Evil Cogs

Evil Cogs – платформер от небольшой инди студии Wet Fish, который пришёл к нам со смартфонов, планшетов и всей разной утвари, которая имеет доступ к интернету. И как нам кажется – делает нашу жизнь веселее и проще. Как я уже написал выше – игра портированная с мобильных устройств. Представляет классический платформер «выживастик». Здесь можно умереть, но это будет не так часто, да и никакой смысловой нагрузки не несёт. Так же стоит отметить, что игра позиционирует себя как Action Adventure, с решением всякого рода головоломок основанных на физике. Всё это есть – но этого настолько мало, что просто не замечаешь. Головоломки здесь больше подходят для детей дошкольного возраста, взрослый их просто не заметит и будет проходить уровень за уровнем, до конца. В игре представлено две главы или если быть точнее ,42 уровня (включая «бонусные»), которые проходятся в среднем за 2 минуты. Уровни не сказать что разнообразные, но прямого повторения нет. Немного о сюжете : Мы играем за лучик света, который попадает в какой-то загадочный мир. Продвигаясь вглубь уровней, думаешь найти развязку или хоть что-то приоткрыть, но чуда не произойдёт. В игре очень посредственный сюжет, но он здесь, наверное даже не нужен. Игра непродолжительная, но достаточно симпатичная (об этом далее) и просто её закончить будет вполне нормально. Графика и музыка в игре очень даже хорошие. Что касается визуального стиля, то тут всё в порядке. Чёрно-белые тона, придают игре какую-то загадочность, где нужно гнетущую атмосферу и действительно чувствуется переживание за нашего «светлячка». Версия для ПК будет отличаться улучшенной графикой, картинка будет более насыщенная, ну и также игра будет работать в Full HD. Музыка в игре хорошая, конечно звёзд с неба не хватает, но атмосферу создаёт. Обязательно стоит упомянуть - в игре есть озвучка персонажей, которые нам повстречаются и какого-то высшего разума на первом уровне. Всегда очень приятно, когда даже в таких небольших проектах, разработчики уделяют внимание мелочам. Управление в игре простое и состоит всего лишь из пары клавиш, правда оно не очень удобное, но всё же быстро привыкаешь и проблем не испытываешь. Плюсы: + Геймплей + Атмосфера + Музыка + Визуальный стиль + Цена Минусы: - Сюжет - Управление - Продожительность Что мы имеем в сухом остатке: Довольно хороший платформер, с хорошим портированием для ПК. Красивая картинка, разнообразные уровни, которые не дают заскучать, но всё же хочется чего-то большего: разнообразия в геймплее, большую продолжительность, загадки на уровне взрослых игроков, интересный сюжет. Но даже эти недочёты (хотя их нельзя назвать незначительными) не перевесили чашу весов в отрицательный отзыв. Сама игра хорошая, ей просто требуется всего и побольше. Игра оставит хорошее послевкусие с нотками терпкости, после 2-3 часов игры. Она не успевает надоесть после завершения сюжета, но и вернуться к ней вряд ли захочется. Я надеюсь разработчики учтут опыт этой игры и будущие проекты у них будут на твёрдую пятёрку. Итог: 67/100 Рекомендую.

I generally try not to speak negatively of a game for aesthetic reasons alone, but the combination of odd visuals and poor audio are some of the biggest issues in Evil Cogs. It felt as though so many aspects of the game were pushing me away that I didn't even finish what seems to be a relatively short game. Then on top of it all, the controls and control scheme made the gameplay needlessly frustrating. [h1] Crappy Bird [/h1] The initial steps of the “tutorial” bit demonstrate that you have to use A and D to move. This creates a movement styled very similarly to Flappy Bird or perhaps the old Choplifter games. It's not particularly appealing and, while I understand that the challenge is to make that clunky moment system work for navigating tight spaces, it just ends up feeling like an endless battle with a lot of wasted effort. Evil Cogs does have a set of consumables for speeding up your movement and slowing down time, but it's most often used as a requirement for an otherwise impossible area of a level than as something you can use to soften the annoyance of the control system. Every moment that I actually got a little bit slowed down in this game, it seemed as though it was more an issue of the control than the intended difficulty. [h1] Fumbling around in the dark [/h1] I'm not a huge fan of games that are dark for the sake of being dark. When most of your screen real estate is taken up by just pure blackness, why even bother rendering it? This is a problem that I see quite often in Evil Cogs. You can see it in the screenshots where 60% of the screen is just blackness. On top of that, the entire premise is around ambient darkness, so that extends further to be an issue of actually being able to discern the obstacles in front of you. I had moments where I'd die (though death is handled in a near-instant respawn Super Meat Boy style) several times just running in to something that I couldn't have seen even looking right at it. The overall visual tone didn't make me feel like I was “returning the light,” it just made me want to finish the level as fast as possible to avoid more exposure. [h1] The Muting Moment [/h1] There are so many areas of poor sound in Evil Cogs that it legitimately seems as though the developer did it as an afterthought. The game is plagued by these high pitched squeaks that I assume are supposed to be the sounds of 'old rusty gears' or something. However, they really just sound like a dying seal. That's a sound that plays pretty much constantly. Then there's some very dissonant and a bit uncomfortable sound effects that play in other areas, I expect to give a certain kind of ambiance. Sadly that ambiance is mostly just disappointment. Then finally comes the bit of voice in the game. I don't even know how it was made, but it managed to sound like a combination of a low quality microphone recording or a robot voice reader – but either way with what seems like poorly translated lines. It's somehow even jarring among the cacophony of other bad audio. Only a handful of moments, like the ending sounds of a level, were ever appealing in my ears. It's truly the worst aspect of the game. [h1]Low expectations, and still disappointed [/h1] I didn't necessarily expect greatness with Evil Cogs, but I did expect it to at least be interesting enough to recommend to a niche audience. Some people enjoy games with a lot of darkness and gloom. Even though I'm not one of those people, I couldn't find anything that consistently made me enjoy the game. Mechanically it seemed like it was cohesive, but cohesive doesn't make things fun. It's certainly playable if nothing else, I just don't expect too many people would be having a lot of fun after a shgirt stint in the game. The good thing here though is that Evil Cogs was also released on mobile and is apparently free there (though with microtransactions). You can at least get it on there and try it out to see if you're willing to pay for it on Steam (and have no microtransactions), but even given that option I think I would avoid it unless I was a huge fan of pointlessly dark games. If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/28346672-Endyo-Gaming/

[h1]Awesome![/h1] The game has mystery atmosphere, great sounds, effects, animation and great graphics!!! Anyway, I can't say something bad, because I'm developer :D Must try! :D

A MUST HAVE, Evil Cogs sheds new light on an intensive graphical design and game play rolled into one! The game graphics alone will have you immersed and in awe as you enter into a world of dankness and light. While the concept of Evil Cogs is easy, the game progression only gets harder. Making your way from point A to point B is never just that simple. Not to mention that the game throws a few things into the loop like, characters, storyline and funny narration which simply add to the OUTSTANDING graphical levels and great game development.

Если нравятся игры данного жанра - рекомендую. Играл изначально на мобайле, весьма интересный геймплей и симпотная графика.

This game is bad. You have to flappy bird your way through the level which is the worst control scheme possible. It feels like a bad IOS port. The constant ingame currency bombardment doesn't help the look one bit. Additonally the voice over sounds like Text to speech. The German version has google translate levels of descriptions. I'm gonna refund this thing right away.

Ein wundervoll atmosphärisches Spiel! Die Musik untermalt die atemberaubende Grafik perfekt. Durch das "Kauf-System" kann jeder für sich entscheiden wie viele "Hilfsmittel" (Zeitlupe oder Beschleuniger) man haben möchte. Dadurch kann man sich selbst den Schwierigkeitsgrad einstellen.

The graphics are amazing, fairy and adorable. The gameplay is really good and well made.

If you'd like to watch the first 30 minutes of the game played without knowing anything about the game you can check my first look video here: https://youtu.be/5jGYcY9uG58 Evil Cogs is a fairly simple puzzle game in which you play as a little whisp character and you have to fly through the stages and collect small items along the way. Once you make it to the end of the stage, that's it. You move onto the next one. At it's core it's very reminiscent of games like Inside and Limbo with it's dark art style and scary themes. That's where the good stops regarding this game. It's issues are MAINLY with the controls. Everytime you want to move your whisp to the left or right it ALSO moves you up, even if you don't want to go up. It's almost like the flash helicopter game years ago where you just clicked or stopped clicking to fly up or down. It makes it really unfriendly to control and get through tight corridors and small movements. Along with that, the puzzles aren't exactly challenging or fun to complete. It's not like Limbo where some puzzles could take 5 or 10 minutes to sort out completely, Evil Cogs is just a quick "Oh I move from here to there" kind of game and each level is more of that. Lastly the game has powerups that will allow you to speed up time or slow it down. Good idea in concept, but the execution is poor. You have to earn gold in the game in order to BUY a use of these powers which makes them expendable. No one ever wants to just burn gold on a single use of a power that's not 100% going to pan out for you. It makes it painful to have to use them. They definitely could have found a better way to utilize these powerups for the game. They just don't ADD anything to the experience the way they are implemented. ADDITIONALLY: I strongly recommend you use a controller to play this game. Keyboard is very difficult. I can't entirely recommend this game to players as it is. The game is too easy and the features are forgettable. Maybe the future holds more for it? If you'd like to watch a first look at the game, I did a video that's posted above. It's a blind playthrough of the first 30 or so minutes of the game so you can see if it would be your cup of tea. Thanks!