Midnight Witch Starlight

[H1]아니 이동키는 아니라지만, 스킬키를 누가 U,I,J,K로 놔두냐. 생각이 없나?[/H1]

Ich mag die DigiPen Spiele. Immer wieder findet man unter ihnen ein kleines Juwel, meist mit ein paar Kanten, aber eine nette Unterhaltung für Zwischendurch. Leider gehört Midnight Witch Starlight nicht in diese Kategorie. Und das überrascht, denn der erste Eindruck ist richtig überraschend. Wow, was für eine hübsche Comicgrafik. Was für eine tolle Abwechslung neben all den Pixelgrafik- und Lowpolygonspielen, die man sonst im Indiebereich oft sieht. Umso enttäuschender ist es dann aber, wenn das Gameplay startet. Und das liegt nicht einmal am sehr simplen Grundprinzip: Wehre mit Magie alle Feindesgeschosse ab und dann geh weiter zum nächsten Bildschirm. So simpel das ist, ich glaube es könnte für eine kurzweilige Unterhaltung funktionieren. Wenn es nicht so überkompliziert wäre. Midnight Witch Starlight ist ein klassisches Beispiel für "weniger wäre wesentlich mehr". Denn das Spiel ist einfach übermässig kompliziert. Statt einfach zu zaubern hat man mehrere unterschiedliche Zaubersprüche auf Lager. D.h. man sollte innert Sekunden unterschiedliche Tasten (für die unterschiedlichen Sprüche) drücken, je nach Gegnertyp. Und dann kann man die Sprüche auch noch stapeln und kombinieren also den einen Schuss mit einem anderen abschiessen und stärker machen. Ja, so etwas kann funktionieren im letzten Level, wenn man zuvor Stunden investiert hat, sich in alle Mechaniken reinzufuchsen. Aber auch dann wäre es für viele Spieler (mich inklusive) wohl zu überfordernd. Und in jedem Fall ist es das, wenn das das grundlegende Spielprinzip darstellt. Ich bin denn auch nur mit Glück nur über den ersten Bildschirm hinaus gekommen. Dann habe ich entnervt aufgegeben. Fazit: Tolle Grafik, die leider von überkompliziertem Gameplay völlig zunichte gemacht wird.

Midnight Witch Starlight is a student project from DigiPen. One of the first things students should be taught in game development is that 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid 1990's with dedicated 3D cards like the Voodoo3 and the ATI Rage. But the students were deliberately mistaught that's it's okay to release obsolete 2D games in the 3D era of gaming... certainly any professional developer seeing a prospective new hire who doesn't even know about 3D gaming probably isn't going to give them a job. Needless to say if an educational institution taught me incorrectly on purpose, I'd ask for my money back. It's a 2D run-and-gun side-scroller inspired by 90s anime. The story involves a magical girl fighting a "legion of shadow" to free corrupted spirits. You use spells with different elements (e.g., light) to attack enemies and progress through the changing forest. This is possibly one of the laziest, lowest effort DigiPen projects I've seen... it's just a single screen shooter, and apart from the upgrade gimmicks, has absolutely nothing going for it. We also have to question what value there is for gamers on Steam when institutions flood the store with low quality 2D video game homework assignments... sure, it might make the students feel good about themselves, but this has no benefit for gamers who have to wade through this stuff to find professionally made 3D games. On pricing, this is "free" enough, at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 3 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Nope. This isn't worth downloading. There's no financial cost up-front, but you'd still be spending your time and a little hard drive space on a product that's far from the best. There's thousands of better alternatives on Steam.

A challenging but simple game with interesting core mechanics.

https://youtu.be/ksbw_mXwL8M My full playthrough as well as thoughts and commentary along the way. So I won't lie, I had some issues with the game, and when I mean issues I literally mean I had some troubles figuring out how to play the game. It was all on me after a while it finally clicked in my head and I realized I had been doing this wrong the whole time so don't be like me. Give the game a try it's pretty quick but enjoyable.

Işığın tarafında büyülü bir kız olduğunuz, 90'ların animesinden ilham alan, dalga tabanlı, 2D koşu ve silah tarafı kaydırma çubuğu. Gölge lejyonu tarafından yozlaştırılan ruh lejyonunu kurtarmak için büyü cephaneliğinizi doldurun.

[h1]魔法シューティングなベルトスクロールアクション。肝心の魔法攻撃が活かせてない印象[/h1] digipen学生作品。 セーラー服を着た女の子が魔女っ子（？）に変身して敵を倒していくベルトスクロールアクションゲーム。説明は無いものの、ゲーム中央上部にある月はタイマーで、シンデレラ的な要素なのか完全に陰ってから少し経つと即死。また、左上の体力っぽいゲージは体力だと思うが、それが減る前に緑ゲージがシールドの役割をしている。 特徴は敵とプレイヤーの攻撃魔法にある3すくみの属性（火・水・雷）と、その属性攻撃に基本の攻撃（光）を当てると強い攻撃が行えること。連射があまり利かないので、必然的にそのシナジーを使っていく必要がある。いくつか進むごとに体力、シールド、魔法のいずれかを1つ強化できるが、どれだけ強化されているかは分からない（特に魔法）。 シナジーが面白そうとは思ったものの、実際にプレイするとシナジーを出す前に敵が攻撃に当たってしまい出づらい。画面も狭く障害物配置はランダムっぽいので、ぐるぐるしながら自分の出した魔法を追い越してシナジーを出すみたいなことに。地味。 そして気になるのがこの魔法少女のフィジカルの強さ。たくさん出てくる敵は魔法攻撃ではなかなか倒せないが、体当たりなら一撃で倒せる。もちろんシールドや体力が失われる[spoiler]と思っていると、癖のあるダッシュをいい感じに使うとほぼ無敵な体当たりになる。犬やボスは無理なようだが、最もよく出る敵はこれで終わった。[/spoiler] こだわりなのかもしれないが、攻撃キー配置も横に4つ並べたほうがやりやすいと思う。結局は物理攻撃なんだなぁと思わせるバランスと作りはもっと調整したほうが良かったような。

I got interested in this game because of the magical girl character design. At first, I had no idea what I was doing and kept losing, but eventually I figured out the mechanics. You should use your elemental magic first, then your light/basic magic—it spreads and becomes much stronger. The game can be challenging, but I found out that using the dash ability lets you tank enemy attacks, which is super handy and can be a game saver. The shop could also use more information about what each potion or upgrade does. Overall, it’s an okay game—confusing at first, but you will get the hang of it.

I started in my usual hubris of attempting to intuit how to play rather than just reading, yet I had not realized that I would find it to be more esoteric than I expected; enemies have potent strengths and weaknesses and also look identical save for their status icon showing their element. Spamming the basic elemental attack ran me out of time in short order, and the combination spell probably wasn't something I was privy to stumble upon due to the pace of the game. Even once I had learned it, I assumed I needed to run past the elemental bullet, turn around, and fire back at it. Thankfully I was able to intuit myself out of that hole and simply shoot a double, although the timing between shots feels sticky. The game is a finely paced and engaging Nerve beater with a null progression; that is, even the most substantial change between levels, the upgrades, are hard to verify because the health and shield bars don't change in size, and attacks are inevitably entangled in elemental damage calculations that I can't see. My radical course of action would be to just take away the levels and centralize everything around the timer mechanic; victory could entail receiving enough time bonuses to reach the maximum, and health/upgrades could be sprinkled in media res, which inverts their ambiguity into a skillful acquittal that I don't have to question if I wasted my time on, because I never had the chance to. Vampire Survivors is basically what I just described, which uses the swarm of enemies itself as a timer; it's obviously a more economical design whereas the timer adds another dimension requiring support from all adjacent features, such as the clarity of visual designs and the mechanics of sustaining time. On the other hand, the opportunity for dimensionality is perhaps what Vampire Survivors lacks the most, since the diversity of strategies are all fundamentally boiled down to crowd control. Can there be such thing as a pacifist "bullet heaven," or will it remain a style of beater that prides itself on maximal stimulation and destruction. Midnight Witch Starlight gets a B for 化け物 わ ぶっ飛ぼす !!