Incy Wincy Spider? No.. Far More Dangerous..

Review by jackjoshseb on Wednesday, February 1st 2012

“Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Hello everyone,

Today I'm here for my 7th Review. I'll be Reviewing another featured game by maker Youngcaliman, Black Widow. It won't be for [BHR] or [TR], this Review was promised as I got around 80% to the finish.

Review

I've been talking a little with Youngcaliman recently, just on random things and once I saw he had another Feature, I immediately took the opportunity to play it. As I mentioned in my first review, Youngcaliman is fantastic at basically every creator, and Blick Widow is his second Platformer game. The thumbnail seeemed plain, but I got the feeling the way it was laid out that it'd be similiar to "Solstice" by Ravicale, with a bright background but putting the light level on dark. These type of games can result in fantastic puzzles and unpredictability, the thumbnail includes some spider webs and it struck me that it'd be about the Black Widow spider, not.... a Black Widow. Once again Cali has produced another fantastic storyline. You're basically stuck in a spiders web, the Black Widow's and must use sense that bugs normally wouldn't have.

Fast Paced Gameplay... No Enemies.. I Think I Like This Style

The gameplay as always was fantastic, but in Black Widow it was different to many other Plats. Black Widow has no true enemies, the focus being puzzles. This being the case there was little to no lag and extremely fast paced which is always fun to play.

It Really Is Hard To Describe The Scenery In A Game Like This..

As the italic sentence says, it's hard to explain and describe the scenery of Black Widow seeing as the background was plain white, regular tiles were used. Although there were statues in certain areas which gave a nice pop to the certain areas, while the lighting level was pitch black, I quite njoyed the sense that the pitch black lighting level gave, and on the white background it just ~popped~. This type of scenery was used to the advantage as much as possible.

What Are We Going To Talk About In This Section.. No Enemies Really?

Well, there wasn't any true enemies really, so I'll talk a little about the block placement, puzzle placement, and other random things that could make this paragraph more detailed. First off, the block placement was fantastic, in a game with no true enemies, you need something else that stands out to the user, and one of those things, was the way that the blocks were placed. You had to reach for ledges, squeeze in between small gaps and guess where sandblocks and crates were to give you every chance ossible of winning, but one slight stumble and it'd be all over. The burst tiles and invisible switches connected to them were amazingly placed, but jumping when unnecessary and aiming to not hit the ground on certain occassions came into play, one fall or one jump that wasn'tneeded would result in a bust tile bursting, and you failling past and into the lava, a very nice trap that took a while to understand. As part of a puzzle, you need to lose health in order to progress to the next area, there's a laster in the middle of a one way door, and leaning into the door as much as possible to get the laser on you was extremely hard yet possible with superb placement.

This Is A Puzzle Game... This Is The Puzzle Sectioñ ;D

We know by now Black Widow is based all on puzzles, and mind boggling traps. Youngcaliman comes up with all the puzzles that he puts into his games, and if they've been used he's never seen them before, so he's a creative puzzle man and these puzzles were no different. They confused me and left me boggled for a minute or two for each before realising what to do, in Black Widow a puzzle was used where dying to go back to the beginning was a puzzle so you can progress to the next stage. Throwing grenades through tiny gaps to open one way doors and even using a whip to leap and whip barrels to cause explosions, it was all inspirational puzzles that would've inspired many users to try and be as creative as Youngcaliman. Young made the puzzles confusing yet we all look forward to the challenge. There were many traps to add to the puzzles, with one way doors closing and diving to get out, to burst tiles bursting so you fall into lava. Like I said... one wrong move..

You all know "Exclusive Yes, Expensive No" right? Well this is "Creative Yes, Difficult, Yes"

The creativity that Youngcaliman uses in his game leaves members thinking ~Why couldn't I think of that?~. I've only played these pitch black level lighting with light backgrounds quite a few times, but barely were decent, one of my favourites was "Solstice" by ravicale, and Black Widow has added on to my most creative list of favourites. The puzzles and design were really creative. Without any true enemies, many users are surprised at how difficult this ended up, but it did, the puzzles and traps were too much for many users to handle.

Final Scores

Always good, always good, no lag and a new style, going for fast pace and puzzles rather then enemies. I like it.

I thought the scenery was good, but I was surprised at how well Youngcaliman made it seem without going to any extremes at all.

The placement was really good, the block placement was exceptional, the laser beams placed intently inside one way doors and invisible switches, all top notch in my standards.

The game was focused all on puzzles, and it certainly didn't disappoint, the traps were unexpected and puzzles ingenius, 5/5.

Another top score of 5/5, the creativity was overwhelming with puzzles, style and gameplay and using no true enemies it was still extremely hard.

Feature Worthy?

Well, honestly no one is denying the feature of Black Widow. The puzzles were fantastic and never seen before. The gameplay was styled to a new way, and puts it ahead of all the rest. It reaches the qualities with ease, so easily that (correct me if I am wrong) is going to the EGL. Congrats Youngcaliman.