ErasmusMagnus's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Alice is Dead - Ep 1]

If I had to describe Alice is Dead in just two words, they would have to be "Flash masterpiece". That might sound like a lot for something that simply appears to be a dark and edgy take on Carroll's nonsensical children's fantasy story, but there is much more to this game that meets the eye—much like the source material. So how about a deep dive into the game to see what exactly makes it so compelling?

If you fancy a fine riddle, and are intrigued by the premise, by all means dear reader, simply play; it's free. But if you've done that already or wonder what the fuss is about, allow me to articulate my outlook as to why I think this game is deserving of special recognition.

I'll start with design, as that tends to influence the experience of a game the most, making this aspect the most significant. Alice is Dead is an incredibly tightly designed point and click adventure game. While games of this caliber are typically known for their engaging, high-quality stories, they sometimes neglect the actual playing process, and may have idiosyncratic tendencies. Interesting, well-designed puzzles are one thing, but clumsy control schemes, noncontextual leaps in logic, pixel hunting, pure trial and error, or wandering around missing pieces of the puzzle are another. However, I'm extremely happy to say Alice is Dead is a shining example of some of the best the genre has to offer. It's an exemplary instance of a streamlined point and click system, which is doubly impressive considering it even has the excuse to indulge in those oddities if it wanted to, being set in Wonderland! No, the madness lurks under the surface. Alice is Dead is a direct and straightforward puzzler, with no overly complex frills for the controls or Gordian knot conundrums, while still requiring deliberate and clever thought to solve its riddles.

Starting with navigation, movement is clear as crystal: The static backgrounds ground you visually, and arrows clearly mark every accessible location. Sub-areas for environmental examination are natural to enter and exit, with no need for indicators. It's nigh-impossible to get lost thanks to this visual consistency, and aids in creating a mental map of the location.
As for object interaction, thanks to distinct and clear art and merciful hitboxes, you'll never feel like you're cheaply missing a vital component, and if you are, you know it's through the fault of your environmental observation. Again, simple sounding, but many point and click games use the art to hinder you, heavily obscuring items in the background, or having stubborn selection. The smoothness of play is further aided through the use of contextual mouse clicks versus dedicated commands, which serve to streamline the experience. Every click does what one would reasonably do, whether that means picking something up, using it, or perusing it depending on what makes sense. The only exception that comes to mind is breaking a shovel immediately, but this is minor and can be forgiven as par for the course for Wonderland. It's very intuitive and satisfying.

Collected inventory items can be used on the scenery to try to see what they can do, with feedback on everything. And I mean that literally. You'll never wonder why something did or didn't work when you try something, thanks to amazing textual feedback in the form of the player's pragmatic and delightfully droll monologue, keeping things compelling and entertaining even in the slow moments. The tools available at your disposal are made crystal clear, either through visual design of the environment, or accompanying dialogue. The challenge is figuring out how all these pieces fit together. This even playing field makes your victories feel well-earned, as you are stumped by design, rather than trying to assemble all of the cards needed to play your hand. Add on to that great pacing and recontextualization of space, and the gameplay is simply delightful. Its design is outstanding.

Naturally, the context of the game is its strongly focused narrative, and it's very well made. It's Alice in Wonderland, except she's dead, and we're feeling a bit amnesiac. Who are we? And why is Alice Dead? And who and why is someone in it for the Rabbit? And the ontological mysteries pile up from there. All we know, while we ponder and try to solve these mysteries, is that we have to try to escape. As we explore more of the environment in wonder, and progress through puzzle solving, the intrigue builds. With a setting like Wonderland, things are not quite what they seem.

That's not even counting the absolutely fantastic writing. As mentioned, you get feedback in the form of commentary on just about everything you interact with, so it rewards your curiosity and investment by encouraging you to try out every conceivable action. And it's all worthwhile, with superbly dry and witty humor, with gems such as "The hole is very threatened by your spear," or "You unlock the shovel and beat the game. Just kidding."

The game is remarkably well paced, with instances of recontextualization of space, such as the inexplicable music playing chest being the portal forward, returning to the start to better analyze what happened, and the touches of Carroll-esque Wonderland madness, like having a high-tech keycard scanner on a tree, eliminating an obstacle in your path that's a dead end, or unlocking a door to open up something completely different. The entire thing is compelling, foreboding, and brilliant, and the cliffhanger leaves you wanting more. Everything that sets up the plot, stakes, tone and themes does so in an exemplary way and strongly motivates you to dive further down the rabbit hole.

Aesthetically too, everything is bursting from the seams with charming details, and absolutely nothing feels lacking. From the very first title screen, the jaunty, scratched old-timey tune and the vacant drawing in the background is immediately unsettling and creepy, drawing you in to play and sets the tone perfectly. The art style juxtaposing a dark dungeon and a bright, mysterious woodland is implemented absolutely wonderfully. The film grain adds a lot of dynamic energy to otherwise mostly static screens, providing you with a sense of depth. The cavern's walls are helped by the ambient sounds drawing you in and giving you the sense of an out-of-the-way cellar of inexplicable purpose. Not to mention, the attention to detail of the changing volume of the music and ambient sounds depending on your position are extremely nice touches.

You get a tremendous sense of place, with a feeling of unease due to the constantly present jaunty piece of music played diegetically in this alien setting. There may be only one primary track, but it keeps everything rooted in place, and the shortness of the game never makes it overstay its welcome, always maintaining the mood of unease inherent to a Wonderland story in which Alice is dead. There's not loads of sound effects, but the ones that are present work well, and the quality writing more than makes up for it, being the primary way of providing feedback. Add to that the quirks of Wonderland, the frantic scratched writing of a panicked dying person, and the sense of unreality, and you've got something truly special to be immersed in. Phenomenally done. Absolutely no complaints about the aesthetics. The only caveat is the poorly aged Flash compression, which you shouldn't count, because that's unfair. You wouldn't have the impeccable illustrations otherwise. Not everything can be vectorized.

Alice is Dead is a great example of an integrated and wholesome video game experience. While the game could've used the setting of Wonderland to excuse truly maddening game design, instead, its madness opts to be fully integrated and resonate with the player's experience, rather than serving to frustrate, confuse, or overly obscure. To play it is as delightful, intriguing, and quietly menacing as the source material. Any game-like abstraction that would otherwise rip one out of the story instead blends seamlessly into a Wonderland setting. Of course you combine the thingamabob with the whatchamajigger to make your cromulent bric-a-brac! It aids in the investment, and being totally ingrained in this creepy ontological Wonderland mystery, it follows the flavor wonderfully, through charming quirks rather than hair-pulling puzzles.

To open a locked door, you might try lock picking it. It sounds like it worked, but it doesn't. Fruitlessly stumped, you'll have to walk away, only to find that in the adjoining room, the music-playing chest unlocked! Just one of many examples that feeds both directly into gameplay, the unusual setting and tone of the game, the diegetic soundtrack itself, and further exploration! Fantastic. What's not correct isn't incorrect, it's merely inversely-counter correct. All of the strangeness in the game is the best kind: Pure Carroll-esque charm only possible through the medium of a video game, serving to enhance engagement and bemuse the player, rather than frustrate, confuse, or obscure. And yet, despite the Wonderland setting, where all of the prototypical madness of a middling point and click adventure game would be seamless, you're funneled down the rabbit hole in a truly fun manner. Its aspects work together in tandem to create something to make you feel truly disoriented and lost to maximum effect in the best way.

If it isn't abundantly clear, I adore everything about this game to a prodigious degree. I will never shake the feelings of wondering what's behind that blue door, counter-intuitively unlocking the music-playing chest, and shockingly realizing I was the target the whole time upon gazing into the mirror. I must've first played this game fifteen odd years ago, and its gestalt worked wonders to make me fall in love with just about everything in it. While each individual aspect is very well done on a technical level, the entire thing is greater than the sum of its parts. From the high polished and splendid, satisfying puzzle-solving, the esoteric and understated environmental storytelling, the uncanny vibe of it all, and the sinister but vaguely wonderous ontological mystery, not only did it engage me on a pure playing level, but beyond it, through vivid memories, strong emotions, and thoughts that only fantastic art can evoke. I thoroughly recommend playing this game (and series) to anybody with even a slight interest in the gameplay or story. So many point and click games could learn something from this, it is something that is a shining example of what the genre is capable of.

There you have it. A classic that in my opinion is well deserving of its praise. Any negatives are negligible. And if you agree with that sentiment, good news! As stated in its description, this game is now finally receiving the commercial release of which it always deserved! And if you think so too, you can help out the dev team for free by wishlisting their game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1826770/Alice_is_Dead_Hearts_and_Diamonds

And if you're especially kind, you can go support the team on Patreon—they're too modest to advertise it themselves anywhere:
https://www.patreon.com/lorestrome

[DCK: Drunk Klunk]

I'm atrocious at this game, but it's good fun with a catchy tune. My best rank was B.

Cycon responds:

ALL HAIL B, LONG LIVE THE KING

[Red Code]

Phenomenal game. It aged like fine wine thanks to the native Flash vector graphics, so fullscreen works perfectly. Addicting, intense, strategic. A real work of art.

[Agent Bunn-E]

So much for Spybreak, lol.

[Skydiver Mach II]

We're cruising!

[Stick RPG]

Rest in peace. Thanks for the fun times.

[The Last Stand Union City]

Pretty awesome game. The design is just exemplary (barring some unignorable technical aspects), with a well-executed story and context, though with mostly derivative and unremarkable writing, graphics of pretty good quality and well-done sound design, and strong overall cohesion. I enjoyed the game greatly. However, if you try to play in fullscreen, an infamous yellow screen of DRM nonsense shows up, and is ever-present, so that knocks it down a peg. The game itself is fully competent, but this aspect doesn't do it any favors. So if you want to play this in fullscreen, here's my advice, like many others: Do not maximize or manually fullscreen it. Instead, drag the window borders to your preferred size. If it turns yellow, that means it's now too large and has to be readjusted again. Or, you can skip the headache and buy the remaster on Steam for 10 bucks.

I recommend playing on survivor difficulty, unless you consider yourself clumsy in video games. It simply upped the stakes, improved immersion, and didn't feel cheap at all. I played two save files, both on survivor, and had a blast with both. In one, I played normally, primarily using slashing and blunt weapons with the occasional firearm, and it felt great to explore and kill zombies and customize my little guy. Again, never cheap or frustrating. However, I want to tell you about my other file. I created a totally different character by the name of Punchmaster Joe. He has long blond hair with mutton chops, and is a martial artist who attacks only with his bare hands, due to an unrelenting sense of honor. And so, donning John Lennon sunglasses, a lounge suit, and blue jeans, he punched his way through Union City, never daring to resort to anything beneath him. Tedious? Yes. Difficult? You bet. Drained lots of health due to stubbornness? Absolutely. Pointless? No doubt. Possible? Just about. No guns, no melee weapons (barring torso zombies which are literally impossible to hit otherwise), he managed to fight through the zombie apocalypse with nothing but his bare fists. And he managed it! If you want proof, I suppose I can show you what achievements I won as him, but there's no video of it, so you may just have to take my word on this. But I promise it's possible. It's all about learning the rhythm of pushing them and then stunlocking them with a lucky punch. Any game that allows you to do that has something special going for it. And amazingly, my mouse survived through all that clicking.

[Endacopia - Demo]

Awesome, I really like this. This is exactly the kind of stuff I love to see on Newgrounds.

The design of the game is strong. Walking around is comfortable. While unusual to see WASD for a game like this, I have no complaints. It's very smooth and is seamless to walk around, helped in no small part by the animations of the main character. Click to move wouldn't hurt though. Interaction controls on the other hand are a bit unintuitive. The instructions and experimenting around eventually make clear how to interact with the environment, but it takes getting used to. The puzzles at this stage are simple, but adequate. I assume because it's the beginning? While there's no wacky moon logic puzzles to figure out, there's no particularly challenging puzzles yet either. The coin puzzle I solved by accident and laughed at, so that was funny. Replacing the usual flavor text of newer point and click games, the return of '90s style clickability is very entertaining, which also makes sense based on the unique setting. I cannot call the gameplay exemplary, as it could probably do with some more tightly designed puzzles and more depth (at least with what I've seen in the demo so far) and/or inventory interactions. The fighting especially seems to come out of total left field gameplay-wise (which is maybe the point). It's lucky I'm already used to arcade-based reflex gameplay as a player, otherwise this change would utterly alienate me. While they can be fun and add variety, non-optional action sequences are a very poor fit for otherwise deliberate, slow-paced, and non-violent gameplay, even if they're well-designed (which this is). Any player who isn't already used to arcade-based reflexes will be thrown for a loop, as it asks them to recall skills that they may not expect or already have, and the rest of the game doesn't cultivate them. It's not like the core game heavily alternates between integrated combat and exploration—it is just an occasional minigame that asks for an entirely different skill set and can't be bypassed. It's like a sudoku player being asked to win a round of arm-wrestling in the middle of the puzzle. But overall, I would call the design quite strong for the genre. Great feeling navigation, decently fun puzzles, joys clicking on every object in each room, helpful NPC interactions, and it leaves me wanting more.

The storyline definitely conveyed what it was about and I never felt as though I was missing something I wasn't supposed to. I mean, I felt I was missing something, but in the way the game intended to. This is definitely one of those semi-abstracted plots that require both attention and detachment to make sense of it, so I felt I was along for the ride, not lost more so than I believe I should have been. The intrigue was very strong and I was very curious and felt compelled to see where it led, to see if the broken surreal pieces of the nostalgic and off-putting puzzle would fit into place. No hand holding at all in that regard. My favorite character was Tip. What's nice is that the slow pace allows for you to decide how much you want to soak up the information. I loved hearing the drawing talk muffled back to me, guessing the password as "...password?" and laughing both when I thought it was right, and then learned it was wrong, and more beyond that. No complaints there.

From the visual and sound aspect, the game executes the style perfectly. It's consistently highly polished, with great attention to the small details to not only the clickable objects, but to superb sound design as well. It really adds a sense of joy exploring every little nook and cranny and moving the character around. It just feels… good. The place where classic graphical techniques and modern sensibilities collide. Add to that the insanely charming dialogue and character expressions. Fantastic.

As a wholesome experience, the demo is totally cohesive, with the gameplay feeding into the context and vice versa. This is seen in instances such as the player being an identifiable entity in the context of the story acknowledged by characters, cheesing the game and politely acknowledging it, and umpteen touches upon those really makes it feel like you have a presence and agency in the setting, which works wonders for investment and immersion into this bizarro setting. The tone wonderfully skirts the line between unsettling and cutesy and inviting. The sum result is quite engaging, never knowing if your next encounter will be warm and fuzzy childlike glee, or a glimpse into the darkest recesses of your mind. Great stuff.

Overall, Endacopia is great. Super fun, weird, charming and funny. So many fun little touches, between the art style changes, clickable interactive elements, and the surreal, uprooting setting. It is a bit clunky though (I never could quite figure out how to kick the ball, and the talk music with Tip got stuck and played after I left until the loop ran out), but I have a particular fondness for point and click adventure games, and the mild shortcomings of the gameplay notwithstanding, the demo not only engaged me on a purely game level, but through strong feelings and thoughts that only good art can. This is something really special here, and the net result leaves me hungry for more. I'll be following the full game's development for sure.

Andyl4nd responds:

Wow, thank you for the in-depth review Erasmus! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the demo, it fulfills me to see people take note of the design choices made.

Yes, the puzzles were made with simplicity in mind for the sake of having the player focus on getting used to the gameplay before things become complicated later on. I plan to have the puzzles progressively escalate in difficulty over time in the full version of the game.

I agree with the the sudoku-arm wrestling metaphor, even if that sounds totally rad haha. The idea is to occasionally break the repetitive nature of this genre, but I can see how it's a turn-off for certain players. I'm considering having alternative methods of defeating enemies without having to necessarily engage in battle for those who'd rather skip those obstacles in the future.

I had to jump through too many hoops to get the web version up and running thanks to the strange nature of the engine used, so Tip's theme playing after the dialogue is over is one of the few side effects of the html5 version.

Thanks again for dedicating the time to play and review Endacopia, I look forward to completing the game's development if the universe allows it :)

[Days of Survival]

Not bad. The day/night resources/monsters loop works nicely. The biggest problem is that during the day phase, I was mostly just waiting around for resources to spawn. There wasn't anything else to do. At night, when the monsters attack, the way the sword always points right or left makes it hard to hit enemies above or below you, making me vulnerable. If I got hit, and I did, I never was able to get enough ore to make potions to heal fast enough.

The game's lacking in depth. There's nothing really to do outside of combat and resource mining which often involves idling about. I was at a point where I was at one heart from the mentioned difficulty hitting enemies, and the pressure increased. I tried to survive until daytime, where I could then mine all the resources that spawned at night to hopefully make a potion. But I died. That was on day 5. It took a while, so I ended it there. So if that was polished up a little more, if the timer was hastened, or other mechanics like hunger was added, that'd improve the experience. As for everything else in the game, it's nothing special, but it works well enough (graphics, music, premise). So while I had frustrations, and wouldn't play it for a long time, I still had fun with the game.

MacaroniAndGames responds:

I’m glad you could still somewhat enjoy the game, but I do know from play testing that it is definitely boring during the day. Maybe I could add animals to the game that would spawn during the day, and that would be useful if I added a hunger mechanic. I definitely have some ideas for an update now, thanks for your feedback!

[Nick Bounty]

"Nick Bounty: A Case of the Crabs" was pretty fun back in the day, and it still holds up as well as any typical point and click adventure game, and all that that implies. There's a $1 remaster on Steam if you're interested. But how does the Flash version hold up?

Well, I can't call the game design particularly strong, as it's full of the common pitfalls that these kinds of games are prone to: Multiple moon logic puzzles, cumbersome controls... It's not a particularly smooth experience, at least in the gameplay department. But on the flipside, it also maintains many of the appeals of those games as well. The reasonable logic puzzles, the fleshed-out environmental details, the engaging flavor text, and the amusement of trying to execute terrible ideas, such as trying to talk to dead bodies, shooting every witness you see, or casually admiring your book collection in the middle of a murder scene. Good stuff. So it's a very solid foundation, with the strengths and weaknesses most games of this caliber have. Prototypically point and click.

The story is great. The very beginning loading screen draws you in, and the narration and plot work a deadpan noir detective story humorously and effectively. It's well-paced and well written, with the stakes rising dramatically yet comically. No complaints there.

The style of the game is extremely well done, committing to the black and white color scheme. The backgrounds are very detailed and look great, drawing you in, and the intro storyboards are very engaging as well. The writing in particular is great and is well voice acted to boot. It's especially nice since there's a whole bunch of it to enjoy in the game, from interactions, narrations, and dialogues. The music choice, while small, is also well done and matches the vibe phenomenally. Where the game falters however are the character sprites, which are often jankily drawn or have half-baked animations, taking you out of the rest of the well-illustrated game. The sound also has some strange quirks as well, such as an occasional lack of ambient noise or one section with randomly low-bitrate dialogue. But the details often make up for it, such as hearing blues behind a door in an alleyway, or the relaxing sounds of a dock.

The elements of the game work extremely well in immersing you in the role of a noir setting, justifying puzzle solving by playing a detective solving a murder, but then often you have to make multiple jumps in logic until you're doing trial and error. The crab item especially. And some mechanics are underutilized. While the shoot command's whole purpose is this, being a joke command where you don't have a good reason to use it until the punchline at the end (which fits the game's tone perfectly and is a wonderful little touch), the move command is used literally only once. Because it's useless the entire rest of the game, you'll probably forget about it by the time you need it. I certainly did. There's not even any worthwhile flavor text as a consolation prize. Other odd logic includes needing to use a crab to make a witness speak (What, you couldn't poke him or disturb his bucket in another way?) and having entry to locations being blocked without great reasons why. But then you have lots of little details that pull you in to appreciate the game's sense of humor, such as the aforementioned "Shoot" brick joke, the slew of loquacious and hard-boiled environmental details, and the ability to humor ridiculous action combinations like talk to dead body: "Hey, hey you!" Overall, the sum of its parts, while sometimes are arbitrarily gamey, is strongly cohesive.

All in all, the game is a clever, humorous, pleasantly noirish romp with very enjoyable writing. It was fun, and I enjoyed playing through it, even though it wasn't groundbreaking. But when you're in the moment, it won't matter while you're racking the brains of this Public M. Would recommend.