Just Chattin Bout' Jcaldwell

The Temple of the Earth Titan is a game created by jcaldwell

Today I will be reviewing “The Temple of the Earth” by a member whom you may or may not know; the long gone jcaldwell who at his peak would be known as the “god of shooters.” In fact, if any of you guys are curious about that term, just do yourself a favor and check his profile and golly-behold you’ve have entered shooter heaven and wasted twenty-four hours of your life in awe. Anyways, besides creating shooters, jcaldwell was also known for by his plat-making skills early on in his sploder career. I wouldn’t be surprised if you never heard of “The Temple of the Earth” before since it’s a fairly old game made back when jcaldwell was just brushing up and polishing his plat-making skills after I gave him some advice on improving his plats; little knowing that he would later become the pantheon of plats.

I could waste my breath chocking on a bunch of adjectives whilst describing the thumbnail but I’d rather not (since the audience seems to complain when my entire paragraph is composed of adjectives). Anyways, what more can I say? The thumbnail is pretty bland and dull which is the reason by few people have even seen it. Why play a game with some chalky thumbnail when you can play some of his more “flashy” games plastered on his front page? Compared to his more intricate shooter thumbnails, this game just screams “Want to play a game? Sorry, no can do.”

Upon starting the game, I am instantly chucked into a fairly short intro-level with the general throwing out a block of text while I try to rush to the end of it. Yea it’s a short intro-level but it gets the job done with leading the player into the plot and having some interesting decoration to encourage you to keep eating the pellets like in pacman. The foreplay is good and it just makes you more curious like a kid unwrapping his flashy new game-boy for Christmas in a more literary way.

I don’t really need to vividly describe the majority of the traps in the game; you can just see it for yourself. Red, lava and more lava and finally super giant slurpee lava. That’s pretty much the motif of all the traps in this game. Whether you’re bouncing like jumpman from crusher to crusher to avoid dipping into a pit of lava and say goodbye to momma or speeding your way down a trail and end up burning your toe, you are still being killed by one thing; lava (perhaps the only exception to this rule is the final level). I think jcaldwell over-used the lava a bit in this game for his traps because there’s barely anything else other than…lava. So the next time you walk out of seven-eleven with your cherry-filled slurpee, just think of this game and soon enough you’ll be mixing them up.

Before you continue to read farther, I must put up a warning for anyone suffering from a severe disorder…

Claustrophobia Alert!!

Oh and did I mention the dark too? Kids these days will imagine even their door-knobs as monsters waiting to feed onto their flesh. Anyways, if there is one major thing I need to point out, it is this; it’s so friggin’ dark. Not to mention it’s a dark “narrow” tunnel as well for you claustrophobics. Really though, it’s pretty annoying you have to use your radar to see where you’re going. He could’ve at least given us a torch (which I believe he does later on). I know he’s trying to add some atmosphere and story elements into the take (also involving the talking owl pecking words out at you in the dark) but I think a torch would do just fine in these dark type of games where you travel through a dark labyrinth for the majority of the game. Plus, despite being a dark labyrinth, the game is pretty linear in design and its fairly easy as pie to know where you’re going.

Interestingly enough, I don’t even know why I included this section *cough enemies cough* . But I think the final boss is so intricately and well designed that I’m going to devote an entire section on it (and like every game, the final boss is of course your beloved Rocky). No, I’m not going to waste a couple of sentences describing on how well Rocky is positioned from pixel to pixel in this review, I’ll be rambling on about something far more revolutionary and something far exceedingly rare in today’s plats; merging both the level design and the enemy together so that it works in a perfect domino effect. You see, in order to defeat Rocky, you don’t technically fight him head on unless well, you’re just dying to commit suicide. No, you move around the stage and hit a bunch of switches and once you hit them all, you can kiss Rocky goodbye as he takes a hot lava bath. Yea, it’s not the most interesting way to beat a boss but it’s a thousand times more creative than pitting the player man to man with Rocky who could pulverize you with the flick of his fingers. Jcaldwell did such an amazing job on the final fight that it could’ve possible been released as a game on its own. It’s a nice touch and grand finisher to the game which wouldn’t be half as good if the final level never made it into the game.

It’s rather unfortunate that jcaldwell probably won’t see this review I made for him as he left sploder several months ago but you know, this will be my last review as well so it isn’t such a bad thing. The Temple of the Earth was a fairly decent game due to the lack of any interesting traps or game-play and the dark narrow corridors that I disliked. The thing that saved the game however is the final boss which I hope serves as lesson 01 to all new game-creators out there burning up their creativity. It’s probably not fair to judge jcaldwell based off of this game alone because you know, this is a really old game by him and his newer games are a million times better so if you want to play a game by him, try the ones on his front page. Other than that, peace out and have a good day!

Game-Design: 3/5

Traps: 2/5

Enemies: 3/5

Presentation: 3/5

Innovation: 3/5

Total Score: 15/25

A review by: Rocketeer on March 2, 2013

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