Tag: Tutorial

[LEGACY] Thrive

We’ll start off by saying that I was excited about Thrive, as I’ve played Spore. It’s the part of Spore where you crash-land into the sea inside a big meteorite and gobble up all the stuff you need to evolve, adding more on as you go.
This game is that exact part from spore, but more complicated, more complex.

Again, you start off a tiny cell doing a wiggle-swiggle around the sea, but instead of particulates being picked up you’re sucking up glucose, ammonia, and phosphate. Glucose acts as your primary food source and energy source (so if you can’t find that you’re fucked), whereas ammonia and phosphate are your progress devices, the more you collect of those the quicker you fill your evolution metre.
From there you add different parts to your tiny little cell body, some are just cells, but others have more precise functions like Metabolosomes and Chemosythesizing Proteins… nah I’m too dumb for that stuff.

So, what do you do in the game? Thrive. Haha, yeah but what else? Nope, that’s merely it.

I only played it for what I can say is a “little while” on my stream while making my review, and it’s safe to say it’s not the most entertaining game to play, but also for others to watch. So I continued to play it off-stream to no avail. I couldn’t get a whole lot further than what I had initially, but slowly came to the realisation that “I have to play this game for a lot longer and grind it right out to even noticeably progress, don’t I?”
Yes, that was the case. That, for me, is a huge game-killer. When you noticeably have to put many hours just to get the ball rolling in a game, is it really okay? When the game punishes you for taking a step further than what is expected of you? Especially when all there is to the game is swimming around, gobbling up things and becoming bigger.

Pros:

  • The game functions as a game.
  • Takes the cellular floaty and collect things to upgrade yourself (part of Spore(in brackets as idk where it came from first)) and expands on it, pushing it further.
  • Goes in depth with a more science-y approach, adding more accurate names and processes to evolving and upgrading your lifeform.
  • The upgrade, item, and travel menu is clear and easy to read. It could’ve been so user unfriendly considering the amount of information they’re trying to put across.

Cons:

  • Despite being a lot more complex than the original concepts of this style of game, it still feels empty. I think the original premise (that I’d found in Spore, among other games) was better due to the promise of actual evolution. Within Thrive you just get bigger and bigger and more complex, while that in itself if a fun part about it, that’s really just about it. It’s about getting the best out of what stage you’re in, but not progressing any further than that.
  • Even though the game has numerous pointers and plenty of little pop-ups that show you at the start what things do and how the game works… I still can’t help but feel a little lost even into an hour of playing. I know what I’m doing, yet still feel lost.
  • The game overall, while a good concept, is just incredibly boring. Not much to say about it. The only real danger you have is dying because you can’t find any glucose. I have found other organisms in the water that I’ve had to fight, but honestly, you’re more likely to die from “starvation”.
  • Following the above comment. I do know how the game works, different areas have less of different things that you can eat and need to survive. I know that if I go into a stage unprepared, then there will be a higher chance of me dying, sure. But when I go into the next stage up, and I’m wandering around (in the one direction the first time) for the best half of 2 minutes. In those 2 minutes I find absolutely nothing with no clue as to why I’m not finding anything or where it could be, and die. It’s not really compelling me to play the game for any longer.

Overall, this game is for someone who can do the same thing over and over again, with the same kind of background, same motions but with slight variations. It’s a game that will take a lot of time and a lot of patience, and is really only for someone who enthuses about microorganism evolution and progression.
It’s honestly not for me, not really worth my time and genuinely looked a lot more enjoyable in the trailer than what it was playing it or watching it via a stream.

In addition, please note that this game is currently in Early Access and seems to be one of those games that will be an EA (not that EA) game for a while. This is (hopefully) not due to this being a shovelware game, and because, as the devs state, it is a volunteer project. It is also apparently free elsewhere, whereas on Steam it’s paid for.

Price: £3.99, but free elsewhere.
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: None
Cards: No
Worth The Money: Honestly, no. But it seems (like Unturned) this is a pay to support the dev type deal. If you’re interested in this game, find where it’s free and help these devs perfect their long-term project.

Zesty Rating
4.5 Out Of 10.



A game premise I was genuinely keen to see if taking one point of another game and honing in on it worked again. This time it fails. Bland, slow and unrewarding, similar to how life is going for us right now. Too much work and effort for so little outcome and nothing to show for it.

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.
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[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.
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