Turnament

Disclaimer: I'm a friend of the developer and I did some beta testing on this game. My only incentive is to leave my honest thoughts. Turnament is a deceptively challenging puzzler from the mind who brought us the Halfquake series of games. It's a full remake of an older web title that was available on the developer's website, expanded with many new features and levels as well as boasting a catchy soundtrack. I find it to be reminiscent of the type of puzzle games that were popular in the 90s and 2000s. It serves equally well as a "coffee break" style game and something that you can play for long stretches once you really get into it. It's also very replayable thanks to the inclusion of optional challenge modes, an endless mode, and a level editor. If you're familiar with games such as Qix or Jezzball and want to recapture that kind of nostalgia, you will absolutely love this game.

It pains me to write this, because I like Philipp (author of the game) and his works, but Turnament is not particularly fun. It is a remake of the eponymous Flash game from 2006 which was expanded and given a great deal of visual refinement. But the core mechanics stayed the same, and they are just not very exciting today compared to many fantastic modern puzzle games. Turnament is a real-time game in which you control a probe on a grid with the goal of collecting crystals. You dodge enemies and build walls that can block one type of foe. There is a shield that allows you to survive a hostile impact and a repair drone that makes impassable squares clear. That's basically it, and not a lot of puzzle variety can be squeezed from this modest collection. Most of the challenge in the game comes from purely dexterous dodging and escaping and not puzzling anything out really. In some levels you don't even control the probe as it moves around randomly, so you have to protect it and nudge towards destination by building and destroying walls around it -- an immensely tedious and frustrating experience. After you collect a single energy crystal, all normal enemies on a level may as well automatically explode, because you can simply click and kill them all one by one. Maybe destroying an enemy could remove energy, so that a player needs to think about order of killing and about conserving energy. I don't know if it's a good idea or not, I'm just spitballing on the spot while writing this review, but I think the core gameplay should've definitely been re-evaluated and improved, given the chance. The game feels very undercooked, like the effort was put into superficial things like presentation and new modes, while the gameplay, which didn't overstay its welcome in 2006 during a short campaign, is now stretched over bloated modes it cannot really support. The new challenge mode, a set of 30 levels with higher difficulty, greatly illustrates limitations of the game's mechanics. There are a couple of fun levels, but most of them consist either of hardcore pixel dodging or idiot drone herding (thankfully, these can be skipped). I feel like it shouldn't be needed to turn your level into a Japanese shmup simulator to create a challenge in the puzzle game. Endless mode just doesn't work. Levels are too easy and look like something out of teleportation chamber from the movie Fly. Procedural generation of satisfying levels is an immense task, clearly out of scope of a single developer with limited time budget. I think endless mode should've been cut, to be honest. Unlock system is weird and unneeded (though if you don't play with Perfect sound you're doing it wrong). Level editor is robust and fun to use, but it is so difficult to make something challenging without adding frustratingly hard bullet dodging (if you level has BOTH hardcore dodging AND idiot probe, then I won't click the like button, sorry xD). My review sounds very negative so far, so let's talk about what is great. Graphics are clean, readable and look nice. The music is fantastic (buy the soundtrack btw). I think the new character art is very good and expressive. The story is basically perfect for what it is -- it frames what is essentially a set of very abstract levels into a coherent narrative, it is not verbose or obtuse, it provides a nice break and some humor between levels. Probably the only problem with presentation is putting credits in place of level 30. It's wrong! It is about EXPECTATIONS! You play the game, you see that there are 30 levels. You play level 29 and catch up to a BIG BAD. You are hyped for the FINAL CONFRONTATION in the LAST LEVEL! And then there are credits. Immediately deflated. IMO, 'Credits' or 'Epilogue' should be a separate button below the grid, and numbered levels should all be levels. So, this is it. Congratulations on the release! Sorry about the negative review, I just couldn't sugar it up. I'm sorry if it feels bad to read this, Philipp. I admire your creativity and passion all the same, and look forward to your new projects.

A quite involved reactive puzzle game, that does require strategic thinking and ability to adapt. While the story is certainly not the biggest factor to play it, it does share its own part in entertaining the player, accompanied by impressive soundtrack and nice seed-based Endless Mode, adding replayability value.

One of the best games I played in a good while, really enjoyed beta testing, and tinkering/breaking the game. Thank you, Muddasheep, on this remarkable title ^^

Turnament brings back good memories of the flash games era. To see a remake of this game makes me nostalgic as it was one of the more solid and polished games. I'm also glad the developer included a level editor.. it's almost as if he could read my mind >)

In summary, I can only recommend the game, it doesn't offer a super complex story, but that doesn't matter, the gameplay and the art style keeps the player hooked. There are challenging levels as well as easy ones - a good mix. The level editor makes it possible to create great complex levels. I am excited to see the levels that will be created from other players. ^^ In general, Tournament is a great game and I'm glad to have it in my collection. I really like the gameplay, music and visuals :) Thank you for letting me test your game. PS: I'm excited to see what other projects are coming in the future :D Thank you muddasheep. :)

A deceptively short puzzle indie with some wicked puzzles at the end of the standard campaign that had me scratching my head (but satisfied to solve). A level editor on day one is a great addition to a handful of other modes I've yet to fully explore like the challenge mode, the (sort of?) rogue-lite endless mode that has a few upgrades to work towards, and the dozen-plus user created levels that are already out there. This is a modder-made indie so it's already got points in my book, but it's fun, a great way to burn some time, and supports modding of its own. Win-win-win!

Part two when??

Fun little puzzle game with varied mechanics.

(don't get deceived by my record time, I've actually played much more of this game and I have a recording of it!) Turnament is a really nice and impressive reactive puzzle game, with its own small yet entertaining mechanics! While story is not really big, the game quite well makes up with nice music, unlockables, endless mode with a lot of level variations, challenge stages, custom user levels, developer commentary!~ *ran out of breath* Give it a go, it's really good!