Elephant Quest

Yesterday, I reviewed Treadmillasaurus-Rex, a game by jmtb02. Today is another, more recent (as in, this morning it released) game, Elephant quest. As the title informs you, jmtb02 is finally getting back to what he knows best, elephants. Elephant quest is a mishmash of platformers, RPGs, and metroidvania games. You play as an elephant who was robbed of his hat by a large mammoth, and naturally goes on a long and dangerous quest to get the hat back no matter what the cost. Why would you do all that for a hat? You obviously haven't seen how sweet that hat is.

The controls are pretty simple, and the game is both arrow key and WASD friendly. You start out with one turret, and the ability to jump about 5 blocks high. Through doing side quests you can unlock normal sentries, and flying autoguns which greatly boost the damage you are capable of. The basic goal of the game is to go to the 4 corners of the world (literally) to obtain four blue keys, so that you can unlock the door that holds wooly, and your sweet hat. Depending on how many sidequests you do, the game can take anywhere from 15-40 minutes, it honestly could have used a bit more length, as it had a good skill system in place, and all it would've taken would be more unlockable areas and more NPCs.

On a graphical note, I'm actually rather impressed. jmtb seemed to go far above his standard artistic fare with this flash game and it shows. The way the enemies health bars slide along the screen and display works well, the crazy physics of the turret string is cool to watch, and everything looks and feels like you are in some perfect magical world inhabited solely by Elephants (and bison).

The stats system is rather complex, and relies a lot on forethought about levels to come. You start out only being able to upgrade to one of four stats, each of which branch off further, ala dynasty warriors. There are also a few +15 bonuses scattered about and four huge +50 bonuses, on in each corner of the skill chart. As far as actual skills go, you without a shadow of  a doubt need to get 100 int first and foremost, because int has a skill increases the amount of points you gain per level up. Other than that, the jump skill is probably the most important, as the final boss would be ridiculous with the default jump. Damage is also nice, as is speed, and minion summons, though they are by no means required, and you can spend points on whatever you feel would benefit you the most.

The questing system is what you'd expect ofjust about any sidequest from an RPG, and there are three quest types:

1. Talk to Person X
2. Go find item X and bring it back to me
3. Collect Y number of X's and show them to me

None of these are difficult, and in actuality, you can probably pop of nearly all of them without doing any real backtracking.

All in all, Elephant quest was probably one of the most fun flash games I've played in a while. Everything runs smoothly, and it feels very professionally done. Its the type of game I could see being up on the iPhone or android app store for a buck fifty or two bucks.

Treadmillasaurus Rex

Imagine a game involving A T-Rex, on a gigantic treadmill moving at over thirty miles an hour, while mines roll across it...and the front and back of the treadmill are covered with lasers of instant death. Not enough to grab your attention yet? Okay then, now imagine there is a wheel behind the treadmill that spins every few seconds, and it can reverse the treadmill, increase the mine speed, and many more things that would likely prove lethal to Dinosaurs. What I have described is Treadmillasaurus Rex, in a nutshell.

Treadmillasaurus Rex is a game from that clever armorgames Elephant developer, jmtb02, and was recently featured on Kongregate's front page. In Treadmillasaurus Rex, you naturally play as an Elephant a T-rex on a treadmill. It's a very arcadey game and how quickly the game decides to kill you depends on the almighty random number god and his wheel of suffering.

There are two types of wheel effects in the game, neutral ones and bad ones.

Neutral

• Random fact - Tells you a random fact about T-rexes
• Hat - The best powerup in the game, it gives you a completely useless top hat
• Party - Adds disco lasers, background color lights, and other pretty things
• Confetti - It rains confetti

Bad

• left laser/right laser - the lasers inch a bit closer to you, not much to worry about.
• gamespeed increase - this increases the overall speed of the game. No technical disadvantage here save for the game becoming more reflexively intense.
• +1 all obstacles - Mines get faster and lasers scoot in closer. Not the ideal spin.
• +Treadmill - The treadmill gains a large boost in speed. This can be very bad depending on the timing, but isn't really a problem once you readjust to the speed.
• +wind - Adds or increases the wind speed. Wind is pretty much a treadmill effect that still aroks while you are in the air. Watch the confetti to gauge the wind speed.
• spike speed - faster spike mines. Spikes cause your death 9/10 times, so this matters quite a bit as it effects your jumping paces.
• reverse treadmill - This power up was designed to kill things. If you get hit by this an a bad time, hitting a spike or laser is pretty much inevitable, because you have to keep adjusting until the treadmill has completely reversed itself, then you have to set up your spike jumping pace again.

On graphics, the game is nothing special, but it accomplishes its goal. The lasers are lasery, the hat is hatish, the confetti is identifiable as confetti, and I can conclude from what I see that I am some type of carnivorous dinosaur who is on some type of moving belted device which is being rolled over by spiked circles.


There really isn't much more that can be said about this game, other than that you should play it. A game takes five minutes, tops, and its a fun little time waster that serves as a nice buffer between trying hard to look like you are working, and staring out the office window.

Aliens Kidnapped Betty

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Kongregate's newest featured game, Aliens Kidnapped Betty! It's like canabalt with more timing! It's like a generic platformer, but with a twist! Combine those and what do you get?!?!?

(A pretty awful game)

First off, let me put it out there that I am very biased here. I love platforming games, and something about removing a sense of control from a complex platforming game tears at my very being. See Meat Boy and then PETA's parody Tofu Boy for an example. The PETA devs, bless their big crazy heart, did everything right in emulating super meat boy except for the movement. The tileset layouts were the same, the sawblades, art style, everything was well above par, except the controls. Tofu boy slips around like he's made of mercury, his speed is more erratic and his horizontal jumping is too short by about a third. These small, minute differences turn two otherwise identical games into, well, a comparison of normal bacon and soy bacon. Aliens Kidnapped Betty does the same thing, it turns what would be a generic platforming game into a completely subpar experience by applying an interesting game mechanic in a place it does not belong.

That said on to the story. Betty gets kidnapped by aliens, and guess who is going to rescue her? Congratulations, you are correct, those of you who chose the obvious answer and not something ridiculous like Lisa Edelstein. You play as Mike McManly, a man with restless leg syndrome who is able to jump 8 feet high in a single bound. This comes in handy as your woman has been kidnapped by aliens who seem to not understand the danger of leaving magical doors of teleportation around town. Mike however, and full advantage of this, and uses said doors to get his woman back.

(note: none of this is actually said in the game, but I feel it was implied)

What do you do to win? press up or click.What do you do to get away from an enemy? press up or click at the right time. How about getting coins? Press up or click in the specific pattern the level designer intended. That last bit is unfortunate, because of the 16 levels I played, two of them had genuinely interesting mechanics that went along with the game. The rest were just standard platformer fare, sans everything but the jumping.

On a graphical note, I really do like the background and tileset for this game. The people look out of place, but the urban tilesets are done neatly, and the backgrounds are well done in that retro 8 bit style.

Well folks, that's my take on the game. Not one I'd recommend, but to each his own, and if it seems like something you'd like, have at it.

Topsy Turvy

Topsy Turvy is a flash game by Candystand.com that is also available for the iPhone. Its a cute little gravity shifting platformer. The concept has been done to death in flash, but the game is still rather fun, albiet too easy and lacking in the puzzle division.

For about the first twenty levels, the game is pretty puzzle based, you turn the world and find the appropriate direction for your planned jumps and falls, but after that point, the game becomes more of a mildly puzzle based traditional platformer, it takes a lot of reflexes, but not which thinking, which is disappointing following the levels before the final five. Overall the game is a bit on the easy side, no level took me more than two minutes, except for the final one, which requires either perfect timing, or you to stand in a hard to judge, nearly pixel perfect gap and jump over a moving spike wheel multiple times.

The level design isn't perfect, the story is a throwaway plot, and the graphics are pretty generic, so why would you keep playing this game? Because it is damned addictive. Its not one of those games there the puzzles eventually become completely insurmountable, after thinking for a few seconds just about any map's solution should become pretty obvious, but executing the solution becomes harder and harder as the game goes on, and the drive to finish compels you to play until you see it through.

No Time to Explain

There is no time for me to explain what this game is, but you must play it. Not much to review of the game since it only takes about 5-7 minutes to beat, but all in all it OH GOD MY RIBS ARE IN MY EYES

K.O.L.M.

Remember your horrible childhood? Remember how you were constantly abused by your whore of a mother, the one who constantly told you how much of a disappointment you were to her, and that you were a worthless individual since you were crippled and blind? If so, K.O.L.M.(the acronym is a secret) will bring back every childhood memory you could ask for.

As for the gameplay, its typical metroidvania fare. Collect shit, go to new area, collect shit, return to old area, rinse and repeat 50 times, beat game. The real draw here is the story, which is pretty much takes GLADoS, gives her a child, and then beats all of the subtlety out of her as she derides her child for being a disappointing wwalking for about 75% of the game. The platforming is slow and repetitive, and requires no more than a speck of ingenuity to figure out, but the real downer is all the required backtracking. Yes, its a staple of every metroidvania game, but the difference between backtracking in a game like zero mission compared to K.O.L.M. is that not only were there new hidden areas in zero mission, but they also held rewards, which made backtracking an adventure instead of a chore.

Ultimately, the game's weakness is that it has no real strength. The story has ben rehashed dozens of times, the gameplay is neither challenging or or fun, and one's time would probably be better spent playing other games that do both platforming and narrative better, such as Company of Myself.

Endeavor

Endeavor is a platformer in which you play a dwarf on a quest to obtain a secret treasure which each of his ancestors have tried to get, and failed. Naturally, things don't go as planned and you end up in purgatory just in time to be caught between a fight between a god and a demon, or so it seems. The game has three story routes, and the endgame of the story surprised me quite a bit.

As far as graphics go, the games sprites and layouts mostly do the job, with one notable exception, albeit a major one. The main character is composed of about 15 pixels, and doesn't appear to be anything resembling a dwarf. I never would've guessed I was a dwarf without being told multiple times. The rest of the pixel work is quite nice though, it all fits and whatnot.

The actual game play consists of a lot of jumping, falling, rinsing and repeating. The is also a water section somewhere in there, but other than that, its just a lot of bouncing. If you are the type who loves hidden collectibles, there are tons of stamina improving berries scattered across the landscape.

I found that the story was far and away the main reason I kept playing the game. Collecting all the energy orbs for the god, building my stamina, finally getting to find out the secret of the treasure that my family searched for, it was all very well done and vaguely lovcraftian nearing the end. The morality system involving the demon ruler was nice too, and killing the innocents actually offered a great reward in stamina, if you so chose to do so.

I can't really say much more about the game without giving away the plot, but its definitely worth playing if you want a minimalistic story based game.

Great Dungeon in the Sky

Great Dungeon in the sky is another one of those dungeon crawling games with a twist (I seriously think straightforward dungeon crawling games are outnumbered by their meta companions at this point), where you take control of an 8 bit character, and crawl through dungeons killing other 8 bit characters using one to three special powers. The shining features and core of the game is the fact that when you kill a monster it gets added to your list of characters you can play as. This means that while you may start out as a bland warrior, if you manage to kill a cat or an astronaut, you will gain the ability to play as either a cat or astronaut.

The amount of characters in the game is incredible, and while many feel exactly the same (gender swaps, race swaps for the same class), no character plays like a cube, or an angel for example. You start out with a mere 32 characters unlocked, but all in all there are well over 300 characters.

                                                     Manticores, now with 50% more stealth!

The characters themselves don't really matter much, its just a graphic. The skills and traits are what really make them unique. There are over 200 unique skills, each assigned to between 1-10 characters, and each character in turn, can have up to 3 skills. There are skills to speed you up, make explosions, shoot guns, create ropes, turn invisible, jump high, summon an ally, cast spells and generally anything you could think possible. The most notable flaw in this system is that every skill has a cool down timer, and that every skill shares the same cool down time bar. This means that a lot of the more interesting attacks are worthless, because in the time it would take for a spell like blind to cool down, you could have swung 5 times and killed the monster. Other than that minor flaw, the skill system is quite impressive.

The main goal of the game is to slay four dragons, then fight the final boss, which is a lot easier than it sounds. In fact, you'll probably spend more time dicking around with characters like the red cube and the cucco than you will actually doing the quest. Collecting the characters in a pokemon-esque manner is more of the point of the game though, as the main quest is easily doable in about 15 minutes. There is a benefit to doing the main quest though, because every time it's completed you get one free monster unlock, which is nice as about half of the monsters aren't prone to spawning often, while others like goblins occur about every other level.

Great Dungeon in the Sky is a short and cute game where you try to kill everything in sight just for the purposes of seeing what it does, and really, what more could in want in a game?

Spikes Tend to Kill You

At least in video games they do, anyways. Spikes Tend to Kill you is an extremely difficult platformer by noxious hamster. The setup is simple enough, you are but a lowly square, who wants to get from one side of the room to the other. However, the spikes and shooters littered about the levels are there to put a stop to all your advancement nonsense, and about 95% of the time, they are the winners.

Its definitely got some great level design, all the levels are made to fit perfectly with the jump speed, height, and player speed. Although every level is linear, figuring out and beating the gimmicks in each level still presents some challenge. The game seems to have an obsession with pixel perfect jump accuracy and timing down to the milliseconds in the later levels, with spikes scattered in a formation that only barely gives you enough lateral and longitudinal leeway to survive, and unlike a game like I wanna be the guy, these spikes actually have a Square hitbox, so the empty space around a spike isn't exactly safe either. The shooters are far worse than the spikes though, as the shooter puzzles tend to involve you first figuring out the exact pattern in which you are supposed to take, then failing 20 times because you were a few milliseconds off. If you like games like super meat boy, give up robot, and I wanna be the guy, I'm sure you can wrangle some excitement out of this game.

That's not to say that the game isn't without its problems. A huge element of almost every masochism game like this is that of the stick and carrot. This game has hundreds of sticks, but no carrot. No story to be seen, no promise of a reward, no working towards rescuing a princess who seems to get captured every 5 minutes, not even a death counter, just spikes, shooters, and a midi file that gets grating after about 15 minutes. On the technical side, this game eats up 120% core usage and doubles my ram usage for firefox, which is pretty bad for a flash game. Another notable problem is that about every 30-90 seconds, the game will freeze up on you and ignore input for about 3 seconds. If you were standing still during this time, you continue standing still, if you were moving, you continue moving that direction until the lock up has dissipated. As bad as it sounds, it doesn't effect game play much, but when it does, it can be rage inducing.

All in all its a pretty good game design-wise, its just a shame the author didn't bother to at least attempt tack on a story, or some type of goal above getting to the next room.