PVP Brawl - @themonkeyman12 ‘s Pepperman

Hello internet people, this blog will be new to me as I’m going to be judging my peers Tectonic Shifting Device or as you non-Gamedevians would call it, a platformer. This title was made by my long running friend Dylan “themonkeyman” Burnham and appears to be a classic Mario spoof; Bullet Bill-esk enemies and all. Pretty solid platformer, but just because he’s a friend, doesn’t mean we can’t brawl it out.

Now to the critiquing

Mechanic Design (4/5)

Let’s start off describing the mechanics of the game. The obstacles you’ll be facing along your journey as Senior Pepper are: Patrolling Bullet Bills (Which you can stomp on to kill, Gumba-esk), Shooting Bullet Bills (Which you can’t stomp on), Horizontal-Moving Platforms, Vertical-Moving Platforms, and Pitfalls.

Most of moving platform sections involves dodging Shooting Bullet Bill’s projectiles, giving way to some frustrating yet rewarding maneuvers.

There are unmarked checkpoints that you achieve along the game as well. These however are not saved if you accidentally fall backwards behind the checkpoint. If you do that, you’ll go to the one before it.

Example below, if you die at D1, you get set to R2. After respawning, you then go and die at D2, you get set back to R1.

Triggers and Enemy Placement (3.5/5)

The enemy placement in the level is, for the most of it, well placed. The enemies are placed plentifully and the ability to kill them, but not needing to, gives you a primitive choice of “Rush to the next checkpoint” or “Make it easier if I die in the unforeseen future”.

Triggers on the platforms, however, these upset me. By that, I mean, there aren’t any. More often than not you need to reach them on the upper most arc of a jump, yet they don’t pause at the end of their path – not even for half a second.  Instead they jolt straight back along its planned route.

Challenge and Progression (4.5/5)

The challenge of this map is present, and I feel he hits right on the nose.  The map has its frustrating moments that make you riled up and frustrated. However the game lets you patiently time jumps and wait for enemies to pass. You feel your little pepper can’t jump high enough, and sometimes you feel like he can soar.

The progress is also at a good level with this game. It doesn’t give you any tedious empty fields to run through, and gives you a nice progressive challenge curve to climb.

The Goods, the Bads, and the Uglies

Goods

Overall this is a very solid platformer. The enemies are neat and in a good place as far as difficulty. As I mentioned, difficulty curve is very solid for what I’d call a “first release” build of this platformer. This reminded me of Mario in the best of ways: very well done controls, and sometimes unforgivable enemies.

Bads

The bads here aren’t that major, but still fairly bothering.

One thing I have to critique about the platforms movements is that they’re a bit hard to time. Not to say difficulty is a bad thing, however I feel there are better ways to handle moving platforms in a game like this.
1) Have them move once you land on them, and when you die/fall off, have them reset and remain stationary until they move again

2) Have them pause half a second, a second after they reach the end of their line, allowing for cleaner timing of the jumps.

Uglies

The mechanic behind the checkpoint system messed me up a few times. I’d take a jump, get hit by a bullet, and respawn. The problem being I’d keep my momentum, thus, making me fall off the wrong side of the checkpoint island, setting me back to the previous checkpoint.

This by far was the worst tasting feature when it landed in my figurative mouth.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I'd give it a 4/5.

I have to say, to Dylan, this was a pretty entertaining simple little platformer. To the world, maybe he’ll put this up on Miniclip one day for a quick 5 min amusement!

Until next time,

Jordon