[ER] Just Wingin It

Return to the Sky Sanctuary is a game created by demonxz95

Hello everybody and welcome back to another Moolatycoon review. Today we'll be examining Demonxz95's relatively newest release (January '17) *Return to Sky Sanctuary*, a sequel to an earlier game of his released in 2014. Demon isn't really known for his platformers, and instead has made his claim to fame with a string of difficult arcade games, which he prides himself in. How does this platformer fare against the legacy of his arcade games? Let's find out.

To put it bluntly, this game is severely average. *Return to Sky Sanctuary* is a simple puzzle game that only takes about 5 minutes to beat, which in its own way is refreshing amidst a sea of long platformer rpgs. That being said, this game doesn't really try to do anything ambitious. The puzzles featured in the game, while well implemented, aren't anything too difficult or original and sometimes Demon introduces segments that feel more like padding than gameplay. (i.e the part where he tells you the solution to the puzzle on the sign) Because of this lack of inventiveness, the game sometimes feels like its just going through the motions of a stereotypical puzzle plat. Cramped hallways? Check. Lava platforming? Check. Simple powergluv puzzle? Check. Kill yourself to hit checkpoint "puzzle"? Check. Now, these aren't bad qualities in the game, there is a reason they became standard after all, but sometimes a little imagination can make a game stand out more, which brings me to my next point.

Where this game falls short I think is the scenery. Considering how standard the gameplay was for a plat, I was hoping Demon would put a little more effort into making his game look good, but that was not the case. Instead he went for occasionally inoffensive walls of the same tile before briefly switching it from room to room. Sometimes scenery was just completely absent. Much like the gameplay sequences, I can't qualify the scenery as being bad, but rather just lacking a little more creativity in how it was presented. I think if the game was any longer than it was, players would not be interested in giving the game their attention. That being said, I think this is a good game for new members to get associated with the platformer mechanics.

I think this is game is a solid benchmark that creators should strive to be better than. Its a completely acceptable game that does everything right, but fails to make any sort of impact on the interest of the player.

Ratings:

Verdict:

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-=Passable=-

Return to Sky Sanctuary is by no means a bad game. If you're looking to kill some time, this is a good, well polished experience that may motivate you to build your own game, but when stacked up against other games of today, I don't know if this has the same ingenuity. I would try to focus more on building complex sequences that take more than 5 seconds to figure out.

This has been an [ER] review. If you are interested in getting your game reviewed, you can let us know on the forums.

http://forums.sploder.com/index.php/topic,502624.msg6394411.html#msg6394411

Thanks for reading!