This was a nice, breezy playthrough. The game ran quite smoothly considering it's a different genre than what ZC was designed for, and I didn't encounter any glitches. My thoughts on a few different areas of the game:
Puzzles: Good puzzles often appear to have a straightforward route to solving them on first glance which turns out to not work in practice, forcing you to find a more creative approach (and in great ones, even many of the clever-seeming solutions won't work). And there are some good puzzles here! None of them are super-challenging, but there were some levels that made me stop and think, and gave me that nice "ah, so that's how you do it!" feeling. However, the majority of ABaHC's stages can be solved by the obvious method. For some levels this is because they're focused on the story or tutorializing a new ability, but many others are effectively just filler. They're fast enough to get through that they don't drag the game down, but I think it would've been better to spend development time on making a few more of the quality puzzles instead of many filler ones.
The cursor mechanic helped freshen up the standard block-pushing puzzles (in addition to them being in side-view, which is relatively novel for ZC quests). New abilities were introduced regularly enough that nothing felt played-out, although dropping fireballs to break 'blognesium' blocks often felt like it was just clicking on cracked blocks with an extra step, with only one puzzle I can recall really making use of the added limitations.
Speaking of fireballs, some levels have an 'action' element where you have to evade fire dropping down from dispensers, and I don't think this really worked. There weren't any levels where these dispensers were difficult to avoid, or where they blocked off a potential solution. The only effect they had was forcing me to restart levels a few times when I wasn't paying attention to them, which was more annoying than challenging. The one action level I thought worked was the Ganon chase room where you had to quickly drop fireballs on the blognesium barriers, which took me a few tries due to my poor dexterity with the mouse. Other Ganon chase rooms were okay - the first one was definitely a surprise! - but ultimately just added a short time limit to solving two of the game's simpler puzzles, with no real execution challenge to be had.
Music: I enjoyed the track chosen as background music, although it was on the verge of wearing out its welcome by the end of the game. I think just a few more tracks would do - maybe one for the story-focused levels and one that's used to signify harder stages.
Graphics: Nothing special here, but all game elements were distinguishable and easy to read, which is what's important for a puzzle game.
Story: I ended up enjoying the story segments more than I thought I would; they were a nice complement to the puzzle-solving. I wasn't really bothered by the text replaying when you start levels since the game isn't frozen while the dialogue is playing. The one exception was the cutscene before the final boss, which I ended up having to see three times. Also, the parts where you get blocked by Ganon's blobby minion were a bit annoying, but I think that was intentional.
I'd recommend A Boy and His Cursor to anyone looking to see something unusual done in the ZC engine, or to people looking for some light puzzles with a few moderately difficult ones sprinkled in. If you're hoping for something truly mind-bending you won't find it here, but it's a pleasant enough way to spend some time with a quest.
A Boy and His Cursor
Overview
Feature Quest
Creator:
Avaro
Genre: Scripted
Added: 29 Jul 2013
Updated: 07 Sep 2013
ZC Version: 2.50
Downloads: 911
Rating[?]:
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Download Quest (4.69 MB) |
Information
This is a nice little scripted Puzzle/Sideview/Story quest, that features Zelda characters but not the typcial Zelda styled gameplay. Link has lost his memories and goes on a mission to find the 50 diamonds. This quest was made for the Summer-Two-Week-Quest-Contest 2013.
About Reviews Comments Forum Topics
A Boy and His CursorStarted by Lukaz , 04 Aug 2013 |
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A Boy and His Cursor UpdatedStarted by Avaro , 05 Aug 2013 |
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