[MR] The Spell Didn't Seem To Work Well

Spellbound is a game created by netshark

This is Miracle Reviews, where we might just see a Miracle Game!

Introduction

Welcome to my 48th review and my 44rd [MR]. Today I'll be reviewing Spellbound by netshark. Netshark is a member that hasn't made a platformer for quite a while, nearly a whole year ago now, so I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't as good as his other games due to that, but has he lost his quality? I've got to play the game to find out. Even though it's been a while since his last platformer, I'm expecting a good game here, especially because it's featured.

Review

The game starts off with netshark's classic puzzle, touch the orange switch. It wasn't until I came across the owl saying 'The object you are looking appears to be hidden' when I immediately knew that I just had to look at the radar, so the owl just gives the puzzle away, which means it's not really a puzzle then. The start is very unoriginal as well and you'd see what I mean if you play this game. The rest of the game seemed to be completely different to the start though luckily, but the rest of the game wasn't much better which I'll explain in the review.

I've got one word to explain this game - repetitive. A Native, lava and switch/key in every part of the game. They are a good combination of things to make a challenging game though, but when there's too many, than that's not so good because it's repetitive. Natives were pretty much the only enemy in the game and lava I think defiantly is the only hazard in the game. There are also lots of mini paths leading to keys or switches which starts to make it obvious where to go. Although the game is repetitive, this game is very challenging. Lava is expected to be seen quite often when it's in the game a lot, but you can be a bit shocked sometimes when you might go down a drop in to lava, not realising it's there, just like I did a few times. Another thing that makes it's challenging is that it's dark. Dark suits this game a lot with all the positions lava is placed in. It's not just the lava though that goes well with the dark, it's also that it creates a feeling that makes you feel like you're lost, which starts to make you wonder where you go which makes it more challenging.

Well you already know that there's lots of Natives, but the positions they're placed in are average. There're some in good places and some in bad ones. Some of the Natives are placed in too tight places, some were easy to avoid because you could just use your shield to stop them. I even saw one just fall in to a pit of lava without a touch of the sword from the player. It is important to get your placements right. Examples of good placements of the enemies are when a enemy can get quite a lot of health of you. If it can be destroyed easily without the player losing health, then what's the point in having the enemy in the game. It just creates more lag like in this game. (not saying that this game is laggy) There is a good amount of health in this game though and it is placed in when you'd need it mostly. There was a time where I saw a cookie placed in, but I don't understand why it was there because there wasn't an enemy or a hazard nearby. It just seemed weird. What I also liked about the health placement that netshark could understand (well at least it looked like he did) where people are most likely going to lose a lot of health in the lava getting him to know if the player would need a good amount of health to get past a challenging place with lots of lava in.

There is quite a lot of puzzle in this game. Most of the puzzles though are just finding the switch, which is one of the most used puzzles on Sploder. There are some challenging puzzles though. I'm going to take the climbing up weak blocks one for an example. It is challenging and can cause the player to get frustrated. The bad thing about that puzzle is that it is boring, just like a lot of the other challenging puzzles in this game are.

Last of all is the action. There is nothing to this game that makes it exciting at all. It isn't entertaining and this is just a slow paced game. Even with the fact that some of the puzzles were boring, that effects the action. What I did like though is that this game is laggy, even though there is a lot of pointless objects like extra lava pits and back grass, especially since the back grass can hardly be seen.

Ratings (Out of five):

Overall, this game deserves a 2.25/5

Is it feature worthy?

The big question though is "Is this game feature worthy?" In my opinion, no, it isn't. There are lots of bad things in this game - repetition, enemy placements, puzzle, action and loads more. I've already explained what's so bad about this game in the review, so I'm not going to bother explaining what's so bad about them again, but if there's that many bad things about this game, then I'd say that I don't think it'll be feature worthy.

This has been a Miracle Review!