sketch fighter

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/sketchfighter/

 

Just when you think every type of 2D shoot-em-up has been done, this comes along! Very clever. Makes me wish I saved all my doodles from high school...

 

Clever? It's just a normal 2D shooter that happens to look like it was hand-drawn.

Now, if the game had a weapon that allowed you to, say, draw your own level as you go, that would be awesome.

 

Its pretty good. Ambrosia used to release awesome games like ev, now it doesn't.

Oops, I mean, Gooball is great! Yeah!

 

It's true. Ambrosia is no longer a hallmark of genius. But for me they usually trump games from the other Macintosh developers in creativity.

I wonder if any game will ever strike me as unexpectedly as EV did.

 

Darwinia was awesome tho. And Uplink was very interesting.

 

Sadly, both were merely ported by Ambrosia from the Windows side.

 

I dunno, Ambrosia just seems to release the same games over and over again with slightly different graphics.

I like the idea (heck, I have a website named "doodlegames.com" which was created with just that idea in mind) but ... it's just the same thing with new graphics... guy flying around in office chair shooting stuff ... oh now it's a doodle.

 

There have been some amazing exceptions, though. Cythera was a really different sort of RPG, EV revolutionary (not to say it was an original idea), Bubble Trouble quite clever, and Barrack just completely innovative. Chiral was a favorite of mine for a while.

Even though most of those are based on previously designed gameplay models they usually take the idea farther and make it better. Lately, maybe not as much.

 

I think the interesting thing about Ambrosia is that they are mostly a publisher - not a development house. Most of the games they have released over the years were not developed by them - so if they publish a port of Uplink or the like (which is a great game) then we should be thanking them!

 

The thing I like about doing games with rough art (try visiting kingdomofloathing.com for an extreme example) is that you can explore *gameplay* ideas without investing heavily in art (which is by far the most expensive component of most game development).

The problem I have with Sketch Fighter is it's actually using rough art as a conceit. The gameplay is unoriginal, and the artwork is simply rough as a gimmick. Now -- there's nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is.

Anyone seen Platypus?