I’m reviewing Liberated Pixel Cup games, one by one. There’s 48 games.
Disclaimer: I am also competing in the contest.
Forge [Play me!] [Download me!]
This is an HTML5 game. It’s extremely incomplete.
As a heads up, this game doesn’t work in Firefox 14, so fire up Chrome or keep reading if you’d rather not.
The game’s goals were set pretty high, as the author wanted to do a multiplayer game, as well as a map editor. , however, due to the limited time available in the contest, he couldn’t finish either of them.
The game’s single player mode consists of a small area with a castle gate, as well as some water and a dock below. For enemies, we’ve got one slime and one bat that seem to really just want to eat you alive. You’ve got 100 hp that is quickly drained when the enemies touch you. You can attack with spacebar, though besides the animation, it doesn’t seem to do any damage to either enemy. It does feature pathfinding though, the enemies know where you are and chase after you, which is pretty impressive.
The collisions aren’t functional in the game, you can walk through water and wall without any issues. You can also walk away from the map and into the whitelands.
There’s also a basic map editor. Again, I had issues with this on Firefox, but in Chrome is sort of worked. It has 3 different layers you can place some tiles on, as well as save / load features. I believe it uses Json to save and load the actual map.
Overall, there isn’t anything to do in this game. What is worth mentioning though is that Azlen, the developer, is 11 years old, and while he had som help from Dethe, who’s 47, Azlen ‘called the shots for technical issues and approaches’. I think it’s fantastic that a kid his age is learning how to make games, and I don’t wish to discourage him from doing so.
Congrats Azlen for starting on the path of Game Development! I look forward to seeing what you can do, given more time!
