JACK N JILL DX
SHORT VERSION: I think the people giving this half star reviews are a bunch of jack offs! This game might not blow anyone away, but it’s a really solid and fun one-button auto-runner with loads of content.
LONG VERSION: Pretty shocked to see all the half star reviews on Backloggd with people saying it’s only good for the easy achievements… I thought this was pretty good!
A one-button auto-runner with a cute monochrome aesthetic, you have to get through a collection of platformer levels and reach your partner (jack or jill) at the end of each.
It starts off very, VERY simple but steadily adds new mechanics… wall jumping, moving platforms, cannons you need to align with switches and shoot yourself out of, wings that turn you into flappy bird, plus an assortment of obstacles and enemies. And you deal with all of this with one button, and it WORKS.
Now, are any of the ideas it presents original? No, but I thought they made really solid, fun levels with all these different mechanics, with good flow and a steady difficulty curve (it gets tricky towards the end, but it never becomes especially difficult). Even when levels get cluttered with obstacles and mechanics later on, they still make it clear where you need to go (aside from a few slip ups here and there).
There is so much content, too! 20 levels across seven worlds for a total of 140, PLUS a mirror mode (though I certainly had my fill by that point), plus a collection of fun little minigames that are also all one button.
It’s just a fun, simple, eventually challenging time. I really don’t get all the hate!
I mean, it does have a few problems, most of which are associated with auto-runners… sometimes you need to memorise what’s coming up, and they can re-use obstacle patterns many times due to the genre limitations… but I never found these things too egregious and, as mentioned, most levels have good flow that let you see what’s coming up, and they mixed and matched obstacles to make things not feel too repetitive.
Oh, it could also have really used coyote time. That’s definitely something that would improve this game.
But yeah! It’s often cheap, and a good example of a one button game (plus the minigames). I mean, it’s not going to blow anyone away, but not every game needs to!
THE RAMP
SHORT VERSION: A minimalist, isometric skateboarding game… the developer is upfront about what this game is, and I respect their choices, but dang it I wanted more! I would love a successor where they… RAMP things up!
LONG VERSION:
There are only four environments in this game, each cute little dioramas for you to skate around. The goal is… there is no goal. You just skate around and do tricks, but there is no reward other than the game itself.
I love the aesthetic of this game… the music is generic lo-fi beats but they suit the game, and the sound of the skateboard is so satisfying. The levels themselves are little isometric playgrounds that look lovely, though I wish there was a little more going on in the backgrounds to give them more of a sense of place, but they also work well as cutouts.
There is a “hardcore” mode that makes the controls a little more skill based and there is a tutorial you must play before all the other levels are unlocked, but apart from that, this is an incredibly chill game… and I enjoyed it…
But it also feels like a bit of a waste! It feels so good to play, and I would have liked some goals to shoot for or SOMETHING, just to give the experience a little more meat, even if the goals were also super chill and easy, with the non-goal mode as an extra.
But the dev is up front about what the game is, and I respect their choice even if I want more. Plus the game is always very cheap, and it’s a chill way to spend a little time.
I just wish my compulsive gamer needs were more sufficiently met!
SUBLEVEL ZERO REDUX
SHORT VERSION: This Descent clone isn’t decent! While it feels great to fly around, and I love the visual style, it’s hampered by proc-gen level design that feels repetitive far too quickly, has unbalanced RogueLite elements, and mostly uninteresting combat encounters (thanks to the proc-gen).
LONG VERSION: A Descent inspired RogueLite, this game feels great to play even with a controller. Flying around space dungeons felt so smooth and satisfying!
It also looks great, with that hi-res retro texture look that the System Shock remake also used (I’m a fan of it), and lots of neon lighting.
Unfortunately, that’s about all the good I have to say about this game despite it having lots of potential.
Most of the problems come from this bring a proc-gen RogueLite. First, the level design… there seem to be so few rooms available for the map generation, so you see them all over and over again very quickly, and few of them are particularly interesting in the first place.
The levels are also very short, and there are only six of them?! And the last two levels are locked out until you complete an initial run. This wouldn’t be as bad if there was just more variety in what levels it has.
There are only two times the game is challenging. The first is when you get to a “boss” room where you have to blow-up a reactor (nice nod to Descent). These can be tricky because they lock you in the room, there are lots of enemies, and the reactor itself can shoot out lots of lasers… but they end up pretty easy to cheese. They’re also always the same each run, except the regular enemies are mixed around a bit.
The other challenge is when you get to a trap room… a room with a loot box that triggers a bunch of enemies to warp in when you try to open it. These moments were the most fun I had because it actually feels like some care went in with what enemies warp in, and the rooms are designed for a fun skirmish. Unfortunately, there are only a few of these rooms, so you’ll be fighting in them again and again.
Most of the battles in the game are pretty dull, with you fighting a handful of enemies that don’t particularly compliment to each other, in rooms not particularly designed for the encounters. There is also only a small amount of enemy variety.
There is other RogueLite stuff too… the items you find are random, you can create new items with old ones and “nanites” with lots of different stat possibilities (which I think is a Borderlands thing? I only played the first one for a few hours a decade or so ago, but I remember it hyping all the different weapons you could make). You can also find blueprints for new items, and unlock new starting ships with different stats, and you can get perks between levels and what not.
So yeah, typical RogueLite stuff, and it works well enough I guess except the game is so short that if you aim to craft something expansive, the game is basically over once you get it. The equipment also didn’t feel that balanced, with some loadouts being significantly more viable than others (if you’re lucky enough to get them).
There are also logs you can collect to learn more about the story if you care about that sort of thing. Adds a little bit of flavour but this is definitely not a story driven game.
There is a decent (Descent) game here, but it’s buried under so much underwhelming RogueLite stuff. I feel this would be much better as a straight FPS with hand crafted levels because there is just too little content to keep repeated runs interesting. And what little content it has isn’t that interesting to begin with!
Not every game needs to be a RogueLite, and some genres just aren’t suited to them, like FPS games in my opinion.
Oh, for the record, I finished it on “classic” difficulty.
I got it for cheap and enjoyed it for a few hours before I started to realise how little meat there is on this bone. Amazingly, this is a redux edition which added stuff… the original release must have been REALLY bare bones!
REFUNCT
SHORT VERSION: A simple, relaxed first-person platformer that’s very, VERY short and easy, but I had a nice time with it. I think it cost less than a dollar, and I felt I got my money’s worth and didn’t want to refund Refunct!
LONG VERSION: An incredibly Unity-core game in that I think 90% of it was made with built-in features. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing!
Anyway, it’s a very basic, chill first person platformer… there are platforms. Touching the platforms changes their colour. When you press a big button, more platforms raise out of the ocean, as does another button(s).
The aim is to raise and change the colour of every platform, and also collect some doodads that appear here and there. It took be under 20 minutes to do this.
But I enjoyed doing it! It has a nice relaxed atmosphere, you can’t die, and it was fun hopping around.
Mechanically, it’s also basic… you can just crouch, jump, and wall jump, and sometimes you’ll encounter lifts or trampolines.
I wish the movement felt a little more satisfying… as it is, it feels a bit stiff. But it felt good enough for me to finish the game, as short as it was.
So yeah! It was cheap, it was chill, and I had a decent time. Not every game needs to be an epic.
INK
SHORT VERSION: A Super Meat Boy style game, with all the good and bad that entails, with an interesting gimmick where levels are invisible until (very colourful) paint is sprayed around it by you and enemies. In the end it’s nothing remarkable, but get an… INKLING people will have a decent enough time with it.
LONG VERSION: This is basically Super Meat Boy (with the same floatiness I dislike from it) except levels are invisible… when your character touches a platform or when you perform a double jump, paint splatters about and reveals more of the level. Dying will also unleash a big splatter (and the paint remains on subsequent lives thankfully), and enemy projectiles and deaths will also send paint. So, lots of ways to spray paint!
I absolutely love how the levels look after paint has been sprayed everywhere… so colourful, and I love how it looks like actual paint splatters.
The game starts with just pits to worry about, but then you have enemies (which must be killed before the exit opens), spikes, static and homing turrets, moving platforms, and keys. So, nothing too creative, but the different mechanics are used in enough ways to make each level feel different.
This idea has two major drawbacks, though… first, some levels can be a bit trial and error since you can’t see anything at first, but thankfully most of them feel designed around this limitation.
The bigger problem is once a level is revealed, you’re left with a rather generic clone of Super Meat Boy. I did appreciate the levels being much more bite size here (and there are only 75 levels… Meat Boy overstayed it’s welcome by a lot), but still.
It also gets a bit too annoying once the homing missiles are introduced… they feel ill-suited for the main gimmick for one thing (the other hazards felt better designed around it), plus they are annoyingly persistent. Once these show up (around level 50), the game really starts to feel like a Meat Boy knock-off.
Controls also feel a wee bit sluggish, and the game could have used coyote time.
So, yes it’s a gimmick, but it’s a very pretty one, and while the actual game itself isn’t anything remarkable, it’s a fun enough time if you enjoy this style of platformer.
QUAKE: DAWN OF THE MACHINE
SHORT VERSION: I (mostly) love the design and aesthetics of the new levels, but the new RPGish features don’t work for me at all, and makes me feel like maybe they were right to cut all the adventure gamey stuff out of the original Quake. Enjoyed playing through it once, but I doubt I’ll dive into it again any time soon! Hopefully this isn’t a DAWN of new design from MachineGames!
LONG VERSION: I have mixed feelings about the latest MachineGames Quake episode, though overall I quite enjoyed it!
There are a handful of more “experimental” levels in this one, such as one that uses 5D space, and another where you have to switch between past and present. These are neat, but it’s stuff I’ve seen plenty of times in mods (even Doom ones).
I felt the stronger levels were the more traditional ones, especially the ones that tried to do some world building, such as one that starts in a castle that slowly reveals itself to be inside a base, one with an Aliens style outbreak from a portal, and another where people worship a “queen.” They use text more than I’d like, but it’s just bits here and there to add a little flavour to the worlds.
Aesthetically, all the levels look great (apart from the titular machine level which I’d also consider a dud level which is boring to explore and full of dopey jumpy bits across sinking platforms). On multiple occasions, I would be teleported to somewhere with a scene in front of me that made me go “whoa!” I especially like the levels that take place under blue skies… nice change from constant dungeons.
Design wise I also think they’re also mostly great, with good combat encounters (aside from a few too many arena battles), secrets that are fun and satisfying to find, and good flow. Some of the levels are bit more open than others, but it’s usually easy to find where you’re supposed to go. The more closed levels also do a good job of evoking the original feeling of Quake, with trap filled dungeons.
Like the last one, most of the levels are a million hours long (i.e. 40-50 minutes on a first play). Again like the last one, shortcuts get unlocked, and I really do feel MachineGames have taken inspiration from the Souls games when it comes to environment design and level structure. I generally didn’t mind how long the levels were, though it can sometimes get exhausting. There are also a few smaller ones too.
The new weapons are whatever, though I like you get an axe that you can kill zombies with (something I would have liked in the original game). I like the new enemies and feel they suit the game well. They also do this weird thing where sometimes enemies will turn into other ones when you kill them… it’s whatever I guess. I like the remixed bosses, kinda feel like shoot’em up bosses now. Would be nice to have an all new one to kill, though!
Anyway, time to talk about the big changes. First, you start with only 50 max health and small ammo carrying capacity. This is because throughout the levels, you’ll find upgrades that increase this.
While it was amusing having a massive pool of health and carrying a tonne of rockets by the end of the game (you can make your cap go over the original limit), I didn’t like this. Mainly because I’d panic before finishing a level… did I miss an upgrade?? What if I need it to finish the game?? And while usually I just leave a level if I struggle finding all the secrets, here I felt compelled to not leave until I found them all in case they had an upgrade. It made me enjoy the game less because it discouraged me from playing the game on my own terms.
The other big change is that after your first run through the game, you get a rune that lets you unlock doors found in the previous levels, which you can now revisit via a hub.
The revisited levels are made a little harder (tougher/more enemies), and the unlocked area usually leads to a new level where you get another rune until you collect a total of four to finish the game.
I wasn’t a fan of this. I much rather just replay the game on a new difficulty (which I usually do) instead of them bloating the length the campaign artificially like this, especially since the levels don’t meaningfully change aside from giving you a new exit that’s usually just behind the previously locked door.
Even worse, sometimes levels also have doors that only unlock with the rune you get from the secret level you’re about to go to! So you gotta go back yet again to get whatever is behind the door, probably an upgrade!! And it sucks!! The levels are big, long, have tonnes of enemies, and just played through them twice! Granted, the runes usually open up shortcuts, but it’s still annoying. I ended up just using cheats on these revisits because I couldn’t be arsed going through the same battles again to get to the new area.
And then AND THEN, if you unlock the super secret bloody nightmare mode, you go through the game AGAIN after beating the boss, to fight a new boss! They change things up considerably more for this run (different and stronger enemies, you get better shotguns, you lose weapons with each new level, items are moved around (which explains why some items that should have been secrets early aren’t marked as such… they’re not there on this run)), but it’s still the same levels. And you’ll want all the upgrades you can find for this mode because it is BRUTAL.
Okay I rambled on enough. I like most of the levels, even though they can be a tad long, but I can deal with that for the world building and what not. I like the new enemies, and the new weapons are fine. But the adventure gamey stuff just didn’t work for me at all. I appreciate them trying to experiment with the formula, and exploring what Quake could have been like if it went down the original design path, but it just didn’t work for me.
