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

Game Atoms – Terraria

Hello internet folks, today for you I have decided to “Craft a Dekonstruer”. This requires me to discuss the game atoms in one of my favorite games in great detail. The game I’ve decided to Dekonstruct is my most logged steam game to date – or so steam claims – with 223 hours playing. So I sure hope I can deconstruct its atoms and display them in a nice pulpous array for your reading pleasure. The name of the game is Re-Logic’s Terraria, released for Windows on 16^th of May, 2011.  How I describe the game is by saying this: so you know how Minecraft is a building game with adventure aspects? Terraria is an adventure game with building aspects, In 2D.

Now that you have some idea, let’s get started.

Player Character

In this game, unlike Minecraft, you get to customize your character right off the bat. You launch new character and you’re presented with 6 editable features: Hair, Eyes, Skin, Cloths, Gender and Difficulty. Each of the physical characteristics you pick are from a list of pre-defined sprite options, which you can edit the colour of with some simple Colour/Hue/Shade sliders. The gender option changes whether or not your sprite has a small bump on their chest, as well as the pitch of your character when they squeal from getting hurt. The difficulty allows you to set the rules that character is defined by. The choices for that are: softcore, mediumcore, or hardcore.

This game handles difficulty in a few ways: the world difficulty and the character difficulty. The world difficulty I’ll discuss later, but the character difficulty adds a nice splash for those who want more of a challenge.
Softcore, when you die, allows you to keep all of your stuff, and only half your money.  A pretty easy way to play the game if you’re playing for the first time and just want to reach one of the end goals.

Mediumcore, when you die, all of your money and stuff explode everywhere from where you died, all Minecraft style. Meaning you’ll need back-up gear at spawn if you want to see that Legendary Gold Sword ever again.
Hardcore on the other hand, when you die, you’re dead. Say farewell to that character.

Objectives

Let me make the objectives in this game abundantly clear; there aren’t any – no physical objectives anyway. There are no levels to climb, no story to complete, no credits to reach. This game is a sandbox game filled with a variant of biomes, with goals you set yourself in regards to what, how, and when you want to do things.

Though the game is mostly based on how you tackle the challenge with the gear you have (going to hell with wooden gear is totally possible, spending more than a few seconds there may not be). You, more often than not, require a previous tier of gear to get the next one to make things within the realm of possibility.  So there may not be a standard leveling system implemented, this gear tier system feels like one. They even reinforce this by requiring a tier of pickaxe to mine the next tier ores (You can’t mine Demonite without a gold pickaxe).

There are bosses in this game, and though only one is really required, killing all of them (some multiple times) allows very shiny pieces of bling.

Resources

The resources in this game come in a few forms: Stat Crystals, Potions, Accessories, Ore, Armour, and Weapons.

Stat Crystals & Potions:

These are the consumable loot found in chests. The designers implemented Mana and Heart Crystals as a treasure to find that increase – you guessed it – mana and health respectively.  There is a cap in both stats so these become literally useless after your character has reached it.

Potions range from health and mana, to iron skin and gravitation. They alter your status in a wide range of ways.

Accessories:

There are literally 146 accessories in Terraria, with only 5 character accessory slots. You can mix and match to build your character’s “class” in any fashion you’d desire. You find these as loot from enemy drops and chests around the world, and they vary in depending on the biome/enemy. Want a Shiny Red Ballon? Better find a floating island. Want a flying carpet? To a desert temple you go!

Ore:

Easiest to explain and probably the recourse you’ll be collecting the most of. Ore is found in caves and the earth itself. You’ll need this to make tools and armour, as well as furniture and floors. Ore is the resource used to make most of your armour tiers.

Armour & Weapons:

There are plenty of these, with approximately 18 Tiers of materials. That doesn’t include the special chest spawn and boss drops. The variety really gives a wide range of choice to; again, customize your character into a “class”.

World

To avoid surpassing my word limit even further, I’ll try my best to keep the world description brief and close off this article. There are 17 different biomes, all with their own discernible enemies and resources. 

You as a player will want to build rooms to let spawn of friendly NPC’s. These NPC’s can be acquired after completing certain tasks such as defeating a boss or reaching a level of health, but they will all need a room to live in.

Now, how to alter world difficulty in this game is a very neat idea. The world starts off in “Normal mode” with all of its spawns and world-gen existing and remaining the same. After you reach a certain tier when you have all the best normal mode gear, you’ll want to face the only boss that you’ll ever need to kill; the wall of flesh.

After defeating the wall of flesh, it floods the world with “The powers of light and dark” altering monster spawns, adding new biomes, and making all that gear you just worked for in normal mode to be like the wood-armour of old.

This method of hardmode activation is very rewarding as it makes the player feel like they’re “new game +” the world they’ve been playing in for the past 10 or so hours. Allowing you the feeling of ‘starting all over’ without, actually starting all over.

Information

Total – You have total information on what you’re holding, what’s on screen, your health, and any NPC health. With the mini-map displaying anything you’ve seen, you’re also given the past landscape.

Privileged – The privileged information you get is more from trial and error. You venture into a biome with dead trees and purple landscape. “Oh I wonder if I can get any neat resource here?” When suddenly an eater of worlds crawls out from the ground, eating you whole. “Oh, well I guess not yet.”

There is an NPC inside the game that can give you hints as to what you can do to further character progression, however very few are actually useful.

Hidden – All of the game tier progression is hidden. There is no way inside of the game to know where to find the resources needed for the next tier. You either need a wiki, or spend hours upon hours testing for yourself.

Sequencing

The sequencing in this game draws from the aforementioned armour tier system.. While you play the game, you’re limited to what your gear/personal skill can accomplish. You’re unable to beat the Wall of Flesh in wooden armour. Unless you had a means to acquire high end-tier fresh off the character creation screen. This is very easy to do, as you can just load into a previously adventured world, or have a friend join and hand you gear.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer isn’t anything besides having an extra set of hands to fight bad guys with. You can trade items, fight each other in combat (toggle-able PVP), and adventure together. Multiplayer is how I played most of my hours, as this game becomes a lot easier with two or more.

Final thoughts

So there is my take on the Game Atoms of Terraria. I hope I touched all of the bases that needed to be touched as I would not like to do this game disservice. If you have never played the game I highly recommend it in the future. Bring company.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

Jordon.

Blog Quest: Critic-al Hit! Borderlands 2

            Hello internet creatures, long time no text. Today I shall be tackling the task of judging and degrading a game. I’ll be cutting it into bite sized chunks for your reading pleasure, and hope to get across why I thought this title fell a bit flat.
            I was super excited for this game after playing the guns-fest that was the first one. I spent hours upon hours shooting through Pandora, completing every little quest there was to offer. It was the first game in a long time I got every single achievement in, including all the DLC. The humor and the graphics was just my cup of tea, and the RPG aspects just rubbed me in all the right places. So when I caught word of a “2”, I was excited.
            I know it’s been just over a year upon its release, but better late than never and this is pre-DLC; I shed my critic on Borderlands 2.

Players

            So for the first chunk, let’s talk about the players. There are four player characters/classes you can select from. You can play as Salvador the Gunzerker, Maya the Siren, Axton the Commando, or Zer0 the Assassin. They took this page straight from the prequel, and made the classes affixed with the characters. In essence, instead of picking the Siren class and going about the story as a faceless busty chick, you’re going around as Maya, an escaped religious fear prop, trying to come to terms with what it means to be a Siren. (There is of course a unique backstory for each of the four, but I pictured the breast- I mean, best one)
            Having a backstory on your character is certainly a cool way to give some lore into the game. Though I tolerated being pre-written characters in the first game, this broke some immersion for me. I wanted to make my own character and imprint myself as a Siren this time around.  Though I’m aware we would miss out on finding my lost journal entries scattered around the landscape, but do I really care? Would removing this backstory, or even moving this backstory onto someone who wasn’t my character, really change how this game feels as a whole? No.
            Though I can see why they’re adding more characters into their Borderlands roaster, which I’ll get to in my next chunk.

Objectives

            This game handles objects in the most classic RPG way in the book. You’re introduced with Quest A, which when you complete leads to Quest B. Repeat n times until end. There is Quest A.a as side quests based around the main quest area that you can and should do for the experience, but there aren’t any fancy branched paths or choices. Or if there is choice, it’s more of an illusion of choice. The plot of this one is trying to stop the antagonist handsome jack, with the help of the protagonists from the first Borderlands.
            However if the reason why I can’t make my own character is so that they have fodder for sequels; I’m not sure I like that too much.
            Besides the campaign that I so elegantly explain, there is what I perceive to be the fun part- and that is leveling. This I feel is the main objective for you as the player as you crave the next ding to max out your skill tree.
            Another objective is getting these “Badass points” that you can spend as a simple number boost to your stats. I feel that alone these would be a pretty weak reward. However as it is something you gain from doing remedial tasks throughout the game world; it’s a nice side bonus.

Procedures

             In the game the way the player moves and acts remain constant. Once you pick up on how to move around, shoot a gun, and utilize your skill- you generally know how to move around the world. The only additional mechanics you may need to learn how to use is any skills you pick up via your skill tree. Though small, a lot of them change the way your class plays a lot.

Rules

            There are a few simple rules in this game that prevent the player from completing things before certain gates. One of the big ones is the inability to use items until you reach the level to do so, as in basic RPG fashion.  

Resource
            I was determining how detailed I wanted to get into the resources of this game; however I think I’ve taken it down to three:

• Loot: This consists of Weapons, class mods, shields, grenade mods, relics, experience, and money. All of this stuff you get from killing or completing. This resource is bountiful and you gain from progression in the game.
• Health: now I don’t just mean health, but in this regards I’m also referring to your shield level. This gets taken away from you by damage and you should probably avoid this unless you want to spend a trip to the reconstruction machine.
• Skill Points: This you get from leveling and only have a set limit amount of how many you can acquire. You spend these in your skill tree to unlock new flashy ways to kill things.

Conflict
             The conflict in this without spoiling anything is pretty funny. It gave me some ouu's and aww's, but there is only so much claptrap i can take.

Final Thoughts
            My final thoughts of this game is pretty blarg. To be completely honest i put down the game before finishing and i have yet felt the need to pick it back up. I feel it is the same game with different paint and some added leather seats. Perfect if you haven't played the first one, but if you have - like i have - this game will feel like you're going back into it with whole new DLC.
            Though fun, it hardly makes me want to finish. Where it had all the possibility to do so.

Until next time

Jordon

Grind Quest: Skills, Goals, and Feedback

Three games and their feedback:

Borderlands:

The goal in this game is to reach the vault and reach unimaginable riches. Side goals would be to reach max level, and slay all the bosses.

A feedback loop in this game is the growth of player level from slaying monsters and completing quests, increasing level of quests and monsters. This builds up to allow you to use shinier weapons and mods, eventually bringing you high enough level to beat the final boss.

One of the skills required in this game are proper hand-eye coordination for shooting baddies in the face/chest/genitals. Another skill required is the ability to understand talent trees and their benefits for you as a player. A final skill worth mentioning is proper timing and when to use certain guns/gun types at certain points.

Terraria:

The goal of this game would be to beat all the bosses and acquire all the loot.  Side goals would be to build a very pretty house!

A feedback loop in this game is the ability to only mine certain ores with certain quality pickaxes. This enforces you to acquire the previous tier of ore to move onto the next. Eventually this brings you to max ore tier and introducing you into slaying bosses for gear.

One of the skills required in this game would be the ability to understand yourself on a 2D plane, as this entire game is you on a 2D surface. A follow up one would be building aesthetics, as this game does have a heavy building component to it.  A final skill worth mentioning would be basic understanding of how to structure a strategic character. As to beat some of the end-game bosses you need to know how to equip balanced accessories, armour, and weapons.

Tetris:

The goal of this game is to last as long as you can, defined by the game mode you’re playing. Example to this would be complete 150 lines, last 2 min, get 40 lines as fast as you can. Side goal would be to beat previous records.

A very basic feedback loop here is the constant of giving the player pieces, and the player placing those pieces. This progresses the game forward as long as the player places them correctly.

One of the skills required would be placement forethought. Looking at what piece you currently have and what’s coming down the line. Another skill worth mentioning is remaining calm during the heat. Pieces will eventually start coming down very quickly and you need to not panic.

Other skills:

Other skills that are interesting to the player I haven’t already mentioned would be: reaction to certain enemy types and knowing how to deal with them. An example of that would be in Dark Souls, and learning how to dodge certain moves, or where to attack certain enemies.

Until next time,

Jordon