Recent reviews by coldfrog

The Pedestrian is a fairly uninventive puzzle game in an extremely well-polished package. The visual concept is neat enough, a game that takes place on various signs with your character wandering through environments to sometimes cause changes in the real world. The mechanics are a kind of take on something like Gorogoa with a little more modality but neither the new and unusual puzzles or the lush, colorful art design. In fact, I'd go so far to say that it has been so polished it scrubbed away a lot of the real sense of uniqueness. There's even a late-game switch up that has huge potential but was barely used, and I was honestly looking forward to see what they could have done with it (though the lack of many truly interesting puzzles for the previous ones probably shouldn't have given me that hope).

There are a couple things that bugged me along the way: some things aren't clear, like that changes in the outside world remain even if inner signs are reset, or what stays "frozen" in a later mechanic, leading to some just outright trial and error that could have been avoided, and there were a couple puzzles where I am pretty sure I skipped most of what they wanted you to do. It's otherwise as far as I can see bug free, which, along with the extreme polish put into it, is probably the best I can say about it.

Thinking over the puzzle games I've played in the past, very few focus so hard on the shine over the puzzles. Almost every puzzle game I've loved has had a little roughness around the edges of true brilliance. Things like Swapper, Baba Is You, Portal, all have these clever concepts and interesting mechanics that exist to serve the puzzle, and very few have ever worked hard to put more polish than they needed over the hard-working core. This game took 6 years to develop and I honestly can't tell what they spent that time on. I'm guessing being bug free and having decent transitions and a good interface. Which are fine, but don't make a game a winner and definitely don't make a puzzle game interesting.

I'll say this in its defense: I have played a LOT of puzzle games and puzzle platformers. There is a good chance that this will be a real good entry for someone who is interested in puzzles and what can be done with the concept. But to someone who has spent a lot of time with this type of game, I can't recommend it.

I received this as a gift, though I did have my eye on it. Yes, I've only played for less than half an hour. Yes, I am ready to wholeheartedly recommend this game.

It is a fast paced, simplistically beautiful arcade game that does exactly what it sets out to do. It's a fall-n-gun platformer that knows how to make things clear. For instance, it is quite obvious which enemies are stompable and which aren't by the color scheme, and the controls are simple and elegant and immediately clear.

The only opaqueness is the weapon system, and that quickly becomes clear (you learn fast that S is shotgun and L is laser and what that means, for instance)

Highly recommended

I am going to recommend this, but with some mild hesitation.

First things first, it really captures the retro style, feeling a little mega man, a little Super Metroid, and a little Cave Story (I mean, you have to make it somewhat modern, right?) If this appeals to you, you are probably about sold, but just let me continue.

If you are familiar with the way Capcom retreaded the NES style Mega Man series, you might be aware that it included more instant death traps than any game previously. Well, this game is filled with those things as well, and you'll be quite aware of that by the time you start getting into the depths that this game offers. Because this game is harder than any of the games I've mentioned so far. And you know what, maybe that's your thing. Frankly, I'm OK with that. The nice thing is that the game takes advantage of years of experience to know what kind of classic mistakes that old games can... Oh, what, there's a lives system? Well then.

In truth, the lives are not as bad as it seems. You can die several times but when you run out, it's not start-over game over. In fact, you end up in a room, progress saved, but you will have to find your way back to your last location. This is not necessarily an enormous detriment... except it is VERY spare on teleport locations, and some parts of the game... you are going to die plenty. This can lead to rather a few revisits to rooms that probably killed you a couple times as well. If you haven't stocked up enough lives, you might be in pretty big trouble. I will say this to their benefit, though: there are many rooms where you can flick a switch to remove an energy barrier that lets you take a shortcut through the room to skip parts of it, but even then you'd still have to make your way through some tricky bits. I don't even want to think about how many times I died in some sections so far, and I'm about 2/3s of the way through.

The thing is though, these levels are quite well designed. I feel like a connoiseur of platformers would be able to appreciate this, but unless you are a master, you have to be prepared for grinding through some particularly nasty bits to get further.

So basically, if you have not been frightened away by this idea, and possibly if you don't get frustrated easily, give this a go.

I should also note, great visual assets and a wonderful soundtrack. If that pushes you over the edge, great, but if not, don't say I didn't warn you ;)

I got this game from a free key and am glad. I would not have been happy paying for this.
The game isn't incompetently terrible or anything, but it lacks focus and originality. The only really original thing in the game is the rope which has some pretty interesting uses, but I would have been really happy if they had built a game around that mechanic and explored it deeply.

BUT ANYWAY.

Every aspect of this game feels thrown together fairly without thinking about the other parts. There are a variety of level mechanics that are in the game, but they don't seem to tie to anything beyond what the designers wanted to make that level about. The visual design is not bad but basically is just a pasted-on theme on the same kind of levels. Level progression is weird and unclear - finishing levels unlocks other levels, but there's no real clarity on which levels will be unlocked next, nor is there a sense of progression necessarily. One level might be extremely hard, but it might unlock a very easy level. Some levels are challenging only because they are incredibly long and, since one hit kills, you have to redo the entire level when you die, which can be tedious. (there are maybe three or four levels I can think of that stand out as poorly designed this way)

The music and sound effects: again, just functional, but for some reason there is a sound when your character lands (I finally figured out what that noise was!), the gem-collecting sound is exactly the same every time, no modulation at all, and the music is mostly in tune with the game, but one particularly goofy-sounding song (the main theme in fact) just did not seem to fit at all. I would not be at all surprised if the songs were just public-domain tunes that they used because they were free. (still nothing WRONG with that, just a more effective use would be nice).

The controls are kind of floaty too. I mean, I think that's intentional because you have a cape and that's kind of floaty (also this is a mechanic later, surprise surprise) but sometimes momentum seems off, and lets not even start on the different sized characters.

One last note - if you don't do the levels in the order they want you to, you might show up in a level with a mechanic you're not yet familiar with and have to figure it out yourself. Not too bad really, but poor design nonetheless.

I mean, there's nothing that really makes this game exceptionally bad, but nothing that makes it very good either, and in fact I feel like it turns out to be less than the sum of its parts, simply because it is put together in such a way as to feel disconnected and just bland.

I don't really know why I finished all the levels. I guess getting it for free makes me feel some kind of obligation or something. Whatever. I would say that if you have to pay money for it, pass.

This game is platforming at its most basic. The controls are exactly what they need to be for making almost but not quite pixel-perfect jumps, and the graphics, while hardly the best, offer a few well-designed visual backgrounds and are always functional enough to let you recognize what will kill you and what dangers are ahead. The levels are well designed with just enough trickiness to offer potential traps but that the Single Life mode seems (at least to me) very much possible, some day, with enough practice. And the levels are also fun, which I think is the most important part. They are all very memorable in at least one way, and offer a variety of challenges. They are good enough that I feel it is worth playing through the speedrun mode, and playing multiple rounds to attempt to reach A++ scores.

Basically, it is a well-crafted challenge platformer that is beatable by probably most people but also offers enough challenges that people will want to come back to it repeatedly, and is short enough that a full game is not a huge time sink and failing does not prohibit you from coming back and playing again because you felt like you spent too much time on it. I would rank it better than average, and well worth the very low price of entry.

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure is a randomly generated sidescrolling shooter that banks on a couple things: goofiness, nostalgia (slightly) and not caring too much about shooter games.

If I was to judge it purely based on its mechanics, it's not much more than mediocre. The weapon options are nothing too special, and the enemies mainly rely on strength of numbers to add challenge. The boss fights that I've experienced so far were OK but no big deal.

What really is entertaining is the silly nature of the entire endeavor. The game takes a lot of cues from Oregon Trail and basically makes fun of every option.

"There is a river. [Tom] has the brilliant idea to jump over it. Or, you could try fording it."
[Ford]
[Jump]

And then you can actually jump over the river if you want to.

Other times you might be attacked by modern cars or "inner demons", and the text that accompanies almost every event is weird and goofy. And it works almost every time, and because the game is so quick to play (the game I won probably took between 5-10 minutes) and there are a lot of options, it hasn't yet gotten old.

But it probably will eventually. And when I'm tired of seeing a million buffalo charge at me for the hundredth time, then I'll probably stop because all it has left are the mechanics, which, as stated, really aren't much special.

Still, it doesn't cost much, and it still plays much better than the far more tedious McPixel (I don't know why I feel the comparison is necessary - highly pixelated graphics and bite-size gameplay I guess, but nothing else much is in common so *shrug*) and I still foresee getting some quality time out of it, so I would recommend it!

Guacamelee is part beat-em-up, part challenging platformer and part Metroidvania explorer. Does this sound like an appealing combination to you? Yes? Then just get it right now, because you will enjoy it.

Every part of this game is well done and polished. The combat is smooth and gives a good feeling of advancement, doling out new abilities that both add to the fun of combat and give you an extra bit of exploring power. The main game is challenging but definitely finishable, though I anticipate some people may have trouble with some of the bosses. I'm not GREAT at beat-em-up type games but I found that I was able to push through some of the harder parts after no more than a few tries, with very few exceptions (and these exceptions were mainly bosses or challenge areas). Where it really puts you up against the wall are the optional challenges. Some are incredibly difficult platforming sections (one actually a little too difficult in my opinion, though I did manage it), others brutal combat sequences. But these are all optional - Though there are some challenging bits in the main playthrough, for the most part it may only take a little practice to get through these.

The exploration is a real joy, though, especially once you get the ability to swap worlds at will. Dual worlds is not a new concept (Zelda, Castlevania, and plenty of other games have used it), but it is not unwelcome and, even more, fits very well in with the story here. And, by the way, the story is incredibly simple, and yet, tied with the sense of humor this game has, is well done and does not break the flow of the game.

Along with this, the visual style is incredibly bright, well animated and just full of visual treats and silly references. It doesn't rely on these references to get anything across, they are merely little bonus details, but easily appreciated by fans of games in general.

The only criticism I have to offer is that I sometimes feel like combat is too hectic to tell what is going on and that the bosses may have a little bit of a difficulty spike, but other than that I heartily recommend this game. All the pieces fit together into something fun, light-hearted and well polished.

The origins of this game, whether they are true or not, certainly ring true after having played the game. The reason being, this game handles as if it was designed in the early days of platforming, when game creators hadn't quite gotten the hang of how things should handle.

The movement of your character isn't abysmal, but using the jetpack is far from the joy it is in the previous (or... later?) Dark Void game. You can hold the jump button down to rocket, which is OK for going up, but the delay makes coming down tricky to control, or you double tap, which is probably the preferred method but has some weird quirks, like a slight bob that makes aiming while hovering trickier than it should be. The controls overall feel oddly unresponsive. This combines with moving, which re-adjusts your aim, making you have to do a lot of fiddly jiggering to really point the way you want. All the while, getting blasted by aliens. This could have been fine if it were a dual stick shooter instead, but the way it is makes dodging and firing a real chore if you want to be safe.

And you do want to be safe. Because if you take a lot of damage, you WILL have a "low health" alert. That goes on and on. And is annoying. This just adds to the likelyhood that this game really was created in the 80s.

The entire first level consists of collect keycard, open next door, collect another keycard, which is OK, but again, makes it feel dated. I got to the first boss, and promptly lost all my lives. And yes, since this is claiming to be an arcade game, having lives makes sense, but it feels just like worthless punishment here.

For a bonus, while it's not the WORST music, it sounds like Mega Man cast-offs to me, uninspiring stuff that didn't make the cut for their better tracks.

I guess for me, they either really found this game and decided to do absolutely no modernization, or they concocted a story meant to play on nostalgia and went out of their way to make it play poorly. I really hope it's the first, which is forgivable. The thing about nostalgia is that, people would have had to play the game before now to have nostalgia for it. Either way, poor mechanics without the memories to back them up are a disappointment, and make this game overall not worth it to me.

I was wary of this. I played a ton of alpha, even after I had unlocked everything and finished all the levels. It was a lot of fun, and I appreciated the minimalism of the game. I paid for the advance copy something like three years ago, played the game, then stopped and sort of put it behind me for a while.

Then, just a couple weeks ago, I saw that it was released on steam. While I thought about looking up my copy of it, minutes later I received a message saying because I paid in advance I got a steam key!

So, I cracked it open. And for a brief minute, I was shocked. This isn't the blocky spreadsheet I remember! Where did all these graphics come from? Why are these characters saying things? A town? I miss my grid of things!

Of course I got over that quick. What I wasn't sure about is what changes there would be, and after playing about 10 hours of the game, I am excited to say that I think they've put an amount of polish on top that has made the game even more nuanced, more complex and overall, well, more.

The base aspects of the game are the same. You are in a dungeon with monsters levels 1-10. Killing them nets XP, but killing monsters of a higher level than you gets you exceptionally more experience. And you will need to kill higher level monsters, because otherwise you are unlikely to level high enough to kill the boss. Lucky for you, the monsters are pretty lacksadaisical and tend to just stand around in the same spot, and won't strike unless you strike first.

It also has a clever mechanic where revealing tiles in the dungeon is the prime method of regaining life and mana (aside from leveling, which refills all your life and mana). The monsters also refill their life, though, so you can't just take anything out by regaining your life over and over.

It sounds simple, but when you count class skills, items, gods and so many other factors, there is just so much to this game. And the random generation of levels makes every game, even of just random games, a thrill and a different experience. And I love the way they build level by level as you experience more and more - the learning curve here is a big improvement on the original which pretty much threw you right into the fray and you had to guess what would be hard or easy. Frankly, that never bothered me because a game like this that lets you take your time, you learn in your own way, but I appreciate what they've done here. It opens up pretty fast anyway, and I think your particular sense of play can lead you towards certain classes as the most fun or interesting.

So basically. I'd recommend this. A lot.

A curious 2d Zelda-esque game with an eerily dark tone to it. It may mean something or it may be style over substance (with regards to the story anyway), but the game itself is solid and playing it you can't help but get an uneasy feeling that this world is off.

It's hard to really describe this because of how unusual the story and tone fit with the play itself. It's quite dark and often makes you question the meaning or motivation of many of the characters - but is there a deeper meaning to it? I don't know.

Whatever the case may be, I will recommend this if you like the zelda style of 2D action game. It has some clever bits to it, as well as a rather different "weapon" that adds a neat little gimmick overall. I like it, though I am still not sure how I feel about it, meaning-wise.