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Why Did the Skeleton Cross the Street?

Brutal's Challenge DeluXe by BrutalMoon is an arcade-style action game made in RPG Maker 2003 where you play as a brave skeleton dodging hordes upon hordes of enemies to make your way through a huge amount of different levels. The game has multiple different modes, some of which come with additional content. For this review, however, I played the Deluxe Mode that contains the most content.
After this review was first posted, the creator decided to implement some improvements into the game. This version of the review has been updated to reflect those changes.

While I personally really like these kinds of action-focused bullet hell-like games, I will say in advance that I could not complete Brutal's Challenge in its entirety. The reason I quit, however, wasn't that I didn't enjoy this game in and of itself. A good amount of the content I played was actually pretty fun. Although I found some levels frustratingly hard or not so well-designed, I only turned off the game when I got to a point where one of multiple technical flaws made it impossible for me to continue. Because while the concept itself is solid and Brutal's Challenge indeed does offer a lot of interesting challenges, the actual execution suffers quite a bit from both engine limitations and sometimes rather poorly thought-out implementation.


The main premise of the game is that the player takes the role of a grey skeleton who tackles a series of challenges designed by another skeleton, the eponymous Brutal. The story didn't seem especially relevant though, as the game very clearly focuses on gameplay, and usually keeps dialogue to a minimum. The graphics used seem to generally consist of the standard RPG Maker 2003 RTP, which works well enough for the purposes of this game, although the way they are used isn't always good. The music is a mix of standard RTP tracks and songs from other games, but I didn't find myself paying much attention to the music most of the time.

In order to complete a level, you must usually move the grey skeleton to a so-called Goal Ghost, who will then transport you to the next map. Of course, that sounds easier than it is, as every area is infested with enemies that block your path. Just touching one of these will immediately cause you to lose, and sends you back to the last checkpoint. But this transition is very fast, you have infinite lives, and especially in the early parts most levels are mercifully short. As a result, the instant death mechanic itself is by far not as frustrating as it might sound.

In addition to the aforementioned checkpoints, there is another element that - at least in some cases - makes your character's unlife easier: By pressing the X-button (or Esc or 0 on the Num pad), you can gain a huge boost in speed for a short time, which then takes a while to recharge. This ability can be useful when dealing with large groups of enemies, and is even necessary to get past certain fast monsters. But it can also backfire if very precise movement is required, which can turn into a huge roadblock especially in later levels.
You also have the option to change the way the camera works, although I personally haven't found a compelling reason to do so.



Come on, won't anybody throw me a bone here?



So far, so good. And indeed, a significant number of the levels I played gave an individual spin to the simple enemy-dodging mechanic Brutal's Challenge is built around. Unfortunately, after just a few screens it already becomes very apparent that the creator did not design the mechanics and levels with the player's perspective in mind most of the time. A lot of the oddities and bugs that plague this project are just minor inconveniences, but together they make the experience spotty, sometimes even outright cumbersome and irritating for the player. And even after some readjustments were made since the original version, there are still instances where sloppy implementation or badly thought out level design turn into high-level ragequit fuel.

The checkpoints, which were obviously intended to make life easier for the player, used to have numerous issues, but have since been overhauled to fulfill their function better. Originally, the game would immediately jump back into action upon death or entering a new level, which could cause players to lose before they could even get their bearings. Now, the game will wait for the player to confirm they are ready to start. This may not always be an optimal solution, and for some levels, there's still a chance for the player to get killed through no fault of their own before they can even touch the checkpoint. There are also a few cases where the preparation phase wasn't correctly implemented, which can lead to sudden and frustrating deaths. Overall, however, the player now has enough breathing room to ready themselves instead of getting utterly crushed by something they couldn't even have seen coming.

However, that does not change the fact that there are multiple mechanics that don't seem to work as intended or have unwanted side effects. For instance, pressing the Enter key while standing in front of an enemy will have the same effect as touching them, which is death. The game also gives you the ability to walk diagonally, which is theoretically helpful in some levels, but due to the way RPG Maker handles movement input, it's very hard to actually get to work: Rather than pressing two directional buttons at the same time, I found you need to keep one button pressed and then repeatedly push the other to move diagonally, and even that doesn't work consistently unless you are pressed up against a diagonal wall. While this diagonal movement isn't strictly necessary to beat any level, its unreliability and the lack of an option to turn it off can not only cause players to lose when they try it and it doesn't work. Especially in levels where the speed boost is needed, one can easily trigger it unintentionally, which often ends in disorientation and death.

Apart from the normal levels, the game also features levels where you either have to get to the Goal Ghost within a certain amount of time, or have to survive for some time before being allowed to move on, as indicated by a slowly materialising skull or "goal" picture respectively, which is a neat idea. Sometimes, the timer does not reset properly if you die from taking a hit - a relic from the old version - meaning that upon restarting the level, part of the time you have available is already consumed from your last attempt. But usually, the player already gets to see the relevant picture during the readying phase at the level's start, which is a bit of a confusing way to indicate the level type, but works once you get used to it.



Where are they all coming from? Who hires these guys?



I also encountered one instance of a so-called mirror level, where a second skeleton mirrors the player character's actions, but ultimately it didn't seem to work as intended, didn't reset upon death, and in general pretty much had no relevant function, as the level was perfectly solveable without it.
In a few other levels, lava covers parts of the floor. The grey skeleton can take up to 5 steps on it before dying, however, and special NPCs can restore the number of hits you can endure. This gimmick gets old rather quickly, but is also only used for a very small number of levels.

There are also some instances where the graphics don't make it clear what kind of terrain you're currently on, or what functions certain objects have. More than once, I got stuck on a map for a while because I didn't realise a certain type of tile was actually passable or impassable, or had a special function for me or for the enemies. Not to mention that the mapping is spotty in many areas to begin with: I distinctly remember one map that used windows on the floor as walls.
For enemies, there are similar problems. Apart from the use of skeletons as enemies, which can make it hard to keep track of the main character, often enemy graphics aren't used consistently. In a game where finding a path past or around certain formations of enemies is the main focus, it's important that the player is able to remember and quickly predict what kind of movement pattern a certain enemy will have. However, there are multiple instances in the game where one and the same enemy type acts this way in one level, and then a different way in the next. This is both confusing and counterproductive.

Which brings me to the elements of the game that I find to be most problematic. First of all, there are numerous levels where enemies don't move back and forth a certain way, so that the player can plan a route to avoid them, but where the enemies actively chase after the player. As the path they take to get to the player is influenced by random chance, suddenly part of the player's success no longer depends on skill, planning and reflexes, but on luck. It's especially bad when enemies come chasing at you from off-screen, and since many of them are as fast as you, once you see them coming, it's often already impossible to still avoid them.

As a whole, even after many glaring flaws were fixed or at least alleviated for the current version, it is still rather obvious that a lot of the game's mechanics and level design choices were built from the perspective of someone who very clearly knows the game's and the engine's workings, and who already expects what's coming. In other words, Brutal's Challange is the type of game that is pretty much perfectly playable for its creator, but not so much for the "clueless " player. In some levels, enemy patterns or the layout of the passable spaces are so obscure or mind-bogglingly confusing that rather than skill and perceptiveness, beating them comes down to trial and error or brute-forcing. Information is often not conveyed to the player in a consistent and readily comprehensible manner. Some levels require movement both so precise and fast that even with good reflexes, simple luck and a lot of patience are ultimately a necessity to progress. Combined with the fact that the speed boost ability, which is necessary to beat many later levels, does not in fact reset upon death and takes quite some time to recharge, too often the challenge turns into a battle of attrition between the game and the player.

Ultimately, I got stuck on a level where a bug somehow permanently slowed down my character's movement speed so that I could no longer finish it. Whether this was a once in a lifetime-bug or a fixable error, I couldn't tell. But since the player's opportunities to save their game are rather sparse, I wasn't ready to reload and replay the significant number of difficult and time-consuming levels I had beaten since my last save.



You shall not pass!



As a whole, I really wanted to like Brutal's Challenge, and I'm somewhat disappointed that I didn't get to experience all of it. But despite everything, much too often, it only tests the player's patience instead of their perception and skill, as even with the checkpoints, making only one minuscule mistake often forces the player to replay multiple difficult challenges yet again. The often minor but numerous flaws in its design make the game so difficult for the wrong reasons that I can't in good conscience bring myself to recommend playing it, except to people who have a very high frustration tolerance. Which is a shame, since there are quite a lot of good ideas and fun challenges to be found in this game. But all things considered, the game has an unfortunate tendency to draw a lot of its difficulty from a distinct lack of player friendliness - and that's not the kind of challenge that Brutal's Challange should be.

Posts

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I am incredibly flattered at the fact that you took the time to wrote this amazingly detailed review.

I was 100% aware of every single flaw you pointed out in this review during development and I'd just like to say that I'm sorry.

I have tested every single level in the game several times and let me tell you, this game was hell to iron out at times. The concept is simple yet untouched previously in this engine, and making basic levels with basic level design and enemies is incredibly easy, but when I tried making the game harder and more varied, things got pretty stressful. There was a chunk of the development time dedicated to fixing one very annoying game breaking bug that I was completely unfamiliar of how to remove it, but that's unrelated; the problem is that I am simply bad at making a polished game. Making a game as mechanically fast as this one comes with a lot of problems, most of them are being unprepared for the next level or obstacle because of how lighting fast the game functions.

I blame myself for being inconsiderate of the player's reaction times and skill level, for making unfair deaths and making the game have objectively bad design choices made just to add difficulty that's a bit too much at times.

However, I also blame the engine. I found the idea of an arcade-like game with a crapton of wacky levels ON RPG MAKER incredibly fascinating and I wanted to show it ASAP (note: don't worry the game was not rushed). But it is incredibly annoying that the game can just randomly fuck you over because the engine made the enemy stop moving for a short period of time because you just touched it, and now the pattern is delayed. I could've put a level reset on every level, but the thing is, this game has three variations for every single level, meaning that I would have to manually reposition the player in the right level and position 190 times. And possibly almost twice the amount cause some levels are long and require more than one level reset.

But it's too late, the game is already released and I doubt I'll come back to this series (Excluding the original version of this game, there were two games before this on GameJolt) because I've got no more ideas for levels. And with that, I just wanted to say that I'm happy that you saw the potential in the mechanics and especially the levels. I hope you or someone looks in the game's project file so that they can see the amount of hard work I put into the later Deluxe levels, the Hard Mode levels and especially the amount of content in the post game. I don't think anyone will ever beat this game legitimately though. :/

I'm sorry to end this on a sour note, but I really hoped for this game to be a success among speedrunners and RPG Maker enthusiasts. I'm upset that I fucked up this badly, trust me I've seen a livestreamer play this game, I know how bad it can get.

Thank you very much for the review.
Actually, if I ever make a sequel, I have an idea to make it as free of problems as possible.

All I have to do is make every level screen-sized, with level resets on death and no timed gimmicks.

This makes the player easily familiarize with the stage, and makes it so that the experience will never be interrupted by delaying bugs.

However, this is only a far possibility, as the game wouldn't be terribly interesting due to level design limitations, and I've already ran out of ideas.

Maybe you can help me out. Any ideas for a possible sequel? I know this game's problems, I just need something to inspire me to make an interesting game.
NeverSilent
Got any Dexreth amulets?
6280
Hey, I'm glad to see you're taking this review so positively, despite the sometimes admittedly harsh criticism. As I said, the reason why I decided to try this project out is that I like these kinds of action-packed games as well, and I was just as upset as you that I couldn't give it a higher score, as much as I wanted to.

Still, if I may give my honest opinion, if I were you I wouldn't dismiss the idea of going back to this game and retroactively patching it a bit. To me, it looks like it would definitely be worth the effort. Despite the flaws this game has, I don't think it's beyond saving, on the contrary.
While I don't know the details of your eventing and level design in the engine itself, if my guesses are correct, it should be pretty easy to fix the level resetting problem with a few simple Common Events, for example. In fact, I would be happy to help you with that and put those events together for you, if you want.

Apart from that, if you're looking for inspiration, I can strongly recommend checking out this game. Theme-wise, it may not be the right time of the year at the moment, but that game does a lot of cool things with the idea of dodging enemies as well, and is definitely worth your time.

Anyway, thanks for your response, and feel free to let me know if you decide to go back to this project at any time, and if you'd like me to support you with that. If you do end up fixing some of its problems, I'll absolutely play it again and perhaps adjust my review and score accordingly.
author=NeverSilent
Hey, I'm glad to see you're taking this review so positively, despite the sometimes admittedly harsh criticism. As I said, the reason why I decided to try this project out is that I like these kinds of action-packed games as well, and I was just as upset as you that I couldn't give it a higher score, as much as I wanted to.

Still, if I may give my honest opinion, if I were you I wouldn't dismiss the idea of going back to this game and retroactively patching it a bit. To me, it looks like it would definitely be worth the effort. Despite the flaws this game has, I don't think it's beyond saving, on the contrary.
While I don't know the details of your eventing and level design in the engine itself, if my guesses are correct, it should be pretty easy to fix the level resetting problem with a few simple Common Events, for example. In fact, I would be happy to help you with that and put those events together for you, if you want.

Apart from that, if you're looking for inspiration, I can strongly recommend checking out this game. Theme-wise, it may not be the right time of the year at the moment, but that game does a lot of cool things with the idea of dodging enemies as well, and is definitely worth your time.

Anyway, thanks for your response, and feel free to let me know if you decide to go back to this project at any time, and if you'd like me to support you with that. If you do end up fixing some of its problems, I'll absolutely play it again and perhaps adjust my review and score accordingly.

You know what, I will patch the game! It's one of the biggest projects I've done yet and I don't wanna throw it away like this. And I'll check out that Last Minute Gift game!
If you re-review it, I would be super content. I'll make sure to fix all the problems the game had.
And along with the patched game, you could also review this soon... :)
NeverSilent
Got any Dexreth amulets?
6280
Believe it or not, but I finally updated this review to reflect the changes since the original download. I also slightly bumped up the score as a result and adjusted some of my arguments. Hopefully this is still of use to both you and potential players.
author=NeverSilent
Believe it or not, but I finally updated this review to reflect the changes since the original download. I also slightly bumped up the score as a result and adjusted some of my arguments. Hopefully this is still of use to both you and potential players.

Re-read and I still really like how detailed your review is, I'm glad you point out even the smaller flaws :P
I agree with it all and I just want to say: you should really play and review the special Halloween game I made weeks ago. I've been awaiting giddily for your review, as I tried my best to improve from this game :)

If you don't want to, it's okay (tell me though, I need an answer lol). The true sequel to this game is coming up and you can (or not, your choice :P) review that instead, if you're burned out.

Thanks :D
NeverSilent
Got any Dexreth amulets?
6280
I'm glad you still find my review helpful. I unfortunately don't have a lot of time available to dedicate to RPG Maker at the moment, but I have in fact started playing the Halloween Challenges game, and I'll probably write up my thoughts on it as soon as possible once I've completed it. See you then!
author=NeverSilent
I'm glad you still find my review helpful. I unfortunately don't have a lot of time available to dedicate to RPG Maker at the moment, but I have in fact started playing the Halloween Challenges game, and I'll probably write up my thoughts on it as soon as possible once I've completed it. See you then!

Thank you!!! Bye!
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