The Dangerous Virus Of Mediocrity

Peaceful Travels is a game created by paq

Hello everybody and welcome back to another review. Today we will be analyzing "Peaceful Travels" by Paq, a game maker I have not seen too much of on the featured page. His games page only shows 7 games though his records indicate 87, which bothers me when people delete the games of their past, but alas we are not here to review Paq, we are here to look at his game Peaceful Travels.

I suppose the first remark I have to the game upon initial impression is that the title of the game is quite fitting for what kind of experience you are in for. This game is not the stress inducing platformer variant that brings hair pulling, so I suppose it accomplishes what its namesake indicates, but is this a good thing? The music and the level design are actually quite charming and it does give the effect of a peaceful travel, but for a game its a little too peaceful. The enemies placed in the game save for the archers don't really add anything to the experience and if anything detract from the overall feel the game attempts to generate (this is a minor complaint since the enemies are easily dispatched). The real issue is that the gameplay is truly very minimal. The player essentially backtracks though the level on a psudo switch hunt type game in the form of finding items to open up the next area. There aren't a whole lot of puzzles (though the ones that were included I liked) and the platforming isn't anything interesting. The issue I have is that I cannot find a genre to fit this game into. Its not exciting enough to be an adventure platformer, its not perplexing enough to be a puzzle plat, and it is certainly not an RPG. As I stated, Peaceful Travels is a very appropriate name for the game, but unfortunately that doesn't make for a very engaging game.

To his credit, Paq did a pretty nice job with the visuals on levels 2 and 3. I have no clue what he was doing with the intro, and Level 4 is pretty plain, but Levels 2 and 3 are both well designed in terms of layout and decoration. I think if Paq made an attempt at making a game with substantial gameplay, he is already good at making maps, his design consistent with titans such as Blackhole or gaminator, just on a smaller scale since the levels aren't nearly as ambitious. I think that the levels Paq created are rather streamlined, and at least don't waste my time with annoying sequences while I backtrack to the start of the level and back to where I was again. This in itself frustrates me though, because I know that with the right game play this experience could have been much better, because Paq already displays his experience with building the actual levels, what this game lacks however is interesting stuff to compliment the appealing aesthetics.

That is this game's Achilles heel, it just isn't interesting to me. One or two tries and I'm not interested or engaged enough to want to play it again.

Ratings:

Verdict:

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-=Passable=-

Does a game like this warrant a feature? I don't know, but its none of my business to go unfeaturing games. What this game does do right, it does pretty well and I think Paq does deserve to be rewarded for the talent in level building and design he displays in the game, however this platformer fails to set itself apart from other switch hunt platformers. I believe this is a good foundation but I don't see it as anything special.