The second of Toffer Team’s lewd adventures is out in the form Hikari Love Potion. The Hikari series, which began last year with the release of Hikari Clover Rescue, is known for its focus on lewd art. Furthermore, the small development team prides itself on delivering small stories with delicious coitus aplenty. However, there are noticeable shortcomings that come with the mentality. Most importantly, the tunnel-vision of lewd kills the other visual novel qualities making it a sub-par reading experience. In an interview with us, Toffer stands firm on improving those aspects of his series. This is the team’s first release since the interview and only one question remains. How does it hold up?

The curtain lifts and your new name is Yuuta. You’re an office worker who seems to be losing that motivation to push forward in life. After recounting the tales of your misfortune, a blinding light surrounds you. This is not an assault, but instead a portal to a new opportunity. An elf girl with a vibrant personality emerges to inform you that she’s looking for you. Furthermore, she humbly requests that you come to her world. The whole situation is mind-boggling but, since you’re not doing so well in this world, how about we hit the reset button and go to a new one. Upon arrival, the elf girl informs you that you’re a prophet. Your destiny involves liberating the land from the grip of a corrupt goddess.

In order to put up a fight against the goddess, you’ll need some weapons. First, an ancient potion that will remove the corruption in the minds of the populace. For clarification, the goddess uses mental manipulation tactics to bend society to her will. Second, a body part you’re quite familiar with, your male genitalia. The goddess’ fury did not spare the men of the land. As a result, the remaining populace is almost entirely female. However, why is this important? The potion carries a very strong side effect that awakens the subject’s internal lust. Furthermore, it’s cure lies solely within the seed of the prophet. The story is set for you to become the catalyst of this land’s bright future or die trying. Welcome to Hikari Love Potion.

In your journey to save the land, you will meet key characters. Let’s take a moment to introduce them starting with the one who searches for you. Sophia is an heir-apparent to the land and its prophecy. The royal family separates following the corruption of the goddess and are in custody for their defiance. Sophia remains as the beacon of hope traversing between worlds to find the prophet the world needs. Needless to say, she’s very happy to find you and your weapon. Clumsy to a tee, she bears a good heart with even greater intent. Your first ally is a cute one, but she’s also sly due to being the first victim of the potion. Her shining personality makes her a very welcome sight on your quest to save the world.

Sophia formally joins you on the quest, and it’s now time to introduce your first opponent. Agnes is one of the strongest knights of the land under the command of the goddess. No soul can hope to match her in combat. Despite how strong she is on the battlefield, it’s the frailty within her personality that you quickly take note of. She’s still a young girl with a strong sense of justice and it seems like the corruption doesn’t have a full grasp on her yet. You hope to take full advantage of this timely opportunity to get her on your side. Strength and commitment are the themes surrounding Agnes’ design and her inclusion within the tale gives life to the world.

After your careful interactions with Agnes, you will come across Iris. Iris is a weak willed girl whom the corruption quickly put under the goddess’ thumb. It’s worth mentioning you come across her in the midst of a scouting assignment to find more information regarding the goddess’ whereabouts. The girl in the maid attire informs you that she’s searching for a dangerous man for her master. However, due to the compassion you show towards her, she cannot label you as dangerous. Instead, Iris decides to protect you and thus reveals a dangerous fact. The maid outfit isn’t for show, she serves directly under the goddess. Furthermore, It’s up to you to free her from the shackles of the corruption.

Should you succeed in saving in previous endeavors, the march continues. The destination is a castle in the midst of a deep valley under protection by a powerful demonic being. Here you meet Rinu, a succubus sworn to protect the goddess’ fort. Rinu isn’t just your ordinary succubus, her power puts her on the top of that pecking order. Perhaps the greatest capture by the goddess, it’s up to you to set this dark being free. Furthermore, with a will stronger than iron, it will take cunning strategy to take her down. The spoils of victory, should you succeed, put you in a prime position to save the world.

Last, but certainly not least, the main cause for all of this. The corrupt goddess of the land herself, Beatrice. With her limitless power, she took control over a fragile land and its populace with ease. Furthermore, to prevent an uprising and the prophecy, she quickly kills and enslaves man for their future defiance. Through your interactions with the damsels you get a sense of how sick and twisted this new rule is. She’s the final boss, beat her and set a whole world free from their shackles. An overwhelming figure, not just in visual terms but, in reality.

With introductions in place, let’s talk technicalities. Hikari Love Potion is, at its core, a lewd adventure. When dealing with a lewd adventure, it becomes very easy to expect the bare minimum in all major aspects of what is a visual novel. One could argue that elements such as story, character development, and soundtrack all fall flat as a result of focusing on the art. However, this isn’t exactly the case with HLP, as several elements improve from previous works and some even shine on the same level as the art. Most notably, the soundtrack. HLP may not be the longest read, but in combination with its narrative, the soundtrack does an absolutely brilliant job to immerse you in the presentation of key moments. It’s the most immersed I’ve felt with a setting in a long time.

Speaking of narrative, there’s a lot to talk about. The ridiculousness of the story is to be expected with lewd adventures. Furthermore, the short length and lack of character development arcs can make this a forgetful read. Despite all of that, there’s, somehow, never a dull moment in the read and while the story completes itself within a week, in-game time, it’s actually surprising to see how gripping it is. That said, there are still a heavy lack of character development, especially for those who join the roster later on. Their inclusion feels awkward and their actions at the end of title feel unnatural. Soundtrack’s great, story is good, what about the art? The fantasy setting allows for a colorful and diverse cast of species and they take full advantage of fleshing them out through the art. Above all during coitus scenes.

In conclusion, Hikari Love Potion works on the base created by it’s predecessor in Hikari Clover Rescue and excels as a standalone game. If Toffer Team can focus on reinforcing story length and character development, mark my words he’ll have a masterpiece within the next set of years. HLP is an outstanding Western lewd adventure release that you should check out. It took me two and a half hours to fully read it. As a result, the $4.99 price point makes it hard to pass on the release. Congratulations to Toffer Team on the release and we look forward to reading more! Likewise, please consider following them on Twitter for updates on their new yuri series.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by developer for review purposes.

The post (18+) REVIEW: Hikari Love Potion appeared first on oprainfall.

When you try to explain the appeal of niche Japanese games to more casual players, you may hear something along the lines of how some offerings are “messed up” (and that’s PG-level language). A game like My Horse Prince would be a perfect example to support that argument. To summarize the setting, My Horse Prince has you play as a nameable female protagonist whom meets a male horse (named Yuuma) and becomes its owner, eventually going on to romance him and become his jockey. So basically, an ‘otome’ with a twist. This was a game that I didn’t believe would see the light of day outside of Japan for pretty obvious reasons, but it has and I decided to check it out to see if there was a good game behind it.

It’s safe to say that Mr. Potato Head has fallen on hard times.

The actual gameplay consists of two parts – textbook romance VN interactions and touching markers on the screen to trigger an event and fill a meter. Admittedly, the execution of these events is both hilarious and baffling at the same time, such as Yuuma playing the guitar in a concert and lifting huge boulders during training. To build up the energy required to do this, you will need to trigger events with Yuuma and answer the dialogue appropriately to get more points. Answer badly and you will lose points. You can do this up to three times every half an hour. It is clear this game is not meant to be taken seriously, and this is shown in the dialogue, which is very lighthearted and only serves to carry along the minimal story. Some of it is funny at times, but it makes for a very weird experience considering the context. The same can be said for the graphics. While the drawings are very well done, the CGs in particular are not the kind of thing you’d want to be seen playing in public.

One of the game’s CGs. To their credit, the CGs are really well drawn and fit, but there aren’t enough of them. Furthermore, they are arguably NSFW.

My main issue with My Horse Prince isn’t so much the weird setting, but the game’s design. This is a free-to-play game with in-app purchases, and this clearly shows. You can pay to have the ads removed but if you don’t, they really get in the way. Between every chapter, you have to watch an ad, if you get an answer wrong in the bonding events you have to watch an ad to get a second chance at a correct answer and after using all your bonding events you have to watch an ad, and wait half an hour for your three bonding points to renew (or watch an advert to get an additional one). The worst part is that they are entirely random and some of them you cannot close until after waiting for a period of time. If you exit to try and trick the game into thinking you have watched the advert, chances are the game will crash and you’ll have to restart your session. To elaborate more on the in-app purchases, you can pay $0.99 to remove the ads, and you can pay $0.99 or $1.99 for golden items that can help you progress through the touchscreen sections faster. You don’t need to pay any money to complete the game, but it would presumably improve your experience. The music is also pretty standard stuff, the lack of variety in the track listings means it will also get very repetitive.

You said it, not me, Usaya. Taken from the store page.

At best, there is a lot of missed potential here. At worst, the game is hogwash that only shows the bad side of mobile gaming and (in the eyes of some) the worst in niche Japanese gaming. Perhaps if the game wasn’t hobbled by intrusive adverts, the story was more serious and there was substantial character development, there may be something redeemable but that is not to be found here. I get the vibe that this game was made as a joke, and if you go in with that mindset you may find My Horse Prince worth your time. On-off casual play for me was a large handful of 5 minute sessions over 2 weeks, allowing me to finish the 10 chapters in no time. Maybe with no ads and more hardcore playing I could have finished it even quicker, so the replay value in this game is abysmal. There is a postgame side story but that appeared to be a grindfest so I didn’t play much of it. To summarize, while Usaya Co. get my respect for releasing such a bizarre game in English, I can’t really recommend My Horse Prince at all due to the poor execution, especially if you’re looking for a good quality game or story. This applies especially to detractors of both mobile and Japanese games, as this title will do nothing to change your mind.

Review Score
Overall

As this game was free to play, this was downloaded by the reviewer to play on his own device. No money was spent on in-app purchases, nor was any golden items given or the adverts removed by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: My Horse Prince appeared first on oprainfall.

At first I thought to open the review by stating that I don’t really like mobile games, but that is not entirely accurate. I do actually own 64 apps on my iTunes account, perhaps not all that much considering I have had one since they were first introduced, but not a small number either. At least 75% of those apps are games, which surprises me a little. But when I looked over which games I had, a pattern definitely emerged. The only games I really spent any significant time playing were all full games that you could purchase outright. Even then, I tended to play them a lot less than I would on a Nintendo 3DS, or especially my beloved PS Vita. So what I decided would be a more accurate statement is that it’s not that I don’t like mobile games.  The controls are not my favorite, but what I really don’t like is Free to Play mechanics.

A few new faces and many old.

So even with the Final Fantasy title, possibly my favorite video game franchise of all time, this game had an uphill climb ahead of it in order to garner my affection. Just because the game has Final Fantasy in the title, and is published by Square Enix, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a true Final Fantasy game. The Brave Exvius in the title is an important distinction to make because this was developed by Gumi Inc., the makers of the very popular Brave Frontier FTP mobile game. I never played that game personally but it certainly looked pretty, and it garnered quite a few fans. So this game was the two companies combining their efforts to make that style of game featuring a Final Fantasy world and characters.

Rain is a fairly common JRPG protagonist; a bit irresponsible and some serious daddy issues.

The main character is Rain, and he is fairly young to be a knight of Grandshelt. He seems to have a deep reserve of power, but he also definitely leads with his emotions first. So far, I actually like him a little better than many recent Final Fantasy protagonists. Even with his father issues, he does not come from the school of ‘grimdark’ heroes that many of his predecessors did. Despite his official artwork that makes him look like a character from Final Fantasy Type-0, he wears his emotions on his sleeve and considers himself a bit of a Lothario.

Lasswell is Rain’s lifelong friend and confidant.

In many ways Lasswell is Rain’s opposite. But in the rare circumstances that he lets his guard down, you can tell that Lasswell is mostly so serious because he needs to be in order to keep Rain in check. He is perhaps overly serious and highly accomplished, but you will see deeper into his personality over time. Much of what you find is actually a low sense of self worth and a few well guarded secrets.

Your standard damsel in distress this round is Fina.

Fina takes the roll of princess who needs to be saved for this game. She is a bit of a RPG trope with her amnesia and appearing from a crystal and using a bow and white magic. However, it’s not always a bad thing to go with the classic archetype. If she was obnoxious it would not work out, but she’s rather sweet and innocent and is generally a fun character to be around. As a white mage, she will often be a very important party member unless you can happen on a better one through the luck of the draw.

Character selection and growth is the highlight.

There are a couple more story characters that you will run into and eventually be able to recruit, but they are not really the focus of the game. The focus is in having many different characters, 90% of which come from classic Final Fantasy games, that you can mix and match into the party and grow in level and rarity. You can perform a character summon by using Lapis (the common currency of the game for almost everything important), friend points, or the very rare summon tickets. Much like many other FTP titles you have a smaller chance to summon rare characters than you do low rank ones. But in this game you can spend a lot of time and resources in increasing the rarity of those characters.

Gold summons are rare, rainbow colored ones are extremely rare.

The Rank (between 1 and 6 stars) determines the quality of spells and skills available to them, their base statistics, and the potential level that you can raise them. For a 1 star character, you can only level them up to 15, but for a 6 star you can level them up to 99. Unfortunately, so far it seems that you can only gain 6 star characters from extremely rare summons. You cannot actually raise any character’s Rank past 5 stars through Awakening. Sadly each time you awaken them to the next rank, they start at level 1 again, but at least they keep all their spells and skills from the previous rank. This randomness in characters, and the fact that spending a load of cash on Lapis for summoning purposes will net you better characters, does not endear this method to me very much. But there is a lot of satisfaction in growing your characters, almost like Pokemon, especially for the classic Final Fantasy characters like my Rydia (who is now Rank 5).

Town and Environment Exploration involves the use of a virtual stick.

Your time in the game will be spent between Rounds of combat at a location, Exploration at a location, Exploration in a town, Rounds at the Colosseum, or Rounds/Exploration in the Vortex. Most of your progress in the story will work its way across the overworld map via defeating dungeons using multiple Rounds of combat until you defeat the boss of that location. Sometimes after you defeat that boss, the location will then be open for Exploration which will seem much more like a traditional RPG with the hidden passages and treasure as well as random combat. The Vortex is also much the same, only it features special zones that you can either defeat to gain special rewards or there will be special timed events (such as the one for Halloween). All those activities use up your Energy meter, as you would expect for a FTP game, and you need to wait for it to restore over time or purchase more energy with money. Colosseum rounds do not expend energy, but they are limited with the number you can participate in before they have to build back up over time.

The touch command combat is pretty good.

The actual combat is pretty fun, especially if you are like me and love the old turn based style of RPG. This is a style that has been largely left behind by many developers because it’s considered too archaic. But I still love the old style, and this game does it very well. If it was just the combat and I could play all I wanted without restrictions, I would give this game a glowing review. But unfortunately it is like other FTP games and it actively undermines your effort to play it. The Energy in this game is even more restrictive than other FTP games that I’ve played, such as Final Fantasy Record Keeper, and the Energy restores at an even slower rate. So most of my time “playing” this game has actually been not playing it, waiting for my energy to come back. If they would just allow me to spend the $20-$40 and just buy the bloody game, I would really like it.

The art design is quite good.

The art design of the game is very good, especially the full motion video summon spells (a Final Fantasy staple that is utilized very well here). So I really would have loved to spend more time just enjoying all that beauty instead of being forced to not play. The music is also really stellar and holds up to any mainline Final Fantasy game. The story is good so far, but I am reviewing this game while content is still being released for it. The game has only recently come out worldwide but it’s been out in Japan for over a year and the content is still coming out. That is a good sign that you can play this game’s story for quite a while yet. But because the game is so beautiful and large (for a mobile game), make sure you have a good device to run it. On my iPad 3 it got a bit sketchy after a while and crashed out. Thankfully it saved my progress and it was quick to get back in. So the only real points I’m taking off is because I don’t like the FTP mechanics. They are a bit predatory and stand in the way of actually enjoying the game. Other than that, there is really no reason for you not to pick up this free game and give it a spin. There is a lot here to recommend, especially for fans of the classic Final Fantasy games.

Review Score
Overall

Game is Free to Play, No Money Was Spent on FTP Mechanics for the Review

The post REVIEW: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius appeared first on oprainfall.

Missing Translation has been around for a while as an online game. It was released on September 14, 2014 on GameJolt, and is still available to download and play here. For the Android release, they’ve put a price tag of $3.40 on it, and it’s my job to tell you if it’s worth it or not. So, shall we?

Reading is fun!

The game is a good-looking one, actually. It’s a pixel art sort of 16-bit thing with a greyscale colour palette. It’s a really good look for this style of game; a simple way of giving a bit of personality to a simple puzzler. Also, your character looks like Dante from Clerks (if you pick the male character. There’s also a female option), which…I mean, for me, was a good thing, because I got to imagine him moping around complaining all the time. He does this occasional apathetic shrug that gives him a bit of personality, too. There’s not too much to say other than that, the level design (only one level, mind) is sparse, but effective.

My people need me, apparently.

The graphics are nearly a full half of what I can review with this game. There’s no dialogue, voice or text based. Interaction with NPCs is based entirely on drawing shapes on a grid and interpreting the shapes they reply with, which I couldn’t figure out. The game has a soundtrack — a nice instrumental track that sounds familiar — but, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what game it reminds me of. It’s on a loop, but it’s a catchy enough track that it’s not really a issue.

And now, on to the meat of the game, as well as its weakest part. Missing Translation is a puzzle game, so there are puzzles, obviously. There are three types of puzzles that you have to get through, each with 25 puzzles of (roughly) ascending difficulty. In one, you have to move a block across a preset path (by touching the top, bottom, or either side of the screen to move), and, after you move away from a square, it goes away. Basically, no backsies, and you have to touch every tile. The next one (you can do these in any order, so this is the order in which I did them) is, basically, a matching game. You turn a screen full of anywhere from three to 16 propellers (by tapping them to turn then a quarter turn) until the blades, either coloured light or dark, are all touching the same colour. The last is a simple movement puzzle. A block moves through a path to find a special spot on the path. This one gets a bit more challenging than the others, since, toward the end, you get two or three blocks to move along different paths of different shapes.

Colour match puzzle time.

That’s it. There are only three puzzle types, 75 puzzles in total. According to the website, there are over 100 puzzles, but I couldn’t find all of them. There are a few sections that involve figuring out how to communicate with the locals, but it’s so vague and undefined that I couldn’t figure it out. Of the main story puzzles it took me, if I was overestimating the time spent playing this game, less than an hour to actually finish all of them. That’s the biggest problem this game has; a lack of challenge and a lack of variety. You finish all three challenge rooms, bam, end cutscene and Game Over. I don’t know if the developer plans on releasing more puzzles as time goes by, but, as is, it’s not the most satisfying experience.

Missing Translation is $3.40 on the Android Play Store, and, at that price, it’s hard to recommend. I feel like it has potential, but there are a lot of unexplored ideas (the method of communication is unique enough, but undeveloped) that leave it just short of the game I think it could be. Missing Translation released on June 23 on Android, and is available to play online for free. It’s getting an iOS release, but, as far as I know, it has no release date yet.

Review Score
Overall

Reviewed on Android. Copy provided by the developer.

The post REVIEW: Missing Translation appeared first on oprainfall.

Otome games are definitely outside of my comfort zone, but you know what? That is not necessarily a bad thing. After playing Hatoful Boyfriend, I was left wanting more. Today, I’m here to talk about Hakuoki(薄桜鬼) which translates to “Demon of the Fleeting Blossom.” Now we have already spoken about Hakuoki on the 3DS and the PlayStation 3, but what about Hakuoki on the droid? If you go on the Google Play store and search for it, you will find that there is a premium and a free edition. I am reviewing the premium one.

Hakuoki follows Chizuru Yukimura, who is in Kyoto on a quest to look for her father. The area she winds up in is filled with men who, to put it lightly, will not treat a lady in the most gentlemanly way. So she decides to dress up like a young boy and fool everyone! Eventually she comes across the Shinsengumi, a special force organized by the government. It is at this point you realize that Hakuoki is not a happy-go-lucky senpai-niichan-desu-love-story-funfest. There is lots of violence and some fairly tense moments.

In any case, you end up staying with the Shinsengumi and get a chance to get to know them better. This is where the dating sim-esque elements come into play. Throughout the game you are given choices which will affect your affinity for various characters you meet and potentially your ending. As for the characters themselves, they are a really fun bunch. My favorite character was Okita Souji who kind of reminds me of Okita Sougo from Gintama. Well it should after all, they are both based off Okita Souji, the captain of the first unit of the Shinsengumi in real life. Actually, Gintama features a few of the Shinsengumi members and I found it particularly interesting to compare and contrast the characters they had in common. So, if you are a fan of Gintama, you will definitely get a kick out of these characters, and if you played Hakuoki first, check out Gintama.

One of the first things you will notice while playing is that the artwork for the game is really nice. The men definitely have a glossiness to them. Dare I say, they “sparkle!” The backgrounds are nothing too special, but looked great on my tablet. The tunes you will be hearing are appropriate for the situation, but never really stood out to me. Being on a mobile device, you of course use the touch screen to touch the men–I mean, advance text. You can hold your finger on the screen for a couple of seconds to enable the auto mode, which lets the game advance text by itself. That way, you can sit back and relax as the game “plays.” The unfortunate thing about this game is that you are not given as many choices as I would have hoped, so the story in that sense feels very linear and not quite as interactive as I would have hoped. I guess I have been spoiled by other visual novels I recently played such as Hatoful Boyfriend, or even Danganronpa 2. There is a lot going on in the story and keywords are bolded and underlined. You can click on those to be sent to the in-game encyclopedia where you can read more information. Be prepared to do this often since, after all, this IS a visual novel, so if you went into this not expecting to read…then I do not know what to say to you…

There is quite a bit to see and do in Hakuoki, and getting everything can take you a solid 20 or so hours. However, this game is not too cheap. It currently costs $27.99, but there is a free version for those of you who want to try it out before purchasing. Otherwise, Hakuoki is also available on the PSP, both in physical format or via the PSN (playable on Vita). If you like the artwork and do not own any of those handhelds but want Hakuoki on your phone or tablet, check it out.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy provided by publisher.

The post RE-REVIEW: Hakuoki: Premium Edition appeared first on oprainfall.

Mobile gaming has been increasing in popularity over the past few years, and the increasingly sophisticated technology of smartphones and tablets make it easier for players to have access to different types of games for those platforms. Many mobile games are panned as being low-quality because they try to emulate the experience of traditional console or handheld games and fail. However, Lifeline takes an entirely different approach.

Can you hear me now?

Lifeline can best be described as a visual novel, or maybe text adventure would be better considering there are no visuals to speak of. It works like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, except it’s not your adventure. The game starts out with an incoming message. It’s from Taylor, a survivor from a space ship that crashed into a deserted alien moon. After responding to the message, he—or she, the game doesn’t specify, but I’m not fond of Taylor as a woman’s name—will tell you the situation and all about his surroundings, ultimately asking for your advice on how to proceed. You will be given two options for your reply. Taylor will continue talking to you as he does whatever you tell him to, until the next choice needs to be made, all while haunting, ambient music plays in the background. You can scroll up to see past messages and the choices you made if you need a refresher.

In theory, these choices should branch the story, but I find it hard to believe there are that many paths. A lot of the decisions seem either redundant, repetitive, or even unnecessary. Sometimes, Taylor will react to something with an exclamation, and you’re prompted to either ask what he saw or ask if he’s okay. The simple responses he gives you make it seems like what you say to him doesn’t matter, beyond getting an extra piece of dialogue or two. Also, there are times when the option you didn’t choose comes back up again, which I took as a hint that that’s the way to progress the plot. Ultimately, there were only a few points where I’d say what you chose affects the outcome.

Taylor is supposed to be a student scientist, performing research experiments on lab rats while en route to an alien planet. For someone who is supposedly smart, he doesn’t come off as that bright during the game. While all the dialogue choices are probably designed to keep the player interacting with the game, it makes Taylor seem like he can’t make a decision for himself. Asking where to explore or for advice on handling a situation is expected, but having to tell him whether to stop and eat or keep walking, or to take pain medicine or not makes him seem needy and incompetent.

Sounds like quite the predicament

One thing that bugged me—and this is purely a nitpick on my part—is that Taylor wasn’t exactly behaving like someone in his predicament. The story combines elements of Science Fiction and Survival Horror. As such, he should have been panicked and apprehensive throughout most of his adventure. He did reach panic mode a few times during the more intense, dramatic scenes, but he always seemed to have not only the time for, but the state of mind to make snide comments and references. He frequently joked about not knowing the metric system, he would reference movies and other pieces of popular culture, and when describing something he encounters as unusual, he would often stop to point out the entirety of what he’s experienced on the moon is unusual to begin with. He would also recap events that happened. When mentioning a specific item or location, he would recite what occurred in that place or what the item did. This seemed like a weird thing to do, especially when time is of the essence. I’m not sure if this was a designed quirk of his, or something done by the game’s writers to refresh the player’s memory. If the latter, it seems unnecessary, as you wouldn’t forget events in a book when you put it down for the night. All in all, these moments, while they didn’t ruin the game or the experience, were fairly jarring and felt like a violation of the fourth wall.

I have vast experience with Science Fiction, but not much in the way of Horror—games or otherwise–so I kept to the more conservative dialogue choices. I wanted to explore the game for as long as possible, learning as much as I can about the moon and the situation unfolding, so my goal was to keep Taylor safe for as long as possible. At the first sign of danger I would tell him to run. In the long-run, I probably missed out on some information that could have been gleaned from sending him further into peril, but I felt the trade-off to be worth it. Although, I did feel there were a few too many unanswered questions after completing the game, I’m not sure if the alternate branches of the story would explain them.

Messages from Taylor as system notifications

The true genius of Lifeline is the way in which the player interacts with it. Events in the game occur in real-time. When Taylor says he’ll get back to you in a few minutes, he means a few minutes. If it’ll take him an hour to get somewhere, it’ll take an hour, and when he goes to sleep at night, he won’t send anything until morning. If the game isn’t the active app on your device, you’ll get a notification when Taylor sends you a message (assuming you have them enabled). While the game reacts in real-time, you don’t need to. You can take as long as you need to respond. There’s apparently an auto-save feature so that if you close the app or turn off your phone, you’ll pick up right where you left off.

I felt there were a couple missed opportunities to increase the player’s involvement. At one point, Taylor asks you to look up some information for him. He even waits a few minutes before asking for the answer, making it so you can’t just continue on ignoring his request. This only happened once, and while I wish the game was more interactive in this sense, it might be for the best since the game’s popularity led to not only the question be auto-filled in Google’s search bar, but the top results were discussions about the game.

There was also the complete absence of any information about the player. Where were you supposed to be? Why are you the only person Taylor could contact, and how was it possible? It’s clear that this is taking place in the future, or at least a futuristic world. I suppose it didn’t matter if I was a random person on Earth, an alien on another planet, or if I was on a passing space ship. Maybe I’m just myself and the messages went through space and time to reach me. While I can understand leaving it open-ended, I would have appreciated the context to help enrich an otherwise unremarkable story.

Lifeline as seen on an iPhone’s screen.

Even though I found the story to be little more than average, it was still an interesting tale and I really enjoyed the game. Being in real-time, Lifeline isn’t a something you can just sit down and play through in a few hours. It takes three days to finish the game, although it took me significantly longer since I started just before an incredibly busy week of E3. The way the game’s interface works, it became a part of my phone-checking routine: read new text messages, look at new email, check social media notifications, and see what Taylor’s up to. This interface sets Lifeline apart from other mobile games, and in essence, is what mobile games should aspire to. The free-to-play model irritates too many players and mapping gamepad controls to a touchscreen for platforming or role-playing games doesn’t work well. A smartphone (or tablet) is its own device, with its own functionality. Game designers should look to use that functionality for the benefit of their game. Considering beating the game unlocks a rewind feature which lets you go back to play for the other paths, this $2.99 app is well worth checking out.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by the publisher

The post REVIEW: Lifeline appeared first on oprainfall.

Here we are in iOS territory again! Hey… Hey! Get back here, do not click off this page. I know what you’re thinking. Please, hear me out as I speak about a debatably hidden gem on a not-so-glorified platform in Auro: A Monster-Bumping Adventure. Auro is a turn-based strategy game that features the hexagonal layout of movement at the low cost of $2.99. What kind of splash will Dinofarm Games make with a game that has a ridiculous title that reminds you of the monster mash?

You are Prince Auro, a spoiled prince who stole a magic staff. Auro played around too much where he wasn’t supposed to and unleashed an even more spoiled prince named Prince Argo. Prince Argo then unleashes lots of minions that are trying to destroy toys or something of that nature. If you want to read more into it, you can watch their intro, which is actually a YouTube video, which is kind of lazily integrated into the main menu screen.

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this game, there is a word of caution of what you may be expecting. You should (and I recommend) you play the 31-level tutorial of the game. It’s actually very fun and intriguing to go through. You are taught the mechanics of movement from space to space. Being that Auro plays on a hexagon-based map, you can always move in six directions. The game throws in all sorts of new tricks, new mechanics and new enemies as you progressively go through the tutorial. It feels fun and fledgling-like as you go on, with a very whimsical guide telling you how to play. The game takes a bit of a turn when you start the actual game, however — something that is very common to the iOS genre, but this is one of the stronger examples. To many of you readers — and this includes me — you will end up expecting something in comparison to the Advance Wars series of a dynamic, progressing storyline and going through predetermined levels that incline very methodically on the brain.

If that’s what you expect, you will be disappointed because, when you start the main game, you will find it’s a ladder-based challenge mode. It will feel like you are endlessly training on and on. It keeps a ranking system and places you in that ranking system based on how well you do in a placement test. From there on out, every time you win a game, it gives you points. If you get enough points, the difficulty of the levels increases, which is a mixed bag. It does provide harder versions of enemies you see in the beginning, and they do require more attention to nuances as you progress. The con is that all it really seems like they do is raise the amount of points (which are gained by killing enemies by either knocking them off an edge or by other means of disaster spells) you need to pass the level. If you lose, you lose points. You lose enough and you will drop a rank. If you keep winning several games in a row, you will get more and more points each time. That’s a clever way of letting the game know you are too far down, so it boosts you up faster for winning so many in a row.

If you can get past that type of gameplay style, then you may actually enjoy Auro. I was so heavily mind-boggled by this twist that I had to make sure the game was practically endless by contacting Dinofarm Games. Apparently it is true, but they suggested a very intriguing way to look at it. It’s like practicing a martial art, something you learn and get better at every day. When I think of it that way, that relates to how I play some less elusive titles like Ninja Gaiden or even comparable to fighting games, having to get better at the game’s craft every day. A discipline. I completely agree, because Auro is like this in every way.

The object of the game is to bump your enemies off the stage. Generally, you can only bump them one space in the direction you are facing. Every time an enemy lights up, it means they are able to harm you (but not necessarily bump you). If you lose all of your barrier points via being attacked or being bumped off the stage, you lose the level. That mostly applies to the basic mouse-enemies that only move one space and don’t do anything fancy. You are able to make a run for it and go the warp zone at the end of each section in a level to replenish two of your barrier points and some of your spells (oh, we’ll get to that in a bit) if you feel like you just can’t take them all. Keep in mind that all enemies will move in a similar direction you’ve last moved.

I mentioned earlier that killing enemies gives you points, and you need a certain amount of points to complete a level. There is a meter in the upper-left corner that tells you how many points you will get for your next kill. You will get anywhere between one to four points depending on how full that meter is. The meter is determined by how often you are killing enemies and how consistently you’re doing it. Every time you move, you lose a segment. Lose enough segments, and the amount of points your next kill is worth goes down. Every time you kill an enemy or go to a warp point, you get more segments back. That means that, to get four points per each kill, you’d have to kill someone every two moves. That means you can essentially blow through entire levels fairly quickly if you know the nuances of this game very well.

There are particularly annoying enemies such as slimes, which only bump you back but don’t damage. When you bump a slime, however, they turn flat for several turns and anything that walks on top of it is bounced 2 spaces in the direction they were going. This can be manipulated to spring enemies off the stage. You have sneaky enemies called a “Foxy” that can only attack from 2 spaces away. These guys will make you want to toss your fancy iPhone across the room. Don’t do that, though, just be wary and save yourself the loss of your phone. You have enemies that float and, therefore, need to be frozen to cause them to stop flying and fall, or you have to send them into hazardous objects to be removed from the field. Then, you have all kinds of heavy enemies that you cannot move unless they are standing in a vortex or ice. They can be manipulated by spells that cause vortexes or, since they are too heavy, putting ice blocks to extend the stage and luring them off to break through the ice.

You are given different varieties of spells at random in each level. These spells are complete game-changers. They range from setting a whole row on fire, turning the next “honeycomb” (that’s how I refer to all the spaces next to you) shape of spaces into ice, which can even go off the stage, freezing enemies, blowing all enemies several spaces and much more. Once you use the set spells given to you, they only recharge by grabbing colorful cube-looking objects, with some spells needing three and others needing five. Some spells you get are one-use only, based on the pieces of candy you find on the ground that contain that spell. These things can get you out of a jam. With all of these spells, the complexities of the patterns of each enemy and the fact that you can ditch and warp to the next section hoping you’d have an easier time, all that makes this a very deep game.

There are some small issues to address, like the fact that the game is sorely lacking in other modes. You could have so much more aside from “procedurally-generated maps” (like the website says) and have special boss battles or something like that to break up the overly steady pace of the game. I don’t want to try to force this to be a story game, but there are little notes you get that try to “expand” on the story that you can collect through the levels. They’re very scattershot and bland to read, though, so it doesn’t really develop anything, which is a shame since they might confuse you into thinking it’s trying to expand upon the story. Also a few technical issues pop up, like if you get a tie (at least the tutorial) and get killed while you complete a mission, it says you lost and to try again, but then lets you clear the level. I’m not a fan of loose programming like that.

The graphics aren’t groundbreaking for iOS standards, but I can tell Dinofarm Games wants to be iconic with the animation of Prince Auro. He looks like he’d fit right into retro-game design and that’s an A+ attribute for someone like me. The music — well… the limited amount you hear — is greatly composed and, again, can tingle the hearts of fans of the music from old-school 2D games. The presentation of this game is pretty inspired, I can tell, and that’s top-notch.

Dear Dinofarm Games, you’ve actually earned my respect as a hardened gamer that generally despises the iOS market. Dinofarm Games ethics on their website also tells all and, from what I played in this game, they’re all true. Especially the one that says that they will not waste your time. Auro does not waste your time from the optional tutorial to even to the point of this game having an option that skips all animations of the game and gives instant results. If you take this game and expand upon it more with the lore you’ve presented, you will strike gold. This is the kind of game that your typical home console and handheld gamers (at least the likes that visit game sites like this) would enjoy on a grander scale. Auro: A Monster-Bumping Adventure is a worthwhile experience for only $2.99. There’s nothing more emotionally-driven than a game with a lot of potential to succeed with just a tad more expansion on it, and that’s what Auro is. For now (with more updates to come), Auro is a hidden gem on mobile phones. Especially for those who want to play a game with a mentality of peace of mind, enhancing your disciplinary thinking and looking for a deep strategy experience.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided by Developer

The post REVIEW: Auro: A Monster-Bumping Adventure appeared first on oprainfall.

I’ve stated before that it’s pretty rare for me to play mobile games, and there’s a couple of reasons for that. As a general rule, I don’t like micro transactions, and I tend to prefer playing my 3DS. It’s portable and runs off a separate battery than the phone I use for everything else all the time. While I can easily sink hours into my 3DS, mobile games are built to be played in small bursts (or toilet breaks). That being said, I had a surprising amount of fun with this matching game from Big Fish Games.

Gummy Drop is a game about matching gummies and using the resources and money you get from winning to build up big cities around the world. There are fun mechanics introduced, like the ability to shovel out one gummy that is giving you a hard time, or the ability to completely get rid of one type of gummy that is on the visible board, making it easy to create big combos and get higher scores. Predictably, you’re given the first couple free, then have to buy more with actual currency. Each level gives you 10 coins while the cheapest upgrade is well over 200. You can play a level over, however, up to three times and get more coins, but the difficulty goes up each time by quite a bit, and you only get three lives. Lives seem to respawn every 15 minutes, so, if you don’t mind waiting an hour an a half, you can do so, or just buy more using real money.

Nothing about the music stood out to me, but I did mute it since I played it mostly at work in 10-15 minute bursts. One thing I liked was how easy it was to pick up and put down in the middle of a game. I didn’t have to worry about a timer or losing the match if I got distracted midway through.

The game is simple and easy to pick up, but there isn’t anything about it that really makes it stand out, either.  You only get three lives — usually not a lot, since you can quickly burn through those lives on one level in less than five minutes. There is an interesting feature where you build up buildings in whatever country you’re playing in (you start in Australia). You collect bricks and other things in the match-3 puzzles before using them to build landmarks and advance the game. As you can imagine, it’s quite easy to give in and use real money to try and get around these hiccups. Now that this game is on my phone, I won’t be deleting it, but I probably won’t be going out of my way to boot it up and play it, either. There isn’t much about this game that pushes it out of the pack of many, many, many match-3 candy games in the mobile market.

It feels very cookie-cutter in its approach to getting you to have fun. It’s a gray suit in a large crowd of gray suits, but it does have nice cufflinks. If you have binoculars, you might spot the shiny cufflinks. You might be quite chuffed and satisfied by the snazzy cufflinks on a drab gray suit. But, for people without such fancy tools, it’s just another gray suit.

Review Score
Overall

Editor Note: This game was reviewed from the free version provided on Google Play

The post REVIEW: Gummy Drop! appeared first on oprainfall.

David is a unique title. It’s a Christian art game. Now, I know I’ve lost some of you already, but that fact makes it unique among Christian software. In the past, “Bible” games have been trying to appeal to a certain spending demographic, using Christian themes as marketing (there was even at least one “Bible” game that was just a reskin of an adult game). This is quite different from that. The creator credits indie creators like Jonathan Blow and Phil Fish as inspirations, which means that this guy is deeply familiar with game culture, and is trying to give back to it. Does it work? Well…

Okay, you play as David. You are told there is Evil (appropriately called Sin), and you are sent out to vanquish it . Simple, yes, but the minimalist story fits with the minimalistic art style. I like the art style. It’s simple, but appealing. If Thomas Was Alone proved anything, it was that you can tell a compelling story with shapes. It’s after this where the game starts breaking down for me.

The campaign is just a succession of boss battles. Now, that’s not necessarily a problem, but it does make the game awfully short. There are two difficulty modes: Okay and Very. The difference between them is that Okay gives you six points of health, while Very only gives you one. Now, in the tutorial, the game suggests that you’ll be able to increase your health with golden blocks. Not once in the main game do these golden blocks appear. They only appear in a challenge room called the Arena, which challenges you to destroy as many enemies as possible. Plus, to face the final boss, you’ll need to complete all levels on Very. Very feels really cheap sometimes, since you can’t make any mistakes, nor can you survive if the game backs you into a corner. Still, even with my challenges, I only spent two or three hours on the game. Again, that’s not necessarily a problem (Portal anyone?), but the game feels really dull for a few reasons.

You attack by holding your mouse over David to charge your shot, then move the mouse over whatever you want to aim at. It’s new, to be sure, but it just doesn’t feel right. Not only does it take time to charge up a shot, your shots have to come back to you, and settle back down before you can shoot them again. I’d have rather seen a more immediate point and shoot system. You move with the WASD keys. Moving works OK, except for one quirk: you can jump in mid-air as many times as you want. The problem is, if you hold up, you don’t keep going up, and, if you press up a bunch of times, you won’t get anywhere. So, if you want to keep moving up, you’ll need to hold up for about a second, and then press it again. In the heat of battle, it gets pretty hard to remember that.

Also, you can’t see the whole screen at once. This is really frustrating since you can’t actually see the attacks that are getting thrown at you. It’s part of the reason that Very difficulty feels cheap; something will come up at high speed that you have very little to time to prepare for. Also, in the example above, when the camera zooms in, you can’t see what that thing under the water is doing. Since you can’t shoot underwater, it becomes a tedious waiting game. When you can’t even see where the boss is, or where they are going to jump out, it makes the situation even more frustrating. The frustrating this is, I know the game is capable of showing the whole screen at once, so the zoomed in view makes very little sense.

The music is also problematic. Not the music itself – I actually really like the music. But, when you click on David to charge, time slows down (to give you time to dodge incoming fire). The music also slows, so what was intended to be an upbeat theme slows to unbearable droning.

For a new developer, David is a noble first attempt. And, unlike some other art games, it actually is a game. Unfortunately, it runs into some problems, so I really can’t recommend it unless you are looking for something interesting and a little different. For $2, though, those of you looking for something interesting and don’t mind dealing with some gameplay issues should check it out. It’s definitely something we haven’t seen before; it’s just not terribly compelling. I hope this isn’t the last we hear from this developer, though. He has an interesting style and bold aspirations. Maybe he can bring a new voice to the indie scene.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by the publisher

The post REVIEW: David appeared first on oprainfall.

There are two types of smartphone owners: those that have Flappy Bird, and those who would have downloaded it before developer Dong Nguyen yanked it off of every App Store—that is, before falling back on his word. Earlier last month, he promised to include a “take a break” warning when he does eventually return the game to phones and tablets everywhere. And just as well, as the one thing that makes this iOS and Android title so addictive to many is the fact that it never, ever, ever, EVER ends. Unfortunately, that’s also its downfall, and for any gamer that knows how to actually control something, Flappy Bird outstays its welcome fast.

From the first moment, where the game tells us to “Get Ready,” we are left to fend for ourselves with this…thing.

Story? Who needs one for a game like this? Nguyen did mention in an interview with Rolling Stone that this game was merely meant for relaxation, but I take it there’s a bird who has to save the princess by flying through groups of pipes. Oh, wait, those pipes do look fairly familiar. It’s pretty obvious that the pipes, the generic city background and maybe even the eponymous Flappy Bird himself were all “borrowed” from a 16-bit Mario title. The update received mere days before the game’s takedown has a night background and different colored birds, but did little to change the game itself. Indeed, the backgrounds and birds are as randomly generated as the pipes, meaning that you have no idea whether your bird is the original yellow, a basic blue, or a revolting red that—guess what?—makes him look just like a Cheep Cheep.

With three colors and two backgrounds, there are six, count ’em, six possible color combinations in Flappy Bird. That’s more than the custom armor combinations in some NES RPGs! And, while the graphics are obviously swiped, to its credit, the game looks fairly clean and runs smoothly. I mean, all you have on the screen is the bird, the pipes, the background and the number of pipes you’ve flown through, so there’s a certain simplicity to this whole endeavor. Adding to that, the only sounds in this game are whooshes and a “da-ding” sound made when the bird passes through the pipes, and, once again, the latter sounds like a higher-pitched version of the coin sound in a Mario game. The only thing missing is some music. I recommend either your favorite Bowser theme if you want to go Mario, the theme music to Crazy Bus, or anything off of the Lou Reed and Metallica collaboration Lulu. Any lengthy songs that can cause a sense of dread over time will work fine, in other words.

What’d I tell you? HE LOOKS LIKE A CHEEP CHEEP!

But behind the bare-bones nature of Flappy Bird lies a downright brutal amount of fake difficulty. True, the pipes are as randomly-generated as the stages in a roguelike, and can sneak up on you without warning. Even so, unlike Dark Souls or almost anything published by Atlus—that is, games that are legitimately difficult in the sense that players are forced to adapt to new and more punishing levels and enemies—Flappy Bird is way too simple to be called difficult. The only thing this bird does is fly through sets of pipes, one on each vertical side of the screen. If he hits a pipe even remotely, it’s Game Over. If he crashes down, it’s Game Over. If you fly through 10 pipes, you get a bronze medal. 20 gets you silver, 30 gets you gold, 40 gets you platinum. The pipe placement is randomized, meaning no two playthroughs of Flappy Bird are alike. Seems simple enough.

The problem is that this bird flies with the grace of a sack of cement. He soars high with each tap on the screen, yet falls back down just as easily. This will initially infuriate the living hell out of anyone who plays this game. However, someone who aims for the highest score will probably spend hours upon hours with Flappy Bird, mastering a rhythm and, eventually, getting a medal, only to get an even lower score the next time around. Of course, mastering this rhythm takes practice, but the awful controls don’t do the game any favors. In spite of the fact that there is only one level, your enemies are the pipes, and the only way to defeat them is to fly through them, the game does have an addictive quality in its extremely broken nature. Yet, its technical flaws are too overwhelming to not notice, and it certainly seems like no one with a bunch of spare time on their hands could ever try and master it…

…Oh, wait. I do feel like rubbing this score into everyone’s face, because that’s how I roll. Also, these iAds are just as randomly-generated, and just as ridiculous.

In spite of it being taken down from every mobile App Store almost two months ago, Flappy Bird is still viral to this day, with its numerous clones still making waves on App Stores everywhere. And yet, I bring with that statement the following analogy: If the App Store were a state fair, Flappy Bird would be like the deep-fried Twinkie of the bunch. It’s satisfying for a bit, and too popular to resist, but it rides off of the success of something else, lasts for a short while, and may very well be harmful in large quantities. By the time one is done with it, they realize just how much of a pointless waste of time it truly is. Oh, and it definitely should not add $10,000 to the cost of a phone on eBay when it can be experienced for free.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was downloaded by reviewer, well before the game’s takedown on February 8, 2014.

While the über-popular Flappy Bird never really took flight as a game, casual gamers everywhere should fret not! Nguyen’s outfit Gears has better games on the App Store than this one, such as Shuriken Block, which actually has some good old-fashioned challenge and no plagiarism to speak of. Stay tuned for a review of that one!

Also, for those who still own Flappy Bird, here’s some very helpful advice on how to beat it:

The post [April Fools 2014] REVIEW: Flappy Bird appeared first on oprainfall.

Usually when I first encounter a game, there is a particular element that draws me to it. Be it the plot or the mechanics, there is always something that really resonates with me. For Dischan’s Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos, it was absolutely the artwork. And as I delved deeper into the game, I also found an excellent plot, great characters, and a fantastic soundtrack.

Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos is the first episode in a longer series, although more episodes have yet to be released (more on that later). I would describe it as the first “proper” visual novel I’ve ever played. My experience with the genre has been with games like the Ace Attorney and Zero Escape series where there is another level of interactivity beyond just reading the story and making dialogue decisions. Dysfunctional Systems focuses completely on the story, and offers the player only a few choices along the way, although some of them are ultimately pivotal to the direction the plot takes. Although I wouldn’t want every game I play to be a visual novel, I’m ready to sometimes give up interactivity and just watch the story unfold. It does give the writers a chance to tell a more cohesive story. But if you’re not one for interactive fiction or text-heavy games, then the visual novel genre, and by extension Dysfunctional Systems, is probably not right for you.

The citizens of Brighton struggle with intense poverty.

So let’s cut to the chase. What the heck is the game about? Dysfunctional Systems is centered around the life of fourteen-year-old Winter Harrison, a mediator in training. In Winter’s “utopian” world, it is the job of mediators to travel to other less fortunate worlds which have fallen into chaos, and ultimately restore order. There are all kinds of different worlds out there, some more alien than others (there is some discussion of magic worlds and worlds with malleable physics). In the first episode, Winter is shadowing her mentor Cyrus Addington on her second ever mediation. She finds herself in a world called Sule, which is not dissimilar from our own. It is up to Winter and Cyrus to mediate the country of Brighton, which finds itself in severe poverty. Although Brighton has recently gained independence from Gabrea, their wealthy colonizers, they remain the “workhorse” of Gabrea, and Brighton’s citizens are being quite literally worked to death. They are forced to work multiple jobs and celebrate wage increases of only a few cents, and millions of Brighton’s residents die of poverty and starvation. I will admit that while I did not find myself immediately engaged by the interactions between Winter and Cyrus, the game really sucked me in when it began to deal with Brighton and its citizens.

Cyrus attempts to convey the gravity of the situation.

Shortly after Winter and Cyrus arrive in Brighton, however, the situation quickly becomes a ticking time bomb. The president of Brighton lays out a list of demands which Gabrea must meet within four hours, or Brighton will launch a nuclear weapon at one of their major cities. Brighton is the first country to have developed a fusion bomb, and the president sees this as the only way to force Gabrea to comply with their demands. Winter and Cyrus thus find themselves in a situation which must be mediated immediately. However, the two cannot reach an agreement on how this situation should be resolved.

Winter struggles with her ignorance.

Winter is young and morally stubborn. She clings to a black and white morality and openly scoffs at concepts such as “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. She is inexperienced with mediation and wants to stick to the textbook methods of conflict resolution. Despite being well-read and clearly very intellectual, Winter is surprisingly naïve. The world from which she originates has given her no experience with war, death, or suffering. Cyrus, on the other hand, does anything but stick to the textbook. He has a reputation among other mediators for carelessness and extreme tactics. He is experienced, disillusioned, and prepared to do what he must to get the job done. He is also an excellent teacher to Winter, truly listening to her and considering her opinions, as well as forcing her to step out of her comfort zone and push away from narrow-minded thinking to make her a better mediator. The two complement each other quite well, and ultimately, it is great to see them in action. The game also lets us spend some time with Winter after she returns home from her mediation, and introduces the player to a new playable character, Waverly. Playing as Waverly does provide some new perspective, but ultimately does not have an effect on the plot as the player does not get to make any decisions during her segment. Winter and Cyrus, as well as the other characters introduced in the episode, nicely compliment the intriguing premise and plot of Dysfunctional Systems.

As far as I’ve been able to discern, there are two distinct paths the game may ultimately take based on how the player decides to go about the mediation. The two branches are ultimately very different, and a second playthrough is most certainly warranted. Not only do plot and dialogue options change, the player is also presented with different information, different minor characters, and even different music tracks.  Fortunately the game makes experiencing everything easy by allowing you to skip text you’ve already seen in later playthroughs. I would say that it took me about two hours to complete the episode the first time, plus maybe another forty-five minutes to go back and experience the other ending. Due to the importance of decision making and weighing the possible consequences of your actions, I think the ability to see things play out differently based on your choices adds a lot of value to the game. You can see that not only is the mediation of Brighton changed, but so too are the lives of characters. Dysfunctional Systems asks some very interesting questions about the consequence of choice not only on history but on those who are forced to make difficult decisions, as well as the nature of right and wrong and concepts like “the ends justifies the means”. Although I was disappointed with the length of the game, it does beg at least two playthroughs, and is available for a very reasonable price. It is of course only a piece of a larger series.

Although the episode is stand-alone in the sense that Winter and Cyrus have finished up in Sule and returned home, it does end on a bit of a cliffhanger in regards to Winter’s future post mediation. The episode also sets up a lot of potential for further exploration of characters, the academy which Winter attends, and, of course, all the other worlds out there that need mediation. It is very clear that Dysfunctional Systems was meant to be an episodic series, and that the first episode is just a taste of what the series has to offer. So overall, despite the fact that the story of Brighton has been wrapped up, the first episode will most certainly leave you wanting more.

You can always pop open your codex for more information.

The game has some other nice features that add to the experience including a codex which allows the player to stop and read up on things relevant to the world. And, as mentioned before, the game has some great artwork and a fantastic soundtrack composed by CombatPlayer, who I was awed to learn is completely self-taught. The game ultimately has a very cohesive feeling running through everything from the writing to the artwork to the soundtrack. All this creates a first episode that sets up the makings of a great series. But where are the other episodes you may ask? If you’re anything like me the first episode left you wanting so much more. Since Dischan sold the first episode for a mere $4.99, they were unable to fund the rest of the series. As such, they’ve turned to Kickstarter to fund episodes two and three and give us a conclusion to Winter’s story. If you’re looking for more on this, checkout our Crowdfunding Spotlight on the series.

Overall I think that Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos is a great first step to creating an awesome series. Despite the short length, I would highly recommend this game to anyone who likes visual novels or games with a compelling story, as well as those who can appreciate Dischan’s unique vision.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by publisher.

The post REVIEW: Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos appeared first on oprainfall.

Title	The Walking Dead Season 2: Episode 1 – All That Remains
Developer	Telltale Games
Publisher	Telltale Games
Release Date	December 17, 2013
Genre	Adventure
Platform	PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Vita, iOS, Ouya
Age Rating	ESRB – Mature – Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Stronger Feels
	Official Website

I’m pretty much a newcomer to the Walking Dead universe. I’ve never read the comics, nor have I seen the TV show. I’m actually not a big fan of zombie stories in general, but I am a big fan of Telltale Games. However, my chief experiences with the developer up to this point had been comedic and adventurous titles like Sam and Max, Back to the Future and the Poker Night games – lighthearted games that offer laughs and fun while you’re playing, and don’t call for very deep retrospection once they’re over. Needless to say, I was… unprepared for the violence, heartache and sheer brutality of the first season of The Walking Dead. As horrible as the subject matter was, however, I also found that I could not stay away. The story was incredibly engaging, and I grew to care about everyone in my motley crew of survivors, even if some of them could be pretty insufferable. Of course, there was one bright light who reminded you that there was still some good in humanity, one ray of hope for whom you’d do anything. The person I’m talking about, obviously, is Kenny and his boat. Ha!

… OK, yes, it’s Clementine.

A face only everyone could love.

Clementine easily joins the short list of child characters whose well-being, in my eyes, becomes just as important as the overarching plot; kids like Nanako from Persona 4 and Sunny from Metal Gear Solid 4. It didn’t take long for me to realize that every time I was given control of Lee during Season 1, the first thing I needed to do was find out where Clementine was, and make sure she was OK. As things progressively spiraled out of control during the course of the season, I resolved, if nothing else, to do all I could to at least keep Clementine safe, while messing her up as little as possible. I guess I even failed in that respect, as what better way is there to horribly scar a child than to have her shoot her surrogate father before he becomes a zombie, forcing her to strike out on her own? Telltale Games had a genius idea for the second season, though. How better to make sure that Clem is safe than to take direct control of her?

Well… what idea is perfect?

Season 2 opens with Clementine traveling with her two remaining companions, Christa and Omid. It’s obvious that a significant amount of time has gone by, as Christa has progressed pretty far in her pregnancy. Omid is his usual upbeat self, and it’s nice to talk with them a bit, but, as we all know, Rule #1 of The Walking Dead is to not get too attached to anyone. After the game’s tense and emotional intro scene, another time skip occurs. Now 11 years old, Clementine may not be quite as cute as she used to be, but I found myself no less concerned about her circumstances. Clem soon finds herself on her own, and is quickly forced to look for food and shelter before she succumbs to the elements. After a heartbreaking encounter with a dog, Clementine is taken in by a group of survivors who are just as wary of strangers as you might expect, even if they are pre-teen girl.

Come on, guys. Be cool.

Pete, the leader of the group, might initially seem like a scary guy, but he turns out to be pretty friendly. Luke is apprehensive about taking Clem in at first, though with good reason. Pete’s nephew, Nick, is immediately distrustful of Clem, which will likely cause friction later on. Alvin seems nice, but his pregnant wife, Rebecca, is extremely hostile to Clementine. She’s also harboring a secret that could threaten to tear the group apart if it were to get out. One character who I feel will probably be quite significant over the course of the season is Sarah. Though she is a few years older than Clementine, Sarah seems to have been largely sheltered from the true nature of the group’s situation by her father, Carlos – if such a thing is even possible some two years after Z-Day. I feel like this could end up being a theme during the season – choosing to continue to shield Sarah from the harshness of the post-apocalyptic world, or waking her up to its realities. Overall, it seems like a good group, but I don’t expect it to stay good for long. Again, I refer you to Rule #1.

You helped me in my moment of need. I will remember this.

The Walking Dead’s core mechanics have changed little between seasons. Gameplay is still separated into three main categories: exploration, conversation and quick-time events. Exploration is the most familiar mechanic of the adventure genre – investigating different areas to find objects and other clues to move the story along. It’s pretty standard fare – most of what you find can be viewed, picked up and/or interacted with in some way to find out bit more about the current situation. You might get tripped up a little bit from time to time, but there’s nothing exceptionally difficult about the game’s puzzles. You should easily be able to advance just by examining everything a given area. Classic adventure game fans may be turned off by how easy it is, but the puzzle mechanics definitely take a backseat to the story.

Not sure how I feel about a mean Clementine…

The conversation mechanic that started in Season 1 makes its return, and will likely have the biggest impact on the story this time around, as well. When speaking with characters, you are given two to four options throughout each conversation on how to respond. Depending on what you say, characters may react positively or negatively, and the things you say could come back to bite you later on in ways that are not immediately apparent. Clementine may have been a sweet little kid in the Season 1, but, if it strikes your fancy, you are able to make characters see her as more threatening. Though, honestly, this is not something I was able to bring myself to do. Like the first season, your dialogue choices are sure have a lasting impact on different facets of the story and ending, so I’m not sure how much I want the new characters hating the girl that we spent a whole season falling in love with.

It’s cool, I’ve played Trauma Center. I got this.

Clementine may still be a kid, but she’s no slouch in a fight. While she may lack the brute strength that Lee had in Season 1, she makes up for it in being pretty resourceful, and this is reflected in the game’s quick-time events. Generally unable to kill Walkers outright, Clem’s actions are more about avoiding them, with most of her QTEs involving weaving between Walkers before they can grab her. When forced into a fight, however, Clem will use any means available to survive, relying on her environment to help her out. With less emphasis on actually killing zombies, the QTEs certainly do bring a different dynamic than what Season 1 had. From Clem’s perspective, even on an individual basis, Walkers are viewed as much more of a danger than Lee would have seen. Don’t worry about the prompts too much, though – if you do happen to die, you’ll be dropped off near where you left off. When Clementine finally does get a Walker into a position to finish it off, it usually takes several hits before it’s completely down. I thought these scenes were particularly tragic – it felt as though, with every strike of the hammer, a little more of Clementine’s innocence was lost. Such is the world of The Walking Dead, I suppose.

Season 2 continues the cel-shaded comic book art style seen in both Season 1 and the recently released The Wolf Among Us. This really helps characters and objects stand out against the environment. Human characters are colorful and lively, while Walkers are a suitably sickly shade of gray. The voice acting, once again, is top notch. Clementine, played once again by Melissa Hutchison, really shines in this respect, which is great, considering you’re going to be hearing a lot of her. There was a particularly ghastly scene near the end of the episode where, as horrified as I was, I could not get over how amazing a job Hutchison did. I’ll leave it here for your viewing pleasure(?), if you don’t mind being spoiled. I’ve never really felt the music in these games was that important. Sometimes the absence of music is just as effective as a soft track for a quiet moment. During combat QTEs, the music is suitably punchy and exciting, but it’s pretty standard fare for the subject matter.

Smile for as long as you can, Clem…

With a new season comes a slew of new faces, new dangers and, I’m sure, new tough decisions. Of course, the pitfall of the episodic format is that we’re forced to wait for subsequent entries, which is made all the worse when these can be completed in a couple of hours, and then they end on cliffhangers. Now is a great time to get into the second season, though, as you can get all five episodes – the first one now, and those following as they’re released – for $25. This was a strong start to the season, though I assume things are only going to get worse (for the characters, not the quality) as the story continues. I sorely hope Clem finds a safe place to call home in the end, but something tells me things are going to get worse before they get better.

Review Score
Overall

Note: Throughout the season, each episode will receive its own score. After the final episode, we will average the scores to find the final grade for the season as a whole.

Game was purchased by the reviewer.

Both seasons of The Walking Dead are also available on Amazon:

The post REVIEW: The Walking Dead Season 2: Episode 1 – All That Remains appeared first on oprainfall.

Galaxy Run is the latest game from Spiel Studios, who have previously brought us Propel Man and Slumber Sam. It’s a platformer that sees astronaut Rez navigating various obstacles across three different areas in his attempt to get home.

Galaxy Run is a fairly straight-forward game to play. When you begin a level, tap the touch screen to get Rez running, and tap it again to make him jump over gaps or obstacles. There are quite a few of these; from your standard spikes, to robots that roam back and forth across sections of the course. Obstacles can be made easier to avoid by using power-ups, of which there are three different types. The first slows Rez’s running speed down for a short time, making it easier to execute precise jumps. The second turns him invisible, so any obstacles he runs into won’t harm him. The third skips the level entirely, so you can move on and come back to it later. You are supplied with three of each of these power-ups when you first download the game, and are able to purchase more using real money if you wish.

There are eighteen stages in Galaxy Run, each containing 20 levels, for a total of 360 levels. The first 15 levels must be cleared in order to unlock the next stage. The final five levels are “extreme” levels; these do not need to be cleared in order to reach the next stage, but exist as a challenge for those after something a little harder. And some of them are really punishing. If you’re wondering about playtime, it took me around 6 hours to complete every level, and I’m generally bad at platformers. Each day, nine new “bonus” levels become available to play for free. So if you’ve already completed the entire game, you still have some fresh experiences to look forward to.

The developers did a great job of spicing up the gameplay, as every stage introduces a new aspect to keep things fresh. Some of my favourites were the warp panels and the items that shifted gravity; they really helped to add a puzzle element to the game which I had a lot of fun with. The second one, especially, which made Rez run across the top of the level instead of the bottom, really had me confused sometimes, which was great. Each level keeps track of your record time and assigns you a score based on your performance, with zero being the worst and three being the best. There’s also a percentage tracker in the top-right corner of the stage select screen which fills up as you clear levels and get higher scores, which will extend your personal playtime and increase the game’s replayability should you decide to attempt to get them all. Galaxy Run also adds a few things for convenience that I liked. Rez never starts running until you tap the screen, and this applies to when he lands on moving platforms as well; he’ll stop and wait for another tap before resuming his run. It also marks where you made your last jump, so you can plan your next leap.

The art style and the music in Galaxy Run do the job, but aren’t really anything special; in fact, the music got quite repetitive after a while, especially in the extreme levels where I died often.

I did encounter a minor bug in that, when trying to use the cannon (pictured below), the orange bar that’s supposed to show up inside it to indicate how far Rez will be fired wouldn’t show up. So my getting through stage 16 was entirely guesswork. I did contact Spiel Studios about this, who have stated that they hadn’t heard of such a thing happening before, but promised they would look into it and include a fix in the next update. I wasn’t able to find any mention of this bug online at all, so I do believe this is just an isolated incident.

Galaxy Run is a fun game with some interesting mechanics. However, it is quite short, and there is little here for anyone who isn’t into platforming games. For those who are, it’s a good game for its low price of $0.99, and I would recommend you look into it and try it out.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy supplied by publisher.

The post REVIEW: Galaxy Run appeared first on oprainfall.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is one of the most beloved games from the 16-bit era. It’s been ported to almost every platform imaginable, and it’s featured in many a compilation (including one for the Nintendo DS, which offers portability). But as I mentioned before, the updated Sonic the Hedgehog 2 released on the App Store (and available for the first time on Google Play) is unlike any you’ve played before.

I’ve spoken at length about Christian Whitehead—this is the guy responsible for the Remastered Sonic CD available on current-gen platforms and mobile devices, as well as the recent mobile update for the original Sonic the Hedgehog. He puts care and attention into his work, and he’s developed a huge following within the community as a result. I’ve played both of his Sonic ports, and I have to say I’m impressed with what he’s accomplished, as well. When people heard that Whitehead was creating a remastered Sonic the Hedgehog 2, there was excitement…as well as speculation regarding if a certain level would make it into the game. There’ll be more on that momentarily.

What new life has Whitehead breathed into this version of Sonic 2? I dug Whitehead’s design choices before I even started playing the game. If you’ve not yet seen his Remastered Sonic the Hedgehog, then you don’t know about all the flair he’s added before the game begins. In the mobile versions of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, you can tweak various settings before starting the game itself—everything from whether or not the box art displayed is the Japanese or International version(s), the size and opacity of the in-game controller, music and sound effect volume, and many more (admittedly small, but it shows some attention’s been put into this port) features not available in the original 16-bit release(s). You can choose to play the game(s) with Save Data or in a No-Save file.

(Special Note: No-Save files feature various cheat codes like a level select, a debug mode featuring enemies and items that were in alpha/beta releases of the game—extremely nice touches for longtime fans looking to mess around in the game(s), and more.)

And last, but not least—there are achievements, for friend-bragging or a way to challenge yourself. Sonic 1 featured characters to unlock (Tails, Knuckles and Sonic & Tails), but Sonic 2 has these characters available right from the start. You can select which character you’d like to play as before the game begins (yes, Knuckles can climb and Tails can fly like in Sonic 3). Also, in Sonic 2, but not Sonic 1: a two-player Versus Mode, which, unfortunately, I have been unable to try so far, and a Boss Attack mode.

The game itself controls how it should. Any struggle you have making your way through the game’s levels will be due to touch-screen controls themselves, not because this port’s controls are poorly implemented. Those of you accustomed to mobile gaming will get used to them pretty quickly, while it may leave other folks (like me) just begging for an actual controller. As can be assumed by the fact that I’m talking about a busy, immersive platformer on a mobile device—size matters. There is much less of a struggle playing the game on an iPad versus an iPod Touch, or a larger Android device versus a tinier one. Still, the control-pad can be adjusted in the Settings menu (as I’ve already noted), so finding a comfort-zone is not impossible. The only real struggle for me was with the game’s Special Stages. They’re very pretty, but I’m never going to be able to beat the game (without cheats) as Super Sonic. I feel like the controls could stand a little more tuning up to make Sonic, Tails and Knuckles more readily able to dodge obstacles while rushing to grab rings.

The remastered soundtrack brings out the best in the 16-bit audio. The graphics will attract everyone in love with how much Sonic CD’s new version was an improvement over the original. And the story features a bit more than the original release—Whitehead took a few liberties at the very end to connect Sonic 2 to Sonic 3. I dig it. You can beat the game by lunch time if you’re a seasoned Sonic veteran, or it could take a few hours of sitting down if this is your first time with the game. Still, there’s one last thing to say before I offer my final thoughts on this review.

Hidden Palace Zone is amazing. For those of you familiar with the history of Hidden Palace: Whitehead’s take on the level does not involve anything special regarding Super Sonic or the seven chaos emeralds. It’s actually hidden in the game—you can’t even access it via the Level Select cheat until you find it yourself. I’ll not spoil anything in this review, but you do get an achievement for finding and completing it. It does not feature this infamous music, and, despite Whitehead offering a good point as to why it’s not included, the Sonic purist in me kind of considers that a misstep. In a port where there’s so much attention to detail and options, why not offer certain players the option to pick between the track he does use and the “real” Hidden Palace music?

Still, at its core, this was a chance for Whitehead to go beyond the history associated with Hidden Palace Zone, and make his own level that will impress those who aren’t familiar with the betas and crazy stuff out there. Badnicks scrapped from the original Sonic the Hedgehog 2 are included, but so are brand new badnicks I’ve never seen before, and a brand new boss that was specifically created for this new Hidden Palace Zone.Personally, I think it’s worth the $2.99 asking price just to find and play through Hidden Palace. I’ve played through the level a few times now—I always manage to find a new path with cool things to explore each time I do.

When you think about it, deciding whether or not to purchase Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Mobile is like debating between buying this full game or a decent-sized bag of candy from your local grocery store. Experiencing Hidden Palace Zone was like candy for me, and the various improvements made to the game were good enough for me to recommend it on its own (without my admitted fanfare for the scrapped level). This is an extremely competent port worth trying (for that low price) and mastering (if you have the patience or are already used to touch-screen controls).

But, at the end of the day, I just think damn, I’d pay SEGA $50 to port Whitehead’s remastered mobile Sonic games to consoles. Great games, greater ports, but they’re held back from being absolutely flawless due to constraints set by the devices on which they’re released.

Review Score
Overall

Review code provided by publisher.

The post REVIEW: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mobile) appeared first on oprainfall.

Title: Kingdoms Fall Publisher/Developer: Last Life Games Release Date: August 6, 2013 Genre: Action/Adventure Platforms: iOS Age Rating: 9+ Official Website

Kingdoms Fall had me a little bit skeptical at first. The beautiful dark fantasy art on the app icon and title screen might suggest otherwise, but the trailer for this indie iOS title paints it as the closest thing the platform has to Zelda. It promises action, adventure and puzzles galore, mixed with a story that promises all sorts of intrigue. Pretty lofty and ambitious for an iOS game, I must say, but it lives up to the hype. Like any rare gems, Kingdoms Fall is hard, rough and unpolished, yet pretty and elegant. In other words: this little throwback, despite its flaws, is great for iDevice owners who want something outside of the iOS platform’s casual norms.

In Kingdoms Fall, you start out by choosing the gender of your protagonist, and then the gameplay takes center stage alongside a rather basic story. Your kingdom is under attack by the evil Necromancer King’s armies, and you must kill the generals guarding the rival king’s castle with powerful magic, then dispose of the king in a similar fashion. Along the way, you do the usual puzzle-solving and enemy-slaying, assisted by items such as a shield, bombs, a boomerang, a wand, a magical ring, running shoes and a grappling hook. Sounds about right. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the kingdom’s prince or princess, as you’re going to have to fight and solve puzzles until the bitter end.

I mean, how else are you going to get into that cave?

With Kingdoms Fall, Last Life has definitely stuck to the 16-bit aesthetics in the graphical department. The aforementioned dark fantasy art on the title screen and app icon may suggest otherwise, but these graphics are strictly retro. They’re beautifully done, I might add, but with some shades of RPG Maker thrown in with the character designs and some of the locales. In other words, Kingdoms Fall certainly looks the part, and the environments have their own sense of detail. You venture through deserts, pirate ships, caves, mines, and even a lake of fire. For all intents and purposes, this game simply looks fantastic.

One way that Kingdoms Fall differs from its 16-bit brethren is in its fully orchestrated music. The themes do get somewhat repetitive and are rather short, but they have their fair share of lush instrumentation. I wouldn’t call the music in this game earth-shattering, yet some of the themes have an epic quality to them that perfectly matches the area they’re played in. Unfortunately, the sound effects occasionally leave much to be desired, with plenty of generic sword slashes and shield clinks. But then, they sound a tad more realistic than those featured in an SNES title, so that’s one definition of progress.

Take a look at how well-designed this prison is, for instance.

On the other hand, the gameplay in Kingdoms Fall is, as mentioned before, straight-up retro Zelda by another name. There is much puzzle-solving, enemy-killing and item-grabbing here. While the puzzles start out as typical floor spikes and pressure plates, they get progressively more difficult beyond this. Some of them, including one of the pressure plates in the pirate level, proved to be a little agonizing. Luckily, when you play through the game, the special items are put to excellent use in every segment, and the later dungeons can even require you to use three or four in the same dungeon to survive. The enemies are pretty basic, but there is some good variety here, and most of them will stop at nothing to kill you. Slime blobs charge at you, orcs swing swords, giant frogs spew bile, tiny rats come at you, and, of course, the bosses are absolutely menacing. And one thing that all of these enemies have in common: you can block a good majority of their attacks with your shield. A lot of the enemies in this game fire cheap shots, especially the bosses, so this is a pretty good mechanic. Keep that one thing in mind when you’re fighting an enemy, and you should definitely be fine.

Kingdoms Fall does offer some breaks in between the hardcore puzzle-solving. You can talk to NPCs, who drop quite a few hints and speak some generic but well-meaning dialogue that fits well with the game’s tone. There’s an in-game store which sells things such as potions, bombs, and a coveted bow and arrow. That item is overpriced, yes, but boy, is it useful. And, on the subject of attaining rup – I mean gems to buy stuff, it’s actually fairly easy to do so by such means as killing enemies or opening up treasure chests. You can even attain the grappling hook by way of a referral code that you give to a friend.

(…But that bow and arrow set is still overpriced at 1000 gems.)

The controls and difficulty curve are the only major gripes I have with Kingdoms Fall, but they hampered my full enjoyment of it, and will certainly limit its audience. Even with the control update applied as of this writing, the touch joystick can still be a bit wonky at times, and the four buttons for the items you equip could be bigger. In Kingdoms Fall, Last Life Games implements a new riff on the typical D-pad control scheme, where you can control your character by simply dragging your finger in the right direction. This is quite intuitive, but it presents two problems of note: one, your character moves extremely slowly; and two, the movement involved in things such as avoiding attacks, talking to NPCs or walking across bridges is precise to a fault, and the controls simply aren’t built for that kind of precision.

As for the difficulty, it’s extremely high and thrown at you right from the start. Of course, common sense comes in – use the items that you need, especially your shield – but it’s no help when the buttons for them sometimes can’t register your presses and your attacks have to be absolutely exact. And it doesn’t stop there: not only do you start over back at the beginning of each stage, regardless of whether or not you’re near a boss fight, but the game’s Game Over screen dissolves in at an extremely slow rate. I can definitely take starting back from the beginning, seeing as how you earn your way to the powerful bosses, but the Game Over screen’s slow dissolve is something that made me quite angry after several deaths. To be fair, however, a lot of old NES and SNES titles, including old Zeldas, have had similar difficulty flaws. And Kingdoms Fall, like those games, pressures you to aim high, suck it up and relish the difficulty. Good enough for me.

Venturing through caves will always be difficult, though.

While it has its fair share of problems, Kingdoms Fall is pretty much the only iOS game of its kind. In terms of scope, exploration, design and obvious nods to the retro gaming aesthetic, you can’t find anything quite like this on the App Store. For $1.99, there is plenty of fun to be had here—it took me about five hours to complete the game in its entirety, which is extremely good for an iOS game, and the numerous items and Game Center trophy support can add to the replay value for people who give this game time. If you’re a Zelda fan who owns an iDevice and is looking for a hardcore retro experience, this is perfect for you. With that said, Last Life Games has made quite a fine iOS debut in Kingdoms Fall, and I can’t wait to see what this indie developer can come up with next.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy supplied by publisher. This review was written based on the game as played on an iPhone 5 running iOS 6.1.4.

The post REVIEW: Kingdoms Fall appeared first on oprainfall.

Freedom Fall is a twisted fairy tail coming from the brilliant mind of Lisa Rye. The game follows Marsh, who has been taken prisoner and trapped within the top of a tower for reasons unknown to the player. He must fall through the tower to his freedom, avoiding spike traps, fire, lightning, and all sorts of other obstacles.

Freedom Fall’s narrative is told in an unusual way; rather than have the main characters of the story (Marsh and the princess) interact directly, the princess pens messages, instructions, and death threats on the wall as he descends the tower. Through them, you learn more about the princess and the tower, and eventually find out why Marsh has been imprisoned. This all culminates in the second to last level, in which the princess’ scrawls demand Marsh proclaim either his innocence or his guilt. This single choice will determine the writing on the wall that you see next, and the will give you one of two endings based on the path you take.

These messages written by the princess are absolutely hilarious, and I could not stop laughing at them as I fell through each level; they are easily the part that stood out the most for me. They start out as pieces of dialogue taunting Marsh as he falls through the tower, and eventually allow you to learn more about this princess holding him prisoner, all the while keeping you in stitches. Probably my favourite is a point in one of the mid-levels when the princess starts telling you about a prince she had imprisoned in her tower, who was trying to win her hand in marriage. Shortly after, you come across this piece of writing:

The developer, Lisa Rye, is primarily an artist. She wanted to experiment with a form of storytelling that did not rely on heavy amounts of text, but rather on visual cues. Through them, the story is relayed in bits and pieces as you play, and her wicked sense of humour makes it work.

You progress in Freedom Fall by navigating through each level to reach the bottom of that room in the tower. You spend a lot of time falling, but you also jump around and swim to reach the bottom of the tower. In the PC version of the game, you move Marsh using the arrow keys and jump with the space bar. You can also cycle through your equipment with C and lob bombs with V. Bombs can be used to harm the two bosses you encounter, as well as to blow up objects blocking your path.

There are 12 levels in Freedom Fall, each of which took me around 5 – 10 minutes to complete.  While the game is a short one, it’s a blast to play through, and that dialogue WILL have you rolling around in your chair laughing. Each level forces you to choose between two paths multiple times a level. There are also three special gears to collect in each of the 12 levels, some of which require a particular item to obtain. Every time you fall through a level your time is recorded and your number of deaths noted to come up with an overall level score, which you can try to best every time you play. All of these factors combine to make me want to play through each level multiple times in order to get the best possible score and to gather all of the gears hidden throughout the game. There are no enemies to beat up as you go; save for a couple of boss fights, only the many obstacles set up by the princess hamper your progress.

Three new pieces of equipment can be “invented” by Marsh using the gears scattered throughout the levels. Inventing works just like an item shop; Marsh gives up his gears to create each of his three inventions, effectively making gears the game’s currency. These three items use up differing amounts of gears in their creation, and make it easier to stay alive and explore the tower. You’ll need at least one of these to help you out in the later levels, as the game does become more difficult. All of your equipment affects the way you fall through each level, and can be utilized in mid-air with the space bar.

Here, you can see Marsh opening up his parachute to catch an updraft.

Both the art style and the soundtrack for Freedom Fall suit the game well. They did a great job setting the overall mood of the game; they sounded good and made for some nice background beats for escaping a princess gone mad. Between the fun animations, the tracks playing all through each level and the princess’ comments on the walls, I couldn’t stop smiling, no matter how many times I died (which was a lot).

Freedom Fall is an enjoyable game which was so fun I could forgive its short length. The characters and their predicament are hilariously told through inventive visuals that kept me giggling throughout the entire game, and the music and art style lend themselves well to the game’s overall mood. I would recommend this to anyone.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy supplied by publisher. This review was written using the PC version of the game.

The post REVIEW: Freedom Fall appeared first on oprainfall.

Title: Chu Chu Rocket Publisher: Sega Developer: Sonic Team Release Date: November 22, 2011 Genre: Puzzle Platforms: Android, iOS Age Rating: E Official Website

Chu Chu Rocket! is a game that practically every gamer owes something to, whether they believe they do or not. The original release for the Sega Dreamcast was the first “mainstream” game to ever incorporate online play on a console, way back in 2000. It was an extremely unique experiment by Sonic Team, allowing them to experiment with online console gaming before their flagship title, Phantasy Star Online, pushed the limits of what was capable on consoles at the time. Sega would later port Chu Chu Rocket! to the Gameboy Advance, as well as both major mobile platforms. This game was actually one of their first games for each platform.

The Title Screen

Of course, the purpose of this review is not to be a history lesson, but rather an assessment of how good the game is. Chu Chu Rocket is, stripped to its most basic elements, a fairly simple puzzle game. There are sets of space mice, called “Chu Chus” that have to return to their rocket. They run around on a grid that the player views from an eagle eye view, running in a straight line until they hit a wall, at which point they turn right. There are also space cats called “Kapu Kapus” that instantly eat any mice they touch. The player also has the option of placing arrows by tapping a square and swiping in the direction that the arrow is to face.

The concept itself is extremely simple, easy enough to be taught in the game’s 5 minute tutorial, while also allowing for a shocking amount of depth. You quickly learn that Chu Chus run slightly faster than Kapu Kapus, which is one of the many factors involved in the very simple task of getting the Chu Chus to the rocket. The game has three game modes; Puzzle, Challenge and Battle, each of which plays slightly differently.

The tutorial is a little lengthy for veterans, but it does a very fair job of teaching the basics for newbies.

Puzzle mode is the heart of the experience on mobile. In it, you set all the arrows prior to setting the Chu Chus and Kapu Kapus in motion. And for the most part, it works very well. Most puzzles are tricky at first glance, but there’s a definite skill that builds up as you play. Some of the puzzles are also extremely rewarding, and it does a great job of making you feel great when you finally overcome that puzzle that you’ve been stuck on for hours.

It’s not without its problems though. Some of the puzzles are not only hard, but very difficult to see. Others, particularly the ones that rely on timing, feel like they’re more about trial and error than any real skill. Usually, they have a set number of spots that placing an arrow makes sense and it’s a matter of trying them all until you find the one that works. Even so, there are a ton of puzzles; Sega bundled the original 100 they created, as well as another 400 user created levels from its Dreamcast glory days. Some of these are great, doing things that Sega didn’t see in their original game, while others are overly complicated or too easy. Still, there’s something for everyone. About 10 hours in, I’ve only cleared 96 of the 100 that Sega created, as well as maybe 25 or 30 of the user created ones.

One of the game’s bigger problems in puzzle mode is that it can feel like a game of trial and error. In this picture for example, it’s clear that the arrow has to go somewhere in the middle column of the right; however, finding the correct one is a matter of placing it and seeing what works.

Challenge mode was by far my favorite, although it was a bit short for my liking. This mode tasks you with completing certain challenges in real time, like having a cat eat all the mice on the stage, or getting 100 mice to the rocket. The real time nature makes the game feel frantic, but at no point does it feel unfair. Only once or twice did I feel that the game misread my taps and swipes. Playing on a larger phone or tablet would make the problem nearly go away, and the speed change makes these very, very fun. These are probably worth the price of admission on their own.

Last is the Battle mode, which is a 4 player free for all. It has some of the features of the best multiplayer games, like tons of stages, deep gameplay, and a real feeling that skill is involved. In fact, Chu Chu Rocket! is one of the best puzzle games you can play with friends, since the multiplayer is so easy to teach, and messing with your friend who is in the lead by directing cats to his rocket is invariably fun. At times, it can feel like the last thirty seconds are the only part that matter, since Kapu Kapus do more damage the more mice are in your base, but it also, like Mario Kart, allows for people in last to have miraculous comebacks. There’s just one major problem with the Android version; there is NO way to play your friends. There’s no local multiplayer on a tablet, and no way to link up over bluetooth to play even people in the same room. Even online multiplayer, a hallmark of the original, is completely missing. It’s a baffling, sad mistake, and one that you hate to see.

Multiplayer is a blast, although it’s a shame that no human vs. human is possible in the Android version

That’s the biggest thing missing from the Android release, but it’s not the only one. The Dreamcast version had online multiplayer, a puzzle editor, and the ability to share those levels with people online. It was a very forward thinking game that would set the stage for games like Little Big Planet. The Gameboy Advance version sacrificed the cell shaded graphics of the original for a sprite-based incarnation, but also allowed for complete customization; you could build stages of any type, and you could create your own 16-bit sprites for use in the game. There wasn’t much like playing as a bunch of rupees trying to run from an 8-bit Link.

The Android version is far from hurting for content; indeed, there are two unlockable skins for your Chu Chus for beating all of the Sega-made puzzles and challenges. I managed to unlock the ability to play as Chao from Sonic Adventure, which is a nice touch for Sonic Team fans. The large amount of puzzles will keep anybody entertained for a long time, and there’s also nearly infinite replayability in battle mode, provided you are okay with only playing CPU opponents. Technically, the game runs well, but there are a few too many loading screens on my Nexus 4. The music is harmless stuff, but there’s also the option to turn it off and listen to whatever you want from the phone itself. Graphically, the game ran with no lag on my Nexus 4, Galaxy Nexus and Toshiba Thrive 10.1, even when the screen was filled with Chu Chus from a Mice Mania in battle mode, although, the non-functional settings key is a personal pet peeve of mine.

Loading screens can get a little annoying, particularly if your device isn’t quite high end.

Overall, it’s a really solid package, when you factor in that the price is only $.99. It’s very easy to gripe and moan about how the history of the game is missing, but Chu Chu Rocket! is a game well worth playing. The iOS version has the missing local multiplayer, which is a huge bonus, although, I’m unable to test that out; but even the Android version is great for those looking for a slightly different type of puzzle game. It may not be one of Sonic Team’s best known games, but it is clearly one of their best, and available at such a low price point that it’s nearly impossible to not recommend.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was purchased by the reviewer, and reviewed on a LG Nexus 4, as well as tested on a Galaxy Nexus and Toshiba Thrive 10.1

The post Games of the Past REVIEW: Chu Chu Rocket! appeared first on oprainfall.

Title: Alphadia Publisher: KEMCO (Kotobuki Solution Co., Ltd.) Developer: KEMCO, EXE-CREATE Release Date: October 28, 2011 Genre: Action/RPG Platforms: Android, iOS Platform Reviewed On: Android Official Website

I have to say before diving into this review: I had never seriously considered playing a mobile game like Alphadia before. Why? Honestly, I didn’t know they existed. A fully fleshed out JRPG for my phone? My experience with mobile games went about as far as Angry Birds and Temple Run, just because I had never thought to really look for a more in-depth gaming experience. But when I heard about Kemco and their JRPG lineup, Alphadia caught my eye and I became curious. How would this game match up compared to console RPGs I’d played in the past?

Knowing that Alphadia was a JRPG, I had some expectations of it that I wasn’t sure a mobile game could fill: it needed an overarching story, characters with some personality, a fun battle system and a fleshed out world to travel. So how did Alphadia rate in each category?

Alphadia’s story starts off in the traditional RPG vein that we have all seen before: a young man from a small town finds his family and way of life threatened by a growing danger from the outside world. Our protagonist Ash sets out to find the root of this evil with his two adoptive siblings in tow, along with a mysterious girl and her protector that stumbled into town fleeing the encroaching evil force. The plot is largely political, focusing on the tensions between the country of Schwarzschild and… well, everyone else. Schwarzschild is an empire slowly engulfing the world by exploiting its system of magic called energi. Interestingly enough, energi is treated as a natural, scientific phenomenon throughout the game rather than a mystical one.

The plot makes a lot of twists and turns as it progresses, and many of these developments are interesting and are very personal to the cast, which makes them inherently interesting. The storytelling does suffer from some pacing issues though. Big reveals are sprung on the player suddenly with no buildup. They feel like shock-value plot twists that were thrown in just for the quick hit of drama- which is a shame, because some of these twists could have been really good if they were given enough time to develop more naturally.

The main characters are a fun group as a whole. We have Ash, the hero; Karim, his sensible older brother; Éclair, the perky younger sister; 1417, a girl with a robotic personality;  Weid, a stern protector; and Shion, a gentle and kind girl with a royal air. Each one of their personalities is a little clichéd, but that didn’t really make me like them any less. It was really the fun, well-paced dialogue that kept me invested in these characters throughout the whole game.

The gameplay is exactly what you would expect to see from any classic JRPG on a console. You explore the land on foot initially before gaining a ship and then an airship later on. All encounters on the map and in dungeons are random. The battle system is turn-based and allows you to use four members of your party at a time.

Now, I have nothing against random encounters in a game. I think it can be a successful mechanic; just not the way Alphadia uses it.

From the start of the game, the random encounters are frequent and ridiculously easy. I set a timer in the first dungeon I encountered to see just how many battles I was getting into- I counted 5 battles in one minute of gameplay. This is five battles consisting of 3+ enemies, each one clocking in at about 12 seconds long. To be blunt- the battles are boring and over way too quickly.

This mechanic makes some sense when you consider that Alphadia was made and designed for devices that usually get very little continuous use for games. When we have our phones out for gaming, it’s usually in stolen bursts throughout the day- riding the bus or sitting in a waiting room. The quickfire random encounters would definitely make these 10-20 minute gaming sessions seem full and exciting. After all, if the battle rate stays constant that’s 50-100 battles in one sitting. But if you plan to sit down and play for extended periods, the fights quickly become tiring and exploring starts to feel like a chore, particularly when enemies don’t put up much of a fight. There’s just not enough of a challenge.

Thankfully, there’s an Auto button on the battle screen that will automatically fight your fights for you. Enemies do get more challenging later in the game as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t find myself using anything but the Auto button until the last quarter of the game. Even then, I never once had to worry about losing a battle or paying for healing items. I don’t think I saw the game over screen even once.

Other than the constant stream of random battles, exploring the game wasn’t a bad experience. It took me a while to get used to the onscreen D-pad you use to get around (I’m used to touch screen games letting you point-and-drag), but once I had adapted to it there were no problems. There are also a lot of side quests that players can pick up as they play that will have them traveling all over the map and back and will add a little more of a challenge for dedicated players.

Another aspect of battle worth noting is that each character is set with a particular element of energi; fire, water, and so on. Characters level up and gain new skills automatically as you finish battles. If you want to use more than one element per party member during a fight, players have the option of using rings that can be set to a certain type of energi and equipped to different characters. So if you want some dark energi on hand just in case you meet a nasty enemy with a weakness to it, you can equip a ring infused with dark energi to a party member that uses wind energi to give them a leg up.

Where Alphadia really shines in its aesthetics. If you loved old-school RPGs in all their pixelated glory, you’ll love the look and feel of Alphadia. The aesthetic might be based on games of old, but the graphics are still polished and work well on a mobile screen. All of the main characters are also given a beautifully drawn anime-style headshot that features when they speak. I would have liked to see more detail go into each town and into the dungeons, but on the whole I was really impressed with how good this game looked. The music surprised me too. It wasn’t particularly unique, but every song is very appropriate for its intended use and sets the mood very well.

Now the end of Alphadia is the most unique thing about it. I won’t spoil anything, but the final plot twist was one of the most successful of them all for me (even though it definitely takes a much different tone from the rest of the game). I can see how it might lead into the game’s sequel, Alphadia 2. Far as replay value goes, there are some incentives for players who want to relive the adventure. The game gives players the options of doubling their gold won in battle and the ability to turn the random encounter off completely- a godsend for anyone who wanted to explore more their first play through and were deterred by the large amount of random encounters.

The Verdict

As a mobile title, I was pleasantly surprised by how much substance it has. It definitely blew my expectations of an Android game out of the water. As a JRPG, I’d say the game was average. The characters fall short of being really memorable and some of the gameplay issues kept me from really enjoying the game to its fullest. Despite that, I would readily suggest this game to fans of old-school JRPGs, as it has all of the elements that would really appeal to hardcore fans of the genre.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy supplied by author.

You can purchase Alphadia for Android or iOS.

The post Games of the Past REVIEW: Alphadia appeared first on oprainfall.

Today on Games of the Past, we’re not going terribly far back—only to the second half of 2011, in fact—but we are visiting a formula that’s almost as old as gaming itself: the action RPG. The game? Destinia, a free title for iPhone and Android.

Sephiroth? Is that you?!

The story begins when Duke, the hero, refuses to kill some of his enemies, thus making himself a traitor to the Empire. Actually, it begins right after that, when his boss and teacher Kaiser cuts him down and sends him to prison for this treason.

Fast-forward to the princess of the victim nation and her cohorts, coming to the prison to break out their buddy, and finding Duke in the process. After a bit of necessary cooperation, Duke becomes more or less friends with this group, and spends the rest of the game warming up to the idea of joining their cause.

The plot isn’t terribly original or complex by modern standards, but it does pack an impressive amount of characters, events and little subplots into what is really a rather short RPG with relatively few cutscenes. You can expand on some of the more unclear bits by talking to NPC’s, although there are still some parts of the story that pretty much make no sense. (At one point, you are tasked with curing a poison by finding a bigger poison—and it actually works!)

Get your save files ABSOLUTELY FREE! Limit one per class.

When you boot up Destinia, you’ll be asked to choose your class: Warrior, Gunner or Thief. Unlike just about any other RPG you can think of, these options double as your save files—you can have one character of each class at any given time.

Soon you’ll be running around dungeons, forcing your way through hordes of enemies, in a classic hack-and-slash (or shoot-em-up, if you chose Gunner) style. In crafting your personal method of clearing a room, you’ll combine basic attacks with movement and a growing collection of skills. These skills can be dash attacks, area strikes, stun attacks, or just plain damage dealers, along with many other effects. There’s even a whole range of Aura and Shout skills to buff you and debuff your enemies.

Which brings me to the stats and customization. As you level up, you gain new skills, and in addition to your base stats increasing, you also get stat points to add onto them. Every two levels you’ll gain specialty points, which can be used on two basic trees for skill upgrades or further stat boosts. The list of little options to improve your character goes on—for quite a while, in fact.

Get used to this. You’ll see it a lot.

Of course, your stats are also affected by your equipment, which has an impressive amount of choice to it as well. Not only that, but each piece of equipment appears as a unique sprite attached to your character. It’s a very neat touch for such a small game, although they don’t always quite match what they’re supposed to be—the Scale Hood looks like a bear’s mouth hat, for instance.

The game mostly plays out through basic quests and combat, and herein lies one of the problems I have with this game: all of these quests involve either killing a certain number of enemies or collecting their drops. The areas have no chests or other points of interest—just enemies and NPC’s. After a while, doing nothing but killing repeatedly gets a bit tedious, especially later in the game when it turns into full-fledged grinding. The game presents most of these quests as optional, but you’ll basically have to do all of them in order to be on level for the boss fights.

These are the highlight of the game, in my personal opinion. Depending on your class, you’ll have to come up with specific strategies to dodge all of the bosses’ attacks while constantly working away at their health bars. Several of them teleport or fire extremely damaging projectiles, and late in the game you’ll find several places where you must fight two bosses in a row, adding even more to make these moments the height of the gameplay.

You won’t be blown away by the looks of Destinia, but you won’t be disappointed, either. It’s just an anime-style 2D sprite game with backdrops that, while pretty, are nothing all that special. The visuals do seem pretty sharp, although the in-conversation portraits of characters can be a little bit pixelated. And, as I mentioned above, your equipment showing up on your character is pretty cool.

I tend to play this game with the sound off. Why? Well, the effects are decent—just about what you’d expect—but the music is just, well, repetitive. To my knowledge, there is one overworld theme, one town theme, one dungeon theme, and maybe a few other tunes for cutscenes. Unfortunately, the developers didn’t see fit to put in any variety. In fact, even when you get into boss battles—the most exciting moments in the game—you will continue to hear the same plodding dungeon music that you’ve been listening to for the last several minutes while exploring. Talk about a mood kill.

When you finish the game, you are sent to “Hard Mode,” which is essentially a New Game Plus where all the enemies are 50 levels higher than before. Still, it’s worth trying the game out with different classes to get to know their skill sets, which diverge more and more as the game goes on.

The “Multi Mode” allows you to go online and interact with other players. In the arena, you’re matched up with other players of the same level, and you battle them for Honor Points, which can be spent on special items. You can also go to the Auction House to buy and sell items from other players for in-game gold.

Speaking of money, there is also a paid item shop, much like a lot of free games these days. I’ve never been there, but I do know that paying cash is the only way to get more Resurrection Scrolls, which revive you when you die. (Otherwise, you can just go back to your last save, so only starting with three is not a very big deal.)

In the end, Destinia is pretty much what you expect from a free mobile game, especially one with a relatively small download file for an RPG. If you enjoy extensive character building in the vein of typical MMORPG’s, you can at least count on that being a wonderful aspect of this game. Everything else, though, is just… mediocre.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy supplied by author. This review is based on the Android version of the game.

The post Games of the Past REVIEW: Destinia appeared first on oprainfall.

Title: Strike Suit Zero Publisher: Born Ready Games Developer: Born Ready Games Release Date: January 23, 2012 Genre: Action, Space Sim Platforms: PC Age Rating: None Official Website

Surrounded by a half dozen enemy fighters, my shields down, and missiles incoming. In any normal ship I would have been done for, but this was the Strike Suit. I transformed my ship, danced away from the enemy missiles, and destroyed the circling ships in seconds, ending my comeback with my own barrage of missiles shredding the enemy corvette leading their forces. This battle was one of dozens that highlight Strike Suit Zero as a new entry in the now all but extinct space sim genre. Taking inspiration from classics including Wing Commander, Starlancer, X-Wing, and Descent: Freespace, indie studio Born Ready Games successfully makes its own mark.

Visually, Strike Suit Zero is beautiful. Ships are a marriage of eastern and western design, and the influence of Junji Okubo (Infinite Space, Appleseed: Ex Machina) is obvious. Capitol ships look cold and hostile, bristling with weaponry, while fighters and bombers are sleek and graceful. Beam cannons and swarm missiles seem inspired by Macross, and the Strike Suit’s deceptively nimble humanoid form makes you feel like you are piloting one of that series’ Veritech Fighters. Nebulas, stars, and planets you fight around add a beautiful backdrop, and the minimalist interface gives just the information you need without getting in the way of the scenery.

The audio design is excellent, as well. Nearby beam cannon fire is every bit as terrifying as it should be, and each missile and gun have unique sounds that hint at exactly what you have incoming. The musical score is engaging, with changes in tone helping to increase tension or confidence when appropriate, though the main theme is possibly a bit overused throughout the game. And the voice acting is serviceable, perhaps even good, but unfortunately paired with writing that is perhaps not terrific. Cliched lines abound, and while the story does a serviceable job of moving the game along, it is definitely Strike Suit Zero’s weakest part.

But that is made up for in spades by the fluid, responsive, and just fun gameplay. Ships behave as they do in space sims of yore – the fighter and interceptor are fast and nimble, while the bomber is a bit more slow and lumbering. The Strike Suit’s fighter form handles as you would expect, but transform into its mecha mode and your movement also shifts to a high speed strafing, dashing, and dodging ballet, all while locking missiles onto multiple targets and mowing down enemy fighters daring to get close. There is a definite power trip the first time you go from hilariously outmatched to surrounded by enemy wreckage in seconds. Everything controls well with a mouse and keyboard, but I highly recommend a gamepad (XBox 360 controller support is baked in) or flightstick if you have one available.

And the controls need to be responsive because Strike Suit Zero is hard as nails. Seeking out torpedoes that are en route to a cruiser you are protecting seems easy enough until you are being harassed by half a dozen enemy interceptors, and this is one of many situations that happen frequently enough that you are constantly challenged to stay on top of your game. Part of me would have almost preferred selectable difficulties, but I really liked the sense of accomplishment that came with finally pulling through a difficult mission segment.

I highly recommend Strike Suit Zero to anyone who is a fan of action games, eastern style mecha, and especially those who miss the glory days of space sims. This is a love letter to fans of the genre – prepare for a significant challenge and strap in for a glorious dogfight.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy supplied by author.

The post REVIEW: Strike Suit Zero appeared first on oprainfall.