Medieval Fantasy Island by aayars 2014-04-26T13:08:00
Hiya! I just wanted to point out that when Honestcritic said "why do I have to use 1 instead of space", he didn't mean "why do I only get to use one spell", as you seem to have interpreted. He meant "Why do I have to use the one key instead of the spacebar?" Normally, spells or items are placed along the numerical keys in order for a player to quickly select which one to use, but here, /there is only one spell/. There's no reason to place it on the one key - the spacebar would allow someone to keep their hands on WASD and press space with their thumb.
Now that that's out of the way, I have to say, I really enjoyed the look and feel of this game, but the gameplay is boring and repetitive beyond belief. While I realize it's hard to get a game to play well in 72 hours, I was basically half-falling asleep during most of this game, woken only by the realization "Hmmm, I have to get a powerup token... where is it?" which lasts only a few seconds. It would be like if you were sleepwalking and someone kept poking you with a stick, preventing you from resting.
There's basically no strategy because you give the player whatever spell they need immediately before they fight an enemy wherein they will need it. There's no choice, no forks in the road, no dodging, you basically just pick up whatever token you're given and mash the 1 key. You can very literally beat this game while reading a book at the same time.
I'm very impressed by your graphics, but the game would literally have been better if it had no combat at all. Then I could enjoy the atmosphere and let my brain go fuzzy and get some catharsis out of the nature walk, but instead I keep being interrupted to play Mash The One Button over and over. The winding path you created could have easily been used to create an interactive fiction game of some sort, where you talk to various characters, find items, have dialogue choices... Even a stupid-simplistic story would have been more interesting.
Either way, though, I'm glad to have played this, despite my constant gripes with the gameplay. Keep working on it and I hope that this was useful practice for you.
LD29 — Beneath the Surface (1)
Dive by quickfingers 2014-07-07T00:44:00
I really enjoyed this game - it ate about 45 minutes to an hour of my time, which is really an accomplishment. Simple and addicting. With some expansion, I'd easily pay $5 for it.