Magnetico is a 3D racing game based in the future, where you take a seat in a flying vehicle and compete against AI components on tracks wrapped around a city skyline.

This isn’t the first time someone has created a 3D racer; the developer of this game isn’t new to the game style either, having previously proved his ability by releasing his critically acclaimed “Park Racer Reloaded” game which was featured on YoyoGames. Unfortunately the success of the previous game may be the downfall of Magnetico. There are keen expectations for this title to be noticeably better than the other racing games previously programmed by Zoltán. But does Magnetico live up to such ideals? Perhaps not entirely.

The first impression you get is a sense of refinement when launching the game. Unlike many 3d games often released, Magnetico doesn’t skip on interface quality nor fall short when it comes to the polished touches that make the main menu, while simple, feel like that of a professional game. You might even forget you are on your PC for a moment, briefly believing you are holding a Nintendo 64 controller. Navigating the menu requires use of the arrow keys of your keyboard and the space bar. You’ll soon realize the whole game literally relies on just those 5 keys, a very intentional and considered design feature that takes out any confusion and fuss that most racing games usually dump on you. Nobody likes having to fiddle around, figuring out an over-configured control scheme while trying to win a race, so its a very refreshing feeling to naturally understand the keyboard map from the beginning.

Select your vehicle: Classic car selection menu featured in the game.

When starting a race you get the classic 3D rotating car preview along with a few specifications of the vehicle you are selecting. If you haven’t played before you’ll be required to purchase one, using XP and cash (you are provided with some by default to buy your first racing vehicle). The range of cars to choose from is rather respectable and its just one of the techniques to keep players engaged and motivated to race; XP and cash can be earned by competing in races.

When you begin racing, you get the classic count down often associated with racing games and then you engage in driving. The whole novelty of being in a flying car isn’t reflected in the game play. A transparent “computerized” grid road is directly below you. If you were expecting to control the vehicle like a plane and have to fly through hoops, you’ll be disappointed. Any element of being in the air is taken away by the grid. It feels more like highway racing.

Driving the vehicle is an adequate experience. The handling is nice and smooth. To compare it to the developers previous game “Park Racer” the vehicles are much easier to control, but totally un-dynamic in movement. Turning corners feels a little slow which can be extra frustrating if you apply nitro, one of the three collectables available in the game. The other tokens include bonus coins for the money system and a red triangle that causes damage. Even trying to avoid or collect those can sometimes be a slightly awkward ordeal.

Keep your eyes on the road: Special effects jolt your focus back to the race.

All the other vehicles around you don’t collide, so there is no way of crashing. Innovatively, they go transparent if you get up close, to avoid model overlapping and preventing your view being blocked. This means apart from the damage token, there is little to avoid hitting other than the race track boundaries which will slow you down when you collide with them and cause a static interruption across the screen. The effect itself is well executed, but in my opinion a failure of the game’s design. When it appears it takes you out of the game, and out of the race, reminding you that you are sitting at a computer. Its like watching a movie and suddenly seeing the boom operator; you are instantly less engaged and reminded that you are in a cinema.

The overall graphics of the game are good, but not great. For a 3D GM game it is definitely a nice job, but its not graphically stunning and even the vehicles themselves use models that won’t blow you away. This isn’t to say its a bad effort, but graphically in comparison to Zoltán’s older racing games it feels like two steps forward and one step backwards.

The range of maps and cities is good. There are three cities which each have varied tracks to play on, getting more and more difficult as you unlock them. The design of each city is nice too. Extra racing tracks can be unlocked as you increase your XP score. The range of content overall is good, and like any racing game has a natural replay ability.

A final aspect worth mentioning is the audio. The sound effects are okay, but its the music that demands the praise. The audio tracks are smooth and relaxing but have a futuristic feel about them. They work perfectly as backdrop audio, making the game feel more polished but not acting as a distraction.

Magnetico is a well rounded 3D racer which is fun to play. The futuristic theme wares off quickly and doesn’t add to the game play, and perhaps graphically its not as advance as Zoltán’s other racing titles, but for any racing fan its an addictive and quality GM game that certainly squashes most other competition. If you are a fan of Zoltán’s work, as the end user you can’t expect something explosively advance from his previous efforts, but you can rely on him delivering a solid and consistent game that is definitely worth trying. A clean score of seven out of ten does this game justice.

Play Magnetico at YoYoGames.com

Game Review – Magnetico (Zoltán Pércsich) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Volatile is a real time strategy game developed by Matthew Bowden in a 48 hour period for the recent Ludum Dare 19.  It’s effectively a four way tower defence and attack game which builds on the concept explored in Matthew’s earlier Globules but pits you against 3 opponents all of whom start in corners of a hexagonal gridded square playing board.

There are four main construction types. Each player has, and can build more, headquarters buildings. To win the game you need to destroy all the headquarters belonging to your opponents (you don’t necessarily have to defeat every structure they build). Then come mines, these collect the resources needed to power your empire. Finally there is a single attack and a single defence tower which fire missiles at, and intercept missiles from, your enemies.

You also have at your disposal a Commander unit who can move to any square on the board and ‘discover’ cells enabling you to construct towers there. Discovering cells with your lone Commander unit seemed ineffective since when you build a structure you unlock the ability to build in neighbouring squares anyway – though according to the Ludum Dare entry page “unlocking cells acts as a resource production multiplier”. An “explored” counter tracks your progress as you unlock squares though mysteriously it didn’t seem to go up everytime I ‘discovered’ a new cell. The computer players do not seem to have Commander units.

This isn’t a quick game to play. It’s quite easy to get stuck in tit for tat battles as you focus on building up different areas at the extremities of your base and often I felt I had been concentrating far too much on an area yet nothing had changed (insert your best ‘volatile’ pun here…). So long as you build up some mines and don’t neglect to build offensive and defensive towers you are pretty much guaranteed to win, but it takes time.

There are some signs that the game is not complete.

The buttons you click to select the type of tower you wish to build are located very close together.  Sometimes clicking on them didn’t seem to work – either I miss clicked, perhaps clicks on transparent parts of the images aren’t being counted or something else went wrong.  It was a repeated issue and very frustrating when you want to build a defensive tower in a hurry or take advantage of a recently vacated cell to continue your attack.  On a couple of occasions I mistakenly selected to build a new base when I was intending to build an attack tower. Whatever the reasons behind these, keyboard hotkeys to build each of the basic items would be a much appreciated addition which would stop these mistakes.

The game window too is tiny – pretty much the entire game is just a bit too small.  It can be hard to keep track of different battles as the visible window only allows a small proportion of the game board to be displayed at any time.  A refreshingly easy to use starting menu and perfectly detailed in-game graphics are only let down by an ugly generic Game Maker show_message alert when you win.  I presume the reason the game was designed with such a small screen was so higher resolution graphics did not have to be made in the short game development period.

Although it puts up a good fight and and keeps the game going for a while the AI seems to always to leave you with a two hexagon wide free route straight to their headquarters at the edges of the board! (see image above)

There are no in game instructions, but a bundled readme file contains playing instructions although there do appear to be a few omissions.  All structures can be upgraded twice though the documentation does not describe if there are any additional benefits other than an increase in hit points the tower gains.

This is a good game, excluding the fact it was all built within a 48 hour period. With a little more polishing I believe it would be worthy of a feature on YoYoGames.com

Volatile website

Game Review – Volatile (Matthew Bowden) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Kinetics is another addition to the escalating pile of so-called physics puzzlers where you must position trampolines and the like to guide a particularly bouncy blue ball from its starting position, through optionally collectible-for-points coins, to a portal. For what reason, I’m not quite sure; it’s probably just for a bit of fun.

On completion of a level, you’re awarded with points based on performance; for example, how many attempts a puzzle took to solve. While these rewards encourage swift and precise thinking, the points don’t seem to have much depth or effect. With over forty levels and a noticeable difficulty curve, there’s quite a bit to munch at (as you’d expect for a game with almost a year of development time). As you progress through the levels, new mechanisms are introduced to offer fresh means of manipulating the ball’s path, and more obstacles will appear to amplify the challenge. As these are introduced brief explanations are given and if you ever get confused, you can refer to the instructions found on the main menu.

Whether you get very far in the game is questionable; unlike The Machine, you must complete the levels sequentially, which means that if you get stuck, you’re going to become slightly frustrated. The game does quite a respectable job at preventing this, though; the line the ball took on your last attempt is shown (even if this does promote the horrors of trial and error) and, bar the convoluted graphical effects, tweaking and retrying is a relatively quick process. The authors of the game claim Kinetics has ‘unique gameplay’. Now, we all know that’s not entirely true but the gameplay is generally solid; the ball bounces off trampolines as you’d expect and the level design is acceptably varied while encouraging new approaches to solving different puzzles. Once you pass the first ten or so levels, you’ll start scratching your head (or just experimenting), but the puzzles never seem unreasonably tough. The controls are mostly intuitive, with a wheel scroll changing the angle of the items you place and a drag-and-drop system that means you’ll only ever need a hand firmly on your mouse. As for laptop mousepad users, that might be a problem.

Gravity switching, as seen in: a million other indie games

It’s a simple but largely consistent affair from a graphical point of view, with differently coloured squares and a matching typeface dominating what you see on-screen. The level start/end effects are neat but, overall, the visuals seem to take the crude middle ground between retro and simplistic. As I mentioned before, the effects seem a little convoluted in a game where you’re going to need to restart and retry over and over again. Since I feel obliged to tell you what the game sounds like, I’ll inform you that it has nice synth beat music and simple sound effects.

If you dislike puzzlers that are a tad too dependent on physics, you might want to give Kinetics a miss. For everyone else, here’s a game full of tricky (arcadey) puzzles with some decent presentation to boot.

Play it at YoYo Games

Game Review – Kinetics (Kurt Waldowski & Mike Padilla) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Stop.  Before you continue reading, start downloading from the contest site.  At 110MB, it takes a while to download, but it’s well worth it.

There are quite a few Game Maker games which use the built-in 3D functions, but not many, in fact almost none, that manage to pull it off with the elegance and style that Project Aurora does. By developing an art style which embraces the limitations of the engine, Project Aurora takes you back to the classic days of the PS1 with it’s sharp polygonal models and simple textures.

Developed over the course of two years, Project Aurora is a 3rd-person action adventure game, with classic run-jump-sword-to-the-face gameplay. It tells the story of Shade as she attempts to escape from a mysterious complex overrun by malicious robots; and although storyline itself is rather short (with only 5 chapters to play), the content that is there has been polished to a shine.  One of the things that makes the game play so enjoyable is the fluid and smooth movement of the character.  It doesn’t just feel like your controlling the character – you are the character. Understandably, this carries across into the combat system, where despite there only being 3 weapons being available (including your sword), it still maintains the element of fun found throughout the rest of the game.

However, it’s the character voice overs which really sets the game above any other, comparable Game Maker game.  You don’t need to read blocks of text to understand the storyline here; the voice overs effectively tell the story while giving each character their own sense of personality (something which can not easily be portrayed by text alone).  The background music and effects also deserve a mention here, as they are effectively used to create a mood about each scene and not just fill in what would be silence.

Despite the game’s undeniable polish, there are a few minor flaws.  Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, the game is rather short which is disappointing considering how far it could have been taken (although it is understandable considering it was entered for a contest).  There are also no checkpoints, dying will get you a Game Over screen where you are then thrown back to the main menu (though you can load your game and it will take you to the start of the chapter you are up to).  Finally, the ending is a little unsatisfying as you’ll see when you complete the game.

In summary, download and play this game.  You won’t be disappointed.

Download from the contest page
Download from the GMC

Update: The game won 1st place in the BRSD 2 contest!

Game Review – Project Aurora: Moonrise (Woflix Entertainment) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Crystal Wave is a straightforward but deliciously well-balanced shoot-‘em-up which should satisfy anyone fortunate enough not to be using a laptop mousepad. Oh, and it’s got a retro vibe to it.

Johnny B.’s first of (hopefully) many one-week-developed quick prototype games using the so called ‘Lazy Brain method’ is one of those arena shooters that are as common as muck in the present indie scene (think Coptra and MN.PAR). Still, at least it isn’t a horribly unbalanced shooter of the ‘bullet hell’ variation. So yes, this game isn’t hugely original; you control a ship and you face a small but diverse variety of enemies. You can choose to shoot or dodge them but keep in mind that points are awarded only for collecting what I assume are crystals (although killing an enemy yields a crystal shard). Collecting a larger one will bag you ten points while a small one will only earn you a solitary point. A little more variety is offered by virtue of a bomb which you can trigger with a right-click once the metre is full. The bomb creates a devilish blast which will destroy most of the on-screen baddies while gifting you a horde of magnetically-attracted crystals;  good practice for escaping sticky situations. One thing I was surprised about was that the rate at which the metre filled up is completely independent of the amount of enemies you destroy, such that it doesn’t give you any encouragement to blast as many as possible. The difficulty curve is fairly steep but noticeable; after the countdown timer has ended the first wave of enemies will rush on to the screen and before long, you’ll be greeted by trickier variations of enemies.

You get the idea

The visual aspect of Crystal Wave is very consistent. Consistently pixelicious, that is. The game takes place in space, hence the background is black (well, dark grey). It’s quite an unoriginal choice but then again, the neutral environment minimises any frustration that might be incurred by a lack of visibility. Everything is well pixelled and certain effects in-game add a measured variety. In addition, the choice of font is appropriate and navigating between screens is as simple as it should be. Audio-wise, there is a decent 8-bit soundtrack fitting the overall retro aesthetics (the game only uses a NES colour palette, after all) whilst appropriate sound effects are aplenty.

We’ll have to wait and see if Johnny keeps up his game-a-week promise but if he does, I’m looking forward to what more he can produce. If you’re a fan of arena shooters and beating online highscores (at the time of writing, I have second place), you’ll enjoy this simple entry into the genre.

Play it at YoYo Games

Game Review – Crystal Wave (Johnny B.) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Vijfentwintigspellen (it’s a Dutch word, don’t worry) secretes a fresh air of purity which is rare in games we see nowadays. It feels more like a test than a game but certainly an interesting one at that.

This game is all about the number 25 (which, incidentally, is my favourite number…). See, it was created for the 25th Dutch Game Maker Community competition (you’ll want to press T at the beginning to switch the language to English). It presents 25 randomly chosen mouse-driven puzzles all revolving around the number 25 and even goes as far as to include the reciprocal of the number 25. All of the puzzles are approximation-based (and mostly geometrical) and will proudly test your brain’s awareness of space as well as your knowledge of simple mathematics; they vary in difficulty but most are fairly testing. It’s not exactly hard in the sense that you’ll never see the most difficult puzzles or that you’ll need good hand-eye co-ordination; it’s just very hard to be accurate with such a lack of measuring devices (the background is completely white). It’s not a very serious game, either. If you wanted you could sneakily press ‘Print Screen’ and paste the result into Paint to see what exact size rectangle you’d need to make the area of another rectangle 25 (seriously, that number’s in the title) times as large. After each puzzle, you’ll be presented with a percentage indicating your accuracy; usually 80%+ is good but obviously it varies in the difficulty of the puzzle. After all 25 levels have passed, it will grant you a final average percentage and close immediately after you click, because it’s that sort of game.

Pac-Man makes an appearance

The minimalistic graphics and complete lack of music reinforce the simplicity and conceptual theme of the game at the same time as keeping distractions to a minimum. Vijfentwintigspellen (yeah, that word) doesn’t want you to fail; it’s just there for you to test yourself against. Erik Leppen’s love for the font ‘Georgia’ continues while he bags himself yet another puzzler to add to his growing collection. One problem I found immediately was the game’s resolution; being a laptop-user, the screen extended slightly beyond the resolution of my monitor, meaning my experience was hindered somewhat. A simple full-screen option surely would have solved this but it seems Erik disabled the F4 key and I’m not entirely sure why.

It’s nice to see a GM game doing something a bit different, especially one which is very well programmed. If you like your experiences to be filled to the brim with action, clearly you won’t find this any fun whatsoever. But, to anyone else, it’s worth five (sadly, not 25) minutes of your time.

Play it at YoYo Games

Game Review – Vijfentwintigspellen (Erik Leppen) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Vlambeer’s first release is more frenetic than a headless chicken on steroids. If you enjoy action-packed platforming and generally kicking arse, you won’t want to stop playing this piece of pixel perfection.

Super Crate Box is a platformer in which you score points by collecting crates. Sounds mediocre, right? Not when the crates contain any of a huge array of weapons! From katanas to revolvers to grenade launchers, this Mario Bros.-esque mini-game-of-sorts packs in almost everything. Interestingly, you don’t score any points for destroying the hordes of enemies flung at you (thank heavens the controls are responsive) but that doesn’t mean shooting stuff takes the form of a pointless add-on. No, every time you don’t bother to shoot an enemy down, it will fall back through the level going twice as fast; if you want to score decently, there’s no option but to fire away. The fact that crates make you obligatorily take control of the held weapon gives the game a bit of strategic depth, too; if there’s a flock of onrushing bad guys coming to get you, you may think twice about grabbing the crate and show them something called a bazooka, instead.

After surviving the surprisingly intense tutorial, you’re thrown into the thick of it. You’ll start off with a relatively small range of weapons which will be greatly expanded upon as your crate-count rises, through the magic of unlockables. The weapons are remarkably balanced considering how different some of them are, although over-powered guns are in there for good fun. Some unlockable characters are also included, even if the only point of unlocking them is to laugh at their outrageous running animations. The platformer features three different stages with slightly different layouts and graphical themes; you’ll need to collect a certain amount of crates in one stage to unlock the next. Oh, and for the extreme players out there, collecting a high number of crates in one game will unlock the SFMT and ambush  modes (sadly, this was too much to ask of me).

As evidence for the amount of effort put into Super Crate Box, the game has it’s own fully-fledged website. You can find all relevant information here as well as global highscores, which banks on the platformer’s addictive arcadey attributes.

Crates are score.

Thanks to Roy Nathan de Groot and Paul Veer (who put forward their talents for the graphics and animations respectively), this game is visually superb. Whilst it won’t attract those obsessed with ‘realistic’ graphics, anybody with an eye for nice chunky pixels will be impressed. Vast effort has clearly been put into weapon effects (the flamethrower was my favourite) and they live up to the fast-paced gameplay admirably. The only thing I will criticise about Super Crate Box’s presentation is the underwhelming main menu. Other than that, the chiptune music is absolutely fantastic, capturing the theme and pace perfectly whilst complementing the retro-tastic sound effects.

To quote cactus: ‘This game is a ton of fun.’

Download it at Game Jolt

Game Review – Super Crate Box (Vlambeer) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

The Machine‘s uninspiring title doesn’t do this fantastic physics playground enough justice. Anybody looking for some gravitationally-bound fun and even experimentation will enjoy delving into this world full of beams, ropes and springs.

By now, most of us have played a game boasting mechanics that try to emulate real-world physics one way or another. The general consensus seems to be that physics in games is cool but a bit annoying when done badly. Well fortunately, the physics in The Machine are certainly not bad; ropes swing, springs bounce, connectors connect (though I feel like there’s not enough friction because the ball takes an absolute age to slow down on a flat surface). You won’t find any colourful characters bearing smiling faces but what you will find is a rock-solid engine (the creator used his own ExtremePhysics engine), some tools and thirty brutal levels (one which is designed by Erik Leppen) which will, quite vigorously, test your ability to construct a path for a little red ball to roll to safety.

This is clearly a game for a more ‘geeky’ audience. The first level introduces things fairly simply with just beams and connectors to play around with but as you move through the game, many new tools and precarious situations are introduced and it’s your job to get things to work properly. Aside from the main levels, there is a sandbox mode. So, if you’re too clumsy to take on the almighty challenges set, feel free to mess about to your heart’s content, here. With effectively unlimited tools at your disposal, you really can take full advantage of the brilliant physics; even make some kind of machine. And it feels very right to be given this freedom in what is largely just a (very good) simulation. This puzzler was created for a competition where the theme was ‘touch-screen’ and that shows; the inteface is very click-happy (you’ll be sick of the sound of your own mouse when you’re constructing big structures) and it could certainly be played with a touch-screen, which is interesting considering recent YoYo Games-related news…

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

We probably shouldn’t look at The Machine from a graphical viewpoint because that’s not really what it’s about. But hey, I have a word count to meet! So, yes, it’s grey. Very grey. So grey, even your grandad may become attracted to it, although you could argue it actually fits the game as a whole because the grey UI does have a technical feeling about it. At a glance, it looks like a simulation program more than something you’re meant to have fun playing. Everything about the menu, the buttons and the layout shouts no-frills right in your face. Although, I must say I found the grittiness of the objects and walls in-game to be quite nice.

There isn’t any music, but frankly there really doesn’t need to be any. The sound effects are well implemented with every bang and smash illustrated perfectly and realistically. So, if you like physics, balls, grey, clicking and a big challenge, you’ll want to give this a try.

Play it at YoYo Games

Game Review – The Machine (Maarten Baert) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

Tower 3 by orse ost e7 o

What starts off as a peaceful valley scene doesn’t last long.  In Tower 3 the tranquil highlands have been transformed into a war zone as you must defend your side of the valley from a variety of incoming tanks and later aircraft.

As the sun blazes down you set to work building a tower from 9 constituent components.  Each block has a different property – some are simply dumb obstacles which can be built upon or laid in the path of advancing invaders, others generate the resources necessery to further expand your base whilst the most important fire a variety of missiles towards those incoming baddies.

Tower 3 is a tower defense/defend the castle game with a huge building range, you can practically fill the game room with blocks given enough time and willpower to do so.  To place a block you must click the type you require then hold and drag your mouse to where you want to drop it.  Once you have chosen to buy a block you can’t change your mind and must drop it (though rather surprisingly blocks can be sold by right clicking on them).

At the start there are gaps between the swarms of invading tank-type vehicles but later on you are exposed to a much wider variety of enemies coming in a constant stream, including those which can attack from the sky.  Make use of the early calm to build advance powerblocks as soon as you can so that you can afford to create a large tower structure before the rush.

You won’t loose through lack of funds to construct new blocks.  Money is no object once you have installed a small collection of advance power blocks which each generate 5 credits a second –  what will kill you is the physical challenge of  clicking fast enough to be able to build blocks at a good enough pace to replenish those that are destroyed.

Since your bank balance can’t exceed 200 (apart for momentary flickers of 201) stockpiling funds is not an option, if you don’t spend straight away the money you continue to generate is wasted.

There are a few little niggles which let the game down.  Pressing ‘menu’ from within the game exits your current game immediately without first presenting you with an options menu.  Loosing results in an ugly Game Maker default “All blocks have been destroys. You lose” [sic] message being displayed.

There are varying levels of difficulty as well as a couple of mini-games where your construction options are limited to building either only shooting or utility blocks.

It’s well-worth a play but Tower 3 would definitely benefit from more development time.

Tower 3 on YoYoGames.com
Tower 3 on GameJolt.com

Game Review – Tower 3 (orse ost e7 o) is taken from: GameMaker Blog

A perfection of ideas – this is how Jesse Venbrux describes his first-prize-winning entry into the fifth YoYo Games competition “Design a Handheld Game”. And it’s a fitting description. They Need To Be Fed features elements found in his previous works, most notably the 360° gravity well-known from Frozzd (his winning entry into the first YoYo Games competition over two years ago) and improved with the lesser-known Maru, a game released earlier this year. It’s clear there’s been thought, and care, put into its perfection – whereas Frozzd was a little clunky and felt glitchy, TNTBF is smooth. So, so smooth.

So, in the game, you play as a guy who, oddly, must get himself eaten without dying on the journey to the predator. Whereas Frozzd levels were a cluster of large planets, the worlds in TNTBF consist of small spheres, rectangles, triangles etc, each with their own independent gravity. It takes a little getting used to, but once you’re into it, the game’s intricate movement allows for rather a lot of manoeuvrability… which you need.

Levels start off fairly easy, but it doesn’t take long for the difficulty to be cranked up sky-high. Initial menaces, such as stationary mines, are little threat provided you’ve nailed the controls down. It becomes a second nature to be jumping from one “planet” to another, dodging airborne mines as you switch from one gravity field to the other seamlessly. But other things are quickly thrown in which prove trickier to avoid. Moving mines, which tend to orbit circular “planets”, and particularly homing missiles, will be a bother, especially when you’re having to dodge both at once… while planets are rotating, moving, or reacting to your jump landings. It certainly turns into something requiring plenty of multitasking, as you look to avoid being killed by everything Venbrux decides to throw at you simultaneously, while timing jumps and movements to absolute perfection.

One thing about the gameplay is that it’s perfectly suited to portable gaming, something I’m sure aided its success. Levels are fairly short – most will be completed before the minute is up (excluding however many thousands of times you choose to die). Furthermore, it holds an addictive quality to it, with frustration being hastily subsided by the knowledge that your death was your fault and you can win this level.

Graphically, though minimalistic in style, the game is very pleasant to look at. It has a cartoony aesthetic that is pleasing to the eye, animations are cute, smooth and very well drawn, and (nearly) everything fits together beautifully. The clouds in the first group of levels are slightly misfitting, as has been noted by others before, but they’re not hideous or detrimental to the experience in any major way. The menu, though I’m sure is great, was slightly problematic for me as it ran at about 3FPS. I will reinforce though that this was likely a problem with my computer, not the game, as I saw nobody else complain about any such problem. Sounds and music are both minor parts of the game, but are fitting where used.

So was it a worthy winner? As a stand-alone game, I’m not sure. Venbrux himself stated the game didn’t take a huge amount of time, and there is of course the aspect of its concept being very similar to some of his previous works. There were also a lot of games, including the games that took second and third, that reek of quality. Even some of the games that didn’t manage a “Runners-up” placement seemed to have originality and quality TNTBF didn’t quite manage. But as a handheld game, it’s suited to a T. Short levels, addictive gameplay, progressive difficulty, replayability (in the gem collection) and a nice little pile of levels mean TNTBF would be PSP gold. I know I’d buy it for portable play.

Download They Need To Be Fed on YoYo Games
Phil’s blog entry on the Competition05 results

Game Review – They Need To Be Fed (Jesse Venbrux) is taken from: GameMaker Blog