Recent reviews by Joosp

They absolutely stretched themselves out too thin trying to appease to everyone that they forgot to consider that what they were working on is the final entry to the series. People are recommending this game to newcomers of the series, but only because it's devoid of anything potentially gripping and has no meaningful impact compared to the rest of the entries.

Elements that made prior games so beloved (not just RUtM, but also persistent elements in Momodora 2, 3, and Minoria) are tossed aside, both narratively meaningful ones and mechanical ones. What's here instead is nothing more but an extremely surface level story with no meaningful, occuring consequences for any of the barely nuanced characters that had nuance previously. The ending spits in the face of the dilemmas and themes portrayed across the entire narrative with nothing but a weak and expected applause with no other endings in sight. I would be okay with the absence of prior elements if what was there in it's place went somewhere meaningful, but a lot gets brought up and dismissed even in it's own story without getting into greater detail.

As a metroidvania it's functional if not a tad linear and works just fine, with the sigil system letting you completely break the game in exchange for a small risk reward, if you're bored of mashing the attack button and healing. Maps are pretty but many take place in very cavernous areas that don't do quite enough to distinguish themselves geometrically the same way the more limited games did. The music is usually quite nice in an atmospheric, Minoria-esque way which I appreciate a lot even if it's not always punctual. It is at least charming to see characters returning from Momodora 2 and 3 as you see their home village for the first time, and said area is one of the best looking areas in the whole game.

It's nothing that can be ironed out or fixed with patches, unfortunately. As the product of struggling with the major success of RUtM and financial failure of Minoria, I was let down by what was taken away, and all I can do is wish the devs farewell in pursuing things they are still passionate about instead of pushing to make a product that will make everyone happy.

Thanks for creating these games. They mean a lot to me. I hope someday I can come back to this one and appreciate it despite what was lost. Check out the other games in the series before you consider this one.

It truly builds upon and redefines past mechanics from its own series and contemporaries into something truly special. There are very few games that I believe share Spark 3 as an equal in terms of the sheer precision, speed, and control that it offers in the pursuit of mastering it; backing it all up with a subversive story that embraces its own identity with genuine heart and cheese put into the core themes it plays with. It truly understands the emotional highs of routing your way and blasting through thrilling landscapes, translating it into a playable form.

Even if you don't consider yourself much of an enthusiast in optimising your play, the game eases you into its robust and flexible systems and offers many missions and medals that award you for simply exploring and engaging with Spark's moveset and the combat. A lot of my own time has been spent simply messing around, juggling enemies with combos to rack up score and trying to see if I can reach odd nooks and crannies in the stage, and I very frequently could.

Stages are packed to the brim with tons of details and ambitious scale that continues to floor me: multi-layered towns and cities with smaller districts, massive canyons with rails veering everywhere, mesmerising holographic shenanigans, and one of the largest vertical descending levels I've seen in any platforming game in my entire life to say a few.

This game is genuinely one of the best I've ever played and is easily the Freedom Planet equivalent to three-dimensional speed based platformers. With the inclusion of all the platforming stages of Spark 2 to blast through with the improved mechanics, I think it's safe to say that the developer is more than confident in their own creation as well.

Spark the Electric Jester is a game where a little fuzzy yellow man gets angry a robot took his job and swears to kill every last robot until he gets his job back. Truly a classic plot if I've seen one.

To do this, Spark has to rush through plenty of thematically varied stages with many a Kirby-esque power to use to either help traverse and platform or to use to kick the ever-loving bolts out of whatever robot is standing in his way. You can have one power equipped and one stored away for later, letting you mix up how you play. It's actually a very solid concept, and the implementation of the dash makes it so you're almost never caught on anything for too long and it's just oh-so satisfying to be able to get through a stage and keep your momentum with the help of some of the moves found with each power. This, accompanying with the EXTREMELY great soundtrack and the wonderful designs of the world and sprites themselves make Spark a blast to play through, especially if you're a fan of games like Sonic or Kirby to begin with. The stages jump around thematically as you traverse them as well, adding elements and different looking areas as you continue through a stage.

The bosses, which they're coming by the bucket full, are all rather varied as well and each usually requires a certain amount of awareness and figuring out the patterns in order to beat them down, especially in the later modes where getting hit is definitely not an option. The dash greatly helps in this regard, not only giving you invincibility frames if timed correctly against an attack but also lets you position yourself where you need to be quickly, and it works really well. Sometimes they felt like they could drag on for a bit too long at times due to their rather extensive health, but it usually didn't deter me from not enjoying it. It does, however, get very tedious if you happen to not have any good offensive powers on you, which can sometimes manange to happen if you're unlucky enough. Some of the placement of the powers are rather haphazard as well, to the point that I managed to miss a whole power for the entire game. These problems alleviate themselves a bit when you unlock the ability to swap powers on the go, but it's a few that persists nonetheless.

The things that definitely bugged me the most were the story, which there regrettably isn't much of and tends to feel a bit forced at times (there's a character that starts talking about butts and the internet), but it does eventually go for a much darker tone later on and it remains intriguing enough to at least keep playing, especially with the adrenaline rush you get from the platforming alone. There's also frame rate issues caused by the controller support, but it never got bad enough for me to ever be affected by it and hopefully it's something that gets patched out. I've also experienced some smaller kinks as well, usually with music awkwardly starting back up and fading out again after a boss, or boss health bars sticking around when the boss is already beat. All of them never persisted more than a couple of seconds but they were jarring enough to notice.

I honestly fallen in love with Spark as a game (enough to say I liked it better than Freedom Planet), and while there are a few flaws with the game as it is now, I find that the pros far outweigh the cons and with a healthy dose of updates and polish it'll only get better with time. If you're a fan of fast-paced frantic platforming and hectic boss fights with lots of movement, you'll most likely enjoy this game just as much as I have.

Magicmaker is a game that revels in the fun and destructive capability it offers to players and doesn't take itself remotely seriously. This becomes a lot like a double-edged Ninja Sword for Magicmaker, and whether or not that'll turn you off differs from person to person!


The game is a platformer crossed with a shooter in which you fire off spells from your wand to take down enemies as you progress through the (somewhat) randomly generated stages in which you must complete a set of tasks or otherwise just beat the boss at the end. You can use your wand to attack enemies with too, but the wand is lackluster in damage compared to the spells you cast and is intended for utility purposes instead. The plot is relatively simplistic if not outright non-existant for most of the game, but the witty and rather tongue-in-cheek dialogue of most characters usually kept me very entertained regardless. The game is very short if you're only completing the missions required to get to the final areas of the game, which was a bit of a disappointment.

The game's wand, spell and equipment creation system allows for a lot of creative applications and is probably one of the best features of the game. You can customize both your wizard's appearance and the spells they fire off to a large degree. Want your spell to fire off tons of projectiles that then split into even more projectiles as they bounce around on the walls? You can do that. Want your spell to be a laser that leeches HP and MP off your enemies? You can do that too! With the right materials, you can make a lot of varied and vicious attacks as well as grant your character multiple different attributes by putting them on their robe instead, such as multiple jumps, converting HP damage to MP damage and the like. This can get ridiculous as you approach end game, as by this point you'll have access to 7 slots to put high-quality materials in that can make spells that can cause ten thousand points of damage at ludicrous speeds.

This is where Magicmaker will start to fall apart for most people; as you complete the game and start your New Game+ adventures, your character will grow exponentially out of proportion to the point where it will be impossible for you to die unless you're intentionally playing bad or otherwise perform self-restricted challenges unto yourself. It's sort of like a reverse difficulty curve where the game was much more difficult if you were trying the hardest missions with your limited slots and materials in your first playthrough as opposed to annihilating everything in New Game+++ with your spell that restores all your HP and MP on one single kill. I found the difficulty early on to be really enjoyable, since with the limitations imposed unto your character you have to use your spells creatively as to not lose too much MP while still managing enough HP to stay alive, an aspect I lamented when the game turned into a whirlwind of dead enemy corpses.

However, as I said, Magicmaker thrives in the purest element of destructive fun and creation. If you want to play a game where you feel like an omnipotent god where you're teleporting around and firing countless fireballs that radiate damage like there's no tomorrow and just generally relieve stress, Magicmaker has you covered. The amount of satisfaction you get from making a spell that tears that one annoying boss to shreds in a few seconds is immense; watching the damage numbers remain stretched from the consistant damage going from 0 to 15000 is just beautiful. If you want a harder, challenging, while still very creative game, Magicmaker has a hard time filling the bill.


Magicmaker is the kind of game I feel like really deserves a sequel. It nails down a lot of key aspects well and can be ridiculously fun and enjoyable to the right people, but it flops rather heavily in other crutial areas that might turn others away. I would definitely try out the demo and make a decision based on whether or not you enjoyed the spell creation and destructive potential it offers. I also purchased the OST bundled with the game, which while I enjoy it quite a bit is something I'd also encourage you to listen to beforehand on the creator's bandcamp before buying, since it might not be your cup of tea.[npaavo.bandcamp.com] If you're also savvy enough, you can find the .ogg files in the game files themselves so you could also loop them yourself.


...did I also mention that there's also a level editor?[magicmaker.boards.net]

So; a game released initially for free years ago is now avaliable for almost 20 dollars.
Is it worth it...?

...depends!

Cave Story+ is the most definitive version of the game ever released in my own opinion, trumping other releases on consoles, and the original in terms of raw content. Cave Story+ boasts extra gameplay modes, stages, the ability to switch between the original and new graphics and music (And the WiiWare exclusive music too!), difficulty modes, little easter eggs, and a few things I probably don't have memorized sprinkled on top of an already amazing game.

The problem I have recommending it to most people is that the original Cave Story is still out for no money whatsoever and includes the entire length of the main game. If you're not comfortable whatsoever about paying money for Cave Story+, you can still get the original for exactly 0 dollars and decide whether or not the extra content will be worth your time based on how much you enjoyed it.

I'll be honest in saying that paying that amount of money for Cave Story+ feels like a bit of a rip once you've played the original and know its plot inside and out, but if you're like me and you really enjoy playing the game whenever you can, you won't really mind it. In reality, I own about six different copies of Cave Story between Nintendo systems and my computer, so you can tell I'm a bit of a nut about this game. There's something about the atmosphere, characters, and gameplay that just make it beyond awesome and a blast to play every single time.


In any case, I will always recommend you play the original first. It's free, and it's a timeless classic made by one man. You will enjoy it. If you come to love it just as much as I do and you need more, definitely grab Cave Story+ when you can (though maybe on a sale!)