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SEEKERS
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By Shear Destiny
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The title is written in the same font as Sliders, and I just can't say no the possibility of Jerry O'Connell. It was also short.
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PRESENTATION
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Graphics
There's only one town in the demo, but it's really well made. The chipset is colourful, there are NPCs actually doing things as opposed to walking around randomly saying "This is the town of Hiway Village!", and it's easy to navigate. All the heroes have large head & shoulders pictures instead of just facesets, and all the sprites aside from the three rival seekers are custom. Then, you leave town...
Everything outside of town is the most boring shit imaginable. I understand this is meant to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but would it have killed to include something other than shades of brown? Brown dirt. Brown mountains. Brown trees. Brown temple. Brown chests inside the temple. Brown traps in the temple. Brown insects both in and out of the temple. Brown fucking ghosts.
I'm harping on about this because the game is exploration based and very, very slow. Moving at a snail's pace through a frustrating maze full of identical random encounters every five steps isn't fun, and it's even less fun when every room looks the same as the last one (only with more rocks). Adding to the annoyance in that the lantern field is really small, and you use it all the rooms bar 2, making it really easy to get lost since all the floors and walls are identical. This isn't to say the graphics are of poor quality on their own, but three shitty chipsets would have looked better than the one good chipset repeated ad nauseum.
Sound Effects
Yes, it has sound effects.
Music
The music fits the feel of the exploration sections, but good luck hearing more than 5 seconds of it, since the random encounters are so frequent. Much like all the stuff about Seekers that's good, it gets drowned out by pointless, frustrating bullshit.
Originality
There's some RTP, but the rest is either little-used rips, or wholly original. But, like I've said, there isn't really that much here in the first place.
Extra stuff
There are a lot of small touches, like the townspeople and the character portraits, that are really good on their own, but they can't save the experience from being frustrating and dull as a whole.
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STORYLINE & CHARACTERS
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Storyline
Question: Why did the rival group of Seekers hide behind the pillars and ambush us, when they could have just taken the treasure and left?
Answer: Because then there wouldn't be a boss fight.
Question: If that guy can teleport, why did he need someone else to retrieve the treasure?
Answer: Because then we wouldn't have had to explore the dungeon.
Question: If this is ancient technology that was recently unearthed, why is it in an ancient ruin filled with spike traps and spears that come out of the walls?
Answer: Because that makes it harder to find.
The plot, like Wildcard, works on that level. As a videogame story, it's fine. As a story in its own right, it's not that good. But, if I wanted a good story, I would not look for it in a video game anyway. Ergo, this story gets a decent score. I would give it higher, but this is a short demo and not much happens.
12 years ago, there was some kind of catastrophe that destroyed much of the world's surface. The people depend on salvaged technology to survive, and this is obtained by treasure hunters called Seekers. You play as a group of three Seekers (AMAZING BUT TRUE) who head to some recently discovered ruins in order to find some shiny crap. When they find the shiny crap, a teleporting man says some enigmatic stuff about "The Key" and the demo ends.
Will Dominique's long-lost brother return? Is someone manipulating the Seekers for their own evil purposes? Will we discover the truth about the events of 12 years ago? IT'S A SECRET TO EVERYONE.
Characters
Dominique is haunted by the disappearance of her brother when they were children, which is at least better than her being an amnesiac with mysterious powers. Kincade is the standard hot-headed, womanising klutz. Teela doesn't do anything and looks totally different to when she was in He-Man. Since nothing happens, character wise, in the demo, I don't know anything else.
Cut Scenes
There's one at the start and one at the end. It's all just exposition and setup, with some decent looking animation, but nothing especially fancy.
Originality
It's actually reasonably original. There aren't any amnesiacs, crystals, dragons, corporations sucking the life from the planet, or demons who were sealed away 1000 years ago. But, since this is a short demo, that doesn't mean there won't be later.
Script
The script is actually pretty good. It's not a writing tour de force, but it manages to communicate pieces exposition in a way that sounds like actual dialogue. So, instead of "They have found a strange ruin in the Noth that was not there before", it's "The Highland Mountains were swept from top to bottom, why did they find ruins all of the sudden? Come on, how could anyone miss a 30ft hole in the ground?". There are a few grammar problems, mostly involving commas, in, weird places like, this, but, at least you, can tell, what they're, talking, about, which is better, than, most games.
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GAMEPLAY
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Event Programming
There are traps on the floor and walls that go off when you step on or near them. You have a lantern field which flickers, and you need a lantern to use it. You can use universal lockpicks to open chests, like in Gauntlet. I honestly can't think of anything else, but it all works.
Fun Factor
Ugh. It sounds fun, and it is fun for about five minutes, but then the repetition drives you insane. If you went into the editor, removed all the random encounters and upped the walk speed, it would be pretty fun, though. I reckon'.
Combat
Jesus Christ, this is horrible. Nobody has any skills, all the enemy do is attack, and there are way too many encounters - it's not out of the ordinary to encounter enemies on your first step after fighting the last group. The enemies themselves are quite difficult. Normally, I'd like that, except that since you're in a puzzle-filled dungeon that's a pain in the arse to navigate, you can't just *leave* when your supplies start to run low. You can run away pretty easily, but the boss(es) of the dungeon are also tough and require a lot of levelling up to beat, so you can't just avoid the monsters like a sensible person who doesn't want to spend a minute hitting Spacebar every few steps.
Dungeons
I've talked a lot about the dungeon already, since the demo is basically one big dungeon crawl. The dungeon design is really good, but the frequency of encounters, the speed at which you move, and the fact you can't see more than 2 squares in any direction make it a horrible, horrible chore to play through. The traps seem cool the first time you see them, but after a while they simply become cheap, with no way of telling if they're there or not.
Lantern fields are fine. Walking slowly is fine. Random encounters are fine. Mazes are fine. Traps are fine. All five together is a giant frustrating salad of annoyance.
Puzzles & Minigames
There are a lot of small puzzles, none of which are very complicated, but they break up the monotony. That is, until you solve them, and encounter another 20+ identical monsters while walking around in the dark.
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OVERALL
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Seekers really is a good game that only has a few things wrong with it, except those few things are crucial to the way it plays, and they suck all the fun out of the experience. If those get fixed by the next demo, it'll be great. In its present form, I wouldn't bother with it.
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