Difficult

squish pod
This is a nice arcade/top top down game. You’re a “squish thing”, some strange creature which has the shape a bit like the “yugopotamians” from fairly odd parents (only less green and you’re good). You need to find the exit in a lot of dungeon which are full of enemies: mostly other squish things (called tentas), but there are also quite a few other enemies. You can either stun them, kill them or make them getting stuck in a corner. Moving you do with the arrows, and shooting with the mouse..

The game has good and original graphics, no fancy effects or anything, however the simple graphics are still nice too look at! I liked the fact that almost all graphics are completely custom and original and fit to the theme/style used. However the game could use some extra “effects”: ie when a enemy gets stunned you should make it more obvious it’s actually stunned! Backgrounds aren’t really good quality but original at least and fitting to the theme. Also the “end map” score sheets are pretty ugly black boxes: you should make them blend a bit better with the background!
The sounds are, well, a bit “sub par”. The sound effects look a lot like the basic sound pack, an they are a bit limited. Also the missing background music shouldn’t be in a “finished/complete” game!

The gameplay is basically the same as any topdown shooter which uses keyboard/mouse. It’s pretty “slow” and gets a bit boring after some time. The good part are the many different enemies and different objects you can shoot and the many enemies you will find throughout the game! Also I liked the way the walls are “bumped”: it works pretty smooth and leads to actual fun gameplay! (I always try to “lock” the enemies between a few walls!). However at the same time the game is repetitive: it contains (at least in the maps I played) no real differences in structure, nor in gameplay. And once you tested all weaponry it gets rather boring! A third problem with this game is that it’s way too hard to beat the maps: I simply couldn’t beat the third map, how am I supposed to light up all powerstations at once?
Programming wise this game is decent: it has both a few nice things (the moving of the blocks is pretty cool, the stunning of enemies looks nice) however it has a pretty obvious bug:
[i]
ERROR in
action number 8
of Collision Event with object obj_squid
for object obj_drijle:

Error in code at line 1:
global.var_florag = round(global.var_florag/2)

at position 34: Unknown variable var_florag[/i]
Come on, a finished game shouldn’t have such easy bugs anymore, gamemaker is already forgiving on this subject, by giving very nice error messages!

Story is “hidden”: the game does have a story, however it’s not really implemented in the actual game. (or it was because I never passed map 3). The learning curve is too steep. I find it almost impossible to beat the third map (lighting all powerupstations), even after trying for 4 hours I had to give up on that part!

The interface is pretty nice, controls are easy to get and shooting feels natural, the only problem I have is that the help menu doesn’t explain the specials very well. Also in game it isn’t very clear when you can actually shoot a special: the “special light” becomes clear already, however you can’t always shoot because you don’t have the power to do so. (but it never states why you don’t have the power).

conclusion
Well this game is very hard to actually play: it looks certainly promising –very original, however I wasn’t able to get passed the third map so I couldn’t fully test it. Also there are small glitches and at least 1 big bug in the game: a finished game shouldn’t have such obvious ones!
This game is really worth to play, and I’m surprised it doesn’t have any reviews yet! Jus give some extra hints on how to powerup a station!


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