[EGD] United We Stand, Divided We Fall

United is a game created by jmc10

Game: United

Maker: Jmc10

Genre: Platformer

Prethoughts

The annual competition of Epic Game Drop (EGD) is a contest that tests game maker’s skill to the ultimate level by giving maker’s what is up to a year to complete a game of their choosing. United is an EGD entry by an intermediate game maker named Jmc10. He snagged his first feature in last year’s EGD with a mediocre entry named “Mayan”, but his later games has forced me to give him a redemption in this year’s EGD. His use of puzzling concepts in his Platformer games has been of a reasonable skill, and he has gained two more features from me. United was hyped to feature around twenty levels of flourishing gameplay, but we will see how well he executed his hype.

Review

This EGD entry featured questionable gameplay that Jmc10 attempted to execute over a large mass of levels, and deemed to fail in my eyes. There were levels that consisted of little to no enemies over large areas, and rooms were dealt empty throughout them. Level three and four is a good example of negative gameplay, as there were long hallways of nothing, and level four consisted of backtracking through buildings and other boring sequences. This feature failed to me because the game got incredibly boring fairly early, and once I fell in a game-ending trap, I reconsidered hitting the refresh button. Other gameplay sequences included platforming, which was lazily executed in my eyes. Some items were achieved by simply jumping back and forth on isolated tiles, which got frustrating after a while. The use of back tracking in this game was horribly executed as no enemies or hazards stood in the way of switches, and the player was forced to advance one block forward, and go back a large amount just to unlock the next block. This was another factor that caused United to be exquisitely boring, and for that, I deem gameplay to be a slacking aspect of this entry.

The aspects of sloppiness and laziness can rely on placements of tiles, enemies, and others, and Jmc10 wasn’t too hot with this aspect either. The enemy placement in United was to a minimal in a large amount of the levels, and this caused the only death to be in traps, that were a slacking factor as well. The placements of both back tiles and other items of scenery was an upside, as I stayed in touch with this game a little more, however, it started to slack later in the game. The repetitive placement of switches was negatively executed, as some switches were hidden, and placed too far behind a speaking character (to unlock a pathway). This caused the player to do unnecessary backtracking just to find out that the radar could have been used for a silly mistake. The overall placement of United wasn’t too bad, but it most certainly was not an upside.

The use of traps in this game felt very low, but the quality was probably worse. Some traps involved the player to go through a door, only to find out they were not supposed to “believe” what somebody says, and some traps were double traps. I also counted one trap that ended the game for you, and this is something you should never have (unless you have one life). One silly mistake by the player should not end the game for them, especially if they’re far in a large game. Game ending traps like this can end up ruining the whole game for both the player and maker, so I advise to refrain from these with your dear life. So overall, I feel that the traps were rather close to the neutral mark considering that they weren’t used too much.

Scenery is an aspect that truly reflects upon the game maker’s effort, and their creative artistic-mind. United featured a disciplined array of art, but ended up getting repetitive in certain spots. Jmc10 started getting more repetitive in larger buildings, as he tried to checkerboard a questionable collection of colors. He did take the dullness out of one color, but a mix-up should have been used later on in the game. Some spots that were darkened outside of buildings sparked up beautiful wonders with a torch, and this really set off a show in the scenery column. I felt that although the repetitive use of scenery in buildings dulled down the score, I am still willing to call scenery an advantage in the long run; although, some underground passages completely lacked any trace of scenery.

EGD is the perfect time to display a creator’s substantial level of creativity, and Jmc10 seemed to be a bit iffy in it. The plot of United was pretty creative as it involved uniting different parts of the former country called the United States of America after an apocalyptic World War III, and how a militia is set to foil your plans. This was a solid plot as it didn’t involve a trillion zombies, and it is something that isn’t used too often in Sploder games. It seemed as though Jmc10 tried to make this game look like the standard Role Playing Game (RPG) without adding much spice of his own juice, but I liked how he involved Sploder members in many places of this game. The overall creativity in United was pretty decent, although gameplay sequences and repetitive scenery really kicked creativity’s score, but a solid plot also helped the score out a bit.

Pros

Solid storyline

Scenery outside of buildings

Neutral

Overall creativity

Traps

Cons

Just about every gameplay sequence

Enemy placement

The game was pretty sloppy at times

Ratings

Gameplay: 2/5 – The gameplay featured pointless backtracking along with a low count of enemies in buildings.

Placement: 2.5/5 – The placement of enemies was horrific at times, but certain scenic items were placed nicely.

Traps: 3/5 – United featured a smaller amount of traps at times, but the game ending traps ruined the score completely.

Scenery: 3.5/5 – Scenery in certain places got repetitive over the progression of this game, but at other times it was beautiful.

Creativity: 3/5 – The plot of United was very solid, but the laziness of other factors made creativity neutral.

Overall: 2.8/5 – United was a gigantic game that had soft features inside of it, but it was still a good game regardless of the score.

Conclusion

United was hyped very highly, but I feel that the errors downed the game a bunch in my mind. The tedious use of backtracking, and the standard feel of an RPG made me feel that Jmc10’s mindset was that using an already-seen-before concept would boost his score, but I did not like that. The question on everyone’s mind is: is United worthy of a feature? I feel that a solid placement of enemies over the mass, a beautiful array of scenery, traps that only hurt the player, an interactive plot, and a fresher concept would grant any RPG the rights of a feature. I feel that United has some improvements to be made in order for it to be featured, but I feel that EGD will place United on the feature-list. This was not a bad game, and I am actually very impressed with Jmc10. Follow this review, and I hope you make improvements to make every game of yours better Jmc10!