:
:
I was here all the time, even if I didn't post...
OK, well here is the review:
Controls: 8/10
Even if the controls were pretty smooth and well mapped out, I still regularly mixed up Alpha to attack and 2nd to jump (I kept on wanting to press the Up arrow key to jump and 2nd to attack... probably because I am so used to Bubble Bobble... %)
). I know they fit well in Mario, but in this game you don't kill enemies by jumping on top of them. Also, I hated the way you have to frequently equip and unequip auxiliary weapons to be able to see the invisible blocks in the beginning part of the mansion and that you cannot use auxiliary weapons near a door (gee, I wonder why). I suggest you add a separate button for the auxiliary weapon in a future version.
Gameplay: 9/10
Mostly smooth, though it took me a while to find out how to talk to people. Also, the way enemies respawn is completely random, and to me very annoying as well. Oh, and did I say the directional jumping is horrible? To be able to jump in a direction, you have to be moving in that direction before you jump. Once you jump, you cannot change your direction in midair, unlike in most platformer games I've seen (Mario, Bubble Bobble, Double Dragon, etc.). The real plus side towards always missing your jumps is that you really have infinite lives, as long as you can put up with losing almost all of your hearts every 9 lives.
Story: 8/10
Though the story is somewhat payed attention to, this game rarely dives deep into different plots, unlike something similar to TVF or Desolate, but those aren't platformers: in platformers you don't need to pay that much attention to the story to have a good game. Still, it would be a nice addition to the game to have the storyline mean more than just the places you should go in order to complete the game: there should be something special about the game that urges the player to keep on playing (the different levels in Bubble Bobble and Mario, the intriguing story in Desolate, the different weapons, bosses, and spells in TVF, the different weapons and levels in Gemini, etc.).
Graphics: 9/10
This game is very good in the way of graphics, though the weapon, item, and auxiliary powers' icons could have been a little more descriptive. The only thing that I want to touch on is the way enemies go off the screen: instead of just disappearing once one column of pixels in their sprite is off the edge, I think the enemies' sprites should still be partially displayed if they go off the screen (like in Mario and Bubble Bobble).
Size: 7/10
This thing is all in one program and it's bigger than Gemini! I had delete all the other games I had on my calc plus some of my own programs (I backed them up, of course) in order to play this! Note: I am not talking about Archive memory, I am talking about RAM memory. And even if you do have enough RAM, you need about 50 B more so your game will be saved. IMO, you should either optimize the program heavily, split the program into two parts so that one can reside in the archive the entire time, or both.
Overall: 8.2/10
If it weren't for that horrible size (I am talking RAM, not Archive), untouched storyline, and some annoying gameplay aspects, this game would have scored much higher. For clarity, anything I didn't criticize is considered good and anything I said was good was actually very good. Please, if the author is reading this, keep in mind some of my suggestion for a future version (smaller/split size, deeper story, minor graphical improvements, key remapping, and the change-direction-in-midair thing).
