Recent reviews by AutomaticFrenzy

I love this game.

Its a very unique experience, there's nothing quite like it, but the easiest way of explaining it is calling it an exploration driven, nonlinear, zelda like. Go and find powerups hidden around the world, complete quests, finish dungeons and their bosses to unlock the big final dungeon, etc. The game is very charming, wacky, and funny.

Probably the most unique feature is the merit badge system. There are 40 achievements in the game, but the twist is that each one you complete has a bonus gameplay modifier to it that you can optionally equip. Some of these have ridiculous effects and can completely change how the game plays. A lot of my favorite ones give alternate playable characters that vary wildly in how they approach the combat.

Plus, new to this release, the randomizer mode adds longevity by shuffling all the items in the main game around to new locations.

My playtime is low, but that's because I played this game a ton before it was on steam. I have the only speedrun submission for this game, so I encourage anyone reading this to try and beat my time! https://www.speedrun.com/loonyland_halloween_hill

For a chunk of my playthrough, I thought I was going to give this game a negative review. But the game is a flawed masterpiece, and it convinced me just how great of a masterpiece it is by the end.



The incredible:

The music. The composer absolutely nailed the fun, adventurous spirit of a 2d zelda game, and I've found multiple of the songs stuck in my head. Its an OST I'm going to revisit often, and all of the songs hit, its not just a couple bangers.

The dungeon and boss design. Each dungeon had a clever core theme, good secrets, a satisfying item, and a great final boss. I'll get into one complaint about the bosses below, but design-wise, they were top notch. Specifically, the very last dungeon of the game was fun to discover, and might be one of the best 2d zelda dungeons I've ever played.

A couple of the secrets. Most of the secrets/puzzles in the game are zelda-tier: not always immediately obvious, but usually simple or related to an item that you may not have yet. A few of them were on the tier of fez/tunic/animal well though, and I really appreciated their inclusion. Don't go into this game expecting lots of secrets of that nature, but do know that there will be a couple near the end.



The good:

Art. The monochrome is a bold choice that can sometimes get in the way of clarity, but overall the game is designed well enough for things to be clear to parse. Small details go a long way to make the world feel alive and interesting.

The items. The items you collect over the course of the adventure are unique and useful. Having them all bound to different buttons improves the zelda experience of constantly pausing to equip the right item. Even up to the end of the game, I was routinely using each item because they all still had a purpose and none were outclassed by something else just being inherently better.

Picross.


The rough:

The combat. This nearly made me stop playing the game entirely. Its going for a 2d zelda style combat, but changes so many rules and design considerations that it constantly frustrated me. The most immediate and obvious difference is just the amount of hits it takes to kill enemies. Early game its not super noticable, or at least feels like it'll be better when you get upgrades, but by the midgame it sets in just how many hits most enemies will take to defeat. I had the middle sword upgrade, and there was an enemy type common to that phase of the game that took 14 hits to defeat. I get wanting to make enemies tough enough so running up to them and swinging wildly doesn't let you breeze through the game, but 14 hits is just a lot. And you might not have that many sword upgrades, depending on your path, choices, discovery, etc. Some other aspects that are different that make the combat more frustrating overall: Some enemies do insanely high damage for how hard their attacks are to avoid, you can't hold your sword in front of you as a defensive option, enemies get knocked back way less compared to zelda games so running in and slashing one can leave you vulnerable to them immediately attacking/bumping into you, you never get a shield for projectiles, certain actions like opening a chest dont pause enemies so they can trap you while you are in animation, theres a fairy equivalent in the game but its not something that you can find replenishable sources around or before boss fights so healing a lot of hp is somewhat grindy, theres no item that stuns enemies like the boomerand or hookshot do in zelda, miniboss strength enemies appear outside of miniboss rooms and respawn.
Now, the obvious answer to struggling with the combat is to reduce the difficulty. I played after a patch that added in a difficulty slider, and played from the mid game to the end of the game on the easiest of the five difficulties. That change mostly just stopped me from dying as much, but it still felt harder than most of the 2d zelda games, in my opinion. There was a lot of exhaustion in either having to kill enemies that take many hits (that difficulty gives you double damage and it was still noticable) or trying to dodge enemies and taking random hits that you then have to spend time grinding health back from (that difficulty increases healing, but I still had to go out of my way to actively look for health beyond what enemies dropped).
As I said above, the bosses have incredible design, but it was slightly worsened by how long the fights were, how much damage their simple attacks do, the lack of healing spawned by mechanics of the fight, and how hard it was to predict/dodge a small amount of their attacks. I think the final boss took upwards of 50 hits even with double damage, so on a normal difficulty, would be upwards of 100 (not totally sure on this)

Some missable areas. There were two major locations that I missed on my playthrough. One was the only place to turn in a certain currency, and I missed it because it was very close to a similar looking location and I mentally thought they were the same place for a long time. When I finally noticed on my map that there were two buildings there and not one, the game got a bit easier. Really this issue is on me, but I think if the entrance to the location looked a bit different, I wouldn't have assumed it was the other place I had already been. The other missable area is a major dungeon with a super important item, that has a relatively plain exterior. The main dungeons are marked on your map with big obvious icons. This one doesn't have that. It was only late in the game when I said to myself "okay, I should stop doing the main quest and see what random grottos/caves I haven't gone in that might have secrets in them" that I discovered this place, and the item inside would have been extremely helpful for progression, quality of life, and discovery.




Overall my advice is to feel comfortable turning the difficulty down if combat is ruining the game for you, and to push through the middle of the game where things feel a little frustrating to get to the end. The last 1/4th of the game is great because you have a lot of items, you can really start discovering the fun secrets, combat has become a non-issue, and the final dungeon is super high quality.

Absolutely wonderful local multiplayer game. Really creative with its core premise and execution of all its different game modes. Play 3 person death race with one shot each to really break people

I haven't yet been convinced by how this game beats the original in terms of playability or quality, and that's ignoring the bugs that the current version had as of 2/3/2023.

The original had a UI that organized things in one concise location on the side of the screen, but the new one is scattered all over the screen, and has less information (Spells don't show damage, items don't show what they do, etc).

The graphics give this game a weirdly high requirement to run, which goes against what's great about a thoughtful, well designed puzzle game. It's harder at a glace to take in the whole map and where enemies/walls are, partially from the zoom and partially from the skew, and the full map zoom out helps alleviate that but I'd rather just be playing the original for quickly reading where blood is, which enemies are what type, etc. I often install desktop dungeons on cheap laptops, and used to play it on public computers back when the browser version was functional, so larger graphical requirements are a negative to me.

These features were missing in the original but a new release would have been a good opportunity for some accessibility features, like key rebinding and text size. Missing from this release as well is the radial menu the original had.

as mentioned above, I ran into some bugs. Leaderboard and daily didn't load for me on my first launch, and after I completed my run, they wouldn't load again. I relaunched the game a third time, and the leaderboard was functional, but my time wasn't on it. On my first run, the preparation screen didn't pop up. In the tutorial, it starts you with 1/10 health without drawing attention to it or explaining why.

At the end of this review, I'm just not sure who this game is for, exactly. The UI makes it harder to calculate all the math, the graphics requirements make the playerbase smaller, and there's not much value added in terms of new direction or accessibility upgrades. Just play the original

Short, sweet, and cheap. A fun puzzle game that has a good mix of standard mechanics puzzle, and a couple think outside the box solutions. If you get stuck, think about the level name and look for any suspicious items

Charming puzzle platformer. It gets easier and easier to break the puzzles the more players you have, but its honestly as fun to break the puzzles in silly ways as it is to do them legitimately. Very underrated co-op

Absolutely great local co-op game, I'm amazed at how unheard of this game is for how polished it is and how inspired the level design is. Best played with 4 friends

Super clean design that leads to a really satisfying core gameplay loop. Fair warning, the main progression/replayability is chasing high scores, so if that doesn't appeal to you it might be a short experience

Great game to get four people together for some friday night fun. Mechanics are immediately obvious and intuitive, with some room for tricky biz, like putting a bullet midway between two grid tiles. Really enjoy physically bumping my friends off the map before the round even lets you shoot.

Kid Hallow is a game I played a ton of back when it first released in 2008. It is a puzzle/action 2d platformer that is fueled by user generated levels.

The main gimmick is that there are lots of playable characters, and a level can make you change between them. A level focused on the floaty ghost feels a lot different than the wall jumping ninja, and that's different than the explosive grenade jumping santa claus. This leads to a lot of level variety.

I've always enjoyed games that allow user content, because as new ideas are discovered, people push the game way farther than any developer can think to.

Each level has its own high score and time attack leaderboard, so its fun to pick a level you like and try to maintain the #1 spot.

All in all, if you like stuff like mario maker, this game will be up your alley!