Recent reviews by Thelostrune

Update: Scroll to the bottom beyond the TL;DR for dev scumminess

I have played great games. I've played good games. I've played okay games. I've played bad games. Then, I've played this.
The developer gave two copies of this game out for free in Flyff's Lykan server chat (2004 KMMORPG) and I decided to check it out, just because. This is why I'm marking this as a free gift. He also said he was banned from said MMO some time previously.

This is a game clearly inspired by the Mega Man franchise and appropriately steals two sound effects from those games.
As this is someone's first published game, expect it to be exactly that, but also expect my review to be honest.


Graphics: Everything from bad UI elements, poorly chosen colors for all projectiles (of which there are many coming from you) to cheesy fonts and to downright bad design in the ice level which is completely white (for 1/3rd of the level) with white clouds as the background. All backgrounds move rapidly and some even loop incorrectly like in Tiki Hollows. This is obviously using some sort of default or Humble Indie Dev Bundle type pack and horribly showcased. The tileset is actually quite decent, but this isn't the developer's actual stuff. I even have some doubts about the player/"Terran"/enemy graphics, as they seem to be using some kind of artist base. No clue if this is the dev's or not, but they're bad regardless. Particles and projectiles are obviously not the dev's.

Audio: The music is mostly compromised of Sound Canvas 88 module sounds, which one specifically I don't know outside of Roland Cloud's SCVA being super accessible. Might have some other VSTs, though. It's somewhat decent, but mediocre enough to possibly not being stolen. Sound effects are okay, outside of downright copying Mega Man's sound effects. I don't know the legality of this, as anyone can recreate said sound effects with anything that can emulate the NES/Famicom sound chips.

Gameplay: Simple, you can walk, jump, dash and high-jump by holding W while hitting the jump button, which is spacebar. There's also a wall-jump that you can do from basically anywhere which is a "wall" like the end of the level. You'll quickly learn to just dash + high-jump (and double-jump) while holding down the two shooting buttons, as that's the optimal (and only) tactic. Speaking of those, there are upgrades! What are the upgrades? Add +1 projectile to either left or right click, which sounds about as good as it is until you see they have a wave-like pattern to their spread. Right click has an energy meter which depletes quite rapidly, but shooting with left click restores said energy. You can hold both buttons down and should do that. At some point, you get a shield, which you get upgrades for. Your shield (just a regenerating health bar, unlike your health which does not regenerate) protects your health from being depleted. You get upgrades that improve both energy and shield bars later on. The shield makes you basically overpowered as in you can much more easily rush any situation with certain enemies. Now, enemies, right?
Let's see, there are about 5 types of enemies, 3 of which fire projectiles. 2 types repeating "bosses" (bullet sponge immoble sandbags) and you play every level twice by the way. There's a Wily's Castle too, basically.

Story: something about mr. Xavier saving "Terrans" (humans) and preventing an invasion. PLENTY of bad grammar, spelling and bad writing in general. There's nothing to care about and nothing you should care about.

Glitches? Yeah, there are a few. The aforementioned wall-kick can be done from any vertical thing, which can at least be abused to make the boss rooms a lot easier. One enemy got stuck in a rock, once. Speaking of rocks, if you destroy any of the 1 type of obstacle outside of enemies (that'd be boxes, rocks, etc.) while standing on one of them and move when it gets destroyed, the sprite will follow you. You can also get stuck on the edge of one of the said objects. Else, it's "bug-free" as in it's too simple to break.


Conclusion: Don't buy this game. It's not worth the price, it's not worth your money and definitely not worth your effort and time.
It's a sloppy, poorly made Game Maker game that took maybe at most one weekend to develop. I took a look around the game files, it's really nothing special. Game Maker lets you replace your icons, which the developer has replaced 1 out of the 5 sizes. It's that lazy. I can't wait to hear from the developer how I'm "so clearly mad over a garbage school project he made in 3rd grade which was clearly not meant to be serious at all" and all that kind of language from a clearly upset person himself. Me taking this review so honestly (or "seriously") is not for any other reason than that I felt like it. Have a good day/evening/night dev. May you have the best of luck in your endeavours to improve, or you shall never receive a penny from game development again.


TL;DR: bad Mega Man Game Maker school project, don't purchase, refund if bought, refuse if given gift



Here's the update part:
The developer of the game has gone and reviewed his own game positively (https://steamcommunity.com/id/honeybone82/recommended/984230/) and also gotten most-likely a friend to review it positively as well. Reviewing your own game is a big no from Valve, but they usually don't do much unless it's astroturfing. The real funny part is how the linked developer-made review has disabled comments, as if he knew he'd get backlash for doing that. A whole year after my review, the developer has 5 hours of playtime and played as recently as yesterday as of this update. Real cool that you are enjoying your own game, but it won't make the game any better.