The Basilisk

Overall this is a great game. From a gameplay standpoint, it uses a nice core mechanic, and interchanges other rules which keeps it interesting. From a horror standpoint... it isn't really scary. Suspenseful - sure. But I wouldn't call it scary personally. I particularly enjoyed the sound design and score. It creates the mood the developer is going for quite well. The one thing I am disappointed about this game is that it doesn't build off of it's predecessor, "Archimedes". Playing that before playing The Basilisk adds nothing to your comprehension of the story. And while both are great games, I would have liked to see them intertwined a bit more. Lastly, there are a few bugs, but nothing game-breaking. Overall, I think that this game (And Archimedes) are great games, and at the pricepoint you really can't go wrong!

At the beginning I really liked the game. But as the time went on, it went bonkers. So, you start up as a cute white cube with four coloured edges. Each edge has white corners, which can save you from death if you spin the cube well enough, but will also provide a lot of troubles in the boss battle later. You're joined by a cute girl named Eve, who thinks she's annoying, but at the beginning that is only her imagination. Well... Only at the beginning. At the beginning the game carries itself in a lightweight psychological and philosophical spirit in the company of beautiful music and would be a very nice game to unwind... But then the story progresses and that's when it turns to complete crap over time. Spoiler alert: [spoiler] In one level suddenly the energy drops and in order to gain access to these files you need to conserve some energy, so Eve limits your vision. Which wouldn't be too bad had it been for example lower visibility radius. But instead it is a breathing darkness, which also takes tremendously long to breathe in and breathe out. But that's just a minor liability compared to what followed.[/spoiler] [spoiler]Soon enough you'll get to combat a virus. This virus spits blobs of colour and this is where all fun stops. The virus doesn't even fit the graphical scheme of the game, but that's the least of the problems. A bigger problem is that compared to the rest of the game the virus battle is way too hard, but the difficulty is set by the fact that the blobs of colour don't have a very clever launching algorithm, so oftentimes you'll find yourself cornered with no way to go. Also, I have died countless times due to a glitch where the blobs just passed inside me despite getting deflected.[/spoiler] Later on you'll encounter a minigame to unwind from that tough battle [spoiler](Pong)[/spoiler], but be prepared, because the physics of this minigame are absolutely screwed. And then it begins. Random flashes of horror images and Eve turns out to be a complete psycho. Well done to the devs for completely ruining this beautiful character and pushing the game experience down with it. [spoiler]Also well done for completely spoiling that the Eve that was with you until then was the Basilisk in the worst way possible[/spoiler]. In the end you have one final music minigame and then a choice. [spoiler]To kill "Eve" and be saved or to stay and not be saved? Regardless of what you choose, it's a lost situation, because in the first case you're trapped inside a container and in the other case you're trapped inside the empty cyberspace.[/spoiler] I really don't understand how they thought adding additional content everytime you finish the game would add on this game's replay value, especially since the first dialog is the only one that can be skipped. There is one positive thing on it... And that is the price. But I can't recommend this game even despite the price being this low. Edit: I found one more positive point: The game resources are hidden, but easy to find, so the game is easy to mod.

The narrator's first spoken line about her own voice is:"I was expecting something less... annoying?" Yeah, that makes two of us. I didn't get very far, as evidenced by playtime, because the 'puzzles' (it's just platforming) weren't intereting and the narration annoyed the piss out of me. Maybe it gets better later. I can't be arsed to find out.

This is a reasonably fun little game... at least for the first half, before the bizarro minigames set in. Fundamentally, it's a trippy retro platformer, but it also has a GLaDOS-y computer lady who talks to you throughout (and in between) the levels. The level design itself is quite clever and the mechanics are solid; at its core, the game is about jumping over and across obstacles in an attempt to reach the "spark" at the end of each level, but the twist is that your square has four different coloured sides, and you can't touch any coloured object with a side of a different colour or you die. It's an interesting idea, and it's used well. The level design also becomes progressively more complex, starting out with just jumping on platforms of different colours, but eventually expanding to autoscroller levels, gravity changes, camera changes, and even levels full of small Mario Galaxy-esque "planets" each with its own gravity. The trouble comes in when the game abruptly drops the platformer conceit about halfway through. Suddenly you're playing a whole bunch of disjointed minigames; there's a pong level, and a Guitar Hero level, and a really bizarre "boss fight." There's even a series of "hacking" levels straight out of an old-school Ratchet & Clank game. None of it's particularly well-developed or interesting, and mostly left me looking forward to when the normal game resumes -- which it never does. The game's graphics and sound are perfect for what it is; both are simplistic and evoke a wonderful sense of War Games-y supercomputering, which is exactly what they should do. The voice acting is unconvincing and amateurish, but I think that's the point; Eve is *supposed to* sound like that. Plotwise, the game is fairly mediocre. There are a lot of half-baked Matrix-y threads about the computers rising up and destroying mankind, plus a bit about a killer virus that [spoiler]may or may not be real[/spoiler], all wrapped up with a Zero Escape-alike binary choice made with insufficient information. It's pretentious and abstruse, and normally I'm a fan of that sort of stuff, but the writing just isn't strong enough to carry it off. There's no real sense of weight to the game's big choice, because I don't really have any idea what I'm choosing; I pick one and we're off to the races. Indeed, I found myself wishing the game's big twist had been something other than what it was. In the end, The Basilisk is a fun few hours, and certainly worth the pittance being charged for it. Just go into it not expecting an absolutely life-changing experience and you're probably fine.

Поиграл с удовольствием. Сюже заставляет подумать после окончания, где плохо, а где хорошо. Игра стоит своих денег, купил за 39 руб. (практически все деньги которые были на Steam Wallet). Пройдена за 3 часа, сразу скажу, НЕ простая. Не простая в моральном плане, так и физически. Были моменты где застрявал прям очень-очень сильно, но проходил. В этой игре торопиться не надо, нужно побольше думать. В сюжет вникать, обязательно, а иначе игра попросту бессмыслена для покупки. По моему мнению, всё кроется в СЮЖЕТЕ и когда ты понимаешь сюжет, игра сразу становиться интересней и мотивация играть дальше и пройти игру гораздо сильнее. Обязательно читайте ВСЁ, что бы понять смысл игры. Не поняли? Переводите! Иначе, повторюсь, игра бессмыслена для покупки! Играйте на свой страх и риск! Спасибо.

Let me say, I really enjoyed Archimedes. I bought it just after release and played straight through. One of my best small dev indie experiences. I've got a review of it over on that games' page as well. So I was definitely willing to pay for another of the devs games. This game though.... It's just... I dunno how to say it. It's a very basic (looking) puzzle platformer with well done (albeit annoying) physics. The graphics are basic, which is completely fine given the game, but it has this god awful filter that makes it very hard to look at. That's not me saying anything about aesthetics, just that the filter literally makes it hard to look at the screen for very long. I'm epileptic (and there is a seizure warning on the game, as with Archimedes), but I feel like even if I wasn't that it'd be hard for me to look at the screen for long. I made it about 15 mins before I had to quit. You're a sentient computer program who does short platforming levels to help analyze DNA to stop a virus or some such. You have a "companion" named Eve (who sounds like a 10 year old boy) talking to you while you progress through the levels. Given the pictures, the platforming levels seem as if they change or evolve the further you go on, but I'm still on puzzles that look like the third picture above. I'm sure the story will be great, if his previous game is any indication. So, I highly doubt I'll finish this... unless I can somehow remove that horrible filter. I will not be refunding it however, because I want to support the dev. Maybe I'll get lucky and will be able to play his next game. I wanted to write an early positive review because his games deserve more exposure. Be warned however... he is not joking below when he says not to play if you have motion sickness or seizures. You honestly WILL NOT be able to play this game.

The Basilisk is it worth a buy?! Well I tell you it is. For 2$ you get an arcadish platform jumper cube. Really weird things tho, but it's pretty okay. Nothing much to it, but the price just justifies it.

Short but absolutely sweet. The atmosphere created throughout from the use of music and sound effects was done so well and there were a lot of moments where I felt on edge and creeped because of this. While the mechanics were fairly simple the change of style really kept it interesting from start to finish and it never felt boring or repetitive at any point. The story is great, though I would have loved to have seen it fleshed out a bit more as I was hooked on the ideas that the previous game Archimedes and The Baslisk created. But it really did present some great and not at all dangerous ideas that I can really get behind... Overall 9/10 am now in a cult, so long suckers.

It's kinda like Super Meat Boy in the sense that it's short levels where you get to retry quick. The game changes over time and progresses so it doesn't get dull. The story is cool and it has voice acting. The difficulty is perfect, not too hard or too easy. When you finish it, the game lets you play on a hard mode. I had a lot of fun with it.

Definitely a really fun game. Freaked me out when I got an email from the previous game saying that it had arrived. I definitley reccomend playing through it three times, you get a little something extra at the end if you can figure it out. Definitley worth two dollars.