Robox

I won the game from the cube competition. I was sooo excited after watching the trailer. Unfortunately it was frustrating from the very beginning.
The spiky plants have the same dull colour pallette, to begin with I constantly walked into them. The first time I wasnt even sure what was hurting me.

The flying bugs are annoying since you can only shoot forwards. Often I would jump to avoid them only to collide in their circular path. Shooting itself was dull.

The music in the first level began to subconsciously annoy me until I finally realized and muted the TV. After 2 hrs I stopped playing. Because it was free I didnt feel like I had to force myself to enjoy it. I was bored and frustrated.

I played the demo today of cavestory and what a difference. The shooting mechanic is amazing. Felt like gradius or any of those old school flight games. Ending up with a crazy over the top gun. And shooting upwards made flying enemies a pleasure to battle.
The enemy design is so simple, yet it has real character. In robox, the enemies are really boring.

To sum up. A game with promise marred with poor decision after poor decision. Poor enemy desing, poor platforming, poor combat, repitive music, poor fx sounds.

I agree with what you said there, but I didn't think the music was so bad.

But yeah, the game just doesn't work the way it should sometomes and it gets to the point that it's just frustrating to play, but you can get through it, it just feels like a really big piece of work.

I thought the music was pretty excellent myself, very metroid-esq.
The games insanely hard, but its not so bad when you start getting a few upgrades. Still more challenging them 99.9% of games out there though.

I also strongly disagree the platform and enemys are poor designed. The platforming is very varried and well done - constantly full of new ideas right upto the end. (theres sections with a stone dragon in the sky thats pretty cool....hard...but cool)

The enemys meanwhile, only have one critical flaw for me, and thats no damage reflection. The design and movement I thought was fine. (I ran into the flying things all the time, and thats annoying....but the fact their flight path wasn't predictable and easy to dodge is a -good- thing).

Anyway, I made a video review if anyones interested;
http://randomreviewshow.blip.tv/

(And I feel really proud of actualy getting to the end of the game )

I dont know how you could like anything about the game. You ran into every problem I did. Around the 13minute mark of your vid You were battling the flying bugs whilst dodging spikes on the floor. you jumped to avoid the bugs but they flew into you. You walked into the spikes and that hurt you. You died by jumping ontop of another bug that wasnt visible until you fell down.

I forgot about the swinging plants that are always placed at a platform you have to jump onto. All the hits are cheap. Your video reminded me of the other poor decisions. Boulders that fall when you jump forward. Destroying random rocks that grow plants. (which reset when you go too far)

These things dont make a game hard in a good way. They exploit the fact that I never designed the game. 2D scrollers that are hard challenge your reflexes and ability to make quick decisions. This game was just awful.

I would totally disregard your closing comments.

If you like a challenging hard core game that pays tribute to sidescrolling platforming games from the snes and nes days opt for the pending meatboy or cavestory. They challenge your gaming skills i.e reflexes and decision making. You will die over and over but with a sense that the deaths were avoidable if you had approached the level better.

This game throws every cheap hit at you over and over and death is unavoidable unless you know whats coming up ahead.

I absolutely hated the demo. It was annoying, boring and confusing.

There was a demo?

Still is.