First Flash Game Critiques

Castle Crashing the Beard: http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/castle_crashing_the_beard

Rating: 7 / 10

You might notice the reference to the game “Castle Crashers” in the title—this flash game adopts some artistic elements from its namesake.  First off, even before the game starts, I would recommend reading the loading screen.  It definitely ties in the game story and makes it that much more fun.  The game has a definite learning curve that took me some time to realize.  Still, once you learn the “rules of the game” through experience, it becomes substantially easier.  On one hand, learning is fun, but on the other hand this game doesn’t take too much knowledge and understanding.  The core concept is pretty fun, but the game is rather short—I just ask myself, “Would it have been that much harder to add a few more levels to this game?” Still, all in all, it is a nice looking game with a fun feel, and more importantly fun play.  Replay value isn’t the greatest, but it keeps me coming back.

Moby Dick: http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/moby_dick

Rating 7.8 / 10

This game has many things that I can like as a critic.  One, it has achievements.  Everyone likes achievements—not only do they give you some sense that you are accomplishing something but they also act as a means of telling how far you have gone.  On a less positive note, this game does not offer many achievements and fails to fully capture the benefits that they could offer.  I might get the top achievement in one category and be impossibly behind in another that I would think is similarly related, and I have to wonder how well coordinated the different areas are.

Another cool feature is the multi-axial system.  The game keeps track of health, but it also has variables for breath and hunger, which force you to keep track of more than one thing and prioritize.

That feeds into the last and what I’d say is the most important part: dynamic gameplay.  It isn’t one of those games where you find you are doing the same thing over and over again—as the game moves on, it forces you to do the same.  It isn’t enough to just hone in on your strategy: you have to analyze the situation and respond to it.

The game has a respectful learning curve and lends itself to much replay.  There is that solid informational learning that you could say, read from a strategy guide, but it also has that hard to acquire skill component that really adds to the replay value and gets you involved with the action of the game more.  It gets rather hard later on, I’m not sure how high of a score a normal person is supposed to get.