Second Hiatus

Unfortunately, once again I must take a break from the daily reviews. While they are fun, and I'd love to invest more time into making videos once a week, I have a large interview on Friday so I've got to prepare. I'm also going out of town on Saturday, so it's going to be a busy weekend. Thanks for your patience, and hopefully I'll be posting reviews again by Monday.

Daily Flash: Experimental Shooter

It's like WarioWare rules, all in the style of a top down shooter. Each level has it's own unique rules. From putting a timer on your clearing time, to forcing you to hit two targets per shot, the only rules that remain the same is that all targets must be destroyed to continue. Does the game make sense, or is it too scatterbrained to be fun?

Presentation:
Very minimalistic designs, the only things on the screen are your targets and yourself. It's pretty effective, and it's easy to figure out what's going on. Since half of the game is trying to learn how to beat the level, that's pretty important.
3.5/5

Gameplay:
For veterans of any shooter, the rules for each level shouldn't be too difficult to deduce. And, if you ever needed a hint, the name of the level pretty much spells out what you have to do. But, while trying out new rules every level is fun and refreshing, some of the games had rules that just made it frustrating to finish. For example, I had several stages reset because I missed the final shot because I had to shoot from across the stage.
3.5/5

Overall:
While levels can be frustrating, the good news is that they're never around so long that you stop playing. As soon as you get tired of one level, it's over and it's time to go onto the next. Experimental Shooter is a mix of ideas that are genuinely fun, and others that are just new and different. As the title says, it's an experiment, and one that I kinda liked taking part in.
3.5/5

Play Experimental Shooter Here!

Daily Flash: Flur

A game created in three weeks by a team of two, Flur is a "progressive casual adventure with engaging and nonthreatening gameplay.” The only controls are to move your mouse for direction, and to click once you've leveled up enough to use collectable power-ups. I've said before that games today add achievements to try to superficially extend game time, like a cripple hooked up to a machine. Lets just say that Flur has 85 achievements to get.

Presentation:
Visually, the game starts out looking pretty nice. The menu displays a beautiful fairy, with the entire game sticking to a greenish-blue hue that brings everything together. Unfortunately, that's all you have to look at for the entire game. The background never changes, and neither does your character. The only other things that exist are green and red glowing orbs, though they do manifest themselves in amusing patterns.
3.5/5

Gameplay:
The only thing that kept me going was my curiosity. Yes, the glowing lights appear in increasingly complex and elaborate configurations, but that's about all you get. After leveling my way up most of the way, I still hadn't gotten any feedback that I was doing better. Make my wings grow, make me glow a different color, make something happen that tells me I'm getting stronger. The 85 achievements are mostly shallow and pointless. The addition of red orbs makes the game partially interesting, but it's a long time until any of them pose any threat.
2/5

Overall:
Nonthreatening? Yes, they did that pretty well since getting hit only means a temporary phasing out of the world. Engaging? Hardly. As I played, I waited for something fun to happen. The game feels like it's unfinished, like there was some goal to reach or other levels to add, but they're all missing. Leveling is pointless, and gathering orbs doesn't give you any rewards except more orbs to gather. Yes, there are 85 achievements, but I don't expect anyone to get close to getting them all.
2.7/5

Play Flur Here!

Daily Flash: Escaping the Prison

Ahh, stick figures. Popular about five years ago, who knew they were still around? Escaping the Prison is a choose your own adventure style game, filled with the many dead endings you'd expect from similar games. Less of a game than it is an interactive movie, if there's one thing I know for sure, we love to watch people get hurt.

Presentation:
Smooth animations, great expressions, and plenty of color. While the characters may be thin, the quality here is rock solid. There's plenty of personality in the animation and the drawing, and trying out each of your options is plenty of fun.
4/5

 Gameplay:
 I'm not really sure we can classify this as gameplay. You watch a sequence, then you select your escape tool. There are a few God of War style quick time events, but that's about it. At least it's obvious when you need to make a decision, and they don't expect you to try a thousand times just to figure out what you're supposed to do.
1.5/5


 Overall:
This is a hard game to recommend. While it was interesting, it's not really engaging. Truly an evolution of the choose your own adventure books of old, Escaping the Prison makes it fun to fail. The retry option is nice, and makes it easy to see everything there is. Play it once through, and try all the options you want, and be ready to watch some poor stick figure fail countless times.
2.8/5


Play Escaping the Prison Here!

Daily Flash: Use Boxmen

 Simple graphics and silly faces everywhere. Once again, a game with silly humor in everything from the between stage text to the walls of the levels, Use Boxmen has you using, abusing, and sacrificing your clones to finish each level. A platformer with cloning, how does this one stand up with other puzzlers out there?

Presentation:
I'm a sucker for cute aesthetics. All the faces of the boxmen and even the faces drawn on the foreground are simple, yet adorable. There's nothing like watching your boxmen run into a spike wall or down a pit with huge, innocent smiles on their faces. The hand drawn look is simple, and never really draws too much attention to itself.
3.5/5

Gameplay:
The puzzles are simple, with only one or two levels that required a bit of out-of-the-box thinking to solve. Pun intended. Using your Boxmen in different ways is fun, and intuitive. If I see a cliff I can't quite jump, have a Boxman do it. Have to leave someone standing on a button? No worries, he'll spend the rest of his life holding down that button. The levels are fun, but could be harder.
3.5/5

Overall:
While there are other games that have you creating copies of yourself, Use Boxmen is one of the few that give you the freedom of letting your copies do things that you can't do. While it's not as complex as controlling several characters at once, it's gameplay is similar to lemmings in leaving your limited supply of characters standing around to reach a goal. Plenty of fun to be had, but the 13 levels end quickly.
3.5/5

Play Use Boxmen Here!

I'm Moving!

No, the blog will stay right here, but I'm moving into my first apartment today, and unfortunately Comcast hasn't gotten around to getting our internet up yet. Until that point, I'll try to get some Daily Flash's up, but no promises. Anyways, after a long day of moving it's time to go to sleep.
See you later my good people!

Daily Flash: Gap Monsters

A puzzle game should tug at your mind, make you think in new, imaginative ways, and it should feel good when you figure out the solution to a problem. Gap Monsters is one heck of an amazing game, using negative space as a simple, but incredibly deep mechanic in the same way Portal did with teleportation.

Presentation:
Music that fits the gameplay, a most elegant navigation and level design. The levels are a bland black and white with shades of grey, with all the important things in bright red, but what more could you want? The notes on the right side hide a huge variety of humor, and the sound effects when you slide one of the monsters into a gap are priceless. This is a game with personality, and it's always an enjoyable experience.
5/5

Gameplay:
A puzzle makes you think. A good puzzle gives you a sense of accomplishment just by solving it. The entire gameplay revolves around clever use of negative space, where separating a space suddenly makes a brand new object you can manipulate. While there were plenty of levels that were straight forward and just fun to complete, a hefty section of the puzzles forced you to put on your thinking cap and really study the map. I haven't felt so genuinely clever about solutions in a long time. I can tell you, there were plenty of times when I smiled and thought to myself, 'oh, now that was clever.'
4.9/5

Overall:
Everything today has achievements that say, 'good job, here's a shiny sticker for your wall' and there's a loss of playing games just to have fun. I don't like giving away perfect scores, because I feel like somewhere you can make a better game, but this comes as close to perfection as I've seen in a long time. If you have ever enjoyed a puzzle game, this is one that you'll love and be comparing games to for a long time.
4.9/5(but pretty darned close)

Play Gap Monsters Here!