nothing exceptional

Sir bill and the bandit king

Sir bill and the bandit king is a fast paced sidescrolling adventure game! The bandit king has kidnapped a princess and you, a soldier (I guess) need to get the only one able to beat this kidnapper: Sir Bill. On your jumpy way to Bill you need to evade things like beetles, trees and rolling tnt blocks. The game has 3 maps and 1 final “boss”. If you need a small distraction from the work you’re currently doing and you haven’t played this game yet, be sure to check it out!

The basic graphics are a bit sub par. Rectangles + circle on top of them is a tree. This wouldn’t be so bad if you would actually work this “theme” out good. However there are quite a few graphic flaws: the trunks aren’t worked out enough (only 5 thick lines, either use NO or good depth). As well as it has a “major” flaw in those trunks when you hit a tree: the trunks become smaller! The background isn’t great either, most of the time you’ll just notice a gradient blue background, but in the gaps you can see a small “moving” background.. This moving background doesn’t move “in speed” with your main guy, making it seem pretty unnatural!
The graphic effects on the other hand are pretty neat. Especially the “speed” effect is a nice creation. But even these effects miss something here and there: you should add at least a “rolling” effect for the moving tnt blocks, now they simply look dull.
I really liked the background music in this game, mostly 2 songs but they weren’t annoying and especially the boss song adds to the theme! However The game is missing any sound effects, and Those are (I think) maybe more important than the actual background music.

The game is lacking 1 thing however: content! The game does have some potential to be a good game, however with only 3 maps and a boss map (which has some bugs), you finish the game in about ½ -1 hour. And this game has totally no replay value, there is no way of “beating speed record” or “collecting points” or “difficulty in gamemodes” here! Add to this the very, very few game features (only 5 different enemies types, no real differences between them). And you get a very simple game.
Another gameplay wise point this game is lacking is any possible return to the main menu/previous levels, nor being able to see except for ending the game. Also the ingame help is actually pretty annoying, since in the first level you can’t jump over them. And what’s worse: you can’t even stop the help in the second room if you started it in the first room!
Programming wise this game doesn’t have really any “problem points” in it! – The particle effects work good, I couldn’t find any bugs. However like I said already, the game is so small that there simply isn’t a lot to make in the game! Small additions like ragdoll-physical waving trees could really increase the overall presentation of the game though! Now the game just looks “unprofessional”. Also the speed slow-down when colliding with a tree look unnatural it’s too abrupt.

The game does, at least, have a story. It is a bit too basic but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter however is that you only see the story during the “start” of the game. After that the story basically is abandoned and you just walk your way through the world, which has nothing to do with the story.

The controls are maybe the best thing of the game: the controls are frustrating, but in the good sense of the word! You can’t slow down to 0, which creates the fast paced gameplay and you’ll need to react quickly and take every opportunity you have to beat that “obstacle”. However the keys allow for enough control to make you able to jump over the pits, evade the obstacles and wait a small moment till that part of tnt is in the right place to jump!

conclusion:
Well this game isn’t very great! – true it doesn’t have any problems, and the controls are pretty neat. However the gameplay graphics and sounds really do let this game down, making it only fun to play 1 time. All in all I give this game 2.6 stars!

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