Castle Paradox

Uncommon · Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2004 5:28 pm Post subject: By the Seventh Book

http://castleparadox.com/cgi-bin/gamelist-display.php?game=383

Go play it.

Eggie · Joined: 12 May 2003 Posts: 904

Fine, I will. And I gotta say that your game description on your download interface is pretty long, but I guess there is nothing wrong with that. Anyway, let's see how good this thingy is. Let's hope it's good.

TMC · Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 1:20 am Post subject:

I will. It sounds interesting from the description. There's nothing wrong with long descriptions, they're often better than short ones.
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Shadowiii · **It's been real.** Joined: 14 Feb 2003 Posts: 2460

I got it, and I'll play it as soon as I have a chance. I'm assuming you want feedback? Raspberry!

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SDHawk · **Silent One** Joined: 06 Jan 2003 Posts: 80

My most hearty recommendations to go download and play this game now. It garners the sadly too rare award of "Second OHR game SDHawk enjoyed playing".

It's essentially a book with graphics (or is it a movie with text? I don't know...), and at certain moments interactive mini-games that minorly alter the story. (As far as I can tell, no matter how well you do, the outcome is set in stone.) It may seem like Uncommon was just being lazy to not add multiple endings, but looking at it I have a feeling it was intentional to strengthen the game's story. Even without multiple endings, though, I played it through a second time to do better in the mini-games. (And probably will a third time to see the outcome of another thing to try I just thought of...)

Is it perfect? No, the graphics could be better, there could be some actual music, and if we looked hard enough we could probably find flaws in the writing as well. But all that dosen't particularly matter, as it works perfectly with what it has.
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Shadowiii · **It's been real.** Joined: 14 Feb 2003 Posts: 2460

Interesting. I rather enjoyed it, though I dare say a few parts were...predictable. It was a very interesting story none the less, and the mini games and the NPC animations were nice. My only real problem was that the dancing game went a bit to fast for me to do it...I quit really fast. Raspberry!

Hmm...what else...nope, that's it. Nice work! It needs music badly, though.
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Uncommon · Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 7:04 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I'd add music if I had music to add, and it might help if I had a sound card that worked... You know, whatever.

Hey, for some extra fun, try to get a score of 0 in the dancing game. Might be hard, since it's so fast...

The Drizzle · **Who is the Drizzle?** Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 432

Possible spoilers here.

This was not one of my favorites from you, Uncommon. I liked the interactive story gameplay style just fine, but I found the story to be rather contrived. It was too similar to Grandia II (very similar), which is one of my favorite games. I'm not implying at all that you stole the story or even based it on that, I just didn't think that Grandia II had a very original story and I don't think this one is either. Corrupt church? Seen it. I didn't hate it at all though, the game didn't hold my attention very well. It was like reading a summary of a book you've already read. It's still a good book, but, you know.

Though it is more developed than most OHR games, the characters are still underdeveloped. It wasn't until long after that blonde guy (what's his name-- Sebastian's friend) made "the change" (i'm not talking puberty here, folks) that I knew enough about his character that would lead me to believe that he would even consider doing what he did. (Sorry about the confusion here, I'm trying not to spoil too much.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I liked Parson's Apprentice better.
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TMC · Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2004 12:48 am Post subject:

I really liked it, I congratulate you on its completion. It held my interest for the full 40 minutes. The minigame with the mob was very interesting and well thought out - It would almost be possible to make a game solely based on that.

That dancing game was insane, I tried 40 times, and I was jamming the keyboard the whole time, but my character only moved twice. Broke.

Anyway, definitly one of my favorites.
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The Drizzle · **Who is the Drizzle?** Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 432

Yeah, that dancing game was a biznatch. I got the hang of it after a while and got 84 points. Then that NPC came up at the end and said "You only got 84 points? Wow, you suck." Needless to say, I was pissed. That mini game was a tough one.
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Uncommon · Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004 12:48 pm Post subject:

Heh heh heh.

Well, first off, I've never played Grandia II. The story was originally influenced by working the Human Day contest theme of translation while playing too much Final Fantasy Tactics.

The thing about corrupt churches is that they were never an original idea, since it actually happened. I know you've said before that you are a Catholic, Drizzle, so the only thing I'm going to apologize for here is that your hstory sucks so much. Basically, the pope is a bad idea. One man having so much control is just asking for trouble. That's how the Inquisition got started, and I decided that I need to finish this game after reading a lot about that. So, yes, the story might not be terribly original, but sometimes it's something that needs to be said.

As for the dancing game, the maximum score is 175, and Terrence isn't impressed unless you get 100+ or 0. I never had any trouble with it. In fact, I was afraid it would be too easy...

RedMaverickZero · Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004 1:18 pm Post subject:

I liked the story. The only thing I didn't like was that you had to keep playing it until you either saved or were able to walk around. The storyline looked good and the graphics were good to me too. Might even be review worthy if I finish it.
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Uncommon · Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004 1:58 pm Post subject:

There's no reason you shouldn't be able to finish it, Red. I have it made so that no matter what you do, you'll be able to get to the ending.

As for how long it is betwen saves, it really is only 40 minutes, so that shouldn't matter too much...

Shadowiii · **It's been real.** Joined: 14 Feb 2003 Posts: 2460

Would you like a review? Considering it is done the review would be only for ego purposes, but I haven't written a review in a while and it would be a nice refresher...
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JSH357 · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 1705

It's very neato, but two things I had a problem with so far:
1. The story is very predictable. It almost seems hackneyed. It isn't bad and it's certainly well-presented, just predictable.
2. The dancing game is too fast for me to see the text boxes...

My favorite part of the game was the angry mob. That was great.