[LEGACY] Shape Shift Shaun Episode 1: Tale of the Transmogrified

When strolling through Keymailer, I often look for games I know I can play. This also means that the selection of games that I get can sometimes be rather underwhelming, or just plain shit.
The ease of getting and reviewing bad games has got me this far, being not just a smaller streamer than most, but also relatively newer to streaming, less professional and less social media savvy.
I can now just about get any game I ask for off Keymailer, assuming that it is indie, and it’s cheap enough made. So, when I saw Shape Shift Shaun, this was another game that I could easily get and play. Plus, it’s easy to make a review for a game when everything is so bad that it sticks out like a broken pinkie.

Shape Shift Shaun Episode 1: Tale of the Transmogrified, is a mouthful to say, SSSE1:TT is also ridiculous and the first gripe I have with the game is the length of the title of the game. Why does that need to be the full title? I get that you probably want to make more games in the future, but it all doesn’t need to be in the title.
Nevertheless, I’ll stop bitching about things that don’t really matter all that much.

Shape Shift Shaun is a game where you get bullied at Hallowe’en after you get a bunch of candy, then thrown down a crater that was made by a falling meteor by the bully. You and the bully are now trapped in the centre of the earth, which is reminiscent of the setup of Journey To The Centre Of The Earth or Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaur. Inside this area, the Bully, and Shaun freak out as there’s “no food” despite only being there for like 3 minutes, which is hardly enough time to look around for food. The Bully threatens to eat Shaun’s candy, but the candy has been dropped all over the inner planet. After threatening to then eat Shaun, the Bully then eats a little red Soot Sprite that can talk and transforms into a mega-chad bully and goes on a rampage to eat more of them. Using the power of more little red soot sprites, Shaun turns into a dragon and goes on a quest to capture the Bully.

I have no idea whether this is a game for kids or not.
It’s really hard to tell.
It’s a basic platformer where you can run and jump, and you collect candy for points. You can also change into a red dragon at any time during the game to then glide and breathe fire on the enemies, effectively killing them. You also breathe fire on a multitude of obstacles to get them out of the way and progress with the level.
All the controls, bar a few, seem relatively alright and make sense concerning the global platforming controls. The only thing I didn’t like was the controls for switching forms and attacking enemies. They were close to each other and on a side of the keyboard that didn’t make sense to me. This often led me to change forms when I wanted to attack enemies.

The story itself goes on further than that, hinting towards being able to change into multiple things, but I just didn’t get that far. Despite actually feeling quite fluid and easy to control, the enemy placement and the placement of platforms, on the other hand, had me at a complete loss. Only being able to get close to the end of the level out of memory, makes me think that either it’s not a kids game, or it’s just a bad one.

Pros:

  • The game works, has no massive graphical or audio issues/glitches, and does not crash upon load or during the game.
  • Even though it’s not an old game, it has that old, cheap looking aesthetic of older games with the weird moving 3D character models in a 2D game. I hold this as a positive as it’s not entirely ugly, but certainly holds that old-world charm.
  • Everything is clear and self-explanatory, absolutely no guess-work is required to complete this game. Everything is spelt out clear as day and objectives made clear.
  • Most of the controls are the universal norm for most platformers.

Cons:

  • The story is boring, rather drab and a little ridiculous at best. Clearly overexaggerated for the comedy value. The Bully freaking out the tiny red creature talks then promptly eating it seems a little unusual.
  • The controls that are not the universal norm for platforming are very strange. It essentially has you reaching round the keyboard, but also accidentally smacking the wrong one. Despite being relatively easy otherwise, this part of the controls raises the difficulty immensely for no reason.
  • As the controls for platforming are almost perfect, the game had to fail elsewhere. This is where game design came in. The platforms are arranged so strangely that one small move can have you falling off the edge of a platform, despite the image of the platform still being under your feet. You also have to remember exactly where things are, as you can be jumping off a platform at the far right of your screen not knowing where the next platform is.
    Enemy placement as well is a tragedy. Three long and wide purple blob creatures on a tiny platform that I not only need to land on but also destroy the vines AND kill them and progress.

Price: £5.79
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: 15
Cards: No
Worth The Money: Nah, not really.

In conclusion, I’m still not really even sure whether this game is a kids game or not. It’s genuinely bland enough in the story department but colourful enough and revolves around sweets. It’s also easy to grasp, apart from the odd controls for switching forms and attacking. It’s a really mixed bag in terms of a game, but my audience absolutely hated it, they could’ve hated how it looked more than me. Overall, the game isn’t that bad, it’s just not really worth the money it wants as while it probably has the content and time/effort put into it for a £5.79 game, it’s just not fun.

Zesty Rating
3 Out Of 10
A boring and bland story paired with a colourful but ugly game. Lovely controlling of the platforming and has everything a platformer needs, except for a good game design. Dodgy platforms, terrible map planning and even worse enemy placement.


Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.  Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.

[LEGACY] Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead

Surprisingly, this game was not one of those given to me by Keymailer, nor was it one that was sitting around in my Steam account for a thousand years.
Through having a Steam Curator and actually making reviews, myself, on games for longer than I’d known the person I’d previously made review articles for their site, I’ve received games before. This does not mean it’s been at all successful, or I’ve been popular to be given games to. Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead is the second game I’ve ever been given via the Steam Curator Connect, and was given to me on the 29th of November last year.
(The other one called, Zibbs – Alien Survival, was given to me on 22nd October 2020, and I still haven’t reviewed it yet for reasons, but will actually be doing eventually.)

I’d initially asked my previous reviewing partner if they’d like to review this game (as I essentially shared their reviewing website, they had an equal share of my Steam curator). They probably took one look at it, saying “uhh no, you have it.”. I more than likely promptly laughed afterwards expecting that response and said “Fuck it, it’s a game. It’s not really much of a waste of time.” Accepted, downloaded it and played it about 2 months after receiving it, punctual, I know.

Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead is an adventure platformer game where you, an unnamed, un-aged little girl is travelling across the zombie apocalypse ridden city in an effort to find her mother because “waaah where’s my mummy?”
Despite being a child, the main character makes the slightly more logical decision of travelling across the city to find her mother instead of breaking down into floods of tears. Or even screaming and crying for her mummy like any other child would, getting eaten in the process.

She travels through a sort of semi-industrial in-construction downtown area, the introduction area showing you that you can drop boxes on zombies, jump over things and control elevators.
Most of the rest of the game is JUST this, which is not inherently bad. There are a bunch of different environments, such as an actual construction site and a sewer level (because god forbid any zombie game avoid having sewer levels). The game does not get more complex in terms of what you need to do to progress. It does, ultimately, use the same factors to make the game progressively more difficult by stacking them on top of each other or making the puzzle a tad more maze-like, making you think about each situation a bit more.

As said before, there’s not much more to this game, and the only thing that drove me to almost complete it was the fact that it was seemingly easily done. Down to its simplicity, it was and is (up to a particular point where it seems it’s physically impossible by the game’s standards to pass it.) easy enough to finish. The graphics themselves were cute enough in a very amateur way, and the puzzles and things were simple enough but also challenging enough to keep me in it. A few times I did debate throwing up my hands and declaring the game broken, but that was all down to a few things that are actually easily fixed.

Pros:

  • The game has no game breaking bugs or flaws with audio.
  • It’s a simple side-scrolling platformer that’s easy enough to understand, but still provides an element of challenge for the player with it’s limited functions.
  • While the entire game is just platforming, between stages there are mini-games where it turns from a 2D platformer into a few different types of games, switching the flow and maintaining interest.
  • Depending on how much of an “out-of-the-box” thinker you are, it is possible to complete some puzzles a few different ways, which in my opinion makes it that tad bit better.
  • The goal of the protagonist is easy to follow, and what little story the game has is sensible and doesn’t take itself too far with being ridiculous. There are a few things that seem a bit out of the ordinary, but nothing too huge.
  • One of the few games I’m actually okay with the protagonist being unable to swim.

Cons:

  • The major thing with this game that almost had me quit the game was issues with graphics vs hitboxes. A lot of the time, my character would fail to jump at a gap and fall into the fire below. This was due to the hitbox of the ledge being shorter than that of the actual image. My character, while still being on the ledge, visibly was not on the code version of the ledge and would fall through the graphic. This wasn’t a major issue all the way through the game, but led to a few moments that almost stopped the playthrough.
  • There’s only one type of zombie. It’s a bit of a reach of a complaint, but there is no visual variety between any game’s zombies per level. All had the same ruined appearance, no sludge for the sewer zombies and no high vis jackets for the construction zombies. The variation between backdrops was great, but lacked at the forefront of the game.
  • The mini-games were necessary. If there had not been the mini-games, then I would’ve stopped playing the game a lot sooner. Other than the shift change between side-scrolling platforming, there is no other pull to this game apart from the fact I “knew” I could beat it and I enjoy platformers.
  • Another graphical bug that I only experienced a few times with the boxes. When you’re pushing a box, it can sometimes get stuck, on nothing whatsoever. It was prominent in one particular puzzle where you had to move a box to a puddle that was electrified by stray wires, jump on the box and jump over the puddle. That was my first initial thought, but the box stopped randomly, and I could not push it any further. Me thinking in “game logic” I determined that “you may not use the box in this area and must figure out another way around this puzzle”. After attempting another couple of ways, I tried the same way again and the box magically moved further this time, to my disgruntlement.

Price: £7.19
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: 4
Cards: None
Worth The Money: No, only buy at a large discount. 65% or higher.

Overall, this game is actually kind of cute and semi-competent. A little simplistic, and it’s only redeeming features are the mini-game breaks between scenes and the way that it reuses the same mechanics in actually interesting ways to create new puzzles. It can sometimes feel a bit repetitive and broken, but I honestly never expected it to be as good as it was, to only have those flaws. It’s still not worth the price presented as, while the mini-games are great for what they are, the platformer doesn’t have a lot of content to warrant the price.

Zesty Rating
4.5 Out Of 10
Cute and simple platformer with other elements mixed through. Competent enough to hold its own, but not enough to hold it together. A little buggy, a little overpriced, and the only thing keeping me interested is the mini-games. How does this little girl know how to drive a car and a boat?


Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. 
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.

I'm still hoping that the dev of this game is doing alright, they're one of the few that took a positive influence from the review. Once again, if you're still around, I look forward to what you have planned for the future. 

…

Boobie Shaker? [How Do I Verbally Facepalm?]

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