I Realized How Terrible My Last Review Was...

Crafty Castle is a game created by gamethomas

...but did I take it down? No. That would be cheating. Instead, I'm going to learn from my mistakes and create a review that'll (try to) knock your socks off. Was I just a little bit rusty? Let's hope so. Bad day? Probably. But instead of thinking of things to blame for my utter failure in my previous review, let's take a journey into the Crafty Castle...

INTRODUCTION

Eclipserain here, as always, with my fifth review! What a milestone! I've made five reviews since I've been promoted to Reviewer. That's pretty impressive. Anywho, I've never heard of gamethomas before until I saw his feature up on the featured page. Is he a great creator? A terrible one? I hope not, considering his game is on the featured page. That would mean a corrupt editor is roaming around Sploder, abusively featuring un-feature worthy games. I suppose it's my job to stop them, and to show the world what this game really is...

GAMEPLAY

The name Crafty Castle is intriguing, part one of a good game. It sets up the mood. In this game, you control many smilies as well as frownies. You know what they say, turn that smile upside down! Or was it a frown... Rightside up... Leftside right... I believe I've been sidetracked. Anyways, you control many smilies/frownies in an attempt to collect all the coins in the castle. For example, a red frownie can go through a red door while a yellow smiley cannot, then opens a door with a remote switch so the yellow smiley can move about.

Bosses are a part of this game, too. I wasn't even expecting them. After level 2, I expected just another level of Crafty Castle and then BOOM... a boss! Interesting. gamethomas decided to spice up our experience a bit. However, all it is is a red block that fires spikes at you that you must dodge until the times runs out. Still, it's a boss nonetheless; something to shake the game up a bit. I've seen worse on my Nintendo Wii.

And this is where this game begins to shine. Instead of left to right generic platformer gameplay, it transforms into a topdown game with one smiley. How the heck is this game not boring yet? I'm usually bored out of my mind at this point. Go play for yourself and decide.

SCENERY

This is how the graphics creator is meant to be used. Every small texture was made with the graphics creator, every pixel. This game looks unique to any other, and that's all thanks to gamethomas' graphic making skills; that is, if all these graphics are his. 4/5, you get a feel of the atmosphere.

PUZZLE

Puzzles remind me of Youngcaliman's idea, so this isn't exactly fresh and original, but still a good concept as a whole. Blue smileys can go through blue doors, red through red, etc. Good idea but copy and pasted off Youngcaliman and totally unoriginal, with no credit given.

Level 5 is also unoriginal. I remember 2 other featured games that were just like level 5. 4/5 for puzzles; 2/5 for originality; brilliant execution but no creativity whatsoever.

SCOREBOARD

GAMEPLAY: 4/5, switches it up almost every level.

SCENERY: 4/5, I can tell lots of time was spent on graphics.

CREATIVITY: 2/5, some concepts kinda ripped off others.

PUZZLES: 4/5, puzzles in every level except boss level.

OVERALL: 3.5/5

WORTHY OF ITS FEATURE?

Was this feature-worthy? Most definitely. Then why was it given a 3.5/5? Because its puzzles feel too much like other games. Strip those puzzles off of this game, and it's definitely not feature-worthy. Good game, it deserved its spot on the feature list because of how much effort was put into it.