Rite of the Storm

All I can say is that this needs to be a full scale quest, getting a small snapshot into this universe was just a tease, the story was so good! I saw so many things in this that I have never seen in a quest before which is not something I can say often. All of the mechanics worked very smooth and were enjoyable to learn and use around the game.

Only took be a couple hours, and was a fantastic ride, 100% recommend!

A very nice neat little package, even with only one item the puzzles are so clever! The core mechanic is strong and new elements are introduced at just the right pace, and interactions between them are all very intuitive.
Though there were several puzzles that relied on waiting for an enemy's random AI movement to bring it into the right spot, and those could be a real pain (I had really bad luck on the one with a candle enemy in particular, and was waiting for several minutes), but otherwise the rest of them were all very satisfying to complete.

One other thing I would have been interested in seeing story-wise would be a little bit more of a look at that big storm they keep talking about. What's it actually like out there? They mention a lot of death and destruction, but we don't see anything outside of the dungeon. Something like that would only be optional extra flavor, of course, but extra detail like that could've made this nice neat little package even nicer and neater

Just finished the quest. I've already told this to Shane himself, but this is a masterpiece.
I'm going to break this down into a few categories: game play, story, and visuals.

GamePlay: 5/5

The puzzles and upgrades, which by the end I am only missing one HP Upgrade were wonderful. I actually found the flight upgrade to be Overpowered slightly,but not too much. it was OP in the perfect way. The puzzles were well crafted and often kept me on my toes. Very well done you two.

Story: 5/5
With the soon arrival of RotS: 2, I expect great things and have many unanswered questions. without spoilers the ending left me wanting more. and It is definitely open to such.

Visuals: 5/5
It felt like a Gameboy game all it's own with really good tiles combined with the amazing soundtrack. the particle effects in a certain area were really well done too.

Overall: 5/5

This quest is amazing in every way and I want more! great job Shane and Avataro!

Rite of the Storm is a fun quest with a a lot of positive stuff going for it. However, it does lack a little bit in being a little overly simple in several areas. That said, I am aware that it was made for a two week contest, so I am not letting that affect my rating.

Areas:
The areas are a mix of standard and creative. You have the Polar Ruins and Sunken Desert which are your ice and desert areas. And then you have other areas like Hall of Mirrors and Burning Facility which were more creative. My favorite is the Wildlands though which is a nice combination of forest and creativity. I would love more creative areas in the future.
4.5/5

Difficulty:
The biggest issue for me with this quest is that it was a bit too simple in my mind. Granted I do appreciate that as I prefer simpler things over things that are overly complex. However, the enemies were simple and the puzzles were as well. I never really felt threatened.
4/5

Gameplay:
The gameplay is reseblant of a metroidvania but doesn't quite do as much as it could do with interlinking the areas. Although I mentioned things being a bit too simple, I do think it makes up for it in this area with some creative gimmicks.
4.5/5

Upgrades:
The upgrades are pretty simple but offer you a feeling of progression that works well. I love that there are upgrades for each attack, defense, health and magic as well as for your weapon. It's a shame that you don't get more to do with the last upgrade you get.
4.5/5

Bosses:
The bosses again are a bit more simple than I'd prefer. But in this case, I don't really mind. They didn't stick in my mind very long, but the Caelum fight was quite enjoyable. So while I'd love to see improvement in this area, I don't mind as long as the bosses are creative and enjoyable.
4/5

Story:
The story is pretty simple, but the characters are well done and the little twist at the end is nice and gets me interested in hearing more about the Rite. It was a solid foundation. Now I want to see what you build on it.
4.75/5

Enjoyment:
Despite the things I said, I think this quest was quite enjoyable. For some reason, it didn't compel me too much to go find all the upgrades, but it did keep me interested throughout the main quest and I did go back and get some of the upgrades.
4.25/5

Overall:
While the quest is quite fun and doesn't have any major faults, it does suffer from just being a bit overly simple. Which I feel is largely because of the time restraints. However I think this a good start and I imagine making and finishing makes the creators proud, as it should.
I'd give this a 4.2-4.3/5. I'm rounding it up to a 5 instead of down to a 4 cause I feel it deserves it for only lacking in some personal preference areas dealing with simplicity.

Loved the use of environmental puzzles in this quest! Palettes, graphics and music are all great! Feels like a Capcom NES game. Dialogue has good personality. The main idea in this quest is to find levers to lower barrier posts you encountered earlier, and that was tricky for me to remember where the last barrier post was as there are quite a few. Got stuck for a little bit a few times, but the map is helpful, as is remembering to solve certain puzzles later in the game. One or or two clues/item descriptions might have been nice, but I managed. Last item is cool, but would have liked to see it get more use. Sometimes you have to try a few things out to solve a puzzle and discover things you didn't know your items can do. Definitely recommend playing through this!

Thanks Australia and Europe for this quest!

This was so fun,the funny part was how all the tornados broke the sands blocks XD and the sad part was the Caelum's death R.I.P.
I like this Quest *TATATATAAAA* [You win 5 Ratings,Yay!]
And I like it the ideas of Elicopter and explode the bomb with fire tornado and FlyPolar too ,Excellent Miniquest ^^

It's easy to see a quest at the top of the ratings and have huge expectations, and I think this quest does remarkably well in terms of expectations when you consider the time frame it was made in.

There are a few things that I'm not a fan of such as puzzles where you pretty much have to wait for times much longer than you should need to (Wildlands and Hall of Mirrors) but it doesn't detract from the entire experience.

If you can do this in 2 weeks, I can only wonder what you and Avataro could accomplish without restrictions.

I could go on for a while about how good this quest is...

...however I won't. I gave it 5 stars and it deserves it.

The game was good with lots of good mechanics in it. I especially liked the flying!

It is the only quest that I've been able to complete on zelda classic, probably because it's not too long or short, has lots of puzzles in (i'm better at puzzles than fighting).

The bosses were good. At first I was unsure how to kill them, but then I realised. This made the bosses more interesting rather than some big enemy that you hit a lot!

The only problems were:
-The puzzle in hall of mirrors where you get wind wizzrobes to move the fire for you. This was because it wasn't that obvious what to do. Maybe a sign would've helped.
-The final puzzle with the invisible path. Because I had to look it up, because I didn't know that the path was there.

This is a really good game. I was definitely going to rate it a five before the one room in the very last area with the invisible path. I honestly have no idea what you were thinking there. There's no precedent for that in the entire game and the solution is totally random and contrived. I thought the solution was going to be an upgrade to the circle rod with a larger radius so I was looking everywhere for that. I had to look online and then I still didn't get it for a while. The solution just doesn't make any sense to me. So that right there definitely bumps it down from a low five to a high four for me. This is a separate portion because that is a pretty big problem in my mind. You can't progress unless you notice a random detail which doesn't even have any relevance. Let me go over pros and cons though.

PROS

-Great screen design and map design
-Great, simplistic graphics
-Really great job of building on mechanics, giving new ways to use older weapons. Really solid.
-The gameplay is just really good. There are so many great puzzles in this quest.
-Great job making the world engaging, using interesting enemies and environmental reactions.
-The twist at the end is pretty redeeming for the story in my opinion
-Great usage of scripts. They only added to the quest. And in intuitive ways.
-The quest is very cohesive. It all comes together very nicely.

CONS

-The combat felt pretty superfluous a lot of the time. Especially in later dungeons enemies were just sort of there.
-The bosses felt pretty mediocre. The last boss is sort of cool but just sort of feels like a projectile dodging contest.
-Some of the upgrades are basically just, "go back to an area you've already been to with a new technique." And that's it. There's no challenge. They're just there. This is fine but sort of mediocre design in my opinion.
-The story, while the ending is redeeming, is also pretty mediocre. It's just so cliched it's hard to really care about. And we never get a glimpse at the outside world so there's just little reason to care. The dialogue is well written though and the story does sort of support its own weight. Not completely but it is above average for a ZQuest story. That said it is still mediocre.
-Some puzzles toward the end of the game just felt more gimmicky manipulation of mechanics then actual puzzles. That said, this is just a small nitpick. It does lead into the thought though- I feel like the beginning and middle of the game flow better. The game sort of wears itself out a bit as it goes on in my opinion.
-The aforementioned puzzle at the end which was pretty bad.


So overall, a really good quest that has some weak areas and one or two pretty questionable qualities. But still has that flare of greatness. The design on this quest is just really solid. It was clearly made by very talented designers.

This was a really great quest! I won't really write a long review, but it was the first quest on ZC in quite some time that I've played, enjoyed, and completed.

I never really got stuck too long and had a 0 death count.

The only puzzle I thought needed some slight refinement was in the ice area with the 8 unlit torches with the red/blue in the center. You should've seen how many crazy combinations I tried only to have it related to some pegs. That was a cool concept, but maybe the pegs could've just been torches? It isn't a big enough problem to really change though unless you do some larger update or bug fix though.

Excellent job!