In this game you assume the role of young Noah, an inhabitant in the eternal land of Eden. Together with your friend Downey and other assorted heroic types you roam the obligatory two dimensions (there’s always a light world and a dark world isn’t there?) and try to set things straight after someone messed things up by eating the forbidden fruits whom the enigmatic Father explicitly told everyone to leave well alone. The game is obviously quite inspired by Christian mythology and the Bible, and as an atheist fascinated with these things, that is exactly what drew me to the game in the first place.

Unfortunately Eternal Eden doesn’t follow up on the promise of religious interpretation very well; I was let down a bit by the common, secular storyline that emerged from this extremely promising beginning. Maybe I’m simply missing some of the more religious points, but it feels that Blossomsoft missed out on an opportunity to create something deeper and more thought-provoking. Still, what the game delivers is a well-designed and interesting RPG experience that lasted some 15-16 hours. Much of it was filled with battles and the usual leveling up, but there was surprisingly little forced level grinding – not a single time did I have to backtrack and fight stuff in order to become stronger.

One of the reason for this is that there are no random battles. Hallelujah! Praise the lawd and all that jazz. All the enemies are clearly visible and avoidable if one chooses. Much appreciated move. What this means is that the game is more streamlined, more simple in a way since the designer placed enough enemies so that you’ll always be prepared for what comes next as long as you fight your alloted fights. But it also means that you always see how many fights you have ahead of you – at least in the current area. This may not seem like a big deal but to me it felt like an enormous relief to be able to plan how many of the sodding sasquatches I had to slay before I got to where I wanted.

There are other neat things about the game. The graphics are good (although fairly simple compared to games like FF IV, FF V, FF VI, etc), the sound is good (but nothing special), and there are a few interesting minigames like bounty hunting and turtle hunting. Yes, turtle hunting. You go around an island looking for turtles. It sounds insane, but it really is fun! I never found all those stealth turtles though…

The most important thing about the game is that it has that elusive addictive quality, though. The areas never become too big or long-winded, and there is always more to see just around the corner. The scope of the game is much smaller than FF IV or FF V or FF VI (yes yes, I use them as examples again), but I most definitely think that that’s one of its major strengths as well. Because of its limited length this is a game I wanted to buy and finish, unlike most RPGs I’ve played lately. The relative shortness of the game might even be why it felt so addictive – it wasn’t stuffed with too much filler content. Kudos to you for that, Blossomsoft.

Graphics

Good graphics and special FX. Even though the resolution is higher than that of SNES RPGs, the latter win in comparison by virtue of better animation, design and variation.

3/5

Sound

Decent music, although a bit synthetic. The sound effects were okay. In the end I chose to not have the audio on throughout the whole game.

2/5

Gameplay

If you like the standard JRPG/CRPG deal you’ll definitely like this.

4/5

Addictiveness

Could it be? Could this be the first game I review to get a full score in addictiveness? Indeed it is! I couldn’t put the game down. I rarely buy games, but this was well worth the dough.

5/5

Technical notes

Eternal Eden was made with Game Maker or RPG Maker or some other kind of engine like that, but it’s not very noticeable – it performed well and felt like a solid game. One annoyance is that I’d like a larger window, more resolution choices or a scalable window – I want to play windowed, but the default resolution is just too small on my laptop! Also, when I alt-tab the game is paused (good!) but that music just keeps on playing (bad!)

Overall, I must say that I’m pleased with the reception. I’ve received positive feedback, and people do seem to enjoy the game. Sales from the game’s webpage are up to what Sheeplings sold during six months; granted, I poured more into this second game, but it’s still going better than I thought. I wonder what will happen when I announce the proper release in a little while, along with a photo contest! (Intrigued? You should be. Stay tuned for more information!)

Other positive notes include that the game is mentioned on Gamershell, IGN, Gamespy and other news sites. Still no whisper about it on Gamespot, despite a press release I sent there, but maybe that will change after the real release. Other places have also picked up news about the game; for example Lesbian Gamers and Gay Gamer. Hmm… I wonder if it has something to do with the spandex?

As for feedback, most of what I’ve received comes from forums and e-mails. I won’t toot my own horn, but the concept seems to work very well, and the variation in the minigames works its magic for most people. But – as always – there’s just no pleasing everybody. Here is a list of user reviews, and Spandex Force has received both praise and scorn. And speaking of more scorn, here’s a scathing review from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. I was initially crushed until I started analysing the complaints and compared them to the positive feedback I’ve received. I’m first to admit that my game isn’t as “good” (subjective term of course) as Puzzle Quest; I don’t have the budget or the time for that amount of polish. But I’m not competing directly against Puzzle Quest either - I’m targeting another set of customers. Sure, there’s some overlap – myself for example! I like both casual games and hardcore RPGs. But while Puzzle Quest is aimed at the RPG crowd, my intention is to bring something exciting to the casual crowd instead.

I doubt that this is obvious, though, so I think I’ll have to be prepared for some bad reviews coming up comparing Spandex Force unfavourably to Puzzle Quest.

Back to more positive things, I received a request for a Linux version of the game, and I figured that it shouldn’t be much of a problem. True enough, I’ve done some initial testing and I think I can get it to run on Ubuntu at least. I’ll probably only support Ubuntu, and then have a “see if it works for you – good if it does” clause for other distributions. There’s no way I’m going to offer support for multiple distributions – Linux is simply too problematic. I don’t think I’ll actually gain much from having a Linux version either, but it’s a good learning experience at least. Incidentally, the person asking for a Linux version also mentioned that this game would fit well on Nintendo DS, and even supplied a hint about a publisher working with DS. I’ll see how the game is received after the release, but hey – who knows. Thinking about playing my own game on a DS almost makes me come. Not that you wanted to know that. And not that it’ll happen. But it sure would be nice…

Anyway, I’m feeling positive about the upcoming release. I’ve optimized the game a little, sorted out a Mac bug, received many suggestions for improvements, and the game is slowly coming together properly. The biggest thing left is to playtest the game thoroughly and balance it even more. I really hope people will be pleased about the game’s length – I anticipate that it’s well over 8 hours game play in it, and quite possibly more along the lines of dozens of hours. That may sound cool to you, but for me it sounds like damn hard work, playing through the whole game….again….and again.

Well… I think the terminology has gotten a bit confused, and I’ve been forced to apply the beta label without much thought. First of all, I was only releasing test builds up to 0.4; people tested it and gave feedback. Not much more to that. But after 0.4 I decided to set up the order page, since a few people had expressed interest in purchasing the game. But lo and behold! It appears that when I accepted affiliates for Sheeplings I’d unthinkingly allowed some people to be affiliates for all my games – which meant that Spandex Force became available for them to sell as well!

One thing led to another, and before I knew it I was receiving traffic from a few sites; quite a few downloads in fact. That’s when I decided to release 0.5 – an in-between release that’s fully playable and corrects most issues - and decided to call it the official beta. I didn’t want people to believe that 0.4 or 0.5 was the final version of the game, so I decided to make a press release to state that there will come a newer version later. But of course, the game itself doesn’t care much about what label I’ve put on it – it just happily states its version number.

So I guess people who expected the game to be more opaque about being in “alpha,” “beta” or “final” are a tad confused.

Either way, the game is both in beta and for sale; I don’t see a conflict there. It’s playable and enjoyable to the end as it is, and those who buy the game now get the current full version as well as the final release once it’s done!

• New map art! This is not the final version – it’s just a preview jpg I received. The final even-better city will appear in the shortly-arriving 0.4 release.
• Many more minigames! I realized that the game was lacking variety, so I followed sage advice I’d received from 0.2 playtesters, and added more minigames. A few of these are mini-minigames just to spice things up, but I also made new major-minigames such as getting a cat down from the tree, and stopping an attempted grand theft auto.
• More sparkles! I added particles and sound effects to many places – it’s actually getting to the point where I’m unsure if I can add anything else and still have the game playable at low-end machines. For once in my life I find that I have too new computers at my disposal.
• Lots of other bug fixes and tweaks and improvements. The problem with making rapid iterations like this is that I lose track of all that’s done. I could compose extensive release notes for each release…but that seems a bit overkill for “internal” releases like these.

Game Info
Spandex Force is a unique puzzle/adventure/RPG game that lets you create your own hero to clean up the crime-infested town of Vigilance Valley. Follow your hero’s quest to rid Vigilance Valley of vicious villains such as the Blizzard Wizard, the inept riddler Countess Conundrum, and the mysterious Professor Aphasia.

Screenshots
   

More screenshots and more info can be found at http://www.spandexforce.com.

Downloads
Download the Windows version here:
http://www.spandexforce.com/files/SpandexForceDemo.exe
Download the Mac version here:
http://www.spandexforce.com/files/SpandexForceDemo.dmg

That’s right, a Mac version is available now! You see, I’ve been pretty busy indeed. Please let me know if you find any problems with either release – and feel free to let me know if it’s working fine as well! Feedback is much appreciated.