William and the Lands of Rage

Where the fuck do I even start. First of all, the demo file is named "william and the lands of rage" no caps. The demo material is barely comparable to what is in the project photos on this page. The crowd funding page reward tiers can't even decide what the fucking name is. There is no install necessary, the whole game is packed into one .exe The game had it's first crash the second it launched The second time I launched it there was no sound, so I tried to quit but there wasn't a "quit" button, I had to hit alt+f4 and guess what happened.. It fucking stopped responding, I had to ctrl-alt-delete and task manager to end the task. Fuck me. When I eventually started it up again there was sound, and I hit "new game"

When you hit "new game there are no loading screens or anything like that, no smooth transition, no sound effect. The main menu (which only had two options - "new game" and "continue") instead just blinks straight into the game (if you can fucking call this abortion a game). 

The HUD consists of 3 hearts/shields, which I assume are supposed to be the character's health, but we'll get back to that in a minute. A timer which counts down from 299 in seconds, and a coin counter for how many coins you collect, I'll tell you how that works (hint: it fucking doesn't) when I get into the gameplay. I don't expect a 2d platformer to have a lot going on when it comes to the HUD, but I do expect it to work which you would think is a simple task, but we are dealing with  simple men. 

So at first glance you will notice two things. One: the atrocious backdrop which absolutely must have been drawn up in MS Paint. And Two: the scale of the player, platforms and enemies which I can only assume is due to wanting to show off that incredibly hideous backdrop that a 3 year old could have drawn up, if that 3 year old had broken wrists and cerebral palsy. 

On to the gameplay. Jesus Christ. Okay, so every sprite has maybe 2 frames per animation, which would have been standard if this was 1985 but it's not executed properly and results in choppy and ugly sprites (not that they're real flash to begin with) the main character is some tiny robot named "William" who's backstory is not mentioned anywhere in the game, but only on the various crowdfunding pages and indie websites that you can find the demo file (in my case I downloaded it from Moddb). And for the most part the sprite looks.. Reasonable, I'm not saying it's good, but you can see at least 85% of the effort was put into our little extra chromosome. Again he has two frames of animation and it is sped up ridiculously, so when you move, he has a seizure as he makes his way from left to right of the screen. Jumping as with any 2d platformer is the main mechanic, but the Devs manage to fuck even that up. Jumping is imprecise and floaty, and at most points you can't even jump clear on to a platform, because for some stupid reason there's a climb mechanic which seems to only be implemented on some platforms rather than all of them (I suppose you can give the climb mechanic another frame of animation, giving you a grand total of 3 frames) the platforms in the game world are all the same green/white blocks or brown/black which are all quite small but other than that there's not much to say.

The presentation of the world is broken, I don't know what they were going for, but it's broken. The game throws you randomly into either the MS Paint world, or the hub world. But it's different every time you boot the game which leaves me scratching my head. If you boot into the hub world, you'll be greeted by the same MS Paint world, going through the "world-1" door you will find nothing of major interest, you'll see some doors which have signs above them such as "act 1" or "act 2" or "   " (it seems act 3 doesn't even have a sign yet, but I doubt this game will ever be completed) going through the door labelled "act 2" you will be teleported (I use that term loosely, nothing flashy happens, the moment you walk to a door in this it just flashes to wherever it's designed to take you. If it even goes where it's supposed to) back to the hub world. I guess that this is because "act 2" isn't featured in the demo which is to be expected. Going through the door "act 1" takes you to another beautiful MS Paint world which is only slightly more impressive than the one you've come to familiarise yourself with thus far. Which has a door on the left of you and a door on the right (you can think of them as blue pill and red pill or as I like to think of them mifepristone and misoprostol.) one leads to the hub world, and the other takes you to level 1 

If you boot into the MS Paint world after hitting "new game" you will find that it is just a flat path from the beginning to the end with some sickly convulsing spike trap on the ground that fails to even see through the task of, you know, trapping you. You can just walk on through it without taking a hit. Getting closer to the end you'll either go straight on through a poorly drawn grey pointy tampon (some would argue it's an archway or a door, but I'm not convinced) to the Hubworld. Or you'll first find one obstacle which brings me to.. 

The enemies. The art style in this game is already a puke cake worthy of Filthy Frank but this is the turd icing. I've come across 3 enemies in total (could be 4 but I'm certain two of them are the same, just with reversed sprites) you have the evil pumpkin which is a pumpkin with vines and a scary face. Another evil pumpkin which seems to be a reversed version of the first. A small red bird that flies toward you. And a Venus fly trap similar to in super Mario but with way less effort put into it. You can't get attacked by it, and you can't attack it. Therefore it is a useless prop. All the enemies in the game have a set path as it is in most other 2d platformers except for the bird, instead the bird slowly drifts toward the player, making it extremely easy to jump on and kill it.

Making your way through level 1 is what the Spanish call "El Cancer" you start off in a world with a backdrop no different to anything else you have seen so far. You guessed it. MS Fucking Paint. But something you are about to witness is going to rock your world. As you start to move your character to the right and jump on your first pumpkin you will see the backdrop begin to break off and slide to the right. Normally I'd consider that an ugly bug but no, I think these morons intended it to do so. As it slides off into oblivion, you are left with a jet black backdrop that is so black that it started a rally about how black backdrops matter. The only detail throughout the rest of the world are little MS paint bushes and trees done with a tool that I can only really describe as smudgy. 

If you manage to finish the first level you'll end up in one of two places. The first, you'll go on through to the next level, congratulations you survived. The second is you end up being warped back to the start of the fucking level. Which basically means go to your laundry, get out the bottle of bleach you've been saving, and drink up Sonny Jim. 

The sound is inconsistent throughout the demo, either it loads or it doesn't, it cuts out about every ten minutes and you're left with absolute silence for the rest of the game, the coin pickup sound is irritating and after the first fifty or so coins you'll start to go mad, it is annoying as shit. The enemies make no sound, jumping makes the usual bouncy flutey sound effect from any game in the genre, the music is basic and terrible (actually the main menu sounds like a shitty version of the theme that plays in Resident Evil 1's save room) and the hub world has some royalty free forest birds chirping and wind type white noise which makes no sense for the scenery 

On the technical side of gameplay is where things get super bad. When you take a hit from an enemy in the game, you lose one heart and your character gets knocked back, take 3 hits and all your hearts are gone. This situation usually ends with a "Game Over" screen and you'd have to start again or use one of your extra lives. There are no extra lives, so game over should happen. But no. Having your character die and have to start again doesn't happen. When you run out of hearts, you are still alive (but not on the inside) your character is invincible and cannot die. Falling down into a hole which normally should kill you doesn't either. 

Will the Autistic Bipedal Automaton is left floating at the bottom with nothing but his head showing and you end up stuck. If you hit "esc" you'll be given the prompt to hit "spacebar" to continue. Believe you me, hitting spacebar does nothing at all except for crash the game and result in the program not responding, hitting alt-f4 does nothing, you have to end the task with task manager. And if you boot up the game again and hit "continue" it's exactly the same as hitting "new game" you just start this grotesque shit show all over again 

The timer at the top of the screen is useless, it counts down and nothing happens apart from going into negative numbers and reminding you how many seconds you have wasted on your life playing this stillborn game. And the coin counter on the top right of the screen cuts off after you hit 3 digit numbers.

In conclusion, this piece of shit is an abomination and the work of deluded man children who can't figure out what to name it after three or four renames. I rate it a shit emoji/10 and can't believe I wasted 2 and a half hours trying to play it and write this review.