Zissi's Island
For a game which only costs $2, this is quite a neat little collectathon title. A bit rough around the edges, not perfect in any way and sometimes a bit frustrating, but still entertaining enough for me to completely play through it (took me a couple of hours, maybe 3 or 4, but I didn't track time). You're free to explore a big island, collecting coins, gadgets and pearls; the coins are for buying quest items or other gadgets, and the gadgets give you new abilities that open up new places to you and make exploring easier. The pearls are the ultimate goal, you need to collect at least 20 (of 29) in order to make a necklace for your grandmother.
Graphics are simple, but colorful and cute in their own amateurish way. Music is nice, even if it seems to be playing dependent on zones and often just switches or turns off when you run in and out of them. The controls aren't ideal for a 3D platformer, the camera seriously gets in the way sometimes, jumping can be a bit impredictable, combat is comparatively bad (you can jump on opponents which can easily go wrong and hurt you, or you throw tomatoes at them, which only works if you're facing them directly while they run at you), and running on the gamepad is either B or left button, which kind of interferes with the movement controls - right trigger would have been the more obvious and convenient choice, and you can't redefine keys. I've also encountered a few bugs, and at least one of them got me stuck in a situation where quitting and reloading the last checkpoint was the only option to continue.
Despite all that, I enjoyed exploring the island and collecting stuff, and the game became more fun the more gadgets I got (especially double jump made a huge difference). The island offered lots of little surprises, and I was impressed that it was supposedly made by one guy only. With a little more polish, I think this would be quite a good game. It's just not that clear to me what the target audience would be, apart from people like me who have to play every collectathon game no matter what. The graphics and dialogues make it seem like it's a game catering to younger kids, but I can imagine that the difficulty caused by the clunkiness would put them off, and also, the game has different endings without warning you about it; I thought it was a cheery and relaxing game and ended up getting the worst ending, which wasn't what you'd expect in a title like this, rather cruel and depressing (even for an adult :D ).
Post edited November 07, 2018 by Leroux