Fruit Rings Cereal

Review by moolatycoon on Monday, October 5th 2015

By the end of this review the title will make sense.

Trust me ;)))))):(:

So I decided to analyze this game today because our creator here, Swedenplatformge, wanted to know what others thought of his game, so I played it and was able to beat it, and I felt like it had enough to review, so here I am. Mr.Sweden here is a relatively unknown plat maker. I, being a self proclaimed platformer 'expert', shall dissect this game, but then again, what does my opinion matter in a vast sea of perspective. Was the game good? Well...I suppose you should read this and find out ;)

This game essentially has the player running about a 'Castle' in order to save Wizards and kill all of the baddies to advance on to the next stage. The story isn't too compelling honestly but to be fair I also didn't play the first game, so this game's story might be a mindblowing adventure that requires playing of the first game, but from a first time perspective its quite plain. Save good guys, kill bad guys, also we're in a castle. Each 'castle' I'll call them, has a variety of traps and enemies that you need to dispatch. I feel like this game is verrry plain. Like, each stage has a platforming section, a section where you jump (or rather grapple, which eliminates the whole point) over lava/spike pits, and then a room full of baddies you need to defeat in order to progress. Every level is like this, and with only minor decoration differences to quench the player's thirst for diversity, the game gets pretty dry pretty fast. There were no sequences in this game that made me smile, and the layouts of the levels were almost the same. Now, it wouldn't be a bad thing that Sweden didn't change up the gameplay, but he didn't execute what he had ~well~. Essentially what I got was just a switch hunt until you could find the next enemy. There were no puzzles, and all of the action sequences were made obsolete by the grapple. Sweden really shot himself in the foot by giving out the grapple in this game. Lava platforming is always a little refreshing in games because it adds at least a tinge of suspense about whether or not you'll make it, but the grapple he gives you in the first level (and plenty of it I might add) allows the player to break the game in certain segments and even get ahead of them-self. As for the enemies themselves, I hope you like Thugs and Snarlys, because those are the majority of baddies (aside from the occasional skelly, bat and that one George at the end). There is nothing really blasphemous about limiting your scope of enemies, but I feel like the way they were placed in this game just wasn't threatening to me. The mentality when I approached one was more of annoyance than anything else, they were never in good positions to where I would have to plan out how to combat them, they just kind of existed to give purpose to the game. Generally when you place enemies, you try to put them on tricky ledges or in narrow passageways where the player is forced to confront them, but Sweden just kind of puts them down and makes it the objective. If the objective in this game had been to collect a crystal, I could have skated by almost every enemy with no issue whatsoever. This game suffers at its core conceptual value, its generic and it just drags.

Now, with all of that being said its not a bad game. Infact its constructed quite well considering the average quality on the site. Is it a homerun? No, but its certainly got structure there that indicates potential. Essentially I see it as hammering down the basics before Sweden can really start to become unique in his style. I can appreciate that this game is pretty easy/forgiving, its a nice break from the massive, difficult platformers that dominate the competitive scene these days on sploder. Another thing I didn't really have a problem with was the scenery. This was likely the best thing about this game. Don't get me wrong, its not stunning, however you can tell that Sweden put a lot of time into how he wanted his game to look. Instead of just placing solid backtile walls, he mixed it up with different textures and it worked for him. I could tell I was supposed to be in a castle, which is a good thing. The decoration did look a bit sloppy here and there (I'm not sure what was going on with those trees but the awkward square leaves weren't working for me), but overall it was not bad. It didn't make my eyes bleed and you could see that some effort was put into making the levels actually look like small castles. I feel as if all of this is a good foundation for greater things to come. I speak directly to you Sweden, you will get better.

Now I've harped on the game a lot but I don't want you to think that I hate it. I just think its very very generic, I've seen it all in hundreds of other games like it. Much like our title here, it doesn't stand out among other things of its kind, and thats what holds back the feature. Its not a ~bad~ game per-say, its just not a good one either. Enough semantics!

Ratings:

Verdict:

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=-Passable-=

I wrote what I consider to be a pretty fair review based on my experience with the creator. I would recommend you at least try this game and see if it works for you. Keep trying Sweden because you'll get there.