24th January 2015, 8:17 AM
It was a shooter with a few platforming elements, yes, like Contra.
It's as ABF said. The artwork in that game was great. I basically kept pushing forward entirely motivated by seeing what backgrounds were next. They all were very unique, like you were stepping into whole other worlds as the game went on. The music's pretty decent too, and help "sell" the stage artwork. As ABF said, he was the artist behind it, not really responsible for game design.
This is for the best, because frankly the gameplay isn't all that good. It's no Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde mind, but it is very bland. The level layouts don't really lend themselves to the gameplay. Enemies just keep showing up off screen and rushing right towards you. There's just no thought as to placing enemies in interesting locations fitting the layout of the platforms around you. Heck, most of the time you're just running in a straight line from one end of the stage to the other. Sometimes they switch it up a bit with ramps, but there's just no point there either. The enemies aren't actually "placed" anywhere, so the layout of the stage never actually matters. Some parts go for an auto-scrolling style, which unfortunately also doesn't matter because instead of specifically laid out enemy spawn order like a game like Raiden would have, the enemies still just randomly spawn in forever until you're done. There is basically one boss, and you'll fight that same boss over and over again (sometimes like ten of that boss). The controls are very basic, and there's no sense of inertia. There's no real sense of "weight" when you start... sliding off to the right or left or jumping about. Hard to describe, but I don't think they did the testing and iterating that old platformer developers used to do.
I really hate to come down so hard on this game, but I still have nothing but praise for the visuals, the part OB1 himself was directly responsible for. I just... really don't have anything good to say about the game itself. It's very mediocre, I'm sorry to say. However, I can say this. You'll never throw your controller in frustration. The gameplay is mediocre but not awful, so you'll get through it just fine. I recommend it to anyone at TC anyway though, because hey, someone from this forum was part of making a game. It's worth checking out for that reason alone. I really have no idea what happened to that company afterwards though.
It's as ABF said. The artwork in that game was great. I basically kept pushing forward entirely motivated by seeing what backgrounds were next. They all were very unique, like you were stepping into whole other worlds as the game went on. The music's pretty decent too, and help "sell" the stage artwork. As ABF said, he was the artist behind it, not really responsible for game design.
This is for the best, because frankly the gameplay isn't all that good. It's no Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde mind, but it is very bland. The level layouts don't really lend themselves to the gameplay. Enemies just keep showing up off screen and rushing right towards you. There's just no thought as to placing enemies in interesting locations fitting the layout of the platforms around you. Heck, most of the time you're just running in a straight line from one end of the stage to the other. Sometimes they switch it up a bit with ramps, but there's just no point there either. The enemies aren't actually "placed" anywhere, so the layout of the stage never actually matters. Some parts go for an auto-scrolling style, which unfortunately also doesn't matter because instead of specifically laid out enemy spawn order like a game like Raiden would have, the enemies still just randomly spawn in forever until you're done. There is basically one boss, and you'll fight that same boss over and over again (sometimes like ten of that boss). The controls are very basic, and there's no sense of inertia. There's no real sense of "weight" when you start... sliding off to the right or left or jumping about. Hard to describe, but I don't think they did the testing and iterating that old platformer developers used to do.
I really hate to come down so hard on this game, but I still have nothing but praise for the visuals, the part OB1 himself was directly responsible for. I just... really don't have anything good to say about the game itself. It's very mediocre, I'm sorry to say. However, I can say this. You'll never throw your controller in frustration. The gameplay is mediocre but not awful, so you'll get through it just fine. I recommend it to anyone at TC anyway though, because hey, someone from this forum was part of making a game. It's worth checking out for that reason alone. I really have no idea what happened to that company afterwards though.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)