Recent reviews by Zephyrtf

The Swindle is a prime example of unpolished gameplay holding back an otherwise-stellar product.

The art is charming (if a bit limited in that hinged newgrounds-puppet kind of way), the soundtrack is frankly excellent enough I've integrated it into my gaming playlist, and the aesthetic and setting are both consistently entertaining.

Unfortunately, actually PLAYING the game is an excercise in frustration. Static jump physics, buggy collision, and even some sound tracking issues make the game very frustrating to actually play. Let's go over this bit by bit:

-Complaint number one, the way the characters control is very imprecise AND contextual, making tricky jump expectations near-impossible thanks to a lack of ability to control jump height. Quite frequently, for example, I'll try to jump to a window ledge, only for my character to automatically jump too high dodging the window entirely. I'll then scramble back down to the window, only to get caught by the robot guard ten seconds into a level because of this.

-breaking windows takes priority over melee hits, instead of just reacting to melee hits. As a result, if you're fighting enemies near a window you're going to die because the window-smack doesn't do any damage. This is a strange decision on the developer's part, and the source of quite a few of my more frustrating deaths.

-Land Mines near slopes are a nigh-insurmountable challenge, as the window to hack mines when you unlock the ability is so narrow that positioning yourself to do it will almost always just set off the mine. It's very annoying, as your character also tends to have a bit of drift to it.

-The way the game balances its difficulty it ramps up WAY too fast, with levels in the _first area of the game_ throwing multiple new enemy types and obstacles at me when I've yet to successfully complete more than one or two of those starting levels. As a result, I got hit by quite a few alarms and died quite a few deaths simply not knowing what I was looking at. One early level I was pursued by a _flying cop car with a minigun_ that killed me in one hit as I was in the middle of escaping, even after managing to bait out its first volley to make time for myself. This absurd ramp-up in difficulty moves way too fast and seems hell-bent on throwing everything the game has at you before you've even left the slums.

-The single-hit death system in play is kind of frustrating to deal with when paired with the lame controls. You CAN upgrade your thieves to be a bit tankier, but in the end the clumsy controls cause unfair hits to be tragic losses near the ends of levels.

overall, this is a game that does have promise, but the controls and some generation flaws need serious reworks for me to consider touching this again.
The 100 day timer? cool idea. A stealth game that doesn't penalize you for combat? also great! But it NEEDS MORE POLISH ASAP.

A great game for role-players, and a terrible game for obsessive dialogue-choice expenders.

While it may not always SAY as such, your dialogue choices in this game do actually have consequences, and you really have to fight to turn the part of your brain that wants to say EVERYTHING off as hard as you can if you want to succeed.

Let yourself get lost in your character idea, there's a stat allotment for every kind of cop you want to paly from rampaging brute to maddened intellectual. There's even a few hidden options, like hobo cop or race theory cop.

This game's a masterpiece and I want MORE. MORE MORE MORE.

an excellent if somewhat short game about trying to get past some dude in a well-lit hallway, failing at LEAST six times, then remembering distraction items are a thing and you don't care about the super-challenge ghost rankings enough to not use that ♥♥♥♥ to get past him without murdering him super hard

it's exactly as fun as I remember, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on my team-mates has never been quite the same since Reach.

A very bare-bones game for a very bare-bones price, 60 seconds! Reatomized is something I bought on a whim and somewhat regret for it.

The looting segments are terribly un-fun. The movement feels awful, what and where you can grab things is a bit unclear, and the movement scheme is wildly oversensitive tank controls. Even with the sensitivity turned as far down as it can go, your turn radius is super fast. The sense of momentum building is a bit un-needed since furniture doesn't slow you down nearly enough to matter unless it gets caught on something thanks to unpredictable physics.

The survival element, similarly, is quite stale and shallow for a game in this genre. In other games (even free flash games, I might add) there's more to the survival than yes/no questions and bare-bones resource management.

Let us take the 2011 flash game Rebuild 2, a free game and closest I can find to a direct competitor, as a point of reference:

Rebuild 2 has the following:
-palatable music that sets a somber unsettling tone through grungy droning guitars and buzzing

-interesting base-management mechanics

-multiple varied win conditions (Conquer the whole town? Solve the zombie crisis through science? Defeat zombie satan? etc etc.)

-risk/reward events where you can often get bent as easily as you can profit from them, manageable through the use of specialist party members

And this is a pretty pared down list. While not a perfect game, it's a good case study I recommend the devs play through to get some ideas or even just to have a fun time.

Compare to 60 seconds! Reatomized:
-Music sounds cheap and basic, to the point I suspect it may actually be stock music they never bothered to replace

-a startling lack of depth to the mechanics (all choices are binary yes/no options and, as far as I can tell, completely static in terms of outcome

-unpolished gameplay (seriously, I hate to harp on this, but the main gameplay gimmick where you loot your house is NOT IN A PLAYABLE STATE. It detracts from the experience and I often select challenge modes just so I can avoid it.) (But this also extends to the survival scene being largely static and uninteresting.)

-the writing, normally the high point in these games, is kind of stale. It feels like it's going for kind of a fallout/aperture science dark comedy kinda vibe, but it can't quite nail the concepts and doesn't do enough to sell the gags.

-risk/reward mechanics seem largely static, though I admit this may have just been the dice gods being unfavorable I always got the
same result whenever I picked yes or no on specific recurring choices.

-performance is unacceptable for a game THIS basic. it took a full restart to run this game properly and load times were still strangely long for what you actually get for 'em.

-Survival mode is incredibly boring to look at, read, and endure. There is no plausible reason to play this game more than 3 times as the writing, gameplay, and sound are all mediocre enough to make it not worth staring at a static screen of a suburban family staring at a bunker.

So, to recap:
-unpolished game-play
-bad audio
-buggy with poor performance
-a lack of depth to keep me playing
-survival aspect is frankly kind of dull to look at.

How I would improve it:
-more win conditions. This doesn't just mean more arbitrary waiting periods and luck factors. Maybe the family could recruit other family from outside the bunker, like the aunt mentioned in the photo? Maybe supplies are handled a bit different, with food being used more as a currency? Perhaps drop the "haha all they eat is soup" gag and let it just be a simple abstraction unit? Post around your community, find some good ideas that seem doable and start implementing them.

In its current state though, it's not worth the 10 dollars I paid for it.


HOWEVER, though this is an overwhelmingly negative review I do not want this to discourage you from making games. I only want to see you try harder here.

If you make any improvements to the depth of the game-play to make this worth revisiting, you can rest assured that I will.

I've experienced a gay baby jail bug and a literal bona-fide GAME BREAKING GLITCH within a day of buying this, so far I'm pretty damned unimpresed.

First I find out that trying to skip the slow-ass overdramatic scan sequences with the waypoints can lead to a locked white screen (the gay baby jail, essentially a bug that necessitates restarting the game to fix) but then I try and do the story quest only to find a loop bug only fixable by switching out my starship, and THEN finding out even though everything's all topped off and ready to go I -still can't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ warp to another star system-

I'll hold down left-mouse, the circle will spool, I'll be booted back out to gameplay, and -♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nothing.-

the game is still painfully slow-paced, inventory management is frustrating on levels I'd have never thought POSSIBLE before today, and these game breaking bugs are the icing on top.

So far this hasn't been worth my 30 bucks at all and I deeply regret my goodwill towards the game hearing they'd fixed the game.
Maybe I'll update it if they fix these problems but man I spend a lot of time getting that fancy new ship just to get shat on like this in the starting star-system

Aseprite is an absolutely fantastic program and I highly reccomend it for any and all interested in the pixel art workflow.

PROS:
-great and intuitive user interface, though can be a bit distracting for new users at first
-excellent feature set specialized for pixel art, including a rotoscope layer feature that will let you scale images under the pixel grid
-always adding new features upon request from the community
-nearly unlimited storage for ctrl-z operations
-option to add custom scripts (though I've yet to see people utilizing this)

CONS:
-the pen tools are strictly binary, so if you prefer using an aliased brush you're a bit hard pressed.
-occasionally has some visual glitches with the move tool, can usually be solved by zooming in and out again
-Again, lack of people making examples of user scripts
-Could use a more detailed documentation page on the website for the more exotic features hidden in the menus and examples of uses for same

Overall 10/10 program, and the best I've ever used for my chosen craft.