Recent reviews by Skrams

I like King's Field

It's probably just best to play Soul Reaver if you want this kind of game. Monotonous gameplay, convoluted maze-like environments with unsatisfying versions of metroidvania backtracking, and not enough going on in the story department to keep you enthralled on that end. Music and Sound Design are pretty good along with the art direction throughout the game as well as environmental story telling. Easy to see how this would've been interesting enough to have a come back after 20 years. Cut content is interesting and integrates well for a first time player. Game at its core though just isn't really worth the time investment.

Do you like Picross? It's Picross. It's also free. It's pretty alright.

She's Dio. 9/10. It's alright.

If you're looking for a metroidvania, stop, close the page, and don't look back. If you're looking for a good game, rinse and repeat. If you're looking for tedious garbage that lasts 2 hours then you've found the right place. Inescapable's page asks the questions of "Unravel the mystery uncovered by a remote interplanetary mining operation. What did they find? What threat does it pose? And ultimately, what does it truly mean to be a hero?" None of those questions are answered.

You "explore" this planet in what is pretty much a straight path majority of the game. Other times it will acknowledge you picked up an item and ask you to return to another previous location 10 minutes away because it happens to open a door that lets you pick up another item. You'll also occasionally complete braindead puzzles that required you pressing a switch and then continuing on your way. The creator seems to have played a Metroid or Castlevania sometime in his life and decided to make a game about it without realizing what makes those games any good.

In those games you usually picked up upgrades that had a meaningful impact on your movement or how you dealt with enemies. In this game you acquire 12 total grenades off random bodies throughout the game and a spreadshot gun that depletes your suits energy/health every time it's fired. Besides that you'll be running around with an average gun majority of the time shooting the same enemies for 2 hours. There is 3 different enemy types. There is a regular mutant, a flying mutant, and about 3 enemy soldiers you fight in the game. Take that regular mutant and change it's size and color palette and that's 95% of the enemies you will be killing in this game.

Now another one of the things that makes Metroid and Castlevania good is they include a map and each area is very distinct so you always have a feeling of knowing where you are. There is about 5 or less different tilesets in the game. Majority of them are present in the screenshots provided on the page. There's rocks, lab looking stuff, temple stuff, metal stuff, and I can't honestly think of any more. Majority of it is just different colored rocks. I think it's an accomplishment that a single guy made this, but I can't believe no one told him to maybe make the game fun or interesting.

The only thing that could be construed as interesting in the whole 2 hours would be the broken up narrative that you get from reading tablets throughout the game. It's to be believed that this planet you crashed on was being dug up and researched by some group of people we don't care about. We're to believe they found an old ancient civilization that had a secret thing no one has ever discovered. This secret thing had a lot of power and was cool or something so people wanted it. I might be wrong in my synopsis, but it's not like it really matters when at the very end you don't even get an ending. It mocks you instead. You put the final item in an old tomb, the game cuts to black, and then shows a shot of planet you're on. You are then presented with a completed unrelated quote from an author named David Foster Wallace. The quote tells you how your childish entertainment was just that. It was childish entertainment. It was theatre, smoke, and mirrors. It was all meant to excite and gratify an audience. In reality though, there is no audience. There's no one to clap for actual heroism.

The ending is a slap on the face to anyone who might of bought this. If I were to take a guess, the creator might of enjoyed the authors books and this quote. He also might of just needed a quote that talked about how entertainment is meaningless that could also be construed as why do you need an ending. I imagine the guy working on this didn't know where he was going with the story while writing the three pages or less of text in the game. He then realized at the last moment he needed an ending to his 2 hour affair. He then couldn't think of one that left the audience reasonably satisfied and maybe one that also left them a few questions so they could possibly theorize what was going on. Instead of thinking of an ending like that, he decided to just go with a quote. Again, a quote that basically said that you completed the game and because of that, you don't deserve any praise and contentment you might of gotten from a real ending.

I hope the guy who created this takes his skills and applies himself to another endeavor, but actually gets feedback throughout his process to realize what makes games good and fun. I hope the creator can learn how to make a video game engaging and enjoyable. Maybe then he could go on to make something that actually is like a Metroid or Castlevania. Still, looking at this overall, I'm left with disappointment. It had the possibility of being a tightly packed metroidvania that lasted a few hours, but instead we got a straight path through the same rocky areas and fighting the same enemies for 2 hours. The only thing I think I enjoyed about the game might of been the art and animation on main character, but that is not enough for me to care about this game.

Ultimately, it's just a bad indie game that could of been much better if the creator put more time into it and actually had feedback on what makes video games fun.



Also, a side note. Most of the reviews in the description of the game are either badly written, misleading, or links to a random person on tumblr who doesn't know what he's talking about.

I can't believe this is sold for real currency. I can't believe someone might of bought this for real currency.

It's a skinner box. Just keep playing to get more gold to buy more upgrades to have a better chance at matching three to keep going deeper into the dungeons to get to the arbitrary goal of 10,000,000 points. I can see how a normal person playing this in short bursts of 5 minutes over the course of a month or more while on some public transit might think this is fine. On my personal computer that's not a thing. Maybe I'd be fine if this game was shorter and didn't feel like a slog, but it can take almost 10 hours to finish. That's pretty insane for a puzzle game that you see all of in the first 5 minutes you play. This game exists so you have something mindless to play while listening to podcasts. Please, just go buy literally any other indie game that interests you. There's a good chance it's probably better than this.

Mutant Mudds Deluxe is a retro inspired, Megaman-esque platformer that doesn't ever seem to do anything to justify itself or stand out. It plays upon common platformer tropes such as an ice stage with sliding physics or a lava stage with fireballs that erupt from the lava. One of it's only interesting ideas are levels where the enemies are ghosts and need to be avoided rather than shot. It also plays around with multiple layers in levels that can only be swapped to at certain points. It's a neat idea visually, but does little to add to the gameplay. At rare times it can become annoying to parse out enemies in the background before you swap layers or to see some enemies when they overlap. This at times can't be avoided because of certain instances like the ghost levels where the enemies are transparent. Besides this the levels are usually simple, clean, and designed well enough. There's even secret levels with themes relating to old graphics such as GameBoy, Virtual Boy, and CGA style.

The game's art is great through out but the product itself feels hollow as it never really does anything beyond it's base abilities of jump, hover to cross gaps, shoot mudds, and eventually a boost jump to rocket up. They hurt this even further by limiting you to having only one upgrade at a time of either increased hover, longer shot, or the boost jump for your first playthrough. After you complete it you gain access to another character who can use all three at the same time. The limited moveset keeps the art of platforming a bit more pure, but your ability to deal with situations differently could of been enhanced if they stuck with the more varied moveset from the beginning instead of making you play through the game once to acquire it. They did design certain secret levels around using all three upgrades, but it still doesn't feel like it reaches a varied or interesting enough game to really matter. You could still revisit these old levels and bypass huge sections after acquiring the characters that can use all three upgrades at one time, but there's generally little point besides speedrunning and finding the secret levels.

The game in general just suffers from being generic, unmemorable, and most of all boring. The games pick up and play style might of lent itself more to it's original home on the 3DS, but I grew painfully bored after only a few minutes each time I picked this up. The music didn't ease any of the pain either as it was an average chiptune soundtrack without anything that really stood out. The game laid out it's cards within the first ten minutes and then never did anything different enough to matter for the rest of the seven hours I took to fully complete it. I could only hope if a sequel is made that they add actual variety to the levels to mix up the monotony or make the game harder instead of the slight cakewalk it already is.

I only recommend this as I find the game is a fine trip overall and will itch a certain platforming scratch for some people, but it could of done a lot more than it set out to do.

At least it's better than Donte

You should really buy this game, you really should, really