DaviAwesome and Nexas's Reviews

DaviAwesome's Demo Reviews #1

The Minion Files: Blue the Darknut by Goriya

Note: While writing the review, I notice that I referred to this demo as a quest rather than using the word demo. So keep that in mind and don't get confused. Also, sorry that the review took awhile to get up. Anyways, on to the review:

This quest is very similar to tLoZ. The gameplay is relatively the same, save for a few things. Let's find out if this is good or bad.

Gameplay

Like I said before, the gameplay in this quest is very similar to tLoZ. You start off in this screen below:

Look at me! I'm a Darknut!

Yes, you are literally a Darknut. It's fun being one, though your shield doesn't shield from everything (darn...). But anyways, that is the screen you start off with, and you can probably guess what's in that cave. A sword of course!

The overworld in this game can be, in some way, divided up into different sections, such as a mountain area and desert area, and more. Though this is nice as the overworld isn't the same thing throughout the journey, the overworld does lean towards linearity because there is usually one "road" to get to each area instead of more than one. While this isn't necessarily that bad, it would have been better if the overworld did have splitting paths more often.

Talking about the gameplay, this quest does take a linear approach to it. You have to beat 1 dungeon before you can move on to others, and so on and so forth. I don't mind this in the slightest since I tend to do that when I'm making my quests.

The overworld does have quite a few secrets, and thankfully not all of them are obvious. This means that I actually have to explore around and try to find them, which is better than simply having the most noticeable wall of mountain be bombable. So good job with that. Talking about exploration, you do have to explore quite a bit to find what you're looking for, be it dungeons or hidden money.

Now let's move on to the gameplay in the dungeons. The dungeons were very tLoZ like, with their rectangular rooms and standard doors. While this was the case for most dungeons, it was not for a dungeon in particular:

Ooooh! No standard walls! Nice!

That was a pretty nice dungeon. It kind of changed the game up a little bit which is always nice to have. And a nice burst of creativity in that regard as well! So solid job on that aspect.

On to the difficulty. This quest does maintain an above-average difficulty throughout, and it does get difficult early on. While Level 1 wasn't that bad, the other levels became increasingly difficult very rapidly. The difficulty curve isn't that bad, which is good. But Blue Darknuts do start appearing already in the mini-dungeon after Level 1 (the mini-dungeon is the Pyramid Dungeon in the screenshot earlier). But at least you were able to get the blue ring early on. So, in short, the difficulty is slightly higher than average and does curve early on, but it is manageable, so that's good. Somewhat relating to the difficulty is the enemies. The enemy editor is used slightly to make some new enemies, which does keep the gameplay more fresher than it would have been otherwise. However, there was one boss, made by the enemy editor, that I particularly disliked:

Super long Moldorm of Longness. Yay.

This REALLY long Moldorm took like 1 million hits to kill (not literally, you get the point). I kept asking myself how much freaking health this thing has. WAY TO MUCH is the only thing that can sum it up. It took so long to kill this boss that it would get very frustrating when it would kill me when I had reduced its health substantially already, forcing me to start over. Imagine how much fun that was. Anyways...

Lastly on gameplay is the dungeons. This quest does have a few puzzles littered throughout, and while not revolutionary, it is nice to have some so that the gameplay isn't always enemy after enemy after enemy.

The demo ends halfway after Level 3, I believe.

Story

~~Nothing to talk about here; get the Triforce pieces to save a princess from a warlock.~~

Edit: Didn't read the story on the project page. Sorry about that. Here is what Goriya said his story was: Blue and his friends must each go through an Illusion world created by a Wizzrobe. If they completely go through the Illusion unscathed, they will have passed the test and officially become Darknuts. Will Blue pass? Find out by playing the friggin game!

Design Attention

You should obviously know by now that this quest is made using the NES tileset, which isn't bad. The overworld and dungeon screen design is pretty solid for the classic tileset. And better yet is that there were no screen design bugs, as far as I know! Here are some screenshots as usual:

Not too shabby, so that's good.

As I said earlier, the overworld progress was relatively linear. Unfortunately, so were most of the dungeons. They usually didn't split too many times, so usually there was one way to go. The dungeon's progression would have been better if it included some dead ends, splitting paths, and maybe even some side warps. Even after saying that, it isn't too bad, but it could have been a little better.

Music

The music in this quest was well chosen. I really like the feel that they gave for the areas in the overworld and also for the dungeons. Also, some of the new sound effects freshen the experience with the quest, which is good. Overall, great choices for music and sound effects.

Concluding Thoughts/Summary

This quest (technically demo), though not 100% flawless, does offer solid gameplay and bug-less screen design which is helped by the presence of great music selections. It does suffer slightly from difficulty issues and linearity, but not much more.

Strengths

Cool new character look
Good overworld progression and secret finding
Some creative dungeons
Nice difficulty choice (slightly above-average)
Some puzzles
No screen design bugs
Solid screen design
Great music choices

Weaknesses

Linear overworld in terms of "paths"
Somewhat linear dungeons
Some enemies have way too much HP
A few empty rooms (in terms of enemies)

Rating: 8.8/10 (Great)

Database Rating: 4/5 (Good)

Edited by DaviAwesome, 24 November 2013 - 10:52 AM.

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