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Our first assignment, we have to talk about our first 10 minute experience with a game we haven’t played before. For this assignment, I chose the game “Milo Physics” on addictinggames.com.
Just by looking at the game title and image, I could tell the game was a 2d physics-based puzzle game. Sounds exciting! I love many physics-based games and I was eager to try this one. After waiting for the game to load and starting a new game, I immediately noticed a feature that I dislike which was to drop the rigid bodies from a certain height in the 2d game, the player isn’t able to drop them at the exact point (which wouldn’t affect the game-play, just makes it more user friendly). The goal is to place objects down to help a ball collect all the stars in the level by making the ball hitting them. The score for each level is determined by how long it takes the player to collect all the stars. Already from the first level I had to keep clicking the restart key to reset (resets everything including the timer/score) and try to get the rectangle rigid body in the right spot because of having to drop the rectangle at such a high height (maybe they could use this minimum height limitation for later levels only where they don’t want the player to easily get an object somewhere). That was basically it throughout the game but further levels would have more tasks such as covering a hole to allow the ball to pass by or launching the ball by creating a seesaw and dropping something heavy on one end and etc.
Overall I had a pleasant experience with this game, although at times it could get frustrating because of the height limitation which were unnecessary for many levels (especially for the ones where the player has to build a tower and are forced to restart when they mess up and want to maintain a good score).
Check out the game at: AddictingGames - Milo Physics
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Summon Night: Swordcraft Story for the Game Boy Advance was a game I loved, I’ve been a fan of their series ever since. The game is a Role-Playing game (RPG) a lot like final fantasy but the fighting system is real-time unlike Final Fantasy’s turned-based battle system. The game doesn’t feel repetitive at all even though they use the same game mechanics throughout the whole game. I’m guessing it is because of the new places I unlock every time and the story is continuously progressing. The player can forge their own weapons by using materials they found in the game (trying different combinations). The graphics and special effects were very cool and detailed. The sound and music matches the game style and isn’t annoying at all. The game is well balanced; the player gains new spells and partners later in the game and become stronger every time they level up. Bosses are challenging and fun to face. The user interface is very simple using mainly the A, B, and arrow buttons to move around and attack and defend. The other buttons are for the less often used functions such as the start button to get to the menu. Levels were easy to follow a long, I can usually tell where to go and only have to guess for the levels they want you to such as some caves (when your character is lost). The story is very well done, and I constantly wanted to keep playing to unlock more of the story. The character can choose what to say every so often and it changes the dialogue for a bit but it will always get to the same ending. The enemy AI is quite simple but it gets the job done. There are still many unique features in this game that I haven’t mentioned such as guardian beasts.
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I found Miniclip's Stress Relief Paintball flash game very boring and not fun. There’s no story, very limited audio, game is repetitive, limited sprites. The goal of the game is to shoot all the smiley faces that appear randomly in the office environment game. You basically just click the smiley faces that come out and reload when you are out of ammo. There are a few levels but they are just different background pictures and different spawning points for the faces. There is a timer for each level that will bring you to a new room when time runs out. For every face hit, it adds to the total score. This game is very simple, there isn’t any AI, and it’s just shooting the face. The User interface is simple. There isn’t any flow to the game.
Check out the game at: Miniclip - Stress Relief Paintball