5 Games Review

Last week, I played a multitude of games linked here. Some of them, I played in the past, but had forgotten about until then. The five different games I'm covering here are: Don't Shit Your Pants, Rescue: The Beagles, Super Puzzle Platformer, You Have To Burn The Rope, and Memory Reload: The Downfall

In the first game, Don't Shit Your Pants, it's run like an old DOS game with command line type inputs, with a similar soundtrack and graphics that resemble old DOS games. This game was interesting in that I had no idea how to open the door at first, until I watched someone else beat it in front of me. The first time I inevitably shit my pants, while the second time, I managed to get my pants off, but shit on the floor instead. The next few tries, I ended up shitting my pants automatically due to trying to kick the door down, or writing "don't shit pants" or something along those lines. This game is simple, but interesting in that there's plenty of achievements, or ways to beat the game. Apparently there are plenty of ways to shit or don't shit your pants. This game really lets you get creative with how to not shit your pants. This game exemplifies how you can take a mundane concept, such as trying to use the bathroom, and turning it in to an interesting short game.

The second game, Rescue: The Beagles, is about rescuing beagles from testing lab grunts. Except, this game is actually pretty hard. The difficulty level is supposed to resemble classic arcade game difficulty. That's probably one of the reasons why as a kid, I could never get that far in to this game. Even now, I still have trouble rescuing all the dogs, but I usually manage to get a few of them. One of the mechanics I always liked about this game was that you could leap from ground level to the areas in the background. While I never had much of a problem going on to the higher hills, I always had a problem of accidentally dying when I tried to lead down one area. Avoiding the testing lab grunts was usually relatively easy, or at least it is in the beginning of the game as I never got that far, but trying to maneuver the area is sometimes really tough. If I remember correctly, as a kid I never would get rope or use the owls, as I thought they would hinder you for some reason, which made the game even harder. Owls in game serve as a "weapon" which you can use to force grunts out of the way, and rope lets you move up on to a higher hill. I also just found out that you can still use your parachute, and it's not just a one time use entering the screen. You also have to watch out for each hill, just in case a lab grunt is almost about to reach a dog. The game has simple cute graphics, and an actual story line, which surprised me as I didn't actually remember the story button when I first played the game. If there's one thing that this game has taught me, is that you probably should read the instructions instead of a brute force playthrough, as I realized this time around that a lot of the items lying around are actually helpful.

The third game, Super Puzzle Platformer, resembles either game boy advanced games or arcade style games. In this game, you shoot at blocks, which then give you exp to power up your gun. Shooting too many blocks can result in you falling off the edge in to the spikes below, or having no where to run when blocks are falling on top of you. I can't remember if anything happens if the blocks reach the top of the screen or not. The gun reminds me of the gun in Cave Story, as its power ups seem somewhat similar. There was one thing that got me about this game, was that when I played it in high school, and even now, I always glitched the game. When a block is supposed to fall on top of you, you're supposed to die. Instead, I would somehow glitch inside the blocks and would be able to not get hurt by any of the falling blocks. Instead I'd be able to shoot any of blocks from where I was standing. It's kind of a big glitch, that I remember my friends and I used to abuse. Besides that, the game is actually well polished, and has really nice simplistic graphics.

The fourth game, You Have To Burn The Rope, only has one level, and it's neither long nor is it terribly difficult. The game starts out by telling you that there is a boss at the end of the tunnel, but it also informs you that your weapon is useless against the boss. The only way to beat it is by burning the rope holding the chandelure above the boss' head, which destroys it almost instantly. The music for this game is pretty serene during the level, but the actual credit music is pretty hilarious. This game is actually incredibly short, but its credits song is pretty much four times the length of the actual game.This game makes fun of itself within its own song. This game's replay value sort of relies on whether or not you want to listen to the ending song or not, which can get stuck in your head rather easily. The background graphics and sprites resemble a generic platformer background, while the main character and Grinning Colossus are simplistic in nature, and lack basic shading. All in all, this game is simplistic in nature, but probably has some deeper commentary on games that I am unable to remember at 9 in the morning.

The fifth game, Memory Reload: The Downfall, actually surprised me quite a bit. At first, I thought it was a normal memory game. However, the longer I took to play it, the more I realized that I was wrong. The more times you get something wrong or depending on how long you take to find its matching piece, the cards will change. At first you could stop the cards from changing if you get everything early enough, but the longer you take, the worse things get. For instance, the migrant worker card will turn in to "mexican invasion" and "peace in palestine" turns in to "Israel security." This game is actually a commentary on the downfall of United States as a hegemonic power. After the game is over, it displays an explanation for each card, and how they've effected each other over time in our world. Depending on the cards you caught on early enough, the words in the after explanation change. This game is either a commentary on how society's views on certain subjects change extremely quick, or how society remembers certain subjects are drastically different from how they started out.

Paper Prototype

I switched games that I was working on for the paper prototype, by the second session, so I have 2 records of play sessions. In the first session, it was about a cat trying to defend moon cheese from incoming mice. I initially made this prototype with a more computer based system in mind, and it was hard to play test via paper. This game lasted through about two sessions, before I decided to switch to a different game. This game had a grid based mechanic, where the mouse was to collect all the cheese and has to escape off the map, while the cat has to attack the mouse. In the next session, the mouse was given a speed boost when it gets to the cheese. The mouse moved via dice roll, while the cat could move 4 spots per game. This game was scrapped for a card game.

This game was heavily based off of magical girls, and had a lot of changes to the rules each session. I'm posting a picture of the very first session, as subsequent sessions were hard to see in pictures thanks to the sun setting, and causing a glare. We decided who went first either on a coin toss or a dice roll. You first started with 3 cards, and you drew a card and play a card. The first run of the game had a lot of problems. Your goal was to take out the other opponent's health entirely. Each card was either a spell card with a set amount of mana that it used to cost. Spells ranged from a basic air spell, fire spell, water spell, poison spell, and earth spell. With air and water being on the lower range of cost for mana (being between 1 and 2 mana) and everything else being between 3 and 5 mana. There was usually 2 cards per spell, unless they were more rare spells such as Restoration or a Wand, which boosts your attack and reduces your mana cost for a turn. Some cards even required dice rolls to decide the amount of turns some cards last for. Others require a coin toss based on spell failure rate. Cards the froze the opponent or poisoned them were later changed to use the dice roll mechanic, while the spell failure rate card was based on a coin toss. There were a few cards that would badly affect you as well, which included rotten apples which poisoned you, as well as spell failure rate cards. Health and mana cards were based off of sweet food and drinks, which healed you between 2 and 4 health, as well as 2 and 4 mana. There was also a Restoration spell which cured poison, but did little else in the beginning.

In the beginning, I started everyone out with 50 health and 15 mana. Then I realized that was too high of a number, and we often ran out of mana, as there were too little cards that restored mana. The next session I added a ton more mana cards, and reduced health down to a more manageable 25. I also had to change the poison spells to use less mana as it cost 8 mana to cost, but only lasted for 5 turns. So instead, I reduced it down to 3 mana, and it was based on a dice roll. This session went a lot faster, and didn't drag on as badly as the other one. I also realized the speed boost card, which allows you to use multiple cards in a round, ends up hurting you if you had no mana. The next round, I changed it to where speed boost has anything you use after that cost half the mana it normally would cost. I let you counterattack freeze spells with fire, and changed it where restoration spells cure all bad ailments instead of just curing poison, and also heals you 2 health for a dice roll decided amount of turns. I also ended up scrapping 2 cards as I didn't think they worked. "Hope Monologue" and "Shut Up CounterAttack" as a nod that there's usually someone who is monologuing during a magical girl show, whether it's about hope, or lack of hope. While the other person usually tells them off. They didn't work well as cards. Hope Monologue stunned the other player for 4 turns, or until the "Shut Up" card is played. Said card usually landed in the hands of the person playing it. I also just felt that the card didn't "feel" right. It was a good inside joke, but not good as a card.

One downside to the weekend play session was that my friend isn't much of a gamer at all, and continuously said mechanics were fine when I knew there were still some things off. Although I still learned a lot from it, as each round brought out a ton of changes each time. I learned a lot from both sessions. I initially thought something like a magical girl card game would be easier to play test as I blanked on how to make the cat game better, but there were a lot of things that needed to be changed in the magical girl game, but it was still far from perfect. On Monday, seeing two others play my game, as we were in a group of 3, I learned a lot from that session as well. As sometimes you can't use cards when you're out of cards completely in your hand.