Adept-Omega's Reviews

[Nenjas]

My brain is confused

What did I just watch?

Solrac responds:

It all started back in 1967, As little Timmy watched his parents get eaten by the queen of the seas, Timmy knew what his place in life was.
That sir, is what you have watched?

[LARRY episode 1]

Well done

I'm particularly fond of the writing and voice acting. Good job, guys!

[8-BytchFyveIsABytch]

So call me a softie...

I do tire of seeing people raked over the coals, though. I don't doubt that your efforts were well-meant... you show promise. I'm eager to see what kind of works you'll be capable of in the future.

Good luck. I won't pound on you any more -- plenty of other reviewers have done that already. Good luck in the future, and take care.

[Demon Runner]

Counterintuitive controls; Good artwork

I can see from some of the other comments on this submission that the controls were confusing for many of the players. The big problem is that it's not explained at any point that the different types of block you need to jump over require you to press different directions. I believe many players are assuming (and I was as well), that up would be 'jump', down would be 'duck', and left right would be slow down / speed up, duck left / duck right, etc. Because all of the obstacles look like objects to be jumped over, this leads to players being unable to clear stage one. It doesn't help that the flashing arrow shows the button you /have/ pressed, rather than the one you /need to/.

Even factoring that in, the hit detection and jumping's a bit sloppy. The character seems more to jump into the house-shaped blocks than over them. When you understand how the controls work, the fatigue system's pretty forgiving, but it would probably be better to have a cleaner control / timing system with a slightly less forgiving fatigue system.

As others have pointed out, though, the animation's solid. The cutscenes, characters, and backgrounds look great. If this were an animation, I'd have scored it significantly higher.

I see that this submission was made for the Game Jam, and it's hard to expect perfection from a 72 hour project. The number one improvement I would suggest would simply be a clearer explanation of the controls, in particular becuase the player is asked to do counterintuitive things such as pressing down to jump over an obstacle without a prompt; it would change the game from confusing to playable for a lot of the viewers.

[Jade Wolf 2]

Good level design, but stiff controls

First things first, let me just say that I enjoyed this game a great deal, and have played it through to one hundred percent completion. This is a fundamentally good game that just has a few key issues; the game's world (from the overworld to the levels themselves) is rich and rewards exploration. The author did a good job managing the difficulty of hidden secrets, and I felt like I was actually exploring and making discoveries. Kudos to you on the world design, author, because it did its job well.

I feel that the primary weakness of this game is controls. Control of the wolf character is a little stiff - particularly in midair, though the wolf seems to have some hesitation changing direction on the ground as well. Interacting with enemies was awkward, primarily because of the stiff jumping controls making it hard to land on enemies, and sometimes it feels like normal running speed (excluding exiting a slope) should be just a hair faster.

Speaking of play control, there were a few things that were not particularly intuitive, and not explicitly stated (to the extent of my memory) in the game - in particular, midair rolling, which turns out to be quite important. I discovered the ability to break cracked surfaces completely by accident about halfway through the game, and it took me forever to figure out how the black wolf's wall-jumping works - I didn't expect to have to keep holding up while going back and forth. Speaking of which, I only discovered the black wolf training area long after I had earned the black wolf. If a similar area exists in the next game, I'd recommend making it easier to find. :)

Other reviewers have mentioned the character's animations looking a bit off, and I suppose I'd agree. It's not a breaking point for me, but it is a bit obvious that the wolf's legs are tweened in the run animation. Something like this will obviously be dependent on your animation experience, so I'm not gonna be too hard there.

Honestly, I enjoyed the game quite a bit. This is a game, I feel, whose strengths aren't as apparent as its weaknesses at first glance. I'd recommend any prospective players give it a little longer than the play controls might suggest - once you've figured out how to handle jumping and rolling, the game's levels offer a pretty decent game experience.

I'm looking forward to the next Jade Wolf. Keep up the good work. :)

SeditionGames responds:

Thanks. I'll work on the controls for the sequel

[Santa Crusader]

Not too bad

This was a pretty entertaining game, and I enjoyed it. The animations are cute, the gameplay is decent, and it's got some challenge without being arbitrarily unfair.

I should probably mention that there's a problem with the level code's display after you beat a stage, though; it seems for any stage after the first one you beat, the level code gets 'replaced' with the first one you're given; IE: If you beat levels one and two, you'll still see two's code when you should be seeing level three's.

All-in-all a good game, though.

[Memories Part 3]

An excellent conclusion

This ties into number 2 very nicely. The melody has now lost its 'haunting' effect and becomes more 'enigmatic'. Sweet, sweet stuff. ^_^

Althought part 1 had a few flaws, part 3 is a strong finish that more than makes up for the fact. Overall, I must say "Melodies" gets a 9.5/10 in my book. Great job! Keep up the good work!

[Memories Part 2]

Yes!

This was an excellent transition from part 1 to part 3. The melody in part 2 shows similarity to that of part 1, but is much more haunting, enigmatic, showing both ties to and variation from the first part.

It still feels trance-like, but is totally different in style. This was good, though, this was very good, especially for a transitory part.

[Memories Part 1]

First part of 3...

This was good. I like the three "memories" pieces, though I must say I think the other two were stronger than this.

The melody itself is really neat. I liked it and the sound it gave.
For some reason, the bass line in this one could be better -- it distracted me a lot from the actual melody. Perhaps it just didn't fit my tastes.

Still, I would recommend this to others, especially since it ties into Memories 2 and Memories 3, and both of those are excellent in quality.