During my time on these forums, I've seen some new (and old) mods being released and/or updated, several people commenting on them, and too many messages complaining/whining about the comments and critics, sometimes insulting and almost always really dumb. All of those things are to be expected in any somewhat-popular community, but still.
For the modders who wish to improve the quality of their production, I would like to provide a way to obtain feedback that's as objective and complete as can be. If you're not afraid of genuine, impartial comments on your work (think well about that part), you can make a request in this thread.
I will play your game and write something about it, depending on what you want me to do:
- Quick test, comments about the general feeling, design and idea of the game, bug fixes, maybe some suggestions, basically what people already do when you post a new mod
- Meta-analysis, where I also talk about modding conventions and how the mod compares to the rest of the community (basically where it stands in terms of originality and how well the community will probably take it), great for new modders who want to learn how to make proper classic mods
- Review, focusing more on the overall game design and choices made in the game, mostly for experienced modders with mods that are in a polished state, either demo or full game, with a mark at the end if you want
- Alpha/Beta-test, a complete and thorough technical test where I try to find and report as many bugs and issues as possible (this one will take way longer to make)
- Prototype test, if your mod is still a prototype and you want to know if the direction you took is right and/or you want advice on where to go next.
Simply post your mod in this thread while detailing what you'd like me to focus on, and I'll give you a (really, really loose) estimate of when I'll be done. I'll post the review here too. If you'd rather not make your mod public, you should still post in this thread, but you can send me the mod in a separate private message. If you'd rather not have the REVIEW made public, I can send it to you via PM as well. Make sure you warn me in your post.
Depending (heavily) on the type of test you want and the size of your mod, you may have to wait for as short as one day and as long as a couple weeks. I'll try to focus more on the quick reviews, to not make you wait for a too disproportionately long time.
If you would like to provide tests and reviews and wish to use this thread along with me, I will ask you to talk about it with me first. Before I can allow you to be a reviewer in this thread, I would like to make sure that your work is not going to be hasty, subjective and/or plain wrong.
This is not at all in bad faith. On the contrary, it's to make sure that anyone asking for a test/review of their game should receive something as good-quality and unprejudiced as possible.
DISCLAIMER: I am aware that the only thing this thread relies on is your trust in my judgement and my impartiality. This is something that is basically impossible to guarantee. Since not many of you know me well, this thread is likely to flop. If it does, so be it I guess! I'm not going to insist that you guys trust my opinion (although I'd be honored if you did). In any case, it's not like asking for a review is going to cost you anything, right?
I am an aspiring game designer and indie game developer. I have written lots of designs and experiments, although only a few became a reality. My most complete project is the game design of a tiny and cute platformer, upcoming on Steam Greenlight (probably) soon (who knows when).
I've studied game design a fair amount of time, and although indie game development is not my career choice for now, I fully intend on going that way once I feel ready to.
I was an active beta-tester for several years on the biggest french RPG Maker community at the time, Oniromancie. I know how to find well-hidden bugs.
Also I do not make Cave Story mods anymore, but I used to. For example, I was part of the old and forsaken Take 8 project.
Hey Hiino. I first want to thank you for making this thread, as you seem committed to helping improve the quality of mods in the community. It's a shame that nobody has decided to use this yet, but that can probably be attributed to the lack of activity in this small community.
If I may request your services, I would really appreciate if you could look at a mod that I released a few years back, Cave Story X Mega Man. This is something that I never got around to finishing, but I feel like it's fairly solid in terms of overall design and polish. One of these days I want to go back and finish it for good, so it would help to have an objective opinion of what I did right (and wrong) when I made this demo. I'm hoping that you can do a "Review" and "Alpha/Beta-test" write-up for it, but you can mention anything that you think would be good for me to know.
You can make all of this public. Thanks for taking time out to do this man.
Hey Hiino. I first want to thank you for making this thread, as you seem committed to helping improve the quality of mods in the community. It's a shame that nobody has decided to use this yet, but that can probably be attributed to the lack of activity in this small community.
You're welcome!
I predicted that the thread was likely not to get a lot of answers, at least in the beginning. I'm hoping people will be a bit more interested in this after I've written a couple reviews. We'll see.
If I may request your services, I would really appreciate if you could look at a mod that I released a few years back, Cave Story X Mega Man. This is something that I never got around to finishing, but I feel like it's fairly solid in terms of overall design and polish. One of these days I want to go back and finish it for good, so it would help to have an objective opinion of what I did right (and wrong) when I made this demo. I'm hoping that you can do a "Review" and "Alpha/Beta-test" write-up for it, but you can mention anything that you think would be good for me to know.
You can make all of this public. Thanks for taking time out to do this man.
If it's okay with you, I will do the review first and the test afterwards. That way you'll be able to get a general opinion early, and I'll be able to take my time with bugs without also having to worry about general design (as I mentioned in the OP, it will take longer).
I guess you can expect to receive the review on Saturday (July 2nd, 2016). The upcoming week will probably be pretty busy on my end, so I can't give you a precise date for the test, but let's try to get it done by July 8th, 2016.
EDIT : oh, also, do you want the review to be rated, or will commentary be enough?
I don't actually have a scoring system in place yet, but I was thinking something like a 1-10 score per element (gameplay, story, music, etc) plus a general score.
EDIT: Wow, I told you August when I meant July, why did nobody say anything
NB: Of course, elements marked as "Things to come" in the mod thread will not negatively affect the review. However, since such a list does exist in the thread, I will consider everything not listed there to be in its final stage for this version.
NB2: Keep in mind that I'm in no way a Mega Man expert. I only played MM2 and MMX (not even entirely), and watched a couple let's play videos. If what I say about the series is not accurate, feel free to correct me.
Officially Tpcool's first mod, Cave Story X Mega Man has a straightforward (but not very catchy) name, as it aims to be the combination of a classic Mega Man design with the Cave Story engine.
It may be short (I would say about 15 to 20 minutes) and unfinished, but what does exist is well-polished and feels, more or less, like the demo of a final version.
Assets
The mod presents itself with customized introduction, title screen, songs, and some sprites. Seeing so much effort put into giving an identity to the mod at such an early state is pleasing.
However, the complete lack of custom graphics (enemies and tilesets) makes it all the more disappointing. The Cave Story tilesets clash just a little bit with the flat Mega Man sprites, but most of all, they don't seem to go well with the areas; the "Underground" gets a Labyrinth tileset with automatic moving platforms and floating mechanical Fire Whirrs, while the "Lost Facility" gets a blue Cave (actually PrtJail) tileset WITHOUT any automatic or mechanical elements, ironically.
The soundtrack is a very big part of the mod, and a very positive point. I enjoyed these Mega Man OST renditions, and I would love to hear more of the iconic songs from the series. The sound effects are also more or less there, although they may need a little rework (and there needs to be more of them).
I was pleasantly surprised by the cutscenes upon defeating the bosses. Very nice touch, and well-made too! I would have liked cutscenes to introduce stages and/or bosses though...
One last thing: curiously, weapons gained from defeating bosses do not look like the bosses' weapons at all. A simple visual edit, even if the weapon does not work in the same way (yet?), would have been satisfying. It's not all that important, but it leaves me wondering where the weapons the player get come from.
Overall, I'm doubtful of the artistic choices made in this mod. It seems like most of the art was supposed to reference Mega Man, and it's clear that a good amount of work was put into the OST, but tilesets and monsters were totally forgotten along the way.
Score: 6/10
Game design
The game, like Mega Man, consists in a lobby from which several destinations (levels) are available. Four can be seen, but only two are active in this version. They can be played in any order, although they are not the same difficulty, in a typical Mega Man fashion.
The autosave/checkpoint system is simple but feels fresh and nice. No need to manually interact with an entity and explore textboxes, like the the original Cave Story. Instead, designated points in the levels serve as checkpoints, that can be returned to upon death, provided the player has enough lives left. Otherwise, they get the dreaded Game Over, whose only real effect on the game is that it erases whatever checkpoint they currently hold (and it makes bonuses respawn).
The presence of a limit on lives (with a game over system) scared me, though. The association of checkpoints and stocks is to be expected in an old-school platformer and especially in a Mega Man-like game, but there is a reason why games have progressively evolved to feature other systems instead. Unless the level design is flawless, such functionalities are bound to create a frustrating experience for the player. We are not in the Nintendo Hard era anymore. NB: Do notice that I am talking about frustration here, and not about difficulty. Those are two different concepts, and there is nothing wrong with a very hard game.
And lo and behold, the game becomes a bit frustrating whenever an insta-death is involved. I will be talking a bit more about difficulty/frustration in the "Level design" paragraph.
A nice, subtle touch to the stock system is that bonuses (most importantly 1-ups) reappear if you die without reaching a checkpoint. It may or may not have been on purpose, but NOT doing so results in a situation where it is more profitable for the player to suicide until they get a game over (which is a time-consuming procedure) than to keep playing normally.
Good and less optimal ideas brought together make for an interesting mod. Maybe a little (justified) personality, outside of the scope of Mega Man or Cave Story, would be welcome?
Score: 6.5/10
Difficulty and balance
I think something that is definitely lacking is how enemies don't drop anything when they die. Both Cave Story and Mega Man have drops, so I am not sure where this design choice is coming from. I would have been fine with it had it been justified, but in a context where lives and options to refill one's health and ammo are both limited, I feel it is a mistake.
Let's break down the options for health and ammo refill:
- dying (defeats the point),
- energy tanks (too rare: there is only one, which is in the lost facility),
- 2HP bonuses here and there (not efficient enough for their scarcity, no equivalent for ammo).
This forces the player to be overly conscious of their health. It has little incidence on the final difficulty of the game (since the rest of the game will (should) be scaled on how much health the player loses and gains over time), but I feel like it can have a strong psychological effect on the player: instead of figuring that mistakes are not such a big deal since they can refill it, they will be afraid to lose health and not be able to get it back before the boss, leading to a slower and more careful play style, far from the dynamic pace that makes both Mega Man and Cave Story so entertaining.
Moreover, contrarily to Mega Man (and true to Cave Story), in the scope of a single screen, enemies exist in a limited amount and do not respawn. Adding to that the fact that going back to a previous screen is impossible (save for a couple of exceptions), it is safe to assume that farming is not an actual option. If enemies did drop health and/or ammo refills, simply controlling the drop rate would be enough to control the amount of health and ammo the player can obtain from enemies. On the other hand, it also further reduces the dynamism of the game (the player can relax whenever they clear an area).
Finally, since enemies do not drop anything when they die, what is even the point in wasting time, ammo and health trying to kill them? Most of them can and should be avoided, which is too bad in my opinion. If that wasn't enough, the base weapon has an extremely long range AND goes through walls, which allows the player to snipe most of the bothersome enemies, and further incitates them to play slow and carefully.
Sadly, I did not like the health management in this game. The gameplay feels too "campy" for this genre. Plus, its lack of general difficulty aside from critical spots make for an experience that's more frustrating than it should have been.
Score: 4.5/10
Level design
Each level consists in a straightforward series of screens with enemies and traps. It is easy to understand and, again, very Mega Man-like, with a linear progression and somewhat hard-to-reach alternate routes with bonuses.
As I said earlier, the game feels frustrating whenever an insta-death is involved. That is the main point I would like to talk about here: the game is very simple... except when it isn't. Difficulty spikes are huge: navigating through the enemies is an easy enough task, and sometimes the player will miss a jump and land on spikes, but there are areas where a tiny mistake on a jump or a single bullet hit will make them fall into a death trap instead. This is something that exists in both Mega Man and Cave Story, and I am absolutely not a fan of it.
A death trap is like a bottomless pit: if you fall in it, you die (the main difference between the two being that you can escape a death trap if you're in the middle of hitstun and there's a reachable ledge nearby).
Bottomless pits are common in games like the Mario series, where enemies kill you in one or two hits anyway (we can say that in Mario, one mistake equals death). They are less justifiable in games where you have enough health to survive many hits: the player's topmost (and usually only) concern becomes "do not fall into the pit", as it is several times more punishing than simply losing a little bit of health here and there.
When presented with a situation where they must pass through a regular enemy above a bottomless pit, the logical course of action becomes to completely ignore the enemy (and thus, probably jumping into it without any concern) in order to make sure the pit is avoided. Even worse in the case of a death trap, hitting the enemy can actually become profitable as entering hitstun grants invincibility for a short time.
Furthermore, pits and death traps are not the only problem: anything that kills the player in one hit qualifies, like the presses or that one trap with the moving platforms.
About the platforming part: I can tell there are some spots the player is supposed to be able to reach in specific ways only (which usually come down to variations of "do not miss that first platform"), but since you can damage boost like crazy in this game, the point is kind of lost sometimes (example: the 1-up in the Underground).
Granted, the health refill limits I talked about earlier serve to discourage this kind of behaviour from the player, but still.
Now for the good stuff: the level design is actually quite smart, as it introduces enemies and mechanisms smoothly, one after the other, in orderly fashion. The player is put in situations where they experience new concepts without much pressure or danger of failure being forced on them.
This seems like it's not much, but it is actually huge. It allows for the player to feel comfortable and never confused about what they must do in certain situations. A lot of amateur games tend to not do that at all, resulting in unwelcoming "die-and-retry" setups.
Everything considered, the level design is skillfully handled. It's just enough to add some value to the game, without being overwhelming nor confusing at all. Pretty well-done.
Score: 7.5/10
Misc
Some bugs, but they don't hinder the gameplay.
I never managed to get to the lost facility's secret, even after I hacked in (!!) a teleporter. I had a terrible time trying. Farming for secrets really sucks in this game due to its design (one-way routes, few checkpoints).
The customized readme is nice, especially the song credits. There is no mention of a license and/or copyright though. There should probably be one, just in case.
Conclusion
A lot of edits have been made to bring this mod very close to a Mega Man game, though maybe not enough.
The gameplay feels a bit slower than it should have been, and although it does feature some elements that do not sit very well with our current video game era, it still hits the bullseye on many cornerstones of the Mega Man series.
The level design, enemies and bosses are nothing too remarkable, be it positively or negatively, but the whole thing feels rather nice and fluid nonetheless. Only the difficulty curve is stuttering a bit, and makes the experience a bit less enjoyable.
Playing this game was a good time still, and I would enjoy seeing more of it!
Well Hiino, I figure getting critique from someone who has more experience than me in Game Design would be the biggest thing I'd need for this mod, Hat Story.
I won't talk too much about the intention about it here. I already wrote up a little backstory for it on the thread page. I'd just like a full review with numerical scores for this thing, since it seemed to be kinda swept under the rug when I first released it. It's better having feedback, good or bad, than none at all.
Well Hiino, I figure getting critique from someone who has more experience than me in Game Design would be the biggest thing I'd need for this mod, Hat Story.
I won't talk too much about the intention about it here. I already wrote up a little backstory for it on the thread page. I'd just like a full review with numerical scores for this thing, since it seemed to be kinda swept under the rug when I first released it. It's better having feedback, good or bad, than none at all.
Alright. By "short review", do you mean a quick test (see first post), or do you want an actual review like Tpcool but shorter?
In any case, I can probably get it done by July 7th, 2016.
Thanks I try
I did put a lot of work into that one, but I believe that's because it's the first one and I wanted to get a few points across. I predict reviews will gradually get smaller and smaller due to the reusability of arguments that have already been made in previous ones (I will be able to link or copy-paste them).
NB: Today I learned that reviewing a mod made in four hours is very hard. Do I take into account that it was made in a hurry, or do I judge it as a completed mod?
In the end, I decided on the former, because the time constraint was an integral part of the motivation behind the mod.
This very short mod (2 real maps, 5 minutes) tries to prove a point: that it's possible to make "a much better mod" than Oreoh's Hotondo 2!!! in a very short time. I am not sure that making a mod in order to one-up a kid that tried their earnest to make something (even if that something turns out to be bad ESPECIALLY if it turns out bad, and even if that kid turns out to be a troll afterwards) is a good motivation, but I guess it's fine as long as the mod is good.
Since the goal is not "to make a good mod" but "to make a good enough mod within time constraints", there is not much that can be judged aside from whether or not zxin has reached his goal. Nevertheless, let's try to scrape further.
Assets
As expected, there is not much new content in the mod, but every default element that hinted at it being a mod of an existing game (such as Pixel's splash screen, watermark, version number, etc) was removed, at least.
Seeing not only one, but two custom weapons with their own design, appearance and bullets pleasantly surprised me. The horrible spammy sound of the second weapon, not so much.
The third map, a nice, dark, spooky area with complete ominous silence, was a real treat, which quickly turned into a disappointment when I saw that it marked, in fact, the end of the mod, and that the map was completely empty.
This is basically a mod made with the original Cave Story assets, with a few surprises that leave me wanting to see what it could have become with more time.
Game design
This is a vanilla approach to a Cave Story mod: get a gun, shoot enemies, get stronger, shoot more enemies. It's a solid concept, it has proven its worth, no surprise.
Not even a boss, and the end of the mod takes the player by surprise. Some element of conclusion would have been welcome there.
Difficulty and balance
Two weapons are available, but the point is kind of hard to see. The base weapon is way more useful than the other one. It has more range, infinite ammo, and does not fall behind in terms of damage. It is more useful against almost all the enemies. Plus it's already partially leveled up. Taking a little more time to tweak the weapons a bit would have been good.
More importantly, the difficulty curve is kind of all over the place. The first map is filled to the brim with unmoving bats, then the latter part of the second map is filled to the brim with unmoving parrots. Those areas (especially the latter) are completely trivial, and come down to mere annoyances, enemies that the player has to get rid of just because they are here.
However, the few critters in the first map, and more diverse enemies in the beginning of the second map, give a little tension boost. The narrow path of the first map make dealing with critters tough, and slopes in the second map force the player to deal with the enemies, with otherwise predictable patterns, extra carefully.
The biggest problem is that there is a clear schism between the weak enemies in the first map and the very sturdy enemies in the second map. If your weapon just so happens to be lower-leveled, the player will have a very hard time in the second map, and they might want to farm the first map until their weapon get to a reasonable level, because the increase in damage gained from leveling up is astounding. On the other hand, if the player does well, they will reach level 3 very quickly, because enemies in the second map drop a lot of experience, and it will make that part extremely easy.
In short, some work was obviously put into balancing the game, but still not enough. This matter is already very hard to deal with normally, so time constraints make the job downright impossible. This mod isn't so bad at it, after all.
Level design
Transitions between maps are weird. The first cave immediately becomes a sand zone, which suddenly becomes a spooky dark area, with no continuity.
There is a bit of precise platforming pretty early into the mod (beginning of second map), with an especially tricky jump right above a surprise Sandcroc death trap. That's not cool.
However, it is easy to see that this platforming sequence is optional. The design is pretty good, with a Life Capsule put in the right place at the right time, skeletons/skulls hinting at the presence of the Sandcroc (which are later used without the presence of a Sandcroc, leading to confusion), and a generally fluid path.
The latter part of the second map, with all the parrots, really feels hastily made. It looks a lot like the time limit was drawing near.
The slopes are cool as they add a tricky element to some enemies, but there are lots of slopes almost everywhere and it becomes kind of bothersome. Aside from that, the path the player must take is obvious and feels good to explore. This is not a bad job at all.
Misc
I don't want to point out bugs in reviews but this one was too big not to mention. Even mods made under time constraints need to be proofread correctly!
A couple of grammar mistakes/typos were made as well, which is too bad for a mod with barely any text.
Awkward waiting times in the splash screen and at the end are awkward. I thought the mod was broken at first.
Conclusion
For a mod made in four hours, this has some neat content, even though there are obvious gaps in the design, especially the lack of an actual end (and the introduction of a new map with a new tileset that lead to absolutely nothing). This mod easily clears its initial goal. This is a very good example of what can be done in an extremely short time.
But even more than that, in my opinion, this is a very good example of why making a mod in an extremely short time is a bad idea. It does not seem possible, even for an experienced and savvy modder, to be able to give a mod the polishing touches it deserves in such a short time. Indeed, basically all my concerns with this mod come down to "zxin would have done it correctly, had he put more time into it".
The mod is not bad, and its author clearly knows what he is doing. Alas, it seems that time is a critical resource that can't really be done away with, after all.
What I meant was, by the time you reach the second weapon, your first weapon should already be around level 2. So keeping the first weapon and never using the second one is even more advantageous.
The biggest problem is that there is a clear schism between the weak enemies in the first map and the very sturdy enemies in the second map. If your weapon just so happens to be lower-leveled, the player will have a very hard time in the second map, and they might want to farm the first map until their weapon get to a reasonable level, because the increase in damage gained from leveling up is astounding. On the other hand, if the player does well, they will reach level 3 very quickly, because enemies in the second map drop a lot of experience, and it will make that part extremely easy. Ah, so the weapons should level up easier.
That's not the issue, instead there should be intermediate enemies between the weak ones in the first cave and the sturdy ones in the second cave. Also, weapon damage should be revised.
This matter is already very hard to deal with normally, so time constraints make the job downright impossible. Its not hard to do, merely time consuming to perfect. And I didn't perfect it.
It actually is kind of hard in my opinion, but yes, what I meant is that it's hard to deal with time-wise. You can't really do that with such constraints.
There is an "increaced" when you take the Life Capsule, and a "propperly" in the preachy speech at the end of the mod. There might be others, I haven't proofread it completely.
Awkward waiting times in the splash screen and at the end are awkward. I thought the mod was broken at first. The wait on the splash screen isn't fixable, and the one at the end... error... you mean the one letting the music fade out?
Fixable or not, it feels weird. A simple, classic "zxin presents" would have been enough for the splash screen.
About the one at the end, well, I guess that's the one I'm talking about? It's a bit too long to feel natural. Maybe increase the fade-out speed, or maybe make the music fade out DURING the speech instead of after? Idk
Quick test - Cave Story Return of the Demon Crown by TheVirtualBoy
So I ended up having a lot to say about this mod, and way less time than I predicted. It would need a more thorough playthrough to catch all the little mistakes and things that need to be corrected in order for it to become more polished.
Important things
There is no readme, and more importantly, no configuration executable. I'm not sure why, but it's definitely a bad idea.
There are a fair share of new graphics and customized sprites, and I liked how the title screen was filled with art instead of there being a boring grey nothing!
... But I have to say, a lot of those graphics show a distinct lack of quality. Not so much with sprites (maybe because they are low-resolution), but higher-scale things like facepics and the title screen look pretty bad. I am in no way an expert at digital drawing, so you should ask more skilled people for advice in order to improve, or simply ask for someone else to make the assets for your mod(s). You'll be able to use the readme to credit them.
There's new music in the title screen too. That's neat. I'm not an expert at music, so I cannot judge of its quality, but it sounds fine. If there were a readme, you could specify where you got it from or if you made it yourself (and what its name is)!
I have found two (2) possible softlocks in the game. Not saying there aren't any more.
After I reach this door without having the key: http://i.imgur.com/GNk3w82.png.
Since the press falls behind me, I cannot go back to get the key. Here is the complete list of actions I must do in order to unblock the situation:
Save
Reset the game
The presses are lifted; go back
Talk to the computer to open the wall thing
Go get the key
Save
Reset the game (again)
Go talk to the other computer to open the wall thing (again)
Get to the door
When I fall into the water trap in the starting point and I have the oxygen tank. Leaving the water trap is only possible if you have the Machine Gun level 3. Even the Booster is not enough to get you out. There are two choices: either resetting the game, or suicide (triggering a game reset) by jumping into the press on the left (the one on the right will not kill for some reason).
By the way, about that trap: when you don't have the oxygen tank, it becomes a trap where you have to wait until you drown.
I define softlocks as "situations in which progress in a game is not possible, which forces the player to reset the game or even start a new playthrough entirely".
The term comes from the speedrun community, where playing the game as fast as possible sometimes results in events being triggered in orders unexpected by the developers, which can lead to the aforementioned softlocks. I'm using the term in a broader sense.
Softlocks are a Bad Thing™ because it completely cuts the flow of the game. It forces the player to do a "meta"-action (resetting the game), as opposed to an in-game action, in order to advance or to unblock themselves. If the game autosaves at that moment, or if the player chooses to save, then resetting the game will put them back into the same situation, and they will be forced to start the game over from the beginning. This is indeed very bad. There are some exceptions, like the first softlock case I mentioned in this game, where only the act of resetting is important, and thus saving is not an issue.
As with every rule, there are exceptions: it is possible that softlocks may become desirable if the game heavily relies on "meta"-actions, like resetting, switching saves, changing controls or options, etc. An example is That Level Again and its sequels. Such games are rare and definitely not conventional. For all intents and purposes, make sure to avoid softlocks like the plague.
This is yet another Cave Story sequel. I mean, it's fine, it's just not really that original anymore...
"if you don't know where to go, just ask." Ask whom? No one will give me an answer, and the guy just keeps repeating this.
This particular example is not important by itself, but it underlines a more pressing problem: you should give better directions to the player. Always assume they might stop playing the game entirely for several months and come back to it again with no memory of what they are supposed to do. They should be able to find at least one NPC that reminds them what the next step is.
A lot of the dialogues are pretty cringy and edgy. I don't really know what advice I can give about that, because everybody has an edgy dark emo phase when they grow up. Some people probably like that style, too. Maybe try reading more stories in order to see examples of what good, elegant storytelling is like?
Suddenly, the protagonist's mom talks about the Crown, even though everyone else just talked about an "artifact" up until now. Is the Crown the artifact? Are they two different things? Why does the Crown still exist? Wasn't it destroyed? How come it's influencing the protagonist's dad even though it clearly does not seem to be in the vicinity at the moment?
If you add story and backstory elements to your game, you should clear up any unwanted confusion, or at least make it obvious that "no one knows". The goal is to make the player feel like any questions they might still have will be answered later.
There is a "trap" where the floor vanishes and the protagonist falls... even though I am jumping completely above it. Also, it makes me fall right into enemies. And then, just after that, a boss fight occurs, without any way to heal beforehand.
A lot of things feel very unfinished in this mod. There is what appears to be a complete story, with three boss monsters holding the final boss' soul, a shop with items that you can't buy yet, a teleporter in the parents' room, and a "first" dungeon, but none of these things actually find completion in the mod. This looks like either the mod was created to be way longer than that (and thus was not made for the contest), or you saw very big, way bigger than you were able to get done in the span of the contest.
Maybe you just wanted to be able to keep working on it at the end of the contest, but in that case, maybe you should have removed those elements temporarily and only added them afterwards?
Little tidbits
The executable is called "Doukutsu.exe.exe", this is unsightly.
The window kept its original title "Cave Story - Doukutsu Monogatari", also unsightly.
There are lots of typos, grammar and english mistakes, including one in the title screen picture. Proofreading is important because it directly shows how much care was put into details.
Is the copyright to "Virtual Cat" or "TheVirtualCat"? this is actually kind of important, for legal matters.
I'm Kohta. I'm Kohta. I'm Kohta. You should change his dialogue loop. I'm Kohta.
Kanin just stands there after they talk to me for the first time and I cannot interact with them.
It just feels weird that Kanin and the main character would suddenly talk about becoming friends as if they had somehow bonded during the two minutes that followed their first meeting.
The village cabin has an exp capsule, which means infinite exp and all weapons immediately level 3. If the goal was to remove the hassle of gathering experience, then you should have made locked all weapons into level 3 to begin with. If not, then this is a bad move.
Separating the village into two different-looking parts is a cool idea, but I don't think the background to the "cave" part of the village should behave like that. It looks a bit weird, but that may just be my opinion.
*camera moves* "He wants to see you." *camera moves back* This dialogue is awkward.
Something like this would probably work better: "Hey, <name> wants to see you. You can find <him/her> other there." *camera moves, pauses, then moves back when the player closes the dialogue window*
Did they seriously put a BOMB in a couple's room? "For storage"? Even though there is a perfectly good storage room and plenty of space in the caves?
At one point you have to climb back to the Old Cave from the Village (without a Booster) and it is an unnecessary pain. You should at least have made the climb a little easier, since this is more of a "rest" and "hub" area than a "challenge" area.
There are numerous, more or less important, problems with the mapping. Some examples:
The village is cut in half way too nicely (see the upper part), when a landslide or whatever event would have made a messier job. This does not feel natural.
This map here has some problems: http://i.imgur.com/UFS8pRa.png.
First, the entrance features a black area that cuts to the normal background (where the character is). Second, there is a floating door over there. This is not sensible modding.
The first dungeon is a lot of one single tile repeated endlessly, this would have called for some variety.
Another floating door in the Iron Chinfish's room.
There is a room in the middle of the Egg Corridor. When leaving the room, right as you get out of it and into the corridor, a spike falls on you. Thankfully it's not an insta-death one.
After you talk to the first computer and the wall thing opens, the second computer will say "..." with a long waiting time and nothing will happen. This is a bit confusing, even though the computer is right next to the wall (which has disappeared); try saying something like "the way is already open" maybe?
The press on the right in the previous screen kind of teleports when it starts falling.
After you find the Money and buy the Snake in the shop, you can find another Money, then buy another Snake, etc.
At least one dead dragon in the Egg Corridor cannot be interacted with, while the others all do.
The music when you enter the village the first time changes when you enter it a second time.
Conclusion
The mod was surprisingly long and features some original content, but the game design, as well as the level design, the assets, the mapping, the story, all have pretty big holes that need to be fixed before you can think about additional content. You should have aimed for something shorter, perhaps by half or even by a third, and used the rest of your time to really go over everything you did in order to bring it to a higher level of quality.
I do not think it is against the rules of the contest to ask for advice from fellow modders (contestants or not), you might have wanted to do that in order to make sure that you'd be going in the right direction.
This is the key to everything: working hard is not enough, you also have to compare yourself to what successful modders created in order for you to be able to judge your own work for what it is.
You are definitely not an isolated case, and what you did is already better than a good amount of amateur mods, some of them made by people who make great stuff now. I am convinced that you are able to improve, and I hope that you will take the necessary steps in that direction.
Quick test - Cave Story Return of the Demon Crown by TheVirtualBoy
So I ended up having a lot to say about this mod, and way less time than I predicted. It would need a more thorough playthrough to catch all the little mistakes and things that need to be corrected in order for it to become more polished.
Important things
There is no readme, and more importantly, no configuration executable. I'm not sure why, but it's definitely a bad idea.
There are a fair share of new graphics and customized sprites, and I liked how the title screen was filled with art instead of there being a boring grey nothing!
... But I have to say, a lot of those graphics show a distinct lack of quality. Not so much with sprites (maybe because they are low-resolution), but higher-scale things like facepics and the title screen look pretty bad. I am in no way an expert at digital drawing, so you should ask more skilled people for advice in order to improve, or simply ask for someone else to make the assets for your mod(s). You'll be able to use the readme to credit them.
There's new music in the title screen too. That's neat. I'm not an expert at music, so I cannot judge of its quality, but it sounds fine. If there were a readme, you could specify where you got it from or if you made it yourself (and what its name is)!
I have found two (2) possible softlocks in the game. Not saying there aren't any more.
After I reach this door without having the key: http://puu.sh/pRFqG/3b145c4614.png.
Since the press falls behind me, I cannot go back to get the key. Here is the complete list of actions I must do in order to unblock the situation:
Save
Reset the game
The presses are lifted; go back
Talk to the computer to open the wall thing
Go get the key
Save
Reset the game (again)
Go talk to the other computer to open the wall thing (again)
Get to the door
When I fall into the water trap in the starting point and I have the oxygen tank. Leaving the water trap is only possible if you have the Machine Gun level 3. Even the Booster is not enough to get you out. There are two choices: either resetting the game, or suicide (triggering a game reset) by jumping into the press on the left (the one on the right will not kill for some reason).
By the way, about that trap: when you don't have the oxygen tank, it becomes a trap where you have to wait until you drown.
I define softlocks as "situations in which progress in a game is not possible, which forces the player to reset the game or even start a new playthrough entirely".
The term comes from the speedrun community, where playing the game as fast as possible sometimes results in events being triggered in orders unexpected by the developers, which can lead to the aforementioned softlocks. I'm using the term in a broader sense.
Softlocks are a Bad Thing™ because it completely cuts the flow of the game. It forces the player to do a "meta"-action (resetting the game), as opposed to an in-game action, in order to advance or to unblock themselves. If the game autosaves at that moment, or if the player chooses to save, then resetting the game will put them back into the same situation, and they will be forced to start the game over from the beginning. This is indeed very bad. There are some exceptions, like the first softlock case I mentioned in this game, where only the act of resetting is important, and thus saving is not an issue.
As with every rule, there are exceptions: it is possible that softlocks may become desirable if the game heavily relies on "meta"-actions, like resetting, switching saves, changing controls or options, etc. An example is That Level Again and its sequels. Such games are rare and definitely not conventional. For all intents and purposes, make sure to avoid softlocks like the plague.
This is yet another Cave Story sequel. I mean, it's fine, it's just not really that original anymore...
"if you don't know where to go, just ask." Ask whom? No one will give me an answer, and the guy just keeps repeating this.
This particular example is not important by itself, but it underlines a more pressing problem: you should give better directions to the player. Always assume they might stop playing the game entirely for several months and come back to it again with no memory of what they are supposed to do. They should be able to find at least one NPC that reminds them what the next step is.
A lot of the dialogues are pretty cringy and edgy. I don't really know what advice I can give about that, because everybody has an edgy dark emo phase when they grow up. Some people probably like that style, too. Maybe try reading more stories in order to see examples of what good, elegant storytelling is like?
Suddenly, the protagonist's mom talks about the Crown, even though everyone else just talked about an "artifact" up until now. Is the Crown the artifact? Are they two different things? Why does the Crown still exist? Wasn't it destroyed? How come it's influencing the protagonist's dad even though it clearly does not seem to be in the vicinity at the moment?
If you add story and backstory elements to your game, you should clear up any unwanted confusion, or at least make it obvious that "no one knows". The goal is to make the player feel like any questions they might still have will be answered later.
There is a "trap" where the floor vanishes and the protagonist falls... even though I am jumping completely above it. Also, it makes me fall right into enemies. And then, just after that, a boss fight occurs, without any way to heal beforehand.
A lot of things feel very unfinished in this mod. There is what appears to be a complete story, with three boss monsters holding the final boss' soul, a shop with items that you can't buy yet, a teleporter in the parents' room, and a "first" dungeon, but none of these things actually find completion in the mod. This looks like either the mod was created to be way longer than that (and thus was not made for the contest), or you saw very big, way bigger than you were able to get done in the span of the contest.
Maybe you just wanted to be able to keep working on it at the end of the contest, but in that case, maybe you should have removed those elements temporarily and only added them afterwards?
Little tidbits
The executable is called "Doukutsu.exe.exe", this is unsightly.
The window kept its original title "Cave Story - Doukutsu Monogatari", also unsightly.
There are lots of typos, grammar and english mistakes, including one in the title screen picture. Proofreading is important because it directly shows how much care was put into details.
Is the copyright to "Virtual Cat" or "TheVirtualCat"? this is actually kind of important, for legal matters.
I'm Kohta. I'm Kohta. I'm Kohta. You should change his dialogue loop. I'm Kohta.
Kanin just stands there after they talk to me for the first time and I cannot interact with them.
It just feels weird that Kanin and the main character would suddenly talk about becoming friends as if they had somehow bonded during the two minutes that followed their first meeting.
The village cabin has an exp capsule, which means infinite exp and all weapons immediately level 3. If the goal was to remove the hassle of gathering experience, then you should have made locked all weapons into level 3 to begin with. If not, then this is a bad move.
Separating the village into two different-looking parts is a cool idea, but I don't think the background to the "cave" part of the village should behave like that. It looks a bit weird, but that may just be my opinion.
*camera moves* "He wants to see you." *camera moves back* This dialogue is awkward.
Something like this would probably work better: "Hey, <name> wants to see you. You can find <him/her> other there." *camera moves, pauses, then moves back when the player closes the dialogue window*
Did they seriously put a BOMB in a couple's room? "For storage"? Even though there is a perfectly good storage room and plenty of space in the caves?
At one point you have to climb back to the Old Cave from the Village (without a Booster) and it is an unnecessary pain. You should at least have made the climb a little easier, since this is more of a "rest" and "hub" area than a "challenge" area.
There are numerous, more or less important, problems with the mapping. Some examples:
The village is cut in half way too nicely (see the upper part), when a landslide or whatever event would have made a messier job. This does not feel natural.
This map here has some problems: http://puu.sh/pRvIR/034ef2cff9.png.
First, the entrance features a black area that cuts to the normal background (where the character is). Second, there is a floating door over there. This is not sensible modding.
The first dungeon is a lot of one single tile repeated endlessly, this would have called for some variety.
Another floating door in the Iron Chinfish's room.
There is a room in the middle of the Egg Corridor. When leaving the room, right as you get out of it and into the corridor, a spike falls on you. Thankfully it's not an insta-death one.
After you talk to the first computer and the wall thing opens, the second computer will say "..." with a long waiting time and nothing will happen. This is a bit confusing, even though the computer is right next to the wall (which has disappeared); try saying something like "the way is already open" maybe?
The press on the right in the previous screen kind of teleports when it starts falling.
After you find the Money and buy the Snake in the shop, you can find another Money, then buy another Snake, etc.
At least one dead dragon in the Egg Corridor cannot be interacted with, while the others all do.
The music when you enter the village the first time changes when you enter it a second time.
Conclusion
The mod was surprisingly long and features some original content, but the game design, as well as the level design, the assets, the mapping, the story, all have pretty big holes that need to be fixed before you can think about additional content. You should have aimed for something shorter, perhaps by half or even by a third, and used the rest of your time to really go over everything you did in order to bring it to a higher level of quality.
I do not think it is against the rules of the contest to ask for advice from fellow modders (contestants or not), you might have wanted to do that in order to make sure that you'd be going in the right direction.
This is the key to everything: working hard is not enough, you also have to compare yourself to what successful modders created in order for you to be able to judge your own work for what it is.
You are definitely not an isolated case, and what you did is already better than a good amount of amateur mods, some of them made by people who make great stuff now. I am convinced that you are able to improve, and I hope that you will take the necessary steps in that direction.
Thank you for the review. I decided to not post this in the contest, and instead fix it up. I was rushing a bit too fast with this one. I just wanted to complete it, but that didn't work. I'll fix all the glitches. Also, how did I miss the misspelling on the title screen (!?). "Orignal". Thank you for taking your time with this mod. Once I fix it up, I'll show it to you again. (You probably won't see it for a month or two)
Out of curiosity, what is my first? I made a thread for my Milon's Secret Cave idea which never really took off, but I also contributed to Take 8 and have multiple mods (mostly in-jokes) on my blog. Obviously this doesn't matter at all, but I was intrigued by this because I thought CSxMM was my first "true" mod.
The presence of a limit on lives (with a game over system) scared me, though. The association of checkpoints and stocks is to be expected in an old-school platformer and especially in a Mega Man-like game, but there is a reason why games have progressively evolved to feature other systems instead. Unless the level design is flawless, such functionalities are bound to create a frustrating experience for the player. We are not in the Nintendo Hard era anymore.
I'm glad you said this, because from a technical standpoint the lives were a nightmare include and very sloppily implemented. Because of both of our issues, I am heavily contemplating removing them from the next demo. So, assuming I ditch the idea of a traditional life system, what would be the smartest way to punish the player for dying? Just have it so they can get an unlimited number of attempts from the checkpoint once they reach it? That seems like the simplest solution, but not one that can create the feeling of intense excitement and pleasure after defeating a boss on your last life with low health.
This forces the player to be overly conscious of their health. It has little incidence on the final difficulty of the game (since the rest of the game will (should) be scaled on how much health the player loses and gains over time), but I feel like it can have a strong psychological effect on the player: instead of figuring that mistakes are not such a big deal since they can refill it, they will be afraid to lose health and not be able to get it back before the boss, leading to a slower and more careful play style, far from the dynamic pace that makes both Mega Man and Cave Story so entertaining.
Finally, since enemies do not drop anything when they die, what is even the point in wasting time, ammo and health trying to kill them? Most of them can and should be avoided, which is too bad in my opinion. If that wasn't enough, the base weapon has an extremely long range AND goes through walls, which allows the player to snipe most of the bothersome enemies, and further incitates them to play slow and carefully.
What I get out of this is that health/weapon drops would be a smart idea to include, and that the default weapon is too powerful (or rather encourages the player to play it very safe). Am I correct in that assumption? If so, how do I mitigate the effects of that psychological effect you mentioned? Including a random drop chance similar to Cave Story and Mega Man seems obvious, but what do you recommend I do about the default weapon? Clearly I tried to make it true to Mega Man, but does that not work in this game's favor? Should I scrap the familiar concept of the buster in favor of a weapon less recognizable, yet more compatible with the game's style of play? (Like, for example, not being able to shoot through walls)
Can you be more specific with this, like maybe point out specific areas? Because this could be referring to pretty much any point in the game, as far as I can tell.
As I said earlier, the game feels frustrating whenever an insta-death is involved. That is the main point I would like to talk about here: the game is very simple... except when it isn't. Difficulty spikes are huge: navigating through the enemies is an easy enough task, and sometimes the player will miss a jump and land on spikes, but there are areas where a tiny mistake on a jump or a single bullet hit will make them fall into a death trap instead. This is something that exists in both Mega Man and Cave Story, and I am absolutely not a fan of it.
When you say "difficulty spikes..." are you referring to literal insta-kill spikes, or the game getting too difficult too fast? I'm used to it referring to the latter, but given your write-up I'm inclined to think you're referring to actual spikes.
I modified the small spikes so that they only do eight damage (less than one-third of the player's overall health). Spikes in Mega Man games are typically insta-kill, but only in a small handful of cases does that show up in CSxMM (with the big spike patches). If you are saying that I should totally remove the handful of insta-kill spikes, that's understandable. But do you want me to decrease the damage of the smaller spikes further, or perhaps even remove spikes altogether? Because I am skeptical of that.
When presented with a situation where they must pass through a regular enemy above a bottomless pit, the logical course of action becomes to completely ignore the enemy (and thus, probably jumping into it without any concern) in order to make sure the pit is avoided.
That seems to imply that the player can't get rid of the enemy first, which they can. I don't see why the player would think of ignoring the enemy and jump into them first rather than killing them with their weapon. To me, that would make traversing the pit easier to focus on (but this is not taking into consideration the player intentionally abusing i-frames).
Furthermore, pits and death traps are not the only problem: anything that kills the player in one hit qualifies, like the presses or that one trap with the moving platforms.
So, you think that insta-kill presses and wall blocks are a problem? Should they deal a small amount of damage, push the player out of the way without making them take damage, be removed entirely, or what? Also, which trap is that one with the moving platforms? Is it the one where there's a single gaudi shooting at you while a wall of blocks moves towards you? I thought that was a clever challenge :/
About the platforming part: I can tell there are some spots the player is supposed to be able to reach in specific ways only (which usually come down to variations of "do not miss that first platform"), but since you can damage boost like crazy in this game, the point is kind of lost sometimes (example: the 1-up in the Underground).
Actually, there are quite a few instances where you can damage boost for bonus items, but I kept them all in intentionally. I thought it would be satisfying to be able to find your own way to the bonuses by making creative use of the enemies and damage boosting. Personally, I still don't see it as an issue.
Now for the good stuff: the level design is actually quite smart, as it introduces enemies and mechanisms smoothly, one after the other, in orderly fashion. The player is put in situations where they experience new concepts without much pressure or danger of failure being forced on them.
This seems like it's not much, but it is actually huge. It allows for the player to feel comfortable and never confused about what they must do in certain situations. A lot of amateur games tend to not do that at all, resulting in unwelcoming "die-and-retry" setups.
This is really great to hear (especially because I am most proud of that and the music in retrospect), but your point in the conclusion seems to contradict that:
Licenses and copyright (especially in the case of a mod, like this) are entirely foreign to me. How would I go about including one, and what would be the repercussions if I decided to leave it out?
Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of this review. A lot of the stuff that you mentioned (custom graphics, item drops) were heavily considered, but not possible when I made it due to my limitations as an artist and user of ASM. The other negative points, such as the lives and spikes, I feel confident in being able to iron out. I'm hoping that, if/when I ever pick this back up, I can take all of these criticisms to heart and make a truly worthy mod.
Out of curiosity, what is my first? I made a thread for my Milon's Secret Cave idea which never really took off, but I also contributed to Take 8 and have multiple mods (mostly in-jokes) on my blog. Obviously this doesn't matter at all, but I was intrigued by this because I thought CSxMM was my first "true" mod.
I'm glad you said this, because from a technical standpoint the lives were a nightmare include and very sloppily implemented. Because of both of our issues, I am heavily contemplating removing them from the next demo. So, assuming I ditch the idea of a traditional life system, what would be the smartest way to punish the player for dying? Just have it so they can get an unlimited number of attempts from the checkpoint once they reach it? That seems like the simplest solution, but not one that can create the feeling of intense excitement and pleasure after defeating a boss on your last life with low health.
I've thought about this for a very long time. I still don't really have an answer, sorry :/
The fact that you're making a Mega Man mod is kind of an issue. Choosing your own system over CS's or MM's sounds inappropriate. But if it's for the sake of making the game enjoyable, I think any concession is acceptable, so let's not rule out any option for now.
As I mentioned in the review, this kind of system is less of a problem if the rest of the game is flawless. So I'd advise you to think about this AFTER you've made all the other changes I mentioned (and will mention in this post). In my opinion, big game design changes like this one should only occur if nothing else works, and there are other very important elements (like the weapons) that should be modified, and that might give the game a different feeling with which the lives system will match well.
Another thing: all the elements that make up the lives and the balacing system what it is (lives, checkpoints, health bonuses, energy tanks, drops (or lack thereof)) are too little, too few in my opinion. There aren't many 1-UPs per level, only one energy tank (and only in the first level), etc. My guess is that the game would feel dynamic if there were more of all those things.
Regardless, from your last sentence ("the feeling of intense excitement and pleasure after defeating a boss on your last life with low health"), I feel like this is a matter of opinion. Maybe it's because I started to play games when Game Over screens were already starting to become irrelevant (Super Mario 64) and/or the player had only one life (LoT Ocarina Of Time), but it doesn't seem that I seek for this feeling you're describing as much as you do. Defeating a tough enemy with barely any health left is a great feeling, but I don't really like the idea of having a limited number of tries before getting punished. Thus, I will not prevent you from keeping this system (especially since the other things I said ought to make it feel way better already) and I won't advocate any other system, unless you really want me to, in which case maybe we can talk about it in PM?
NB: As I was writing this answer (or rather, trying to find inspiration), I stumbled upon a critique of Mighty No. 9 by Zero Punctuation, and this bit at 2:13 sums up exactly my feelings on this whole matter.
So basically, one could say that, for your Mega Man fangame, you went in approximately the same direction as Comcept did for their Mega Man fangame. I'm not sure you should take that as a compliment. :v
NB2: I found some hidden health bonuses while I was replaying it. There are more than I thought, but I think they shouldn't be invisible. The only reason I was able to find them was because shooting in the air to reveal health is a thing in Cave Story.
A good way to introduce "invisible things that can be shot at to obtain bonuses" might be to make the player shoot into a cache somewhere in the beginning of the game. Maybe put an enemy there, maybe put a target there, maybe put an explicit sign saying "try shooting" (not encouraged) or whatever, but the player should understand by themselves that "there are caches in the game" and that "they give you stuff if you shoot into them".
Afterwards, whenever you want to put a cache somewhere, try adding a couple non-hidden bonuses, to show that "there's something over there!". Then, as the game progresses, you can start hiding the caches better, removing any hints, etc.
What I get out of this is that health/weapon drops would be a smart idea to include, and that the default weapon is too powerful (or rather encourages the player to play it very safe). Am I correct in that assumption?
If so, how do I mitigate the effects of that psychological effect you mentioned? Including a random drop chance similar to Cave Story and Mega Man seems obvious, but what do you recommend I do about the default weapon? Clearly I tried to make it true to Mega Man, but does that not work in this game's favor? Should I scrap the familiar concept of the buster in favor of a weapon less recognizable, yet more compatible with the game's style of play? (Like, for example, not being able to shoot through walls)
Long answer, the goal in my opinion is to encourage the player to actually engage in closer-quarter combat. I don't think you should completely scrap the buster, but you should either adapt it to the game... or adapt the game to it. I think that's the main difference between your mod and a Mega Man game.
Some ideas:
- make the weapon not go through walls, but make some walls let bullets through (like the two walls encasing the Mannan in the beginning of the first level), you can then edit your level design to allow for some precise through-the-wall sniping on cumbersome enemies
- change enemies' ranges so that they attack you from very far away (Mega Man enemies attack you whenever they're spawned, which is even better, but spawning rules are way different between CS and MM so we can't really do that)
- add enemies that can't be shot at unless you enter their range (for example by putting them on a descending slope, or protected by walls), forcing you to enter the fray in order to kill them
- add enemies that appear behind the player
- add enemies with invulnerability, shields or protection of some sort
- add enemies that move faster/more aggressively
- add enemy generators that don't drop anything (the generated enemies shouldn't drop anything either)
- decrease the first weapon's range
You don't have to do all of those, but I think putting a little bit here and there would greatly improve the dynamism of the game.
About drop chances: a random drop chance might not be necessary if you can figure out how to make something drop every X enemy, but either way would be good.
Can you be more specific with this, like maybe point out specific areas? Because this could be referring to pretty much any point in the game, as far as I can tell.
When you say "difficulty spikes..." are you referring to literal insta-kill spikes, or the game getting too difficult too fast? I'm used to it referring to the latter, but given your write-up I'm inclined to think you're referring to actual spikes.
I modified the small spikes so that they only do eight damage (less than one-third of the player's overall health). Spikes in Mega Man games are typically insta-kill, but only in a small handful of cases does that show up in CSxMM (with the big spike patches). If you are saying that I should totally remove the handful of insta-kill spikes, that's understandable. But do you want me to decrease the damage of the smaller spikes further, or perhaps even remove spikes altogether? Because I am skeptical of that.
Actual difficulty curve may differ from the picture.
Basically, the game is too simple, except for the parts where it's too hard.
Examples of hard parts include:
- that one trap with the horizontal moving blocks (not really hard, but if you're not prepared for it, you WILL lose a life)
- the screen with the horizontal moving block above a huge death trap, where you have to stay on the block even though several enemies try to shoot you
- the screen with the ascending currents, spikes and blocks moving up and down (even though it has no death traps, it's still a bit tedious)
- those three are the biggest ones, I believe, but we could add more.
I'm not saying those parts are actually "too hard" (otherwise I'd just git gud), just that they end constituting the ONLY important "don't fuck this up" parts of the levels.
Outside of those specific parts, the game is pretty easy.
Note: I must admit: by replaying it, I've noticed that the difficulty increases more steadily than I initially thought. I think it may be due to the fact that I initially played very carefully, and didn't have any kind of problem aside from the platforming challenges I mentioned.
That seems to imply that the player can't get rid of the enemy first, which they can. I don't see why the player would think of ignoring the enemy and jump into them first rather than killing them with their weapon. To me, that would make traversing the pit easier to focus on (but this is not taking into consideration the player intentionally abusing i-frames).
This was a general-purpose example. Consider the case of someone who doesn't have enough time to kill the enemy because they're running away from a more dangerous enemy behind them. Consider the case where you can't shoot the enemy easily. Consider the case where the enemy is invincible. Consider the case where it's not an enemy, but a less harmful spike. There are numerous specific cases that apply, or could apply, to your mod.
So, you think that insta-kill presses and wall blocks are a problem? Should they deal a small amount of damage, push the player out of the way without making them take damage, be removed entirely, or what?
I was talking about the player wanting to get hurt in order to abuse iframes. Anything that insta-kills you is a legitimate reason for you to get hurt (without dying) in order to pass through it while invincible. In my opinion, insta-kill elements should be justified and used in great moderation.
The presses and moving blocks can't really deal non-killing damage. Getting completely crushed by a moving block against a wall but surviving would be weird. You probably should keep them as is.
Also, which trap is that one with the moving platforms? Is it the one where there's a single gaudi shooting at you while a wall of blocks moves towards you? I thought that was a clever challenge :/
It is kinda clever, but it's the kind of "gotcha" that you find in heavily die-and-retry games. I don't find it appealing in games that aren't Dark Souls: you fall into the trap, get fucked up, lose one stock, and then the trap is never an issue again because it's trivial when you are prepared for it. Had it been at the end of the level, on my last stock, I would have ragequit (actually I wouldn't have but you get the idea).
If you can find some way to make it so it only deals a limited amount of damage (for example, by pushing back Quote against spikes but without the block actually crushing him, somehow), it'd be cool. Even better: instead of punishing the player for missing it, reward the player for clearing it! Put a 1-UP somewhere that you can't access without clearing the trap, and make it disappear or make it inaccessible if the player fails. You could make the moving block push the player into another corridor from which he can only move forward to the next area, for example.
Actually, there are quite a few instances where you can damage boost for bonus items, but I kept them all in intentionally. I thought it would be satisfying to be able to find your own way to the bonuses by making creative use of the enemies and damage boosting. Personally, I still don't see it as an issue.
That's fair. I was only mentioning this as a "have you considered that the player might do this?" kind of warning, but if this is intentional then it's fine. It's actually pretty enjoyable for the player, who can feel like he has cheated the game and/or feel good about discovering a shortcut or a secret in that way.
This is really great to hear (especially because I am most proud of that and the music in retrospect), but your point in the conclusion seems to contradict that:
You probably understand from what I've said earlier: when I say that the difficulty curve is stuttering, I mean that there are some points that are too hard compared to the rest of the game, which is smooth-sailing.
I didn't say that your work was perfect, or that there were no "unwelcoming die-and-retry setups", but they are certainly fewer in your mod than in a lot of amateur games.
Licenses and copyright (especially in the case of a mod, like this) are entirely foreign to me. How would I go about including one, and what would be the repercussions if I decided to leave it out?
This is just a formality. It's simply about mentioning the author, maybe providing a link allowing people to make sure of the author's identity, and accompany it (or not) with a (C) symbol for good measure.
The (C) copyright symbol was used in order to protect authors' rights. It is no longer mandatory, as authors' rights are now always protected by default: as soon as you make original content of any sort, it is your property and you are legally protected against theft and illegal reproduction.
A good thing to do is to add a license for your work: basically, what rights you give to other people regarding your work. "All rights reserved" means others are not allowed to do anything besides being consumers. On the other hand, "public domain" means people can treat it as a community resource, reproduce it, modify it, sell it and make profit, however they want. Those are the two extremes; if you want something in-between, such as allowing edits for non-commercial purposes only, you should search for a license that corresponds to what you need and add it to your game (it's just a text file). You can also write your own (but it's hard, you have to consider every edge case).
In case someone steals your work for profit, if there is no clearly-defined author with a clearly-defined license, legal actions are harder to undertake. Just know that, in the case where no license is given, the "All rights reserved" case automatically applies, so you don't actually need to have an explicit license.
Hat Story, JonSpider's second mod, is a mod set in the original Cave Story's timeline, after Ballos' defeat. Quote wakes up, in his house above the Sacred Grounds, without his hat (hence the name). He goes outside for a bit, only to get his gear stolen by a mysterious character who seems to know him. With only two guns in hand, he proceeds to chase after that person and hopefully get his hat back.
As its author puts it, the mod was "mostly intended to be a challenge mod with a focus on level design and using unique/different mechanics not seen in CS Mods as of recent". It was cancelled, but nonetheless features three big challenge maps and two bosses, as well as a bit of story.
Assets
The mod does not feature a great amount of custom graphics, but what it does have isn't bad. It does not try too hard to be fancy, and there isn't a lot of novelty, but what IS there is rather neat. The splash screen is a perfect example: different from the original Cave Story, simple and well-done, with a straightforward message: the hat.
However, there is a distinct lack of custom tilesets and enemies, which is too bad.
There is some new music, notably a remix of the title screen theme from Cave Story, as well as a new theme for the Facility boss fight. They sound really good. A completely original soundtrack would have been appreciated, though!
I loved the facepic animation at the beginning of the game. I've been wanting to see that in a mod for a long time (keep in mind I haven't played that many mods). The lack of actual cutscenes prevented the game for taking advantage of this idea, however. As such, there is only one facepic animation in the mod, which makes it feel a bit gimmicky.
Art looks a bit weird overall: the teddy bear kind of looks like a mouse, and Quote's facepic without his hat makes him look like he has no forehead.
The mod shows quality and work, especially the music. Still, it definitely needs more "identity" and more content.
Score: 6/10
Story
NB: This is the first time I add a "Story" category to a review, because this is the first mod that relies (at least a bit) on a storyline to progress. I'll make it clear just in case: a mod without a story would not get a 0 in this category. The story is important if your mod relies on it to drive the player forward, not if it's a completely arcade/challenge game.
Similarly, there is no "game design" category because it is completely vanilla.
The setup and the mod's name suggest that the goal is to find Quote's hat, but the tone of the story is way more serious, dark, and (should I say) edgy than the tribulations of some article of clothing.
Before we can even begin looking for the hat, we are swept up in a seemingly unrelated plot involving a mysterious thief that holds a grudge against us.
It's not necessarily a bad idea, but I'm not sure I can relate to Quote's hat problems anymore, as I'm more curious about the identity of that secret admirer. Quote starts to unfold what sounds like a tragedy that may have happened to that person, or maybe to someone else, maybe a previous bearer of the Crown?
Fantasy stories are meant to be unrealistic you myopic manatee, but it's better when a certain amount of coherence and realism is kept when it comes to the characters' thoughts and actions. Of course, it does not mean all characters must behave like normal human beings (aliens, extremely idiotic or smart individuals, etc. all have their own mindsets which are very different from normal people). What it does mean is that they all should act in a way that's expectable from them.
The various logs that Quote reads along the way are written in very vague ways. The point of logs is to explicitly write what's happening in order for people to read it afterwards. Deliberately avoiding the important parts, though critical to the plot, really feels forced, it's like reading a clichéd script for a mystery novel.
If my treasure chest with obscenely devastating weapons gets looted, if I have two weapons left, if I find several revenge-filled post-its, I'm DEFINITELY going to interrupt the warrior princess Curly's beauty sleep and partner up with her once again. Those are serious matters, it doesn't make sense for Quote not to talk about it with Curly first since she's 100% available (although sleeping).
As the mod was cancelled, its storyline is very short, and no answer is given as to the whereabouts of the mysterious stalker, Quote's weapons and hat, Curly's alarm clock, or any hypothetical Crown user, and not much can be inferred or commented on. Maybe all of it will be justified later in the game, but from what I see, the premises of the story are shaky, not solid enough to incentivize the player. Suspension of disbelief has limits.
Score: 3/10
Level design
Hat Story is a short mod, with three or four big maps and two bosses. Two weapons are given to the player at the beginning of the game: the Broken Spur (aka Polar Star) and the Fireball.
Both weapons are strong and feel useful (although I've used the Polar Star more often, as a default weapon of sorts), and the level design is built around them. It encourages the player to switch between the two weapons depending on the situation, which greatly reduces the difficulty of the regular maps.
Most maps make the correct path pretty clear to the player, although the platforming maps above bottomless pits (the Upper Wall and the Underside) can be somewhat confusing when you're not sure where platforms are and which tiles Quote (or bullets) can or cannot go through.
The facility consists in a lot of the same kinds of traps as Cave Story x Mega Man: die-and-retry situations with moving blocks trapping you and killing you instantly. That's not the good kind of difficulty, in my opinion. I discuss extensively about this issue in CSxMM's review and its subsequent Q&A.
There are two save points placed in the middle of challenge/"unsafe" maps. This happens (at least) twice in the mod: once in the Upper Wall, once in the Underside.
I don't encourage this. Instinctively, saving in the middle of a "fight" doesn't sound right. But most of all, I don't encourage putting a save point without a health refill nearby, unless situationally justified.
The reason is simple: it becomes possible for the player to save with very low HP left, instantly cranking the difficulty up to Hellfire Mode. In some cases, the game might even be unfinishable (for example because taking damage somewhere down the line is required, due to more bad design), becoming a softlock.
Of course, a game usually provides ways to heal. This mod allows you to kill enemies to gain hearts, and the second offender even has hearts spawning nearby, allowing the player heal a bit before saving again, resetting, getting more hearts, saving, resetting, etc.
The problem is that this is a process known as farming, which is (apparently) good in RPGs where it's about experience points, but in this case we are in a platformer and it's about health points. This is a situation that's similar to the reason why softlocking is bad: it forces the player to do an out-of-game, "meta" action (manually resetting the game and, in this case, exploiting its spawning mechanics) to progress.
Such situations are not easy to fix; you could simply add a health refill next to the save point, but since it's in the middle of a challenge map, the player can abuse it whenever they are short on health. The more radical solution is to separate the map in two and add a tiny one-screen transition map with the save point and health refill inside, and lock the door to the second part of the map behind the player.
Some games work in ways that inherently solve the problem. For example, in Shantae, dying brings you back to full health, so save points never need health refills. In the Dark Souls series, save points heal you completely, but they also reset all monsters, so their placement is not an issue. In games with a lobby/overworld and separate levels (like the Legend Of Zelda series, the Super Mario series, Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Crash Bandicoot, etc.), you can only save your general progress (collectibles), not your exact position in the map, so there are no save points at all.
Actually, more generally, save points are weirdly managed. There are areas with two save points in a row, there's a save point with a refill before the Omega boss and a save point without refill after it, so the player still has to backtrack in order to heal up.
About the bosses: both come from Cave Story, with a twist thanks to the level design. The situations they must be fought in are radically different from the original game, and feature interesting ideas, especially Monster X's fight. Not to say the realisation is good, which is a subject I'll talk about in the "Difficulty and balance" category.
The Monster X fight also has a big flaw: it is possible (and easy) for the player to kill Monster X before crossing the gap, softlocking the game (since they need the boss to cross it). Kids, remember to always Say No To Softlocks™! NB: According to JonSpider, this is not supposed to be the case, as a special event should trigger when the player tries to cross the gap after killing Monster X. However, it did not happen during my playthrough, and not even after I tried again. Neither of us know what went wrong, so I'm going to write this off as an absence of thorough testing, for lack of a better explanation.
From a more general point of view, I find it sad that the various mechanics, enemies and contraptions of the game are not introduced in a softer way, like Tpcool's mod. The reason is obvious: this is a challenge mod, made for experienced players of Cave Story, and none of the mechanics are new to those players. Still, it doesn't hurt to have calmer and easier parts at the beginning of the game and in-between harder maps, to help the player relax and allow them to get used to the controls and the overall "style" of the mod.
Last (big) thing: there are a few instances (at least two) where the player is teleported somewhere else during a cutscene. I'll talk about this more extensively in the "Misc" category, but mentioning one of them here is appropriate. At the end of the side quest where you have to fetch the little girl Biggs' teddy bear, you are teleported back to her house once you get it, and the map becomes closed off.
I don't want to be forcibly teleported back. What if I still had some experience points to gather? What if (God forbid) I wanted to farm a little? Clean up all the enemies? Explore the area for potential secrets? Even if none of those are relevant in this mod (no collectibles, no secrets, nothing to explore, etc), the player doesn't know that and wants to make sure. Let the player do whatever they want before they leave.
This kind of situation is what level design is supposed to simplify. Since the game has the player climb up the chimney almost completely vertically, why not simply add a vertical tunnel that connects the top of the chimney (which has a ceiling, by the way, I'm not sure how it's supposed to function) and the bottom, so that the player can jump and have fun falling for a few seconds (players love jumping from high places, just look at the Assassin's Creed series, Mirror's Edge and a lot of platformers) whenever they decide that they are done with the area?
This kind of easy return path is an essential part of a well-designed level. Take a look at the Dark Souls series, the Metroid series, basically any N64 game by Rare (slight preference for Banjo-Kazooie), or any good metroidvania. Dark Souls I is especially incredible in that regard; it branches out many times, and all branches come together, linking them to an earlier part of the world that you already explored before, telling you that you are done with the area and you can leave whenever you want.
Overall, the general level design is pleasing and switching between the weapons appropriately feels very good, but some gross mistakes and missed opportunities leave a somewhat disappointing aftertaste.
Score: 6.5/10
Difficulty and balance
Hat Story is a challenge mod, and its difficulty is higher than average. Both weapons deal approximately equivalent damage, and neither is stronger or more useful than the other. It will always depend on the situation. This is perfect.
The two maps above bottomless pits (the Upper Wall and the Underside) are less interesting than they should be, because falling to one's death by missing a jump is far more likely than dying to the enemies.
The Booster 0.8 is not that good for platforming, because its fuel is short and it doesn't help you recover enough in case you miss a platforming while falling at full speed.
Plus, the Upper Wall is way too brutal for a first map. It's harder than the Beginner's Cave and WAY harder than the chimney. I can't count the amount of times I fell to my death in that first map.
The Underside is better, because it happens later on in the mod, and the player has had time to get used to playing.
Omega is more of a joke than a boss, unless you don't have the Fireball upgraded, in which case it actually becomes interesting. The Polar Star isn't exactly useless against it, but a level 3 Fireball is so overpowered that there is no reason to want to fight the boss any other way.
I might even argue that if you happen to lose too much exp on the Fireball, you should just reset the game and try again, because it will take immensely less time than trying to drag the fight out by killing the small projectiles to get your exp back.
The latter part of the Beginner's Cave is probably my favorite part of the game, because of how hard but cool it is. It has the right amount of toughness for the order it's in. Making it a little bit harder might even be a good idea, although you should consider removing some or most of the lava drops, because they do not pose that much of a threat and their constant noise is awful.
Now let's talk about the biggest problem with this mod: the Monster X fight.
As I said earlier, that part contains a lot of interesting ideas. Having the player deal with the boss while they progress through a map that's already tough by itself, then having them use the boss as an evil moving platform to cross a gigantic gap, all those things are amazing.
However, the level is very hard because of that. Boss and enemies deal a lot of damage, and Monster X's wheels are an incredible pain. Trying to complete the map is already bad enough, what with all the viciously placed enemies, the death traps, and the die-and-retry contraptions (I'm looking at you, moving blocks), and the player has to do it while dodging Monster X's swarms of bullets (gotta be clever and destroy some of its "eyes" first) and its wheels of Hell that deal a humongous 10 damage.
This level is way harder, and so suddenly too, than the rest of the mod. It's a huge spike in difficulty.
On top of that, even after you're done with the beginning of the level and the gap, you still have to kill Monster X, more specifically that horrible second phase, with whatever health you have left. If you die, you have to redo everything.
Adding to the frustration, Monster X's wheels "absorb" the Fireball's bullets, which disappear on contact, making the player unable to use their bouncing properties to kill enemies easily whenever the boss is around. NB: I am by no means a good Cave Story player, and I have a lot of trouble against Monster X, probably more so than against any other boss in the game. My opinion may be biased. However, I sincerely believe that this map pushes the difficulty too far compared to the rest of the game, which was reasonably balanced. NB2: I guess I also completely forgot about the revigorating soup. Oops. It might have been less frustrating otherwise.
Overall, although the player's options are well-balanced and complete each other well, the difficulty is awkwardly managed. It feels like a lot of thought was put into ideas and concepts, at the expense of tweaks (like damage amounts or Quote's max health) that would have been necessary to smooth out the difficulty curve.
Score: 5.5/10
Misc
There are some grammar/typo/punctuation/capitalization problems. A little clean-up would be welcome.
Several dialogue loops (and dialogues in general) have issues: repeted and unnatural long dialogues, badly cut changes of subject, problems with TSC handling, empty windows, etc.
The game folder is a mess: a Profile.dat and a window.rect are included, OrgView is there for some reason, the readme is called "THE NEW README" (where's the old readme then?), and there are THREE game executables.
The falling time when you mess up in the Upper Wall and the Underside is long. Maybe try to add cleverly placed H/V triggers so that Quote's fall gets interrupted earlier?
Some weird mapping, like here and here. It makes the player think that there are secrets over there when there are none. Also, the tile right in front of me here doesn't let projectiles go through, even though the ones in the middle do. Finally, you can go and run around above the map here.
Is Tomoko's soup a reference to the Wind Waker? If so, then that's a nice touch.
The block moving vertically around the beginning of the facility is made to go down first. You can tell because, when activated, it instantly hits the floor with a THUD before it goes back up.
You should try to find a way to prevent the elevators (at the end of the mod) from stopping midway, since there aren't any floors there.
Conclusion
Hat Story's focus on level design is visible, although it's not as groundbreaking as I hoped. Thankfully, the game still feels pleasant overall, and even the nightmarish last boss, with the right strategies, enough focus, and patience, becomes entertaining.
However, its focus on design must not hinder work on the story, graphics, and music. There isn't enough of all those!
The story is not really relevant, but it could (and should) be. Right now, it's the main element that prevents me from truly recommending the mod. It definitely needs a lot more work in order to become a real guideline, the incentive the player needs to keep playing.
Nevertheless, Hat Story managed to keep being worth playing up until the end.
