Full Review: Evoland

Evoland began life as a flash game,  and winner of the Ludum Dare 24.  The theme of the contest was evolution, and I can see why this game won, it is very clever and well executed, especially for being created in a mere 40 hours!   The flash game is now called Evoland Classic, and the downloadable PC/Steam game has taken the title Evoland.  I strongly recommend playing the original (free) flash game before playing the downloadable.  It takes about five to ten minutes to play through, and is a charming bit of fun. 

• Play Evoland Classic

The current Evoland takes the original game and expands it.  The graphical development moves into full 3d, with turn based battles and other RPG tropes.  The result is about 2 hours of light-hearted fun and nostalgia, with a few different gameplay and graphical modes.  The concept is strikingly similar to one of my own ideas, but there are differences, which I will get into at another time.  

Evoland *itself* has evolved.  Whoa. Meta. 

I was initially expecting a more robust gaming experience, and I reacted poorly after playing about 45 minutes.  But having beaten the game once, and adjusted my expectations accordingly, I think that Evoland is a decent game.  Even though the nostalgia is directed at older players who played games in the late 90s, I think of it as a great game for children. 

This game lends itself to being played over and over again, and the action is simple enough that it might be easily understood by one not used to this style of game.  In addition, the bright colors and superdeformed character design may appeal to children.  Not to mention, the various references to jRPG and Action/Adventure game tropes may lay a nice foundation for the real deal.  

As a fan of retro games, I wish the designers had spent more time in the 8-bit and 16-bit, two dimensional realm.  The bulk of the gameplay takes place after the transition to 3d, and it also seems to drag a bit at that part.  Particularly when the random encounter rate seems to be just too high, and the experienced gained in those battles, rather pointless.  

Evoland is a game that bit off more than it could chew. While it has many different gameplay modes, it doesn't do any of them particularly well. On my initial play, I expected to see mechanical changes progressing with the graphics, but it didn't work that way.  There is very little mechanical depth.  This works for the game in the sense that it keeps it very light.  On the other hand, I had higher expectations.  

Ultimately, this game plays like a demo for a much better game, or perhaps an Animal Crossing mini-game. If you want to play an indie Zelda clone, I recommend Anodyne.  And if you want to play a jRPG parody, I recommend Breath of Death 7 or Cthulu Saves the World.  I can't recommend purchasing Evoland for anything more than $5.  But really, with price tags that low, why not buy all of them?  


-D


Evoland Summary

The Good:
Fun, light-hearted atmosphere.  Funny.  Fantastic graphics, excellent monster design.  Really clever concept.  Multiple Gameplay Modes, emulating The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy VI/VII and Diablo/Gauntlet Legends.  

The Bad:
Lack of Gameplay depth.  'Evolution' Theme is flimsy - graphics upgrade in a linear way, but gameplay mechanics seem random.  Frustrating difficulty at times, especially in the Diablo Section.  Different gameplay modes don't affect one another much.  The overworld encounter rate is way too high.  No camera control.  

Game Design Idea: Narrative Walk Through : Statement of Purpose

So, as I mentioned before, I can't seem to crack into any of the supposed game design software I've seen on the internet and read in reviews and even have seen attributed to games that I like (Anodyne).  Yet, my mind persists in imagining what it would be like to design a game.  And I think this stuff makes for a great game design idea!

For example, I think it would be great to design a game, where the levels progress with programming milestones.   Like, the first screen is just a crappy looking block guy, moving around -- success!  Then the next screen maybe you can slash a sword!  And then by the third screen, maybe you can cut down a bush! Hooray!  Then there's an enemy.   And then, by then you might have the hang of it enough to have like, a whole series of screens, with a treasure box at the end, hooray!  

I imagine a narrator the whole time, describing the process of creation to the little character on screen.  The challenges, and progressions.  Creating a weird meta-fiction author dynamic.  Did I mention I love meta-fiction?  I've noticed this stuff is pretty big these days as well, with games like Thomas was Alone and the Stanley Parable Demo.  Also, with the regular use of the term 'meta' to describe things.  But being a fancy English major, I've been familiar with the term for some time.  

Specifically, I was introduced to meta-fiction with the book 'At Swim Two Birds' by Flann O'Brien (pen name Brian O'Nolan - meta!) .  It's a book about a guy who's writing a book.  Meta level 1.  Then the characters in that book decide they don't like what's going on in their story,  Meta Level 2, and they go to to the authors house to talk some sense into him.  Or some such thing.  It's a lot of fun, and very old, published in 1939.    

Further Meta ideas come from the 'fourth wall' concept in theater, whereas the actors aren't supposed to acknowledge the audience, and when they do so, they're breaking the 'fourth wall.'   I've always loved to play with that, though.

Of course, my idea of a video game about its own creation is silly for a couple reasons.  One is that I still don't actually know what the process is like.  I'm just guessing.  And whenever I read interviews with game creators, they always describe all sorts of things they weren't expecting.  So I expect that would happen to me too.  Expecting the unexpected, I'm so ready!

Anyway, I think the process would be to work on different concepts, enemies, items, procedures, etc.  And make careful note when something interesting happens.  Then, when I've got the hang of the whole programming thing, go back and fake it.  There's no need for my authentic practice screens to be in a game, just something resembling them.  Throw a kookie narrator with a british accent on the thing, and I'm set!  

Man, I love my own ideas!  And it's so much easier to write about them than to actually push them through my metaphorical loins, spank breath into them, cut their metaphorical umbilical chord, hold them close and feed them from my metaphorical teat!  I'm unemployed, and *still* that sounds like too much trouble!  Maybe it's the way I described it...  Actually, wait, this reminds me of the conclusion of the play "Slag" that I saw in college.  My girlfriend was one of the three principle actresses, and her character gets miraculously pregnant, but her character was insane, and it was actually just a food baby.  (Oh man, I am *such* an English Major.)

Anyway, I realize I spoiled the ending for you, which is a high crime, but don't worry - the enjoyment of that play came from the performances.  Three fantastic Actresses with really great chemistry.  The plot wasn't really very important, and I saw it more than once, I think.  It was performances like that that gave me a love of the theater.  And has subsequently fueled my curiosity about the connection between theater, film and video games.  Specifically around minimalism - I love how fantastic some performances are with minimal set design.  I can't help but wonder if a similar elegance can be applied to game design, programming and execution.

http://www.andysowards.com/blog/2012/70-epic-map-design/

When I was young, I wanted to create epic fantasy.  Nothing but.  Alright, maybe an occasional side-scroller.  But, the biggest piece of my creative pie was taken up with 50+ hour Role Playing Games.  And the reflexive version:  novelizations of already existing RPGs.  High Fantasy, Tolkein and Dungeons and Dragons ruled all.  And the bigger, longer and more epic, the better. It is still like a security blanket or a favorite stuffed toy.  I can go back there just by closing my eyes and relaxing.

However, in these days following the Box Office and Academy Award domination of the Lord of the Rings movie Trilogy,  it seems pretty damned clear to me that the High Fantasy World is covered.  You can't throw a stone without hitting a two to three hour epic something.  I missed riding that wave, and now I'm wonder when it will subside.  

These days, I am most interested in minimalism, in peeling back all of the glitz and the glamour and the huge set pieces, to find out what's in the core of genre, theater, creativity.  I want to take a chisel to the edifice of the modern High Fantasy Blockbuster and see if there isn't something beautiful underneath it all.  I believe that minimalism is more raw, and prompts the viewer to fill in the gaps with their own imagination.  More than that, it is much, much more inexpensive to produce.  And therefore can be done with a smaller team, which allows for much more creative control and input by the principle few.  And that serves my starving little creative ego, I think.  

Hmm, caffienne high is faltering.  love of my own ideas is waning.  autumn is passing into winter.  power down. boooooooop.  

-D


P.S. follow-up question:  does this need to be published?  Our blog quality standards aren't like, super-high or anything, yet I have a bunch of ideas that are important to me here, and I could maybe turn them into something real.  But if that's the case, what does it matter if I publish now or later?

P.P.S.  Mine the brainy gamer for theater-game connection.  I think he's really into that.

P.P.P.S  Interdisciplinary study called 'Performance Studies' at UCD, Berkeley.  Looks pretty darn close to what I'm looking at

P.P.P.P.S Adaptation and American Movie are both examples of movies about the making of movies.  Adaptation with much more creative license - and a big favorite of mine!

P.P.P.P.P.S. I think I'll just keep all these post-scripts.  Why not?  I'm feeling silly.  Also, I heard that there was a game that progresses through the history of RPGs.  That's sort of what I'm talking about, but not the same thing.

Stressing The Right Moves

cool box art

Today I was wondering about how complex computers are, from the ground up. And how, just to make a simple chess game, there are procedures upon procedures.  To get the display down, and then all the rules, all the if/then/else statements.  

Then I thought of a funny idea:  a computer chess game that does not have any of the rules programmed into it.  Really, it's just a simulator of a chess board.  So, the players have to be the ones to remove pieces when they are taken, or to call check, or to make sure the other is moving the pieces appropriately.  There's something I really like about this.  I guess it plays on my expectations of what a computer-game of chess would be, what the computer will handle and what I have to do myself.  It's a world simulator, with a chess board in it.  

This train of thought sprung, fully formed while pondering my frustrations working with game making software.  In this case, it's Flixel that's giving me trouble.  This is the program that Sean Hogan and Jonathan Kittaka of Anodyne used, and I left that game saying to myself:  I wanna make a zelda clone too!  I still do.  But boy, I couldn't even get started with Flixel.  It's like my adult onset ADHD kicks in, and I can't seem to follow the instructions.  Or, look for new, better, updated instructions.  Every game design software I use is just too complex.

This is also frustrating because I'm not a complete stranger to the world of programming.  In High School, some fifty years ago.. wait, no.  fifteen years ago, I took a computer programming class.  I loved it!  We used a program called Pascal, which was text-based, and later, Delphi, which had a graphical component.  Pascal was great, most of the terminology was intuitive, and Delphi was just Pascal with graphics!  

So, the first thing I did, of course, was to produce an RPG.  Well, a battle game anyway.  It was fun.  There was a party of four, (whom I named after the members of the band Pearl Jam) and they battled miscellaneous enemies.  Bats, goblins, kobolds and the like.  I think the menu options were 'fight' or 'special' and each character had a different special move.  Double strike, attack all -- stuff like that.  And they could gain experience and raise levels.  pretty entertaining.  I really liked programming.

In college, we had to use C++, and we didn't even have computers in our lecture hall.  We had to do it all at home.  I hated C++, found it to be not intuitive at all.  Perhaps I was spoiled by Pascal.  I also was out of the house for the first time and prone to... distraction.  Anyway, I switched to an English major at the end of that year, and the rest is, as they say, history. 

So, is it folly to think I could get back into programming?  I can't tell.  But I do miss it.  Most especially, I miss creating systems, and interlacing them.  I never pursued graphics, but I was really happy to make the numbers move around in fun ways.  To give input and receive an output.  And to come up with an idea, and work out how to execute it.  It's a really cool frame of mind, programming.

Oh well. Whether or not I make a return to programming, you can be sure that I will write about it.  

hasta pasta,

-D

Full Review: Anodyne

Read the First Impressions

When talking about Anodyne, I can't help but say a little more about the ambience.  I want to compare it to a free-to-download indie favorite of mine: Eversion.  This is a little indie game that isn't afraid to get creepy.  It also vibes a bit Earthbound, for the SNES.  It's visually like Earthbound as well:  Anodyne is just between 8-bit and 16-bit style.  It sort of plays like the Game Boy version of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

Like Zelda games, there is a great variety of puzzles to solve.   Unlike Zelda, there are not a lot of equipment upgrades, however, the designers do a great job innovating new and different puzzles as the game progresses.  They also take care to make each stage or region look substantially different from the last, keeping the atmosphere strong, and reducing a sense of repetitiveness.     

The designers were ingeniously courteous in the way they designed the world maps.  They corral you into different winding corridors on the map by the use of locked gates.  However, as you progress, you double back and unlock the gates from the other side.  I don't know if you can beat the game without unlocking the gates, but that would make for one hell of an achievement.  The game itself seems to be only vaguely exploration based.  That is to say, I feel like I am covering every inch of the map in order to progress.  However, that said, I beat the game with 12 undiscovered Cards.

The game comes with a charming little Card System.  You collect various cards throughout the game, which correspond to the different characters and enemies.  Each card contains a caption and an image.  It's pretty cool,  I mean, pointless cards are nothing new, but this game has such a strange storyline, that I'm always very eager to see what the caption is on the cards, even if it's just a throwaway non-sequitur.  Also, the programmers decided not to make the cards pointless: there are locked gates that you can only get through if you have enough cards.

I beat Anodyne in 5.2 hours.  A little underwhelming by the end,  that is my only complaint.  And hey, it might just be my attention span.  There are 12 remaining cards and a secret stage that I haven't yet been to.  I always love these little easter eggs, however, I have not held myself to 100% completion before writing this review.

Is it worth ten bucks?  Well, that's like a trick question, since I got it in a Humble Bundle and also - I generally try to get games on sale, so I usually pay about 7.50 for a game, or even 5.  So, with that context, I still think it's probably worth ten bucks, but I recommend getting Anodyne, or any game, when it's on sale.  Bottom line is that this game is a labor of Love from a tiny team of 2 designers, and it shows.

-D


P.S.  Okay, now I went and reviewed it on Metacritic.  I gave it an 8.  My username is FeaxPotts.  Always nice to have a typo in your username :P  I think I want to go back through all my game reviews and review them on meta critic.  Especially those ones with metacritic scores that I disagree with.

Note:  This game came with an Android version as well.  I gave it a shot on my smart phone -- I don't like it.  Maybe I need time to adjust to having touch buttons.  The biggest problem is the control pad.  It's so slippery, and it's located on the lower left-hand side of the screen, and I'd like it a big higher.  I find that when I lift my thumb, I always set it down on the top of the pad, rather than the center.

November Monthly Update

Image taken from:  http://www.videogameobsession.com/videogame/merchandise/posters_flyers_stickers_etc/Nintendo_Calendar_1990/index.htm

I haven't played much games lately.  Mostly I've been working my ass off.  Also:  staying on my sisters couch in her tiny house.  And quite frankly, she tends to say judgmental things about video games which discourages me from playing them.  Even though I get a lot of alone time, I also feel compelled to work during that time, to help prepare her house for her upcoming wedding reception.  I have this little mean elf-goblin-thing on my shoulder that says 'you don't want to be the lazy ass that plays video games all day and doesn't work enough, you unemployed piece of shit!'  The elf looks kind of like my sister.  But I'm likely projecting.

Anyway, it's down to the wire, and I'm fighting these bad feelings more, and playing a bit more, y'know, to relax.  Trying to get through Mirror's Edge. I'm pretty far.  I think I might have enough new data to generate a full review, but the short version is:  Fun game, deeply flawed.  So very close to awesome.

I'm also playing Anodyne, which is pretty rad.  That's the one that's got my attention, and the one I think of when my thoughts are wandering.  I doubt it's too long.  I expect maybe four or five hours.  Creepy Zelda clone; like it!

I sort of left Fez out of the story.  I will return to it, but I think I want to do so under circumstances when I can really put a lot of attention into it, rather than playing while looking over my shoulder for judgmental sisters. (It's crazy how these dynamics pursue me into adulthood.  It doesn't hurt that I've got no steady source of income and have placed myself in a position to be somewhat dependent on her.)

Alright, so far I've:  torn down a wall of drywall, put up a wall of wood, hacked down way overgrown backyard, dug out a chinaberry bush, dug up a thirty foot driveway and am in the process of laying out four cubic feet of gravel on said driveway.  And I don't have a metal rake, just a floppy piece of shit leaf rake.

I'm done with manual labor for a while.  I'm taking breaks so I don't hurt myself.  Or anyone else.  On to Anodyne!  ... Yep, it's still cool, getting better as I play it!

-D

P.S. here's an article called "Plagiarize This" from a new (to me) website called Gameological Society.  The article is about particular game mechanics that you'd like to see used more often.  There are some cool ideas in the article and more in the comments.  Check it out, if your into that sort of thing (I'm really into that sort of thing!)

First Impressions: Anodyne

Here's a song from the game for you to listen to

an·o·dyne
ˈanəˌdīn/

adjective
1. not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.
"anodyne New Age music"

noun
2.a painkilling drug or medicine.

Anodyne is a 2-d, top-down Zelda clone.  They even include the 'stop when you strike' feature that I think is pretty neat.  It is a Zelda clone by engine, but not by theme.  Unlike Zelda, the game is immediately eerie, dark and strange, and there are reasons to distrust what you are told.  There is an ambient soundtrack through the first portion, and as the world expands, the soundtrack seems to want to expand, but can never quite become a fanfare in that bright, Zelda style.  I should mention I'm a big fan of Zelda clones.  

The gameplay is not as complex as Zelda games.  For example, it wasn't until about two hours into the game that I gained an ability beyond the basic attack.  On the other hand, the basic strike has a secondary use, which is to pick up and drop bits of dust.  These bits of dust have been used in a few different ways.  The designers have used these few abilities to craft some interesting puzzles, and the combat can be tough.  The enemy movement and projectile patterns keep me on my toes.    

The game appears to be open-world and non-linear, though there are clearly established 'zones.'  I have no idea if I'm going to the right place at the right time, and that aimlessness seems to be a part of the design. One thing I like is that there is a moment where you find a road sign, the first in the game, and it is too unclear to read. I don't know why, but I really like that the first road sign you see has no content. It stands out as something to read, but too bad, it's faded, and you can't make it out. Where to from here. The good news is:  I have yet to get stuck.  I think this speaks to a sense of care on the part of the designers.  

If you have a hankering to play a well-designed clone of early Zelda games, but with a creative and creepy vibe, then I recommend giving Anodyne a look.  I'm going to play through the rest, and try to craft a more thorough posting.  

-D

P.S.  I originally heard of Anodyne from Indie Games Magazine.  They've got this great little Android App that I use to read about games while waiting in lines.   I picked up Anodyne from a recent Humble Bundle.  If you aren't hip to the Humble Bundles, I suggest you check them out.  I've already given you a starter by embedding a link in the previous sentence.  Also, they have a very intuitive website address, and if you ask google about Humble Bundles, I'm sure it will help you.  Humble Bundles are a big part of why I started gaming again, after taking a many-year break.