Tag: Class-Based

[LEGACY] Dark Dragonkin

Dark Dragonkin is one of the first games that I have had the pleasure of redeeming from Lurkit. Being one of only 4 games that I was eligible to redeem, I poured all my hope into the one and only Lurkit games available to me that didn’t look like a mobile game port.

This description does, however, come with my personal acknowledgement that, as a brand, Lurkit is better than Keymailer in terms of interactivity and user engagement. However, on the other hand, for smaller channels like myself, in comparison to bigger streamers, have such a limited choice on Lurkit due to access to games being behind an “Avg Viewer” wall.
On Keymailer I can walk up to any brand, developer, or publisher and slap a request on their game, believing that I compared to anyone else, will have a “good chance” of redeeming a game. Although this is the case, a lot of the time I will be “left on read” by the places I request from.
Lurkit on the other hand, pretty much has a 100% chance of being accepted if I meet the criteria, if I can actually find anything I want to review in the small pool I’m limited to. Although I appreciate Lurkit’s approach to allowing developers to choose their audience, I find that, given my smaller size, I am severely disadvantaged and limited.

Dark Dragonkin is a weird little game, top down, JRPG-like game that’s more about solving room puzzles endlessly than any actual RPG features. You go room by room, level by level, using 4 different characters with 4 different abilities. You have the Tank character (who is assumably female, love that) who can kick boulders out of the way and smash things, and the ability to use her shield to block attacks. Not only that, but you have the ninja guy who is great for backstabbing people and can jump over large gaps. Next is the druid-type who has the ability to turn into a fairy and fly through cracks in the walls, also having the ability to heal your team. And lastly, you have the mage who shoots fireballs which can light torches and kill enemies as well.

As said before, there is not really much of a story to this game, there is a little starting story to give your characters reason to exist and reason to be doing what they’re doing, but that’s about it.
From the start, what you do is go level by level, learning the mechanics of each individual and continue on through each dungeon.
I did play this game for roughly 50 minutes, so I almost met my hour quota. It’s not unbearable.
It’s a basic game with an interesting premise which I’ve seen similar things done before by Elmarion: the Lost Temple (but that was in 1st person, and you simultaneously controlled 4 characters with the numbers 1-4), and it’s not completely lost on me, it’s just a bit boring.
It’s a puzzle game and there’s not much else to it. There’s no fear aspect, tension, excitement, or anything of that nature, it’s completely about solving puzzles in an RPG-like fantasy environment.

Pros:

  • The game works, and has no audio or visual bugs.
  • The game provides a unique and intriguing mechanic to managing 4 people at one time. Making solving puzzles more appealing due to having to control more than one element within the puzzle-dungeon.
  • All the mechanics of each character are explained to the player, on how to use them and when is best to use them. Not much room is left for mistakes made via the game being stingy with its hints.
  • Despite the game being simple, a few puzzles did stump me a few times, but that was partially down to me having trouble keeping track of who can do what.

Cons:

  • While the mechanic is interesting, there’s not much else that really draws the player to stay for a while. The games’ music is repetitive and monotonous, and the control of four players is limited to singular, slow movement. I’m aware that this is a puzzle game, and I can appreciate that, but it’s RPG styled, surely that warrants a bit of excitement?
  • The game is a little weird with the walking and placement of things. It would’ve been better if the movement was gridded, or on rails. Walking forward moves the character forward 1 square at a time, leaning towards a more move-based puzzle game. This is due to the difficulty of aiming things correctly, the rock being kicked 2 pixels too far, the fairy getting KO’ed because I couldn’t fit her in the hole… I could go on.
  • Looping back to uninteresting, the game is nothing to look at visually. The characters are nice enough and are unique looking, but looking at the game itself as a whole, it does nothing to maintain my interest visually either. There’s a lot of empty space, both in the map and the black void outside the map.

Price: £11.39
Time To Complete: N/A (The only entry is me LMAO)
Achievements: 14
Cards: No
Worth The Money: IMO, not really. It does have 80ish levels, but there is no way I could withstand the game for that long to get my money’s worth.

In conclusion, this game is something that I’d like to see more of, just with more “umphf” or however you spell it. It is an interesting concept to have a puzzle game like this use 4 different characters that you can control separately. But as much as they spent a lot of time on making an insane number of levels, I think more should’ve gone into making it a fun-er experience.

Zesty Rating
4 Out Of 10. There’s a hint of flavour, but it’s gone before I can enjoy it.
A genuinely appealing concept for a game, let down by boring level design and no real excitement, tension, or fun really. It is a puzzle game, but due to the RPG skin, it’s misleading to those who think they’re here for an “adventure”. 80+ levels of the same song on loop, barren hallways and the call of the black void behind the dungeon map.

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. Not only that, but being more Lurkit-focused in my new era of streaming.

NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
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[LEGACY] Perfect Heist 2

Another game from Keymailer, this time I was hoping for a good, fun experience, akin to PayDay 2 but a little more lax and a lot more goofy.
While I can definitely say that this would’ve been the case if it weren’t for the fact that the game is only suited for multiplayer.

Now, I can’t blame a game for being bad, just because it is dead.
There are certain things you just can’t control, nor can you do much about. There is an over-saturation on the market of multiplayer games. So much so that I doubt every single multiplayer game ever made is being played right now, a lot will have dropped out of relevancy and a lot will have never actually been picked up.

When it comes to Perfect Heist 2, I can’t reasonably say that “the reason that I didn’t get to experience this game fully is because there was no one playing at the time”. I was not monitoring the number of people playing the game that day.
Looking back on the statistics of gameplay, however, it appears that it would’ve been extremely lucky for me to even consider catching anyone else playing due to the fact there were only 5 other people playing on that day.
I could’ve, of course, just assumed that the “Quick Play” button wasn’t working and that’s not how other people were finding each other. That would, however, be rude of me to just assume nothing works, and it’s way more likely that I was just unlucky.

So, generally, what can I say about this game?
I wish there was a legitimate Singleplayer mode.
What I can do is set up a custom lobby and just fill it full of bots and see how things turn out, which was the majority of what I did when “playing” the game. The A.I. seems to just charge full force in with not a care in the world for anything, regardless of what level I set their difficulty to. This led to a few funny moments where the police officers were emptying full clips into the lifeless bodies of my former comrades over and over again until I was red in the face laughing, only feet away.
There’s honestly not much else that I’d like to discuss in great detail, as I don’t think I can get the entire feel of this game without playing with other real people, as it’s intended to be.

Pros:

  • The game works, with no graphical errors or glitches (as far as I’m aware)
  • The art style of the game gives off a great vibe, while the styling lets you know that you’re getting into a serious situation (with the colour palette). The chunky, lower poly-count lets you know you’re in for a goof and a good bit of fun.
  • The amount of selectable characters in the game with different weaponry is refreshing and interesting. I’m sure it’s more than what PayDay has, you can really feel that you’re helping out the team in different ways with all these roles, which all have some things in common too.
  • The custom mode with bots is essentially what made this review, whoever had the idea to have this in the game needs a pat on the back. The A.I. may be very “special” but it provided countless good laughs.
  • The U.I. of the game is actually rather decent for an indie game, everything is clear and concise and nothing is obstructing the view of the player.

Cons:

  • The game does have a GPU issue on the main screen, which is quite weird. Forces my GPU to rise to around 90% only on the main screen, but everywhere else it’s at a reasonable level.
  • The game relies on the player having someone to play with for the game to function as designed, which in itself isn’t a major flaw. Considering the player-base it has, it fails to provide the desired feel of the game.
  • The A.I. for the game seems not to change when adding different level custom bots. The robbers, no matter the level, dash straight into the bank and start smashing glass and grabbing necklaces. The police gun down people immediately, even if it’s supposed to be easy. It may just be only damage scaling, which is fine, but I honestly don’t notice much of a difference there either.
  • When I picked a specific character (possibly called “infiltrator” or something) where you spawn inside the building. The police automatically shot at me, despite my character depicted as wearing the same outfit as the staff, and not holding anything threatening. Not only that, but when I died, my A.I. companions were nowhere to be seen, waiting for a bit, I then flipped the camera to discover they’d spawned outside the map, so that’s fun.

Price: £7.99
Time To Complete: None it’s multiplayer
Achievements: 19
Cards: None
Worth The Money: Honestly, even if you got a group of friends together to play it often… No, not really.

Overall, I wanted this to be a great game, and fundamentally this is an okay game, or a “more okay than the average shit I get from Keymailer” game. Everything works, a few glitches here and there, but its reliance on solely multiplayer is what lets it down greatly. A hollow version of Payday, which would’ve been super fun if there were other people to play it with.

Zesty Rating
5.5 Out Of 10. With no doubt, it would’ve been higher if I’d had access to a single player of sorts or found a lobby with people.
A Payday parody/clone that could’ve been super fun to play, and funny with other people. Looking for a “Quick Game” finds no one, as there’s not many others playing this game at the moment. For a game that is designed to only be played multiplayer, it makes it a tad boring.

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.

NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
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