Welcome Time Wasters!
This week I decided to spend my time with a browser game instead of the smartphone and Steam releases I’ve been doing lately. The game I checked out this week is called 1985. It was an entry for Lowrez Jam 2016, which is a competition I hadn’t heard of before this.
1985 is a mixture of Nintendo’s series to create something that feels a bit like its own idea. It takes its looks and some gameplay elements from the Mario franchise and mixes them with the Metroid series. This creates a game that feels very familiar and different at the same time.
The game puts players in the shoes of our favorite plumber and he can still take out enemies by jumping on their heads. However, there’s a much bigger focus on exploration. This leads to players collecting upgrades, such as a Mushroom and Fire Flower, in order to unlock new areas to adventure in. There are also health upgrades that can be found and the game is littered with coins that can be used to buy more upgrades.
The Metroidvania aspects of the game aren’t bad and it does a good job of blending it with the Mario themes. The controls are easy enough to get the hang of, but they feel a little jumpy. They just aren’t quite as smooth as what players of the 2D Mario and Metroid games are used to and that’s a bit of a negative.
Another negative in the game, and this is a big one, is the camera. The game features a very close up view of the characters and there’s really very little else to see. It hurts both the platforming and exploration aspects of the game. It’s also very nauseating. The close-up view combined with the jerky controls ended up making me nauseous after awhile. It actually got to the point that I had to quit playing because it was affecting me so bad.
The art style in 1985 is very simple, which makes sense for the type of competition it was entered in. The low-end graphics are similar to other games I’ve played and they bring a breath of fresh air to the internet. The audio is simple enough with one looping track through most of the game and the normal sound effects where necessary.
Overall, I can’t really recommend 1985. It seems like a fun little tribute game to Nintendo, but that zoomed in camera and jerky controls just killed the experience for me. Maybe if the developer had scaled the view back for its release outside of the competition it would’ve been a better experience. If you think you can handle it, you might want to check it out just to see a different take on some classic game series.
1985 earns 2 GiN Gems out of 5!