Game Review by Richard Winterton
Game Rating = 2/5
Game Review Summary
Buy this game if
-You want a simple yet satisfying 2D action game.
-You are looking for a game with a lush but charming visual style
-You love classic fantasy with a warm and light hearted touch.
Do not buy this game if
-You want a deep and engrossing story and characters.
-You want deeply developed gameplay.
-You want a little more RPG with your medieval fantasy.
Full Game Review
Do you like Gnomes? Do you like Goblins? Do you like Gnomes beating the ever-loving Snot out of Goblins? Then you will love Emberwinds. Emberwinds is a 2D-action platform game from indie developer TimeTrap. While the game sports an interesting visual style and entertaining gameplay, it seems somewhat unpolished. (more…)
Anka happily lives in a forest with his parents. One day his parents leave the house and do not return. His life changes forever. Anka has the challenge of finding out what has happened to them, where they have disappeared to and why.
Wildhollow Game Review by Josh Komon
Game Rating = 3/5 Balls
WildHollow, by Karjasoft is a new take on empire building. The story is a mix of bizarre and contrived, but the dialogue indicates that the game’s creators are fully aware of this. The game is littered with tongue in cheek humor. The idea is that the hero returns to his or her home town to find that the family farm has been destroyed, and that mom and dad are no where to be found. This hero needs to simultaneously rebuild the farm to its former glory, and find and possibly rescue the parents.
GAMEPLAY
For the most part, Wild Hollow is a point and click game. There is a world map, with plenty of locations, and plenty more which can be unlocked. Within each of these locations, there is a still frame of the town, farm, orchard, or whatever the location is. At these locations, there are people and buildings to click on, each of which starts up a conversation. The player is given plenty of options for what to say or ask the people of the towns. Through these conversations, the hero is given quests to undertake, each of which is rewarded with money or items. There are a few other things that can be done at each of these locations. Items are sometimes hidden in the scenery. Some of these are quest items. Others are statues which the hero keeps as part of the collection. Lastly, there are a few mini-games which can be played at some of these locations. These are incredibly simple, and a bit stupid, but at least they are a change of pace from the monotony of point and click.
All of these actions ultimately lead to the acquisition of money. This money can be used to buy things, but most importantly, to help rebuild the family farm. Once the first repairs have been made, the hero can start to keep animals, feed them, raise them, and sell them.
GRAPHICS
While most graphics in Wild Hollow are still images, they do have a polished look. The design for the characters are very creative, albeit a tad on the intentionally cheesy side.
AUDIO
The music changes by location, and while the sound designers tried to put a bit of a modern twist on it, the game still sounds like every other medieval game.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
Wild Hollow tried a few new things, and to some degree they worked. But all in all, this was a pretty unoriginal game.
THREE REASONS TO BUY
-The game is loaded with humor.
-The character designs are quite colorful.
-There are plenty of things to do.
THREE REASONS NOT TO BUY
-$19.99 is a bit much for a point and click game.
-The game is mostly devoid of action.
-The game play can be monotonous.
OVERALL
Wild Hollow is an average gaming experience, but just is not worth the time and money. It receives a 3/5.
Mean Girls: High School Showdown is a marketing tie-in for Mean Girls, a movie about female bullying in high school. And boy, someone must have been desperate for a marketing tie-in to have greenlighted this train wreck! It dresses up as an adventure-RPG, but the core mechanic is a tired tile-matching puzzle you’ve seen 100 times. You’ll start off picking one of 4 ‘cool-ish outcast’ stereotypes – ‘artsy’ girl in a beret and paint-splashed jumper, indie nerd with catseye glasses and buttons adorning her coveralls, skankalicious rocker bad-girl in ripped jeans and spiked bracelets (my choice), or some proto-emo-thing with a frosted fringe and a powder-blue suit. Then you get to tinker with your skills and attributes, though it’s easier just to choose ‘mean’ or ‘nice’. Recapitulate the plot of the movie as you run around in an effort to infiltrate the various high-school cliques, including the bullying ‘plastics’; this involves a whole lot of ’showdowns’ with various nerds, preps, jocks, and other colorless cardboard cutouts of high-school life.
The Lost City of Malathedra is a promising puzzle adventure game. The story is interesting and the puzzles are stimulating enough, but it falls short in some area like animation and sound effects.
Lost City is certainly worth a test run, but it doesn’t reach the status of “must buy.”
* Music (5/5) *
The most impressive part of Lost City of Malathedra, by far, is the score. The score draws the player in, and it creates a sense of tension throughout the game. It sets an epic tone without being too melodramatic. Music is an often overlooked portion of game development, but EDI clearly put in some extra effort.
* Sound Effects (2/5) *
Despite the quality of the score, I was thoroughly unimpressed by the sound effects. The general effects are fine, but the lack of voiceovers really left me disappointed. From the first moments of the prologue, dialogue flashes across the screen and there is absolutely no voice over or sound effect. The dialogue seems fairly scripted and pointed, so it’s beyond me why they didn’t take the time to record a few voice actors.
* Graphics (3/5) *
The graphics are done well enough, but they bring back memories of 1990’s games like King’s Quest and Ultima 6. The game sports a classic isometric “3d” view with 2-dimensional cartoonish drawings. This gives the game quite a dated look and feel to it.
The scenery and background looks good enough, if low budget. What really drags down the game experience is the quality of the character images and animations. Some more time spent on the characters could have compensated for an otherwise dated and unimpressive visual experience.
* Gameplay and Interaction (4/5) *
The interface is pretty simple. Click on the map to move. Click and hold to interact with an object. Right click to view your inventory.
There was no need for a tutorial. I figured out the interface with a minute or two of trial and error. Major kudos for simplicity here.
This simplicity really puts the focus on the crux of the game – the puzzles. The action is driven by completing puzzles, which seem to be of a moderate difficulty. I had to stop and think a few times, but I never ran up against something so hard I wanted to throw my mouse against the wall.
My one gripe is that the characters walk so slowly. The puzzles involve a lot of movement, and you slowly plod along from one side of the screen to the other. The pace could be picked up a lot if your character ran across the room.
* Overall (3.5/5) *
Interms of functionality, the game seems pretty solid. It is what it sets out to be – a puzzle driven adventure game. If you like that sort of thing, then you’ll probably enjoy the Lost City of Malathedra.
Due to the lack of voiceovers and the dated graphics, I wouldn’t label this a “must buy.” It’s certainly lacking a bit in the user-experience department. However, it’s certainly good enough to soak up a few weekends of game time. If your “to play” list is looking slim, give this a try.
Here’s the trailer for Puzzle Bots, the upcoming puzzle adventure game from Wadjet Eye Games creators of Emerald City Confidential, as well as the Blackwell series of games.
Item-based adventure games are the oldest genre of computer games around, dating back to the 1970s, and have developed from text-only affairs to full-motion video extravaganzas.
Avenue Flo is a quirky adventure that takes in the hidden object genre as well as traditional object-based puzzles and character interaction. A wedding is occupying everyone’s mind in Flordia Street, Dinertown, but on the big day the dress, rings, butterflies, cake, flowers and poodle have all gone missing. Flo wanders off to find or replace all of these items in time-honored fashion, and probably to uncover the mystery of who has gone to such lengths to disrupt the wedding.
Here’s the trailer for an adventure game called WildHollow created by Karjasoft, the folks behind Spandex Force. Karjasoft plans to release Wildhollow in November of 2009.
