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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group
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Message: 5747
Author: Daniel
Date: 24/03/2006
Subject: "Willy's New Mansion" - Sendy's review
Following Sendy's wish and encouragement expressed in messages 5738
and 5740, here is the complete text of her review of "Willy's New
Mansion", which I received by e-mail on Nov. 15, 2004.
------------------------------
"Welcome to the club :)
"It's always nice to see a new game spring out of nowhere. Overall I
thought it was an excellent first effort. Good atmosphere overall,
and some interesting jumps and arrangements.
"I have some constructive criticism, I thought some of the 2-frame
horizontal guardans brought the overall sheen down a little (it
suits some enemies, not othersm, but never overuse it!), and there
was a nasty infinite death when I exited right at the top of the
Reading Room.
"On the plus side, I liked the overall map layout with it's
extremeties, the block patterns which were common to clusters of
rooms (the Forest reminded me of the forest in Broadsoft's JSW:
LOTR, is that where the inspiration came from), and the 2 screen
descent (although I got an infinite death here on my first go. You
could maybe use an item at the bottom of the screen to show where
it's safe to fall..
"Another problem is the one way system... Should the player go right
and up at the first 'stairs' screen, and then come back round and
pass by Double Inn going from right to left (as I did on my first
go), they will get to the top of the abyss and just drop down to
their death - it looks like an innocent exit. Obviously this was
designed as a one way but it's something to bear in mind. No biggie.
"Are you going to make another game?"
------------------------------
A couple of comments of my own:
The extremely nasty infinite-death scenario is when one exits
not "The Reading Room" (40), but the adjacent "Internet Cafe" (39),
to the right into "Math Lab" (36), not at the top, but at the
bottom. It is indeed a totally unjust and unfair IDS and it will be
eliminated in the SE (I put it there on purpose, because it seemed
cool to me at the time, but my JSW-awareness was very low back
then :-) ).
The IDS when one steps down in "The Abyss" (18) after entering the
room from the right is also evidently unfair, and "the great
descent" through the following rooms may lead to some questionable
IDSs. I will change that in the SE, too.
This last point, and the jerky movement of the two-frame "large
insect" guardian (which appears both as horizontal and vertical)
also got the criticism it deserved from Igor, who sent me a long
message at the time. The guardian (seen for example in "Emergency
Exit on the Roof" [31]) was my first half-hearted attempt at drawing
a sprite, and admittedly a failure. My other attempt, the vertical
guardian seen for example on the right-hand side of "Upper Balcony"
(32)seems to have been better, even though in the SE I may consider
replacing it with its modified, smaller version seen in "JSW: Mind
Control" (e.g. in "A Nightmarish Walk in the Clouds" [044]).
And no, I had not played "Lord of the Rings" before creating "WNM",
so the forest was purely my own inspiration (in the "advanced"
version of the SE I will probably stuff it full of challenges
relying on quirky features :-) ). In fact I had not played almost
any other games back then (and certainly none to completion), and it
was only after releasing "WNM" that I started the methodical process
of playing ALL of the existing games, which has been continuing to
this very day and will probably be successfully completed in the
coming months :-) .
Daniel
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