I played 5 MORE of Steam's Worst Reviewed Metroidvanias
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
- Today, I played more of the worst reviewed metroidvanias on Steam. This time, we're doing an even deeper dive into each game. And I might regret it.
Format and thumbnail were inspired by @IronPineapple.
▶ GAMES
Dark Blood store.steampowered.com/app/10...
Happy Mask store.steampowered.com/app/25...
Red Goblin: Cursed Forest store.steampowered.com/app/36...
Zahalia: The Knights of Galiveth store.steampowered.com/app/56...
BlooDecay store.steampowered.com/app/25...
▶ CREDITS
@PyeFive - Editing Dark Blood, Red Goblin, Zahalia, BlooDecay
RandomVsTheWorld - Editing Happy Mask
▶ MUSIC
Sonic Frontiers - Another Passage (Tails Mvt.) [Instrumental]
Sonic Frontiers - Blood Flow (Knuckles Mvt.) [Instrumental]
Sonic Frontiers - Ares Island (1st Mvt.)
Penny's Big Breakaway - Outside the Eidophusikon
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy - Sentinel Beach
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy - Rock Village
Undertale - Another Medium
Super Mario Odyssey - Mount Volbono
Penny's Big Breakaway - Tutto Finisce a Tarallucci e Vino
Super Mario World - Overworld Theme
▶ FOLLOW
Stream: / fireb0rn
Stream VODs: / @fireb0rnvods
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / fireb0rn
Instagram: / fireb0rngg
▶ CHAPTERS
0:00 Dark Blood
12:05 Dark Blood Review
14:39 Happy Mask
30:08 Happy Mask Review
32:36 Red Goblin Cursed Forest
44:06 Red Goblin Review
46:44 Knights of Galiveth
54:43 Galiveth Review
56:33 BlooDecay
1:08:36 BlooDecay Review 
Игры
Dark Blood is absolutely an asset flip, I immediately recognized the hero and basically entire cemetery level from the "GothicVania" cemetery pack on open game art. I'm willing to bet most of the other assets are from the other packs in that collection. Maybe that's why it has the Metroidvania tag on Steam
That makes a lot of sense! I had considered that it might be something where the creators were a student team, and one guy put in effort and nobody else did, but yeah it's definitely an asset-flip
Here to confirm. It's all the same artist, looks like; I don't remember the exact buildings, but I remember the characters and general style. Man, I was dinking around in GameMaker 2 back then. Good times. :T
ansimuz did them, he's got a page on itch, I think they only used the free asset packs too
an asset flip means that it is already a game just reskinned with different assets, or a template that has been reskinned, simply using an asset pack doesn't make the bad game an asset flip, it could just be a bad game, assets are very useful for indie devs
@@BlazingnitroYT "Doesn't make it an asset flip" correct. "Doesn't make it bad" incorrect.
fire really embracing his destiny as the ironpineapple of metroidvanias, you love to see it
Grabing the blade of the sword is actually a real technique, it's called -half-swording- Mordhau* and is meant to hit opponents in armor with the handguard of the sword as if you were using a mace or warhammer, to concuss them. The more you know!
Oh, that's neat! I'd never heard of that.
@fireb0rn Actually a bit of a correction: I have mistaken Half-swording with Mordhau (Murder stroke), both grab the blade but half-swording is meant to pierce, Mordhau is the one for striking.
yeah, the typical "hitting one blade with another" would just wear away the blade of the sword. THey actual did this and then stabbed but never swinged the sword
@@Kennedy00Louis half-swording is grabbing the blade with one hand and using that to get more piercing force.
My older bro's always spouting interesting facts, and this is one he told us a bit back. Cool to see other people who know
I feel as though you shouldn't play the worst metroidvanias, but instead pick 5 random metroidvanias
I had actually planned to, but I've been super busy and these games tend to be a bit quicker to get through. And I usually enjoy these, funnily enough. But noted, thanks for your thoughts.
@@fireb0rn if I may make two suggestions.
both by same dev
1. Catmaze
2. Fearmonium
I don't think they're terrible, but also not great.
however I find them interesting bc you can see the influence on both.
catmaze is aping Momodora, but uses Slavic mythos
fearmonium was made when Cuphead was in full swing, as you can imagine.
solo dev and if I may be honest, decent games considering catmaze is developed on a web browser engine ( Chromium lol )
anywho, figured you might enjoy a small theme or single dev to make a future video on
Nah he should do whatever he wants.
@@TemmiePlays I didn't play Fearmonium but idk if Catmaze belongs on this list. It shows signs of lack of polish you'll be used to if you grew up in the Flash era (lots of passion projects with inconsistent polish), but I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad game. I thoroughly enjoyed the game because in spite of minor issues, it's very playable and has some cool mechanics.
Why tho
I looked up Happy Mask and it looks like the developer also does surrealist oil paintings as well as making all these games that are inter-connected in some way? On the instagram posts about the games he does say they are made as art pieces. He's certainly cooking, though it doesn't always come out quite right. Respect that though (er maybe not the price but yaknow. i get it)
That's actually cool. The games also seem connected too kind of? Which is pretty neat.
Wait is this made by the same devs of cruelty squad cause I saw some cruelty squad assets in there
@@shadowwolf4780 no but it wouldnt surprise me if those assets are store bought or free to use so they pop up in different games from time to time
@@autumnwyvern489 ah I see
Yeah the creator of cruelty squad fits the match they make these weird AF acid trip surrealist pieces
@@shadowwolf4780 I was absolutely seeing the Cruelty Squad influence in there (and maybe a tad bit of Yume Nikki with the walking around surreal environments) , but the difference with CS is that it's actually fun beyond the visual torture and sensory overload- there's deep, refined gameplay and intricate systems and loadouts.
Honestly, it’s kind of a shame that the Happy Mask game ended up having poor controls and layering glitches; it seems like the non-platforming segments were going for something similar to Yume Nikki, which would’ve definitely been my kind of game otherwise.
That's what you get for making a 2d platformer in RPG Maker, that engine is designed for turn based combat, making a 2d platfoming control is just a disaster waitting to happen
@windflier1684 Isnt Lisa a sidscrolling game in RPG maker and that game is a masterpiece
@@nonymouswisp8176 LISA doesn't have "platforming" in the "jump and avoid obstacles" way, you can just fall down some platforms and either instantly die or go down to a lower area.
@@windflier1684I feel it's definitely possible to get at least a decent platformer with RPG Maker. RPG Maker XP and forward essentially allow you to delete the base engine with the script editor and create whatever the heck you want, so just replace the old engine with your own engine built for platforming (though at that point why bother using RPG Maker at all?).
I'm watching the Happy Mask section rn since it's the one game in this video that I never saw or edited. This is... _very_ strange LMAO
I recognize much of the artwork for Dark Blood as free stuff off the unity store. I used much of these for a college software development project once, which'll never see the light of day again. The assets are nice, but after working with them it's *really* grating how limited the handful of frames you have to work with. For the panther, for one, I wound up making a version that'll have the enemy fade in behind the player, run a set distance, and fade out.
Happy Mask is actually kinda cool. Like a nightmarish shitpost. Beautiful.
1:04:30 grabbing a sword by the blade and using the pommel or crossguard to bludgeon someone is actually an established historical technique. It looks stupid, but it actually works.
Yup, just came here to comment this. I believe it's referred to as a murder stroke; it effectively turns the sword into a kind of warhammer, making it far more effective against opponents in plate armor.
I love how 90% of the second game is just "what is going on"
I'm going to start using, "I will revenge for you"
To be more fair than the developers deserve, English is likely not their first language. There's definitely a point to be made about properly localizing a product you're selling, though!
@@lunasophia9002Even good games used to have bad translations back in the day; just look as Castlevania. However, I was saying that more because it's funny, and still kinda makes sense
It's a shame that Happy Mask looks completely unfinished, because it actually seems really interesting and unique from a conceptual level.
Reminds me of Fear and Hunger, but simpler
Just play Yume Nikki or LSD Dream Emulator, those two are the most popular of this genre. Plenty others too, this is by all means a separate genre of games from metroidvanias. Weird the dev called it, but yeah the concept isn’t exactly new either
@@danhorusmore like a Hylics but bad
yeah, I'm not so sure that its concept is interesting or it has just random shit thrown in there and just so it happens some of it is good by a random chance
i think as firevborn said, suffering simulator sums it up pretty well and that's a funny idea
Looking in the steam discussions for Galiveth, I noticed in one spot that the dev left a comment: "Go ahead and give it a thumbs down. It deserves it. I was in way over my head when I tried to make this. That's why I'm retiring from the games industry."
A bit sad to see, honestly...
11:39 Bro, I've seen that art before. Isn't it from Ghosts 'N' Goblins? I was thinking "asset flip" but these assets might actually be straight up stolen.
it's most likely from an asset pack
not stolen but it is an asset flip
Y'all have no idea what asset flipping means. Using stock assets isn't asset flipping
@@YadonTheCat
here wikiepdia definition:
The term asset flip was coined by games journalist James Stephanie Sterling around 2015. The term is largely applied in a pejorative sense, referring to low quality games produced using pre-made assets. Vice referred to such titles as "cobbled together, barely-functioning games.
@@YadonTheCat "Asset flipping" as in "house flipping" -- the idea being that your POS game probably won't make much money, it just has to make more than you paid for the assets (plus your minimal time investment) to be profitable. Churn out dozens of such games and you can potentially make a half-decent income selling garbage to the small number of people who aren't paying close attention to what they buy.
That 2nd game, Happy Mask, at least in the top-down sections, gives me (having never played the game personally) Yume Nikki vibes.
That being said, Yume Nikki at least has some introduction - you're in a comprehensive world and then go to sleep and end up in the weird world that you're meant to explore blindly and just find things. It makes sense for things to be weird and random - you're in a dream.
Also, this game likes sending you back to the... hub area(?) way more.
I guess it's going for the "mysterious world exploration", which it seems to do pretty well... but also goes for a "action adventure/platformer", which makes it more of slog.
8:08 the reason for why the background scroll is nauseating is because the devs did not correctly calculate parallax. The background needs to scroll slower than the level to achieve the correct effect.
fire and ironpineapple crossover when
The mature audiences part where you point at the camera and say "thats for you guys" really made me laugh more than it should have
Happy mask has such an amazing style, it's art actually kicks ass, i love that type of shit, wish the game was more interesting
Gave a littrbit of Yume nikki vibes
Yes! I love the idea too, just wish there were a few less locked doors and glitches, and more cool stuff to find.
I've mastered the fetal position ability
lol
Wow, I was going to say this is a pretty low bar to beat for new game devs, but at the same time I respect the time and effort that went into these projects. I respect anyone that is willing to make a game and put themselves out there. If you want to become a game dev, don't be intimidated and just have fun with it. If you've made a game that people didn't love, don't be discouraged, many game studios had flops before they had a big hit.
As long as you don't publish a really unplayable game or a pure asset flip for money its all good, its okay to make bad games just don't rip people off for them!
I wish every game dev out there the very best, because the world is tough.
And thanks to fireb0rn for this entertaining video and for the really good feedback that new devs can use!
Basically this is what I want to do. Make some low polish, low quality games with decent story thrown in as tests (released for free) before trying to go more in depth.
You respect garbage and asset flips being thrown out there?
Stunning and brave.
"don't die casually" had me dying
Casually?
13:18 Which is weird, considering the game has red blinking when you get hit. Why not link the frames to that animation? If the red animation is playing, don't damage the player!
8:07 I see this a lot in games . It's worst when done in racing games. The parallax effect is backwards. Imagine you are on a train, and looking out of a window. The trees in the background move past you at a slower rate than the trees closer to you.The background should always move slower. Unless you are trying to achieve an effect where it looks like the entire location is rotating around the character.
The Galiveth dev needs to play The Lost Vikings to see how the "switch between different characters with different abilities" mechanic can work when done well.
Happy Mask looks pretty directly inspired by Yume Nikki, which is an older game that is revered and inspired a lot of rpgmaker games that came after it, as far as I am aware. I have it on steam and its great. Very strange and cool.
In the first game, I recognise the enemy in the cutscene from Darkrise, a mobile game. The artwork in the game also looks really similar to it, so I agree with the thought that it's open source.
The way to make Galiveth interesting is a small group, each of which plays completely differently. So even though you're playing the same screens, it would be a different puzzle to solve how to navigate it for each character
Astalon: Tears of the Earth is the GOAT
Then it will be just The Lost Vikings. To be fair I would love a new The Lost Vikings game
@iwontbeforgotten I admit I'm not really familiar, but I'm thinking more like the different Shovel Knight DLCs than the characters working together. E.g. maybe one character is in a 2d platformer, while another is in a top-down tilemap, while another moves by hopping from wall to ceiling to floor, all on the same level, which then gets experientially transformed by the different implications for each character
So that level again but backwards
7:20 it does feel like he got some good looking stock assets, yes.
I know exactly where some of those assets are from even, I've used them as placeholders and in game jams myself
Happy mask seems like an art project
That first game, nice artwork aside, looks agonizing to play through, like they just put the project out while being proud of its bugs unfixed.
Happy Mask seems like it was made by a disturbed person honestly
1:04:22 Grabbing the blade of your sword and attacking with the hilt actually is a sword fighting technique. I'm not sure how often it was used, but it is found in books of sword fighting techniques from medieval Europe.
Dark blood is likely an asset flip using "multimedia fusion".
It's an engine that I used to make games when I was a child, and it's very automated. Player character uses a plug an play tool, so the dev didn't program any physics on the player.
The platforms not moving you when you stand on them, the zero I-frames, the hitboxes not being destroyed on death, and even stage layout, this dev "barely" developed this game. It's almost all using premade assets of the engine, and the art's likely bought.
Just wanna say in the Knights of Galiveth section the goin through an area multiple times with different characters is what the Lost VIkings series did though it was much better executed in those games by having a smaller party size and having different paths the characters take as you basically puzzle your way through swapping characters to open paths for other characters. So the base game idea isn't bad but the execution along with the jank controls and iffy art and odd leveling/upgrade system are what made the Knights of Galiveth pretty bad imo
He really deserves a medal for having spent real money and hours of his life to play those games, they all just seem to be in an early alpha version
Strongly reminded of Steph Sterling going through the trash in Steam Greenlight. A lot of the same sorts of things show up, like awful and inconsistent controls, poor level design, and so on.
that first game I was thinking "hey I kinda like the music though" but then I remembered LOL
oh nice, you played Happy Mask. i've seen this guys stuff a while ago and was aware of it and thought it was cool but I hadn't bought it at the time, seemed interesting but it clearly seemed like it wouldn't be for everyone's taste, one of those complicated, niche, art games. Those sorts are not easy to get into.
btw, if you think it looks cool, trash vomit studios recently released something for free with the same kinda artstyle.
Happy Mask is not a game, it's a fever dream you can play
it'd potentially be fun to try and do a video with obscure medtroidvanias that have minimal reviews. you might end up with some hidden gems as well and not just widely panned stuff!
Swords arn't very effective against other plate armoured opponents so what Knights would do is they would use thier armoured hands to hold the blade of the two handed sword (for examble a bastard sword) and use it as a club when going up againts other plate armoured Knights.
The game with multiple characters reminded me of Astalon, wich is a very good metroidvania where you can switch between 3 different characters who have different abilities
I love this game so much
Galiveth seems to be basically the game "The Lost Vikings" at home
Well BlooDecay seems like the best of a rather bad lot, seems like there's some actual halfway-competent game-making involved. And apparently they're only charging $2.99 on Steam, which seems like a fair price (especially compared to another one of these charging $20)
Sidenote- Happy Mask, the 'overhead' sections were definitely made with RPG Maker, right?
That first one looks as though he followed along with an incomplete tutorial. Then tried to make it work 😂
To be honest, Red Goblin Cursed Forest looks kinda cute. The areas aren’t super detailed, but the blue one with the particles is kinda neat. The controls however… well, they don’t look polished, unfortunately. Not a big fan of gaps very close to transition points when your controls are a that wonky.
It at least seems like more effort went into this than the first one.
48:40 Seems more inspired by Astalon than Trine. But Astalon requires you to go back to swap and isn't too restrictive on progress - you'll pass by things where you see "Oh I need to come back with this other character for that", but still be able to make SOME progress in a different direction.
If you want to play an actually good game with that "switch between characters" idea, then play Astalon.
I've been meaning to try Astalon out! Looks like a really neat game.
all of the artwork in dark blood is stuff you can buy or get for free I have used them myself once for a small prototype game
37:09 That's probably a line from another sprite on the spritesheet. A lot of times when you're working with pixel textures you can get small rounding errors with how they're displayed and it ends up bleeding a part of the texture over. Easy way to fix it is to have the pixel immediately outside your main sprite match the same color or transparency.
Happy mask looks super interesting. I feel like the glitches are intentional
Happy Mask was such a fever dream I got a headache just watching you play it in the background while my focus was on a Pokemon game in the foreground.
36:08 - Considering that it's the only way for you to get out of that pit, I'm pretty sure that's intended? I'd rather think it was intended, than you were just supposed to live at the bottom of that pit forever more.
"Do you normally name your scarves?" This cracked me up
happy mask feels like the sections of the Slots Available ARG that take place in space funeral
Why is there a black square in the middle of the screen when you die in Happy Mask? The game is so buggy, jeez.
Sorry, I should have clarified those black boxes are edited in to censor the deaths. Since the death animations were sometimes kinda graphic and the character looks childlike. There are some unique death animations that play depending on how you died, which is actually pretty cool. Some of them felt kind of unrelated to the cause of death, however.
AFAIK the graphics of Dark blood come from an asset pack. Seen them in other indie platformers.
Thanks for the vids to help me infinitely wait for silksong
I wish games stopped taking inspiration from I Wanna Be the Guy. It's an unfun game that's literally "lol you died randomly again whoopsies".
I Wanna Be the Guy is actually pretty consistent. It's intentionally trolling you, sure, but there's something very cathartic about nailing a section. This is something many of its copies lack.
Honestly I disagree, I actually think IWBTG has genius level design due to its difficulty and the games charm, there’s always a certain satisfaction whatever you beat a level that can’t really be replicated in a game like hollow knight where you don’t really feel satisfied with the games bullshit design.
a lot of dark bloods artwork looks like it was stolen directly from geometry dash 2.2, in the pixel block section.
"a door that opens?!?! a door that isn't LOCKED?!?!?!🤯"
Still waiting for the Aterna Noctis try at some point x) maybe you don't finish it but I'm super interested in your thoughts and insight about some mechanics/areas/bosses.
Happy Mask can't be worst reviewed, when there's no review
“Its like watcher knights on steroids”
-Fire, 2024
Fire is going to get through all the metroidvanias before Silksong comes out.
Has he played TEVI yet? It's good and cute. And kinda linear, but still good and cute and has fun combat.
@@FlameUser64 Im not actually sure haha
you should do a challenge on hollow knight where you have to get all grubs and also only use gruberflys elogy and grubsong (including charms that affect them) and also use the mods from your other grub video
I enjoy these types of vids, please keep doing them.
You should probably think of Happy Mask more like a Yume Nikki or LCD Dream Emulator sort of game. Surrealist exploration. The closest comparison is probably Lisa the First (not to be confused with Lisa the Painful).
As a solo indie dev, this video was heartening for sure. My current project is smaller and uglier, at time of writing, than any of these games, but it's also much more focused and made with assets unique to the game. It's not a good game, I don't think, but I think the design is solid enough that people will think "Good design, underwhelming execution", not "why does this exist?"
I'm guessing the elevators in BlooDecay behave like that because they aren't registering as floors for purpose of the gravity/falling mechanic. Guessing that while standing on them you're actually building up more and more downward speed and thats why movement becomes slow and you shoot off downward when you leave them (cant jump, either)
Oh, good thinking! I hadn't thought of that.
hey fire any tips for absrad or just p5 in general also keep up the good work
hey fire.... i think you should play the hello charlotte series...
even though it's not your typical metroidvania game, and it's kinda dark, i kinda think that you'll enjoy it.
I get the impression Happy Mask is very intentional about every part of itself.
Happy Mask is gonna give me nightmares.
Dude who made Knights of Galiveth played The Lost Vikings and Legacy of the Wizard and thought "you know what these games need? Deviantart OCs."
Happy mask was unique, but looks like it's made in multimedia fusion or gamemaker.
The jank with the roll to jump is caused by "destroying" the player character and swapping with a different character or it's just the "hotspot" being too low or too high when using that animation. But the jump refreshing while in the run animation was also glaring bug. A lot could be solved with creating a numerical flag of "are you in the air or touching the ground" state.
I was scrolling through the comments, why do you have an issue with Clickteam Fusion? I use it all the time and I love it. It's not just a beginner's game engine, it's legitimately good especially if you want to become a serious game developer without coding knowledge. Not everybody can code, and that's OK. It doesn't mean they are a child or that Clickteam is a 'kiddie program.' Honestly, it seems like you're the child here because you think the only legitimate way to develop games is coding, and the engines that don't use coding are just toys for degenerates who, according to you, are not game developers. Grow up.
It's actually made in Rpg maker(and i guess XP version)
Gonna be a fun ride!
7:08 or so, those backgrounds are from the celeste mod "spring collab 2020" and were made by Bissy
I genuinely love the artistic drive of happy mask, it reminds me a lot of the style of cruelty squad. If there was a platformer that looked exactly like happy mask but actually played well I would so gladly play it
Happy Mask is so trolly...they probably thought nobody would play so much lmao
I can't believe it, the enemies at 10:19 finally learned how to pogo. It's too late, they're too powerful
The art from Dark Blood has to be from someone else, no one who animates a characters sprites would ignore the feet not aligning in the idle animation like that
I recognized one of the mob in Dark Blood from another game, probably an open source asset
the underwater section of dark blood immediately makes me think of the water level in Volgarr the Viking. both the mines and the background. haven't checked if it's actually the same though.
The first game has some sprites stolen from DemonCrawl
Happy Mask looks like something Dosh Doshington would play and unravel the mysteries of.
8:53 Did he just dropkick the lady !?!
The second to last one kinda reminds me of a more open world Lost Vikings but janky. I've wanted to see something sorta like LV for a while now, but haven't seen anything yet. Fire mentioned Trine, and I've seen it on store shelves before but kinda just overlooked it, do you guys think I should try it for that kind of thing?
Not too sure how similar Trine is to Lost Vikings, never played the latter. The game reminded me most of that TMNT game for the NES. But Trine might scratch the itch?
@@fireb0rn I'll try to look into it more, then! Lost Vikings had more puzzle elements than the TMNT game, and you had to bring all 3 characters to the end of each level safely. One character was fast and had a jump, another had a shield that blocked everything and another had multiple attacks you could use to beat enemies and interact with things from a distance, so it was leaning more on the puzzle side than a skill based platformer, but I figure as long as the characters are different enough I should take another look!
Greak: Memories of Azur has some nods to Lost Vikings. You have three characters (three siblings) with different abilities and mechanics and you need to utilize all three of them to beat the game.
It's also a pseudo Metroidvania; though the abilities you unlock mostly are the three characters but sometimes they unlock new skills too. However it's a very short game.
I wish we could actually summon the Black Panther. RIP Chadwick 😔
im like 99% sure i saw that underwater background used in an introduction to gamedev final project lmao
Thanks for playing the that is my game!
BlooDecay looks a lot like Minoria
You should play the Aestiks demo it's really fun:)
Double jump spends diamonds? This is the evilest thing I've ever seen!
That second game is basically just a really bad acid trip 😂
49:51 I never thought that a fan game would combine Metal Gear Solid, Megaman, Mario and Zelda 2 in the same game w/ RPG mechanics and a very original character swapping mechanic imo despite the poor overall quality of the game
14:23 41:13 44:12 Would you ever consider playing rain world? 🙂
They announced a sequel to ender lilies! Not sure if you ever played more of the game but Ender Magnolia comes out into early access this month.
Technically speaking, wouldn't Hollow Knight be the one with the highest raw number of negative reviews, since it just has the most reviews