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Interesting concept, uninteresting execution.

I downloaded Amort not really knowing what to expect. "How could a pixel game be 'dark'?", I thought. I found the game's premise very interesting, but I was ultimately unmoved by the experience.

What I liked:

  • The art style of Amort is what originally piqued my interest. I like the strict black-and-white color scheme. For some reason, it really complements the unsettling atmosphere, where the use of other colors might have ruined it.
  • The game has an original soundtrack, which in the RPG Maker community is not very commonplace. The music is simple, but effective. There were times when the music really helped me to feel ill at ease in situations where I was supposed to. I'm glad that although the game uses Game Boy-esque graphics, the composer didn't opt to make chiptune style music instead.
  • The battle system is easy to pick up, but just difficult enough that I felt challenged. I was reminded a lot of Final Fantasy Legend 2 in that the weapons have charges, and it's up to you to decide the best time to use each one. I like that certain battles give you a round or two to strategize before the action begins. When I won a fight, it felt like my choices actually helped me win.


What I didn't like:

  • "Press P for Perception." It was an interesting design choice that could have really enhanced the puzzle-solving, but all it boils down to is "Press P to remove all challenge." When you press the P button, the room darkens and the objective is very obviously highlighted for you. The game gives hints and special messages if you examine certain things or get close to a hidden door, but when you can see exactly where they are by pressing a button, then what's the point?
  • I have mixed feelings about the story. The idea is pretty cut-and-dry: a mother must defend her family from an evil cult. The way the story plays out (or at least, how it's implied that it plays out) is neat, but I got really tired of the whole routine of "Maybe I should seek help from this person, I'm sure they're totally not a crazed cultist. Damn, they are, and they want to kill me! I better find a way to environmentally inconvenience them and kill them. Whoops, I'm (still) a murderer." The story also wraps up pretty abruptly, so you're suddenly reading the credits thinking, "Wait, what?"

    Also, even though it's clear by the end that she's part of this cult's "prophecy", it seems weird that she vows to protect her family, but spends very little time at the house, leaving them prone to be murdered by cultists. Thanks, mom!
  • The gameplay felt very repetitive. You go outside, there's a menacing character standing there going on about cult nonsense. You either confront him directly and get slaughtered, or you do some puzzle solving and make the battle easier. I liked the idea, until I was taken to the next area where I had to... do the exact same thing. Go to new area, talk to crazed person who wants me dead but will allow me to walk freely around the premises unimpeded, solve puzzle in 10 seconds, kill crazed person. It's possible that this was the point and it just went over my head, but as the game does not explicitly tell you that you're moving from level to level, it's hard to be certain. Regardless, I felt it was a little repetitive.
  • The game was over in about 20 minutes, and that's accounting for not knowing exactly what to do. Had I played through a second time, I could probably get it done in 5. Although I'm sure a lot of work went into Amort, I really wish it had been longer somehow. Perhaps some puzzle-only areas would have helped in extending the gameplay, and maybe even added some variety?


Nitpicky Crap:

  • Considering that the game uses the arrow keys for movement, the 'P' key becomes very awkward to reach for. I suppose it's not that big a deal considering that you can't move while in Perception mode anyway, but it still felt like a pain.
  • The game uses a smaller font and font size than the RMVXA default, but the message boxes don't seem to take advantage of this. As a result, there appears to be a lot of wasted space in the message boxes. The use of the "batch text" event command could have been a way around this.
  • The menu interface for the main menu and battles is inconsistent with the pixel art style of the game. I think using pixelated menus and a black-and-white pixel gradient for the health/focus meters would have been a better design choice.
  • The title screen does not actually have an "Exit" option (at least, not that I noticed. You can just as easily X out of it, but it seemed weird that it wasn't even a choice.


Overall:

I didn't think Amort was bad, just kind of okay. I feel like the developers really had a good idea to begin with, but somewhere along the way, decided they needed to rush it out the door. With a little more attention to detail and a lot more content, I feel that Amort could be a very memorable game.

Posts

Pages: 1
zDS
The Besr
5631
07/04/2017 06:39 PM
I feel like this is a style of review we'd receive if we released the game on steam or something. It's super neat, honestly. You did a good job at seeing the game for what it was and you were pretty nice about it despite rating it 2.5, which I deem average anyway so it's not like it's bad.

The game was made for the McBacon Jam 4 event on this site, which is pretty much a team gets together to make a game in a limited amount of time and boy we sure had enough problems in our own lives to delay actually working on it until VERY far into it.

We had really no idea what to do, so we just used the power of improvisation to zap through the level design. I'm honestly quite please you enjoyed the battles! The level design and battle design was more or less me testing the idea of environment impacts a battle. For my tastes, it ended up way too black and white, but with that said it felt satisfying for me and it seems like others. Perhaps it can be improved upon in the future.

We added the Perception to give the environment a little flavor. Personally I think the idea needs some work. We originally talked about just having objects naturally make the player think "this sticks out to me" but that'd take some time to visually create that and or playtest.

Overall, I'm glad you played our silly little game and reviewed it. I think of it like a band having a short jam session that really doesn't go anywhere but has moments of cool in it, as opposed to someone making their Dark Side of the Moon.

Thanks for playing!
Superstroke
4779
07/05/2017 11:28 AM
Yea I generally agree with the opinion in this review.
Pages: 1