everything dies. This makes things kinda drab - just because they are a fighter and a rogue doesn't mean they can't have in-battle options that involve more than gear selection.

Two other lesser, but still annoying problems kept me from enjoying the game as much as I could. Firstly, criticals...a critical from a mutant kills Ai two times over - this is just bad as no real way exists to prevent it outside of running. Secondly, the fatigue system's warnings were obnoxious and rather glitchy. Several times weird things happened during other messages showing. One time the game crashed. Other minor nitpicks I can think of include character equipment selection (Ai and Lamont don't get any cool stuff at all until the very end) and the sheer cheesiness of reloading the game from any point if you fail something like a lock pick roll.

Summary: While a variety of inhibiting gameplay choices can kill one's enjoyment, but I am stubborn and enjoy a good challenge.

Score - 5/10 (mediocre)


Aesthetics - Visual

Pros: Max will say mapping isn't his forte, and he is right. However, the mapping is clean and the environment is easy to navigate. The dungeon looks like an old complex, so it does the job.

Cons: It was not obvious at first what things give stuff - while some things gave visual cues for searchable content, it would be better to make them more distinct in another way. I am also not a big fan of rips, but I am aware that pretty much every game uses rips. Either way, it's not a plus from me.

Summary: Everything does its job. Nothing looks incredibly out of place besides a few monster rips.

Score - 5/10 (mediocre)

Aesthetics - Audio

Pros: Stuff occasionally clicked and beeped, which was good. The general dungeon music was also quite nice and matched well with the setting.

Cons: The battle theme just doesn't work for me on any level. I am aware this is entirely an issue of preference, but do consider your potential audience when releasing Everything Turns Gray. I don't think I could take ten hours of this battle theme, for instance.

Summary: Considering the battle music is playing a lot, this was hard to ignore. I do not grade very harshly on music choice in the end, but turning down the sound when you are in fights and up again outside of them is pretty annoying.

Score - 4/10 (poor)


Final Summary


I took an interest in this game from a concept standpoint fairly quickly. My old game, Philadelphia, has a very similar concept with a different setting, so I could certainly appreciate the aspects that made this game good.

Having said that, it could use some improvement mechanically. I am aware you did not spend a vast amount of time on this game, but hopefully this critique was helpful.

Final Score - 6/10 (fair) Not an average