Review: Magnetic Mayhem
Should've called this Magnetic Doesnt-Make-The-Slightest-Sense-In-Terms-Of-Physics, ifyouknowwhatI'msayian.
No ,seriously, throughout playing the magnets bugged me. Permanently. The flow of electrons inside a magnetic field goes from the negative pole to the positive one. In your level it's all over the place. Here's a few screens I'll be referring to throughout the review:
Screen 1:
Screen 2:
Screen 3:
Screen 4:
But let's get to the music first.
The music was energetic and gave the level a static atmosphere, as if everything was full of electricity, if you know what I mean. I liked it.
Bossedit already complained about the lack of powerups. One between the first and second, like, right in the middle of those two, would be perfect. I was trying to get the 4th screen done for almost half the level because I ended up taking one hit in the beginning.
Back to magnetism: In the screenshots, as you can see, I marked the flow of the electrons in the magnetic field. The positive magnets should always have an attracting flow and the negative ones should be pushing the flow away. But you went all over the place. And I don't understand your gimmick either. While switching between quicksand and water is a cool gimmick, and by the way could've been made way better in this level if you'd not have repeated the only-plus thing for like half of the level, but I think magnetism is a poor excuse to use that. Sometimes you just changed the physics entirely and removed the water effects from the magnetic flow. So yeah. A bit of inconsistency in there.
Some of the magnets were moving. I'd have liked to see them stop at the end because else some of the jumps are very hard to get right. That's also where I lost my powerup.
Let's break down these screens one-by-one:
Screen 1:
I've marked the block to show that the magnetic flow graphic is still there inside it. This looks weird and you should remove these 64x64 pixels of bgo. They were originally made as pure eyecandy anyways. Furthermore I'd like to point out that the lamps, although they're mine and I should be biased, don't fit with the level at all, seeing that everything else is grey.
Screen 2:
Here I marked the flow of the electrons going towards this positive magnet which looks like a negative one. Gosh this bugs me so much.
Screen 3:
Here's where you gave up on physics entirely. Remove the bgos above the platforms and just make them static and not wave like that. If they're being pushed away by the blocks they should stick to the ceiling after a few seconds anyways.
Screen 4:
Change the effect of the brick blocks please.
Another thing I didn't like that much about this level is that you didn't use half of the screen for the most part. This almost feels like an endless corridor like in FFXII2 or something. I'm sure if you'd have even used the expand section to top function you would've been able to do lots with the magnetism gimmick excuse.
But the thing which bugs me the most is that all of this is still consistent after like 5 versions of this level. Oh, also, anticlimactic ending, yay. You didn't need a second section for this level. It just underlines that you could've done more if you'd have split the level up in multiple sections.
Overall, I'm biased due to physics class and what I've learned there and common sense and all that. But this level isn't bad. Although poorly, you did impliment a fairly good gimmick I'd like to see more, but without my magnet graphics pls. Here's your score.
Graphics: 1/3 The only thing you hit was provide an atmosphere using the colour. Most of the graphics were misused, an excuse or just didn't fit.
Music: 2/2 Nailed it.
Gameplay: 3/5 As said, this whole physics thing bugs me. I took like 0.5 points away because of that. The rest is the repetitiveness, the lack of powerups and the anticimactic ending.
6/10
Not too bad.
