Jono's game dev blog

Tobe's Vertical Adventure is a rather simple platformer game released for PC on the 19th of July 2011. It's about some guy being dropped into caves by his girlfriend while looking for treasure, what exists of the story is told through very static cutscenes. The gameplay consists of moving downwards while collecting gems, avoiding hazards and heading for the large treasure chest at the bottom, once you open it a timer starts, the level changes slightly to open more paths and you need to get out as quickly as possible. It's a pretty good idea for a game but the execution just isn't there. There's two power ups to collect, one is balloons for gliding and the other is a portable rope for climbing. Unfortunately they are only useful in a limited amount of situations and I couldn't find a way to switch items so you need to use the balloons up before you can use the ropes, this is frustrating when you are trying to escape. There's two characters to choose fr...

They Bleed Pixels is a rather brutal platformer with a heavy combat aspect, it was released on the 29th of August 2012, I ended up buying it during the Halloween sale because I'd heard good things about it and I wanted a challenging shortish game. It can be bought through Steam . The story's about a girl who goes to the "Lafcadio Academy for Troubled Young Ladies" where she finds a mysterious book which transforms her and causes nightmares, it's told through short pixel art cutscenes which are like an animated comic book. It's not particularly important but it does influence the levels, each dream and the chapters within progress through a nightmare and where the book has been placed in an attempt to destroy it and the journey of ascendancy through that nightmare.

Blasted through these on the weekend, I'm surprised I managed to beat them after having a hard time getting anywhere in Mega Man ages ago, I think something about timing must have clicked recently.   Mega Man Mega Man is a game I've been meaning to beat ever since I played it a few years ago, I think I got to a boss once but I was so low on health and lives that I died shortly after. The story line is a pretty basic "Beat the bad guys to save the world" kind of thing but it gets the job done because it's much more about the gameplay.

Time for a review of a game that's a bit more recent and is on a different platform: Super Mario 3D Land! Super Mario 3D Land is a 3D platformer developed by Nintendo for the 3DS and was released in November 2011. It's less of a standard 3D Mario game like Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine or Super Mario Galaxy and more of a mix between the bonus levels of Sunshine/Galaxy and the traditional 2D Mario games. The story doesn't really exist as it's just a Mario game where you have to save Princess Peach from Bowser once again by defeating him a few times along with his children.

Psychonauts is a game originally released for Xbox, PS2 and Windows in 2005 and it has recently been released for Mac and Linux. It's a game I had heard lot's of praise for over the years but for some reason had never got around to playing it. Once again I played this with an Xbox 360 controller on the PC, it is a platformer after all. In Psychonauts you play as Razputin, a 10 year old boy who ran away from the circus to a summer camp for psychic kids. The camp is the main hub where you will browse around and chat to the other kids at the camp, from there you'll go visit Coach Oleander for the first level which is pretty much a training course, all of the levels apart from the 2 hubs are set in characters minds which means every level is very different from the last in terms of level design and gameplay, sometimes even the characters and enemies will look very different.