Hello I’m Writing Another EGD Review (EGD)

Review by ethan2009 on Wednesday, August 26th 2020

Hello I’m Writing Another EGD Review (EGD)

Hello, epic Splodarians, epic gamers, amazing platformer players, and Meowmeowfurrycat. Today I am reviewing Spellbound, an EGD14 entry in Lordeldar. If you don’t know who Lordeldar is, you’ve been living under a rock and are also seriously lucky. Lordeldar has 63 featured games and makes some cool arcades. If I’m being honest, his past plats really aren’t that special. His other EGD platformer, Tomb, was a slow and average game. However, I tested Spellbound and knew it truly was special and after playing it again for EGD judging, I was right.

Gameplay:

The gameplay in Spellbound was very interesting. A wide variety of tactics such as hover ships, boats, and climbing on trees were all used to enhance the game. My personal favorite level was the first Hovership level. Items like cars, Powergluvs, and, of course, the hovercrafts were all used in creative ways and paired nicely with one another. One of my main issues with gameplay was the last 2 levels (excluding the outro) since they felt very dry… kind of. When you’re inside the realm of a great game, you tend to downplay the lesser elements of it even if they’re better than that of other games; so I will say although the gameplay did fall somewhat flat, it wasn’t bad in the slightest… but I still hated it. The game really picked up in the middle levels and went from decent, to “wow this is amazing!” back to decent. So yeah, that’s all I really have to say about Spellbound’s gameplay.

Scenery:

The Scenery in Spellbound was an improvement upon Lordeldar’s other plats, such as Tomb, while still keeping to his signature style. Many creative uses of backdrops appeared in the later levels, but the scenery was fresh from level to level. My main concern was how much looking at the trees on level 2 hurt me. Gaminator is very good at graphics, but this particular graphic made me want to break my laptop and vomit at the same time. However, this was not entirely Gaminator’s fault. Lordeldar did not utilize these neon green leaves in a good light. The trees just looked awkward even if there were different graphics in the place of the others. The scenery did what it needed to do, and I didn’t have any other major concerns.

Creativity:

When using hover ships in your game, you better know how to use them. They’re difficult to use properly and often end up being a burden to the player rather than something cool. Fortunately, in Spellbound, the hover ships made for fun, action-packed sequences in the skies! Other rarely used items like mouse guns were used in an interesting way, and most of the creative ideas in Spellbound lacked any major flaws. Yep, I just said most and ran through every creative idea in my head to find something to criticize. Couldn’t find one. Moving on.

Placement:

It’s been mainly positives up to here, right? Unfortunately, I do have a few things to critique when it comes to placement. The last two levels of Spellbound are annoying due to certain placements, and level designs. For one, they were both small levels with pretty much the same scenery and would be enhanced if combined into one level. Additionally, some of the switches were annoying to get, and certain enemies could be shot through the walls, such as the boss fight on the second to last level (once again, excluding the outro.) The placements up to there were fine, and the enemy placements made the secrets on the previous level very useful.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions:

I know this review was awful! Don’t rub it in my face. And it’s because Spellbound is the worst game to review for one reason: It doesn’t have any major flaws but nothing is amazing about it either. It’s a very good game, I will say, and in my opinion second to only my EGD game ;P. For sure Spellbound is feature worthy, but I don’t find it to be close to the EGL at all. Thanks for reading, goodbye!