| Game Reviewed | Super Mario & The Elemental Orbs [DEMO 4], by WreckingGoomba, LSF Games, smithuser, MarioMan564, Pyro |
| Review Author | Cap'n Coconuts |
| Created | Jul 23 2014, 4:09 PM |
| Pros | + 20 levels so far + All-around solid gameplay + Not a Hello/CatezeeY clone |
| Cons | - Don't see the point of having both Gravity and Tornado Mario - Some polish needed - Game largely consists of MIDIs, even with the music pack |
Gameplay 9 / 10 |
SM&EO has must of the classic Super Mario Bros. gameplay we know and love while still being fresh in its own way. The game features a rarely seen Tornado Mario as a power-up, which gives you a mid-air jump which sends you flying into the air, damaging any enemies in your way. I'm not sure I get the point of Gravity Mario when the player also has access to Tornado Mario. Both of them are suits that give the player extra jump height and distance, and Tornado Mario's tornado can be used as an attack, so what is the point of having the Gravity Mushroom? The game seems to have some online functionality, powered by Game Maker Server. Unfortunately the readme file doesn't really explain what the point of playing online is, so I'm not going to fool around with that. |
Graphics 8 / 10 |
It seems that a number of different tilesets and backgrounds are being used from different sources. There probably is style clashing going on if you look hard enough, but it didn't really bother me any. Mario seems to be in a unique style I haven't seen before. Looks pretty good. There are some cosmetic glitches in the game, though. Suppose you die after reaching a checkpoint. Upon restarting, for a split second you will see yourself at the beginning of the level with no active power-up before the game realizes you are supposed to be at the checkpoint. |
Sound 7 / 10 |
You are recommended to use the downloadable music pack, as the game contains MIDIs by default. Given the current size of the game, this is understandable. Except the music pack only contains 5 songs and all of them are wave files. And by wave files, I mean unnecessarily large uncompressed audio. The rest of your game still consists of MIDI tracks, some of which aren't very good. Some of them are a bit unfitting too, like Chai's theme for World 4's level select (a Chinese theme for an Egyptian-esque desert world? Eh). I would rather implement GMFMODSimple and use it to play OGG files. Having an OGG soundtrack would also make a full soundtrack easier to download--you might even be able to pack the whole sountrack with the executable and stay under the 50 MB limit! |
Replay 8 / 10 |
The star coins are useless at the moment, but there's nothing stopping you from attempting to collect them all. And this game is good enough for that to be worthwhile, so everything's all good here (for a demo). |
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'Tis a breath of minty fresh air in the world of Mario platforming while staying true to the franchise's roots. |
| Comments |
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smithuser Jul 24 2014, 9:49 PM |
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The music pack isn't finished. Also, I might plan on remastering it. And sometime after final release start on a Brand New Song Pack to see if I have new music talent. BTW I would make custom MIDIs if I could, but MODPlug hates exporting MIDIs. I might get something for that later. |
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Cap'n Coconuts Jul 24 2014, 10:23 PM |
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Hmm. I didn't know it was unfinished, but okay. Don't sweat it though, as it wasn't enough to affect the final score.
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smithuser Jul 25 2014, 1:44 AM |
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Yeah, making new music is harder than making covers/remixes/whatevers I believe.
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WreckingGoomba Jul 25 2014, 5:59 AM |
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Thanks a bunch for the review! I tried using OGGs with both Supersound and FMod, but unfortunately, these don't work well with GM's save system for whatever reason. I'm currently converting the .wav's to .mp3 though, to decrease the file size a bit. |
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