Crayon Chronicles (2013)

As far as value for money goes, this was the best pledge I ever did on kickstarter. Crayon Chronicles is one of the few games that came out on time and completely delivered. While it looks like a kids game, with the whole crayon art approach, underneath is a typical roguelike: Permadeath, randomized levels (though the overall level progression always remains the same (school, graveyard, swamp/ghost town, final dungeon)) and turn-based movement.

Admittedly, the style is not for everyone. It’s not just the crayon look. Every weapon, every cut scene between the levels, absolutely everything is done in a cutesy, kiddy-style, despite the fact that the game itself is never as forgiving as, say Dungeons of Dredmore, where you can easily beat everything with save scumming (okay, you can do that too here, but it’s a bit more cumbersome).

Weapons range from the expected (swords, hammers, bows) to the unexpected (ladders, rulers). Likewise armor or health items. Despite the sometimes unusual items, the underlying systems are pretty typical for CRPGs. You level up by collecting enough exp (which allows you to raise two of four attributes (power, dodge, aim and luck)), use better armor to boost your stats and better weapons to deal more damage. No magic though.

One original gameplay element I really liked (okay, original to me, maybe it’s been used somewhere else before) was how you could regenerate health. Most roguelikes either completely shun regenerative health or allow you to regenerate by moving around (which often makes those games a bit too easy). In Crayon Chronicles, you only regenerate health by getting a critical hit, using rare health items or by opening new areas. Which essentially forces you to move on, explore and fight. Which is pretty clever and ensure that you don’t just idle around until you’re back to full health and instead forces you to take your chances.

Really, really like the game. Like I said, best buck I spent so far on games on kickstarter.

Castlevania ReBirth Adventure (2009)

The title of the game led me to believe this had anything to do with the Game Boy game, and it would have been admittedly great to see a 16bit full color remake of that game with better controls (the spiky wall of doom would have been great). Instead we got a game that feels a bit like a Frankenstein monster, with pieces, monster sprites and whole levels ripped from various Castlevania games and stitched together into this monstrosity.

Not that this is something new, most Castlevania games have repurposed art assets of previous games of the series, but never to the degree that the end result felt like it lacked completely an identity of its own.

Make no mistake, Castlevania ReBirth Adventures isn’t a bad game by any means. It plays just fine and offers the same, refined platforming experience most Castlevania games do. Sadly, when you play the game you feel like you replay all those other Castlevania games, instead of something new, and I say that knowing that most Castlevania games sport the same plot (go beat Dracula in his castle) with a very similar overall level designs.

But when even the weak Dracula X on the SNES felt original and unique in comparison, something really is off.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (1992)

The second Super Mario Land game, set shortly after the first, introduced anti-Mario Wario as the main antagonist. While Mario was far away rescuing just another princess, Wario has taken over his kingdom and now Mario has to win it back.

The game sport an overland map, where you can go to five of the six sub-areas (one, the space area, can only be entered via a sort of secret route (well not that secret, it’s pretty easy to reach via the Hippo bubble and the upper exit from that level)) or various other single levels. The final castle, where Wario is waiting, can only be accessed once all the Coins have been collected by beating all the bosses in the six sub-areas. Compred to the first game, sprites, both Mario’s as well as all the enemies, were quite bigger.

To this day I’m pretty ambivalent about the game. As far as platformers go, it’s like most Mario games heavily refined, has some neat level designs (though less memorable than for example the first Super Mario Land) and is diverse and big enough to provide fun for a few hours. But two things always irked me about the game.

First is the difficulty, which is far too easy. Most levels can be beaten without even breaking a sweat, apart from Wario’s castle, where the difficutly (compared to the rest of the game) suddenly spiked (though not if you had the carrot update for flying). Nothing in the rest of the game came even close to that.

The second thing that annoyed me was that the controls felt different to other Mario games, even the first Super Mario Land. A bit sluggish, with the character sprite having more momentum than I expected. In a platformer, changing the controls between titles in a series is never a good thing, because it throws the player off (even with a game as easy as this).

Super Mario Land (1989)

I have a sentimental attachment to the first Super Mario World, mostly because it was one of the first if not the first Game Boy game I managed to beat after countless tries (all those years ago, man, how time has flown by). These days I don’t have the patience anymore to develop the muscle memory to play this type of game, though upon replay the game felt much easier than all these years ago (probably the muscle memory is partly still in place).

It’s a basic platformer, following the template set by the first NES Super Mario Bros., though with original stages and in a different setting. The plot is taken wholesale from the original (and reading it in the manual is quite trippy), you have to get a princess back (Daisy, who looks actually like Toadstool) and to do that you have to travel across four foreign countries full of various, Mario-typical monsters.

Compared to the NES game, your sprite looks tiny, which allowed for maximal space usage on the small Game Boy screen. And the designer certainly filled those levels with neat stuff. Each country had its own unique theme, reinforced by each level’s graphics and mixed with common Mario elements (typical destructible blocks, pipes, etc.). Also, the game has two or three shmup stages, including the last one with the final enemy (an alien named Tatanga).

As far as platformers go, it’s not the most original game (most of its gameplay elements where known even then), but the gameplay feels so refined and perfect, that it’s just fun to play through it from time to time because of how perfectly Mario’s sprite follows each keystroke. Even the difficulty, which is neither hard nor totally easy, seems like a perfect fit.

a2 – a due (2013)

I don’t really understand the appeal of visual novels. If I want good fiction, I read a book, if I want visuals alongside text, I read comics and if I want real interactivity, I play real games. Even the old Choose your own Adventure-books had more interactivity than your common garden variety variant visual novel. Coupled with the fact that most visual novels are porn-based, or at least that’s perception in most gamers minds, and they have a pretty hard stand.

That doesn’t mean, even if the format itself isn’t all that appealing, that there are no good ones. a2 ~a due~ is a short and sweet story of a young woman who inherited an orchestra from her dead dad, has to deal with money troubles, a Chinese prodigy of her father who might also be a love interest and that’s pretty much it. Three slightly different paths (as much as the format allows), writing that doesn’t make me cringe and nice visuals. It’s nothing stellar, but if you’re interested in that kind of stuff, certainly worth your while.

Jottobots (2012)

If there’s one element in most classic platformers I hate the most it’s timers. Maybe that’s one of the reason why I liked metroidvania-type games so much. I can explore those worlds at my own pace and don’t have to rush anything. Jottobots, a bit-sized (or bite-sized) platformer that takes elements of metroidvania-type games and combines it with a time attack mode, seems like a combination unlikely to appeal to me.

But it’s an exception to the rule. Born from the artistic mind of J. Otto Seibold and Kyle Pulver, the game sports a unique look married to well-done platformer elements. While your time runs down, you have to hunt down clocks (more time) and a few items to get to the end of the level. Scoring points also helps to get a high enough score. It’s pretty short, which is both a blessing (despite the timers it’s pretty easy to beat the game) and a curse (despite the unique look the shortness makes it unlikely that people will get back to it after finishing the game).

The visuals (not sure I would call them really good, just different enough to make you notice them) and the gameplay (which isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but solid enough) keep you going until you’ve beaten the game. I liked it. Or at least I can’t say I disliked it. It’s interesting all around.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (1992)

Beat’n run that uses the same engine like TMNT 4: Turtles in Time for the SNES. The game has different levels and a different story, but offers less content due to a lower number of levels. Despite the smaller size compared to its SNES-counterpart, it’s still a fun game, though much less memorable.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (1992)

Near perfect beat’n run that stars the TMNT displaced in time by Shredder. Each level represents a certain time period, like the prehistoric age, the pirate age and so on. The game plays like the grand daddy of beat’n run games, Golden Axe. You can’t just walk from the beginning to the end of each level, since the levels are segmented into small sectors and only beating up all enemies in one sector allows you to advance to the next. This can get a bit repetitive, but the game makes that up through the variety of the scenery.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (1991)

The third and last (non-beat’em up) Turtle game on the NES had more of the same gameplay as the second part. This time Shredder and his henchmen hijack the whole of Manhattan and the turtles have to stop him. Like the second part, it’s a pretty solid game, only with more polish. The controls are a slight tick better, the game provides more variety and it feels like the game is also longer and bigger. Overall, pretty good game. The second and this third part easily get into the best 100 action games for the NES, if I were the guy to make such lists.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (1990)

The second Turtles game on the NES was a big improvement over the poor first game. Instead of a classical platformer with an overhead map portion, this one was a strictly linear beat’run. The difficulty is still pretty high, but at least this time it’s skill and not luck that decides your fate. It plays pretty much like the 16-bit generation Turtles games for the SNES and the Genesis, with the controls a bit less responsive. The game doesn’t offer anything original, but the gameplay is solid and fun.