My review is about a new game I found called
Slime Forest.
Story:
Something lame about selling potatoes. Or saving princesses. Or something. ;p No worse than Mario.
Graphics:
This game is basically a tribute to all those old tile-based RPGs of it's time, and includes a fanciful battle screen, with an innovative style of battle. The world map, and villages, castles, etc, are all tile-based, with cheesy graphics. There are even items that you can acquire to momentarily speed up everyone on the screen who walks around you, which really helps in case someone is in your way, who would normally move out of your way.
Gameplay:
The game is revolutionary in the fact that you can acquire, pretty early in the game, items that will let you summon, or dispell, creatures for a limited time. In fact, one of the boxes in the upper levels of the cave area has one of these items! But the cave area is a difficult place to survive in, if you don't know at least a few basic names for a few basic slimes, as the green mage (testing) slimes in the dungeon do NOT tell you their names if you guess wrong!
Battle:
In order to earn gold and to level up your character, you have to do battle with 'teaching slimes', who you can only hurt if you say their true name while attacking them. Their true name is displayed via a symbol over their head before you even attack them, and if you don't hit them fast enough, they will hurt you back. 'testing slimes' will not tell you their names, but thankfully, they only appear in the dungeon, and you can usually run away from them, but don't count on that. =p
Minigames:
So far as I'm aware, the only minigame you get is the one where you buy items in the shop to change what you eat at your house. You start out eating roasted potatoes to heal yourself. Acquiring some basic kitchen oil for 10 gold pieces will change this to fried potatoes. For 50 gold, some sea salt will make those potatoes turn into tasty potato chips! Add some seeds to your garden for 100 gold, and you'll have vegetable potato soup... Get some chicken for 500 gold, and... well... you get the picture. But watch out, your roommate might get suspicious about how you're affording all of these conveniences!
Sound:
Nonexistant. There are promises of great sound effects and musical tracks to come in the future, but in order to do this, the author needs people to register, so he can continue serving the project. Those who register will have access to advanced releases faster than those who don't register.
Conclusion:
This game is very good, if you can get into it (Turn the speed and learning levels WAY down to start out with...), as it teaches you Katakana, and eventually, Hirigana, and maybe even Kanjii! Those are what the symbols stand for, and the names of the symbols are actually the pronounciation of the Japanese Alphabet. This 'game' makes a fun journey into the world of learning other languages, and if you get too good at it, you might find yourself reading random pages in
yahoo.co.jp in no time!
Score:
Story: 5/10
Graphics: 6/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Sound: 1/10
Total Score: 6/10