[RRR] The Truth Of Creativity And Despair

Behind Enigmatic Bars is a game created by windchimera734

Hello, its probe here, I'm entering the Royal Review Rumble on the community forums, I have decided to review Behind Enigmatic Bars by windchimera734. Let's get this going while the going is good!

Overview

Enigmatic...Sounds very perplexing when you see this word. Bitterness like a sour patch kid on a Saturday Night. An eerie and dense fog just fills your tiny little mind when thinking of Enigmatic. Windchimera, otherwise known as Shiftry on the forums, he's best known for his game, Flightless, and his above par reviews. Does he have what it takes to create another game that is up to standards? Perhaps... As you can tell, the title sounds promising. And when looking at the thumbnail of this game, besides the white background, it looks dark...No it doesn't need any light bulbs, I am sure that the challenges ahead will make you forget about light. Nonetheless, I just can't wait to tackle Behind Enigmatic Bars and win, or rage out, whichever comes first I guess. So hold your mother's hand and pack an extra pair of undies, as we dive into the darkness that is Behind Enigmatic bars.

Main View

After playing through this game several different times while punching myself in the face because of rage, all I can say is, it is something that is very unique, and it isn't really seen on this website much. The game play is so simple for the simplest of 13 year olds, you go around solving puzzles, avoiding traps, fighting of pesky enemies and getting to the end, but there's more to think of that. The plot is, there is no standard set plot, you have create your own dark and mysterious plot. Your own eyes tell the story behind this game. While playing the game you'll come across signs that help you create the story itself. You could be escaping the departed thought of a loved one. Maybe you are trying to stand up against your bad side and deep thoughts. Or maybe its a fun game to you and you're fighting a dragon while eating cotton candy! You sick child...Well, whatever it may be, the game play really defines your plot, and that's what I find so unique about Behind Enigmatic Bars.

The scenery that is provided is quite deeper than you think it is. Yes it has some good decoration placed for you pesky fashionistas. I am sure it'll BUG you when you see that it has spiders and skulls won't it? Hah, well yeah it looks pretty good for the average platformer, but as I was playing this, I found out what the white background may represent in this case. At first I thought oh a white background black and white, Ying and Yang, you know? It wasn't until the end and the "Oh splode I'm an idiot" moment when I realized that the white may represent something completely different. It shows the light a person is trying to get to. It tells them to move forth no matter how bad things get, the future will get brighter every second of every day. That is really deep, even for scenery, I like that. Only bad thing though, is that their could have been more black, not only to make the game look nicer, but show how much darkness a particular person has. Other than that though, a real nice job by wind.

Now we can start talking about the actual game mechanics that lie beneath us, instead of me blabbering on about darkness HOORAY! The block placements are really nicely placed. They blend in especially well with puzzles, like dipping a french fry in a frosty (Oh don't be telling me you haven't done that before!) Without the correct placements of blocks, there wouldn't be any good puzzles to experience and that would be devastating. Enemy and Health placements, They are awesomely placed, because again they're tied in with the puzzles, I'll elaborate that more later. What makes me happy though, is for enemies, once you're done with the puzzle you get to kill them! Yay!! :D Placements overall were pretty good, some of it was questionable and some of it did not stand out too great, but they were there.

Puzzles was what pretty much made Behind Enigmatic Bars fun to play. As I said previously, you had to use enemies and health to your advantage to solve the puzzle, if you lost a life or killed off an enemy too soon, you basically were sploded over and had to rage quit and as Wind laughed at your face, you started over. Don't worry about it though, it happens to the best of us. Anyways, I like the creativity of some of the puzzles, Wind used. He used a handful of them and one was right off the bat and you do not even notice it because you think its for later, but its pretty important that you take care of it as soon as possible. You see a trend with these puzzles, you do them fast and make each one a priority or you're going to have a hard time with solving them the right way. There were some puzzle I've seen that were good, but they are overused like using the powergluv to move a ball to hit a switch, nothing really wrong with that though. Some puzzles were actually fairly new to me as well and I loved solving them effectively, like luring the ninja down and destroying a block. That was pretty tactical and I've never seen that. I won't go into further detail about puzzles, because I want you to experience all of them and solve them for yourself ;)

Not only were there puzzles, but there was some platforming too. It was nothing too extraordinary, but it was there to make things more complex then they already were, like the freaking spikes in water, oh my godddd. Same thing with traps they were there, but didn't make too much of a difference. A final point though I'd like to make before scoring is the game length. It's not too short and not too long it provides a full gameplay experience that I enjoy when playing games on here.

Pros

-Game play

-Plot

-Scenery

-Puzzles

-Placements

Cons

-Traps

-Some platforming

-Some decoration placements (Very minor con)

Scores

After View

I must say, Behind Enigmatic Bars was the most interesting game I've seen in a long time. There were minor flaws to it, every game has them though, but it was made well. A great game with awesome ideas and puzzles. In the future, I would love to see more games that make you create your own plot to play the game. And hopefully less games that make you rage? Oh come on Probe you can only hope that.. Perhaps this may be a turning point in game making on sploder? I guess we'll find out the answers soon enough. This is Probe5 until next time, we'll see you later!