Review #68 - Checkers By Mat7772!

Checkers is a game created by mat7772

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my 68th review, and today I'll be reviewing Checkers by mat7772. I've played a lot of games made by mat7772, and none of them have let me down. He's got great games made with all the game creators. From the PPG to the 3D mission, he's good with them all. I would say though that platform is probably his strongest creator, so when I saw Checkers popped up on his page, I was expecting something decent from mat. Now lets move on with the review.

Review

Checkers is a fun and challenging puzzle platform game, which will keep you on the look out for traps. It has lots of puzzles in which you can easily go wrong in that can sometimes mean you have to restart. Putting both challenge and fun in to a puzzle game can be difficult as they tend to not have enemies (which cause fun and challenge) so mat did a good job here with making Checkers fun yet challenging. I also liked how Checkers was open spaced. Instead of having a load of puzzles bunched together, mat decided to spread them out, which meant you had to go back and forth across the map. I also like how you choices on what to do. Instead of having to just follow one path, you can normally go about two or three ways which meant you had options. Checkers also had a unique style put in to it, because of the theme and the type of puzzles put in. So altogether, I was impressed with the game play in Checkers.

As I've already mentioned, Checkers is a puzzle game. It had a decent amount placed in, which were either new or had a bit of a twist to them. I also liked how most of them weren't too easy or hard to solve, instead of just having no clue or going from one puzzle to another without thinking about it. However, I did have to look at the walk through. You know that the difficulty of a puzzle is too extreme when you have to look at a walk through, so mat could have made some of them a bit more obvious to work out on your own. I also noticed that some of the puzzles didn't work which was a pain. It didn't exactly mean I had to start again as I just used the pause glitch or whatever, but it can be annoying when a puzzle doesn't work out how it should do. What I did like though is that none of the puzzles could be skipped. In some games, you can find a way to just ignore a puzzle. But in Checkers, mat stopped that from happening. What I also thought was original is how later on in the game, you have to memorise what key is covering a crystal, otherwise later on you can get trapped. It's quite hard to explain, but what I like about it is that instead of having to solve something, you need to memorise it. What I did notice though is how some puzzles can take a while. For example, when you had to lose health from a hot block so you can die, that can take 15-20 seconds, so mat probably could have done with putting that in when you have less health, or by putting something like lava there instead. Overall though, the puzzles in Checkers were pretty good.

Checkers didn't have too many enemies or hazards in, but I actually think that's a good thing as it's a puzzle game. Having enemies and hazards in a puzzle game can ruin the style and sometimes ruin puzzles, so I like the fact that mat didn't include too many in. When mat did add some in though later on, they were placed pretty well as they are quite challenging to avoid and placed quite unique instead of the enemies and hazards just being placed along straight paths. However, there were a couple of power ups that were not well deserved. Later on in the game, all you do is just duck under a couple of logs, and there you go, a pack of grenades and a life to enjoy. So mat could have added in a puzzle before reaching them power ups. I was impressed with the placement in Checkers altogether though.

For a puzzle game, the action in Checkers was pretty good. It was fun and entertaining, and was quite fast paced. Some puzzle games can just be slow, and not too exciting to play, but I felt that Checkers was. As I've mentioned before though, some of the puzzles do take a while to solve, which just slows down the pace in Checkers. But overall, the action in Checkers isn't too bad.

Lastly, I'm going to talk about the scenery. Mat did make the scenery in Checkers quite unique, as the wall background matched the title, and was different to what you'd normally expect in a puzzle game. Normally, puzzle games just have no scenery at all, so I liked what mat did which the chequered background. What I did notice though was that there weren't too many decorative features. If mat did bother to add some in, then the scenery would be perfect, but because he didn't, that's why the scenery is only a good and not an excellent. Anyway, enough with the review, so lets move on to the finale.

Positives:

- Challenging and fun

- Original puzzles

- Detailed background pattern

Negatives:

- Some puzzles too complicated

- Not much decorative features

- Puzzles didn't always work

Ratings (Out of five):

Overall, this game rounds up to a 4/5. Checkers was a great puzzle game. It was worth the time playing and had some decent puzzles put in to it. It was certainly worth the feature, although it wasn't the best piece of work mat has ever made. Good job mat, and I'd recommend you give Checkers a go if you haven't played it yet.