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Message: 5182

Author: Daniel

Date: 29/11/2005

Subject: Daniel's review of "Bizarre" and some other points

 

I played "Bizarre" to completion yesterday, without any POKEs, but
saving snapshots and going back every time I lost a life. The game
is toilet-compleatable, but I think that it cannot be completed
without loss of life – one life has to be sacrificed in "Romantic
Hallucinations" [073] in order to collect the lower rigthmost item –
you cannot get out of the corner after retrieving it – please
correct me if I'm wrong.

I will be honest and I won't say that I thought everything about the
game was wonderful. There were things I liked and things I didn't
like. Let me concentrate on the good things first:

- I like the general atmosphere of the game and the story behind it
a lot. In this sense I think the vulgar language is justified (in
this particular case), otherwise the atmosphere wouldn't be the
same. I particularly like some of the room-names (like "Mean Troll
thanks you!" :-) ).

- I agree with Igor and Herve that some of the graphics are
outstanding. I particularly liked the trees, the burning candle
in "Someones in My Fruit Cellar" [025], the train, the burning fire,
the mutant turtles and Technician Ted (?).

- I think that "Someone with a Fresh SOUULLL!!! [026] is a great
idea for the room design – it's probably my favourite room in the
game. I also liked the design idea behind "The Old Signal Box"
sequence a lot.


As far as criticism is concerned, DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! has expressed it
himself already. I will just stress the fact that the game is very
uneven, some rooms are very sketchy, too easy, perhaps, and that the
linear outline may be a serious problem if someone misses an item
and doesn't feel like using the Writetyper cheat.

A couple of points of constructive criticism:

- In the room "What happened to the bridge?" [020], it is possible
to jump through the block on which the items lies, and then walk to
the left and fall to infinite death (a curious player might do it to
see if there isn't a hidden room below).

- There may be a nasty infinite-death scenario if someone jumps up
to the left exiting from "Get me out of here I'm a ......." [093]
to "The Obligatory Milk Bottle" [094].


On the whole, DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!, it is good to see "Bizarre"
officially released and I look forward to your new projects :-) . As
Igor mentioned, you are an extremely productive author!

A couple of questions:

- Do you consider the current release of "Maria on Tour" to be the
absolutely final version?

- Do you consider the current release of "Bizarre" to be the
absolutely final version?

- What game engine will the SE of "Drunken Master" use in the end?

- Have you solved the problem of upgrading games from JSW48 to
JSW64? And changing from .sna to .tap? I've never had problems with
it, I think.


And some other points responding to some other people:

- Andrew, thanks for the tips about installing SPECSAISIE :-) .


- A question to Soa1000

You wrote:

> As it happens, I have all the messages up to 5160 (I'm away from my
> main PC right now so I can't get the last 13 or so yet) stored
> away, along with all the messages for the JSW Mass Collaboration
> (versions 1 and 2) and the Manic Miner collaboration (which no
> longer exists).

In what form do you have them stored away? Pasted into a Word
document, perhaps? I am asking because this is the way I store most
of the posts (since November 2004, when I joined the Group). If you
have the messages stored in a format which would be easy to send,
would you be so kind as to share them with me (send them by e-mail)?
Or can they all be downloaded from Yahoo! easily? If so, how?


- Igor wrote:

> Anyway, thanks for all the new upgrades to the editor and,
> especailly for the tun export\import feature. Very glad =) Viva la
> John Elliott.

While I totally agree with Igor's gratitude for the new versions of
the editor - thanks, John! - as a language purist I'll point out
that "Viva John Elliott" would be just enough :-) .


- Igor wrote:

> I suppose that there are a lot of people in the internet who are
> fans of JSW but they don't believe that such group still exists.
> How could we let them know about it? Maybe there are some hidden
> pearls among them?

Steve wrote:

> Well, I've found another JSW clone called Spaceman Willy, which
> has been dumped and will be released shortly...

It looks like Steve has already found of those pearls! :-)


- Igor wrote:

> Drunken Master, sometimes I think that the only thing you do in
> life - is creating JSW games. Is it really so?

What else is there to do in life other than creating JSW games? I
mean, what else is equally exciting, seductive and inspiring? Well,
one other thing… perhaps…


Daniel

 

 

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