The pile of old games that I loved back in college, which I rediscovered a couple of days ago... Are mostly not great :/
I kinda forgot that I was only playing this Gamemaker stuff because it was free, and often frustratingly hard. I still might showcase some of them, but it's going to be less "Undiscovered gems" and more "Creative but not very fun freeware".
One of the games in question:
http://www.rjbsoftware.co.uk/afterlife/It's sorta like Joust except very tedious. Music is cool though, and the art's kinda neat in a minimalist way, but the enemies move randomly and take several hits.
The umbrella weapon is kinda neat: You launch it up like a spear, and have to recover it. It does several hits if it floats down onto enemies, otherwise it does one hit and bounces away (into lava, half the time. Which can still be recovered but...). If you catch it midair after a kill (or combo) there's a cute fanfare. Original, but pretty frustrating.
The bombs, though, ugh. They're the main weapon and they suck. The gimmick is you can sorta "toss" by moving sideways and up (they're launched with your momentum). It's harder than it sounds though, and sometimes their momentum plainly doesn't match yours. Accuracy is almost impossible, you just have to keep bombing and slowly whittle enemies down.
Which isn't so bad when the enemies move predictably, but half of them random-walk (at speed). So you have to keep your distance if possible and take pot shots, or risk getting hit unavoidably.
It's kinda sad because the game got updated a couple months ago! I played it literally 10 years ago, and it's been getting updates all this time. And some of the updates seem pretty cool. But the core gameplay just... hurts my hand and my patience.
[9 new replies have been posted] oop should probably make a video review instead