So, here we are, in Action Rush. We start at the precipice of a rocky, floating island after just having come out of a very India Jones looking temple-like place. Flaming torches on stone pedestals, huge towering columns and dark shadowy corners. Completely contrasted by the protagonist, the woman, this woman that we are given looks so damn improper that not only am I questioning why I’m here playing this game, but also questioning why this woman is even here. Apart from that, the next things you see are big floating words on the edge of the cliff saying to follow the path.
Then nothing.
None of the images in this article in any way represent what the game actually looks like. Some aspects are the same, but most of the trailer and screenshots are misleading.
This is the only “tutorial” you get. It doesn’t explain to you that the cards that you collect along the way are unlockable abilities, and it doesn’t explain the little hovering sword things are that you’ve reached a checkpoint which saves your progress. I only found these things out after I went back and got the card after a few times failing the endless jumping puzzle because you NEED the double jump this first card gives you. (Not to mention you can jump while stationary which, as you would expect, makes you do a stationary jump. But use Shift while in air, after jumping stationary, you will start zooming “forward”)
Nevertheless, even from looking at these screenshots provided, they still adhere to the fact that this game is a big CTRL+C, CTRL+V spam.
There is nothing much else to say about this game. The music isn’t dramatic, so it doesn’t provide that necessary feel of a race, and all the assets you jump on being copy-pasted and no variation to it whatsoever, it honestly puts you out of the game. The second level, however, is a whole new bag of beans with “fall away floors” that don’t work half of the time and no clear guidance as to which way you’re supposed to go. The game generally being a mess, I just decided to not even further progress with it.
That and all the assets are floating mid-air, there was absolutely no effort to make the levels look like believable areas. It’s literally just floating assets.
Pros: – The game itself from a “distance” looks nice enough. – The music is equivalent to static noise or ambient song, enjoyable enough for some. – Asset placement is clean, there are no graphical errors or glitchy looking objects. – All Controls Work
Cons: – All assets within the game, no matter how well-placed or how suitable the game looks from a distance, does not make the fact that the game is one big copy-pasta of the same elements. Playing the game for the short amount of time that I did make me see it so quickly. It’s the same asset, over and over again. Even if they’ve managed to make it look different, it’s still the same asset! – There is no sense of “Race” or urgency, the game literally has the word “Rush” in it yet gives no reason to apart from a timer with too much time on it. – DESPITE looking fine, the actual hitboxes for the game are particularly bad, and some aren’t even set. Glitching your character through some platforms or just being “false platforms”. – The woman is super out of place, and dances? With Q and e? It’s so improper and there is honestly no reason for the emotes like dancing.
That, and look at the background. It’s such a cheap attempt at creating a scene, but it actually just stops at the horizon and is nothingness from there.
In conclusion, don’t buy this game. It has no soul whatsoever due to the lack of the effort on the dev’s part to make something more than just a few things you can jump between. It’s so cheap. Insanely cheap, and I’m not making a remark on the price it is, once again it’s the effort. If you’re super enthusiastic about 3D, 3rd person jumping platformers, go on and play it. I do warn you, you’ll hate yourself for it. I pray that you’re one of the silly people like myself who already had this in their library due to buying game bundles from sketchy websites. Don’t actually go out and buy this, as buying games like these enables people to think they can make a quick buck from these (un)passion projects. You’re honestly better off playing Cloud Escape.
Price: £2.09 Time To Complete: 36 minutes. Achievements: 35 Cards: No Worth The Money: No
(I’ve done it, I’ve found the old image they used to advertise the game, which better encapsulates what this game actually looks like.)
Zesty Rating 1 Out Of 10. You are Snow White, and this is the apple offered to you. Play any other jumping platformer game instead. By far one of the worst ones yet due to the lack of effort and overabundance of copypasting assets. Not worth your time or your money. No challenge, no love and no soul. Better off playing Diamond Hands: To The Moon.
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?]
Super Clown: Lost Diamonds was another one of those, “Ah, that will be super easy to play, looks like it has a low skill requirement and made with leftover unity assets from a dodgy car-boot sale.” While being one hundred percent correct in that matter, it did not matter. What is the use of a game if you cannot play it?
As I load up the game, I’m met with a massive spike in GPU in only the menu screen, this continues on through the entire game, but within the loading screen of all things. This should not be something that happens. Through most of my time gaming, I’ve only every experienced issues like this with indie games. The first of which being AffordaGolf Online, my first-ever shit indie game that brought up this issue. My computer specs are as follows: ASUS ROG Strix G15DK Ryzen 7 5800X
Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 7-5800X
Installed RAM Size: 8GB DDR4 SO-DIMM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX3070
Storage: SSD – 256GB, HDD 2TB
Why is this relevant? Well on Steam, it so nicely shows the required specs of your PC to be able to handle said game. For AffordaGolf Online, it seemed as though I was going to swimmingly breeze through the game and have no problems with my GPU whatsoever.
AffordaGolf
But no! AffordaGolf drags my GPU through the dirt and slaps it across the face, and with no option to turn any graphics up nor down, it fucked the rest of my stream for the day. Why, when I have four times the RAM required for indie games, does it shit itself so hard?
Fast-forward a lot of time to my first-ever reviews, grabbing indie games from Keymailer and just taking what I can get. JRPGs, platformers, side scrollers… Anything I can get my hands on that I won’t experience motion sickness playing, give me it all because I want it all. I came across a game called Rent’s Due: The Game (wow great name, where’d you find that?), and I ran into the same issue. Despite having over both the minimum and the recommended “everything” I am still suffering greatly for playing this game. Dragging my PC through the swamp like a horse for it to eventually sink into the mud as I cry over the sinkhole. Why? Why does this keep happening to me? Why is it only these indie games? And specifically the ones that I either can’t change the settings on or when I do “change the settings” it looks like it does fuck all?
Minimum and Recommended For Rent’s Due (Why is it so high tho lmao)
It became apparent to me after loading up Super Clown, that these indie games all have a few things in common, some of which I listed above. The lack of having an option to change the graphical settings, or when you do change the graphical settings, it seems not to have any effect. Another thing however that one of my chatters pointed out to me at the time was the possibility of the game being fully rendered, all at the one time behind the menu-page, not having the levels in a separate instance. When you load up these games, you’re running it all, all the game, all at the same time, even if you can’t see it. All of these games feature the same visual elements too, either low-poly or cheap looking assets. All with such shiny, shiny surfaces, with Play-Doh features and garishly bright colours and conflict with each other.
Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine is what these games have in common, and to a lesser extent, Unity as well. While giving people an easy way to make games and making it so “anything is possible!” and give everyone the keys to making games. I much have to agree with Ego when he argues with Guesteu that not just “Anyone Can Cook.”, in Ratatouille. He does continue to go on about how “…a great artist can come from anywhere…” and something about it being much more moving and recognisable if the artist has come from “humble beginnings” which is certainly true. It’s something, a lot of us who play indie games want, that’s why Stardew Valley and Unturned were such huge hitters. What we get landed with is mostly anything but that! We get people selling the first-ever game that they’ve attempted to make for £10+, when it barely works and hasn’t been play-tested enough by other people (Red Cap Zombie Hunter). It’s genuinely something that needs to be worked on a lot more before it can be worth any kind of money. We get people who know how to cheat the system, and will churn out games that have no effort in them whatsoever. Even turning to stealing assets and claiming them as their own, or taking template or sample games, not altering them and selling them as is! (Abscond)
Do you want to know what you see in the images I’ve used for this review? You see what the developer wants you to see. Of course, that’s what you always experience when you look at screenshots from a computer game on any platform. However, sometimes, heinous things can be hidden behind screenshots taken at a perfect angle.
When you’re looking at your lovely, smooth game that functions really well, what you want to do when putting your game on Steam is to take the best screenshots that highlight the most stunning parts of your game. The most important features or the most awe-inspiring shots that will make people say “Take my fucking money”.
When you’re adding a game to Steam, you NEED screenshots; otherwise it doesn’t let you post your game (as far as I’m aware). The developer for Super Clown needed screenshots, and as you can see already, the scenes look “okay”, they look “alright”, some are a bit “what the fuck is happening with the shading with those hills?” but it’s reasonable. This is because the rest of the game is such an empty shell. If you spin the camera around from any angle you can see the edge of the game, where the landscape falls off the map, where the ground has randomly been raised and haphazardly spray-painted the terrain. The water looks so out of sorts, appearing to be “super-duper-high def water” with the rest of the map looking like it was made from Magic Sand.
In the first-ever level of this game, you spawn on this plateau where there are at least TWELVE help signs that tell you what to do, or how to do things. For each one, you need to press the interact button but THEN click on the exit window. This is while the world is NOT paused, and you can be attacked by little COVID-19 spores that were placed very close to your character. Upon dying, you respawn, but the enemy positioning hasn’t reset, and they are right where they were before you died. On a tutorial level, I’m immediately thrown into a really shitty situation and with no reason for it. Random coins with weird placements that are probably to teach you what things are, with no way off the big rock other than to make a HUGE jump into the water below. This water being so shallow that I may as well belly-flop and get it over with. Now, in the Ultra High Def Water, and the inability to change ANY settings, my PC starts levitating with the amount of work it’s having to do and with the fear for my life I “nope” out of the game.
System Requirements For Super Clown
Above all else, reiterating the fact that indie games, of all games, should not be making my computer sound as if it smokes 60 a day. I have 7 Days 2 Die, and it has a lot bigger requirements and only makes my PC sound as if it has a tickly cough on the odd occasion. There is absolutely no need for this. There will be no pros and cons list because only the cons really matter when the vast majority of people will struggle to load this game up and play it, despite meeting the criteria.
Price: £1.69 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 72 Cards: No Worth The Money: Even with it being on sale for £0.40, I would STILL not recommend this to anyone.
Overall… Yeah, just don’t bother. You probably wouldn’t be able to make it function anyway.
Zesty Rating 0 Out Of 10. A game that looked bearable, easy enough to play, and made with leftover assets. Broken, unpolished, and lack of quality settings for shaders had my gaming PC wheezing like it was winded. Avoid.
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.
NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”. Due to my PC being professionally cleaned recently, I'm choosing to give most games in which I have these “Computer sounds like it's dying from the flu” complaints another go, or at least another boot up on my freshness. Bearing in mind, these games were played extremely early on in my reviewing “career” meaning my PC should've been 100% sound to play these games regardless.
jinxlgamez
Doubtful Player 