forma.8 -- Event Preview, Part 3 (Nindies@Home)
1Don't worry, it's only a demo, it can't possibly last forever... er... can it? (Could it? I don't think so! But it might! Get out the doomsday kit and emergency rations!)
But yeah, when transmission just kinda petered out back there, I was just complimenting the game on how easy it was to understand the causes and effects of messing with various mechanisms in these caves. And then I ran out of places to go almost immediately after that.
I'd say that for all the "show, don't tell" going on with the basic gameplay, the one place where just a BIT more telling could be a nice idea is with the item pickups. We've found... a glowy gold orb, a shiny thing... oh, and those bombs all the way back when... but only the bombs actually explained themselves. I mean, I totally respect this idea and all, but it kinda becomes a problem in this case. There's nothing else to do on the screen where we just wrapped things up and no clear indicator of what might be possible now.
That said, there really aren't that many places to go... though I wouldn't actually hold that up as an excuse, much less a shining example of a late justification. Let me just admit right here and now that between the previous episode and this one, I cut out a bunch of uncertain and wishy-washy wandering about.
It would've been great if I had remembered that door that buzzed angrily at me for passing by it from the first video, because that's what the item we just got is good for! ...yeah, I didn't even remember it until about five minutes into this video, in case you want a SMALL dose of the slow-moving confusion I experienced. (I also find another one of those glowy yellow balls I assume to be a health upgrade if you complete all four of the squares on the drop-in status display... wait, is there even a way to get that display to come back outside a major item pickup? ...not that THAT was going to solve this little conundrum either way.)
In fairness, if I hadn't thoughtlessly incinerated myself at one point along the way, maybe it would've been fresher in my memory... but I'm not willing to take that bet blindly. You can never go broke underestimating your players!
Speaking of thoughtless incinerations, this new screen is by far the most treacherous thing we've seen yet... y'know, in case fire makes you nervous in any way. I know I sure had my neurosis for missing items reactivated on the way back when I found that hidden item I'd overlooked previously, although at least that one had a fairly handy half-obscured ball of light cuing you in to its location. I actually noticed it and wanted to yell at my past self for missing it, unsure if I could trust myself to come back for it properly...
Now, I could've fairly easily ended things as with the previous videos where the rooms ended... but if you check the remaining time on the video, you can see how that might've ended up being a bit too cruel. Or maybe it's crueler this way?
You see, the final room in the demo is much simpler and more direct... it has only two points of interest: a familiar type of enemy dispenser and ... a HUGE plantlike creature... I'm sure they're both friendly!
Actually, that dispenser is a little weird... it only generates one enemy at a time and... at painstaking effort, I have determined that it's not possible to destroy it, finicky though it might be at times to do so. Of course, there are a couple reasons why this might be. This is clearly a boss arena, and there might be no other ways to generate health-restoring pickups... or they might be there to get in your way in the midst of a tense battle. Or, y'know, both. Although given my track record with harvesting those guys for health restoratives, I'd say it's not really going to be all that helpful in that regard either.
But anyway, whatever the thought process involved, we don't get to test any of that! The demo fades to black before the fight can begin! Such a tease!
...however, while not the most satisfying way to end a demo, it's a very effective hook and ratchets things up pretty consistently and allows the players' imaginations to run wild in the meantime. It's not like it's something new, and many demos resort to such a "cheap" tactic... but it's probably one of the best segues you can have into the "COMING SOON!" screen.
I mean, we saw the alternative of just a rapid and random cut between areas in Freedom Planet, and I was personally underwhelmed. Meanwhile, RIVE let us do the whole level, including a minor and a major stage boss, so I don't know... I think either way might be fine. Actually, RIVE was combat-oriented already, so we didn't need a lot of imagination to decide how that fight was going to go down (although giving us a look at another of its Hacks was a nice little bone to throw), but as a probe with super-constrained combat capabilities, I'm forced to wonder how this would've even worked out... maybe it's for the better that my imagination run wild instead of being disappointed immediately?