Sometimes you're just minding your own business and some great game just randomly smacks you in the face. This happened to me several years ago. With, Quasist's FleshChasmer: The Eve. Originally released on Win32 and the GP2X it has since been ported to other consoles like the Caanoo and some variants of the Dingoo. It's a throwback to the olden days of 3D games like Alone in the Dark, and it sure is rad.
Graphically it's pretty impressive artistically. It's done in a solid shaded low poly style for the characters, and the environments are kind of 3D tile based which is really cool. It makes the game geometrically simple, yet very interesting at the same time. Part of this is done by Quasist's great use of cinematic camera and storytelling. There are cutscenes the camera shifts, characters interact, dialogue boxes pop up, it's all really well done. It even has motion blur!
The gameplay is like a traditional dungeon crawling RPG. You hack and slash enemies, find treasure, level up, then fight a boss after you navigate the labyrinth of each dungeon. Enemies small and weak like bats will come and find you, attack and you'll dispatch them with ease. Stronger humanoid enemies will come along as well, and can overwhelm you if you don't plan accordingly. Spells and magic items will aid you in your quest as well.
The story is interesting it's got a bit of broken English, but it's more endearing rather than annoying or frustrating. Interesting character names like, 'Saint Teeth' will keep your interest piqued. The story is about an evil demonic Nazi cult and you, the god of Genocide have to stop them from being typically bad dudes. Mutation is a big part of the story and you'll see tons of people including yourself mutating like crazy. It's very interesting to see people mutating in low poly and what they will become.
Overall the game is really well done, great cutscenes, cool story, very technically sound, and very awesome. It could be on a console somewhere and I would definitely pay $5 or $10 if it was a downloadable title. There was a Windows port which I had at one point, but the download link on Quasist's site link is down. If I find another mirror, I will definitely put a link up. If not you can get it on the Dingoo, Wiz, GP2X, Caanoo, and a few other consoles if you look.
The music in this video is not in the game. So don't worry. xD
Marty Mallow's Adventure, is one of my first really complete games. It didn't come together
overnight, but it almost did. xD Within two weeks in fact. It was my first and only foray into
"professional" game development. Though hopefully not my last.
Way back in 2009 things were shaking, I was working one day and I got a call from one of my friends
whom I went to college with. The poor guy was working two jobs to make ends meet, but he eventually
got a really nice job with Northrop Grumman so he's kicking back pretty good now. Anyway, he called
me up one day when he was working for a small web development outfit. Pittbull it was called. Their
resident game developer was busy and overloaded with projects so they were looking to outsource and
contract someone to do a game or two for them. Thankfully my friend, knowing and seeing all the
game junk I had coded all throughout college, immediately thought of me. Nice.
He called me and we started talking, he said they wanted to "contract" me for a game, though there
really wasn't any contract. I just made a game and they gave me an offer for it, that was it.
Simple yet naive as it was at the time, I was just happy to be getting paid for something I enjoyed
doing. My friend said that the Boyer Candies candy company was the client. They needed a game for
their Fun Zone web page. This was rad as I liked their products. I had no idea that they actually
had characters though, that was a new one on me. So we started talking about games what kind of
games I should do for them. I thought a moment, and remembered that I had coded a JavaScript
sidescrolling demo a Mario 'clone', about two years prior. My friend agreed that if I used my
JavaScript Mario engine, and modified it into a Boyer Candies game using their characters, that
would be really rad. So this is what was done.
The engine at the time was pretty solid, it had controls, AI, animation, etc., but it didn't have
any means of loading levels. It just had one hardcoded tile based level and that wasn't really rad.
As I wanted something like 10 levels for that game. The first thing I coded up was loading levels
from external .JS files. This was easy enough and worked pretty well. It was a simple text based
format with a few arrays for the level tile placements, the enemy, and item placements. It worked
well and was pretty straightforward.
After that I started thinking who should be the main character. I had a list of basically three
choices. Marty Mallow, Patty Peanutbutter Cup, and Sam Smoothie. Looking at the three of them, I
picked Marty, as he was the most geometrically simple, and would be the easiest to draw. He's a
square with glasses. Easy. I am something of a decent artist so I got the animation sprites for
Marty done pretty quickly. After that I started talking to my friend about enemies, we decided on a
jawbreaker, a candy bar, and some marshmallows. These were just basically sprite replacements for
the Mario enemies, and they behave accordingly. The Jawbreaker replaces the Koopa Troopas and jumps
around like the winged ones. The candy bar replaces the Hammer Bros. and throws candybars, and the
Marshmallows replace the Goombas, just running back and forth. After that items were thrown in
there, some candy, and chocolate covered pretzels that my friend suggested as they were also made
at the Boyer factory.
Sam Smoothie, Patty Peanut Buttercup, and Marty Mallow Respectively.
After I had the game in a playable state things progressed pretty smoothly, after that just some
feature requests, like showing the level number before each level started was suggested by my
friend. Which was a welcome addition and I think adds to the professional appearance of the game. I
am a bit disappointed by the Winning/Game Over and title screens though, but I didn't have a whole
lot of time to do them so what I have is workable. I also didn't know how to do like Vector art at
the time so it's forgivable 'Programmer Art'. After that I repurposed my tile based level editor
for use with the game and pounded out 10 levels in an afternoon. These levels were ok as far as the
game goes, though I'm not the best level designer I'll admit one of the levels is just me wiggling
the mouse and editing it as I ran out of ideas. Another idea-less idea was spelling out Boyer in
the level with tiles which was recieved as "really cool" so that bit of idea-less ingenuity was
appreciated.
The game was bought and put up on the website after that and nothing really happened with
development after that. Until of course I went back and patched it now that modern browsers had
played it waaaaay too fast. I e-mailed the company about my patch, but they don't seem interested
so you can always play the perfected version on my site at least.
If you still haven't played it
yet, go ahead and check out Marty Mallow's Adventure. Click to try it out!
Well I hope you enjoyed my trip down memory lane in this post mortem of Marty Mallow. I'll be doing
a few more post mortems of my other games so you can see some of my process and maybe even cut
content and other things.
Have a good one! Until next time!
-JinrohCategory: Games Tweet
Modelers Fight Yeah! - Power Quest GBC Review - Game On! Thursday
By: Jinroh On: 2012-01-26 00:00:00
Power Quest for the GameBoy Colour is a game about Children who Battle Radio Controlled Robots. These kids really serious about their game and want to be the best modellers ever!
The game starts with you, a poor kid in school who gets a letter in the mail saying that you won a free Model. Models are what the robots are called in the game. There are a few different Models in the game, they follow the typical fighting game archtypes, and are the general types of characters you would expect. There is the Box Art Hero, which is the Pugilist Max Model. Max is my personal favorite Model in that he's pretty well rounded and has some cool moves. Then there's Speed, Speed is the only female model in the game and she is pretty much the mirror of Max. Speed's fast and kicks a lot, and at higher levels Speed is a pain. Axe is the androgenous Model in the game. Axe is the most well rounded and one of the strongest Models (not to mention cheap as a wheat penny) in the game. He also has a Gene Simmons like tongue which flails about when it wins. Lon is an old man. Lon is the typical Kung Fu type fighter with some punches and kicks, but is relatively weak albeit a few cheap moves. The Computer player like to pull these moves on you every now and then. Then there's Gong, Gong is a fat piece of cheap crap when the computer plays as him. He's got some annoying grabs and stuff that he throws at you every couple seconds.
So you have a new shiny voucher to get a free model. You can now goto the store and grab one, hooray. The shop keeper will also tell you that you can switch models at any time. The nice thing is that any parts you buy for your model will carry over to the new model. So if you have like Wave Lv. 2 for your Max it'll be some part Lv. 2 for the next model.
The game has a simple map and a generally simple RPG overlaying the fighting system. You have your home town which has about 5 or 6 different places you can goto. You can goto the school, the park, the factory, the temple, the arena, the shop, the lab, and your house pretty much. All but the shop, the arena, and your house, if you walk in, you are automatically greeted with the face of your rival and their dialogue box. They'll say something like, 'Don't go easy on me just because I'm a girl, OK.' or something like that. Then it'll fade into the fighting system and you'll engage in a typical Street Fighter era fighting. The controls are good and the moves are cool, its just the AI can be annoyingly cheap at times and make you want to stab your GBC or at least throw it on your bed. It is a good game though.
The graphics are a mixed bag. The RPG sprites are good for the time and what you'd expect from most GBC titles. HOWEVER!!!!!!!! The people their faces their avatars whatever you want to call them are horrendously drawn. They are quite possibly the ugliest characters I've ever seen in a game. Whoever drew the character faces in this game has a very poor grasp of both human anatomy and Anime' Drawing style. Thankfully the models are nicely animated with many frames of animation for each attack so once you're in the fighting system your eyes will be less strained.
The sound has a tinny quality which is expected for a GBC title, but works well for a GBC title. The music can be repetitive, but its still pretty decent.
Overall the game is well done, except for the character faces and that it is rather short and frustrating at times. If you are a fan of both RPGs and Fighting games it is a must play and can be found on pretty cheap online.
SCORE: ----------------- Gameplay:4 of 5 Sound:3 of 5 Controls: 5 of 5 Graphics: 3 of 5 Overall: 4 of 5
