Aemetta 最近的评测

trans rights

Plenty of other reviews cover the gameplay, but I'm going to dig into the aesthetic because there's a lot to be found here. After playing Steven's other games it seems that he's a big fan of trying different things and seeing what works. Each of his projects feels unique in the sound and art design that adds to the feel of the game in a way I've seen no other developer do.

You might see Minecraft at a first glance with the pixels and blocky shapes in a grid. But as you observe the details you notice that the design decisions don't conform to one mold. The character is low-poly and abstract, with detail given in the shading of the triangles. The sausages are a perfectly round shape with no shading, instead given detail purely by the marbled or browned texture of the meat. There is an extensive use of particles and they're all different, from the foamy waters on the shore to the smoke rising as you accidently step on the grill. The animations of the character and moving objects are quick and snappy yet dynamic and full of character, and then there's environmental animations so smooth and hypnotic yet with long cycles so being stuck on a puzzle doesn't feel so encapsulating.

The sound design uses a fast and free approach of sampling a free sound website, but isn't content with that. It crops the samples down so small they're a tenth of a second or so, just the bit of sound that matters and captures the essense of the noise.

The music is similarly different. In the past, procedurally-generated music has been lacklustre, and mosly a fun experiment, but this game legitimately uses it for good. You won't find many catchy tunes other than the main menu music, which seems to be the only one not generated. Whenever you press spacebar it re-seeds the algorithm and comes up with a new tune, and otherwise will continue playing something very slowly in the background. A lot of it sounds discordant and halting. This works well for the tone of this game, giving you pause for thought and letting your mind wander. The start of each level, as well as some menu screens, use a predefined seed to start with a familiar tune each time you enter them before stuttering off into something new.

Over the course of playing the game you'll discover more and more small details, but while it's consistent the whole way through it doesn't get old. Also check out Stephen Lavelle's other games, including Universal History of Light, which has the most bizarre yet fitting design choices and turns what I've talked about here up to eleven.

I never thought I'd get into a twinstick roguelike, but this game is just too perfect. The combat feels way too good to become frustrating to me like happens with most games. A couple of combat scenarios tripped me up enough to where I died about a dozen times, but it never felt like it was the game's fault I wasn't doing good at it, which kept pushing me forward until I did beat them, which always felt good. Each enemy is completely unique, and in addition all eight bosses had a classic attack pattern that never felt too overwhelming and could be figured out and overcome. There aren't a billion stats to keep track of, like in some action-RPGs, and I didn't have to keep track of meters all over the screen like in RTSes. For the most part I was only thinking about how many enemies were around me/where they were, and how much health the enemy I was fighting had. I didn't have to glance up at the HUD to know I was low on health, because there are auditory and visual clues. There are also other gauges like stamina and ammo, but I hardly ever thought about it. You can upgrade your weapon's ammo capacity so that's not an issue, and the stamina thankfully only applies to special moves that you buy. Point is, the game lets you focus on one thing at a time so the skill doesn't rely on any sort of multitasking ability, and I am infinitely grateful for that. This game made me realize that my problem isn't with action games but rather with the other genres that are typically paired with action. You don't need any prior experience to become a master.

This game has beautiful graphics and wonderful sound design. There's just no way to really capture it in words. It's full of bright colors, but it's never overwhelming and nothing feels out-of-place. It has pixel graphics, but not in the sort of way that a lot of games use "retro" graphics as a crutch for lacking skill. Rather, this feels like each and every set piece was hand-painted, and later rendered into a style where everything is aliased; if you're playing at a 1:1 resolution to the source, you may be tricked into saying so. It really doesn't seem to be trying to emulate an old graphic style, yet it achieves its own unique style that completely works for it.

It's set in an open-world environment where you can go at your own pace. There's no shortage of collectibles hidden throughout, as you'll find not a single room that doesn't have anything hidden somewhere. But don't worry about finding them all on your first pass. Only after beating the game did I pick up on the biggest visual clue that a secret is nearby. And there are plenty of guides to help you out. After going through the starting area, you're put in a village with some shops. You can see what sort of stuff you can buy and start to think about it. But you'll head off in one of four directions. It doesn't matter which, really, the first one will be the hardest of the three as you haven't picked up on skills or gotten any upgrades yet. That's fine, though. If you happen to go south, realize that area's only unlocked after the other three. I went right at first because it's my natural tendency, and happily it's the direction that gave me the weapon I've been using ever since. I'm so happy this game achieved a good open-world feel to it, where I feel like I'm advancing through the world rather than the game pushing me forward as most linear games tend to go.

The only thing this game is missing is online co-op, but considering the nature of it in this game hotseat co-op is completely natural and I don't expect online play of any sort to be added anytime soon. I don't know how restrictive the Game Maker engine is anyways, I don't think it has network support of any kind.