Short Review:
Introduction:
Today’s game giveaway is rather a large download as arcade games go at 52.5Mb in size. When in stalled this increases to 58.4Mb. There is no desktop or start menu shortcuts installed so make a note of where the game is installed so that you can create your own shortcut. For those who don’t know how to do this check out the game discussion forums where I’ve posted a short tutorial. The install path is as follows:
C:\Games\
Apart from the above, installation is a breeze.
The Game:
On the face of it, despite the crude main and options menu, this game ‘looks’ quite good. The options menu allows you to adjust the quality of the graphics and the level of blood. By default, these are set to their lowest settings, so I’d boost them up to full if you want to enjoy the best looking graphics, though there didn’t appear to be much of a difference when using this facility. Perhaps for those with slow computers this may be useful?
It’s in the third person perspective looking from the top down. Graphics look pretty good, but the controls are a little slow to respond (and that’s playing it on a reasonably fast computer with loads of memory (3.2GHz + 4Gb RAM and an NVIDIA 8800 GTS 640Mb graphics card). I found it really difficult to survive at first, but once I realized that the cursor was an integral part of the attack, the game became a little easier. So please persevere and you’ll find it easy to progress through to later levels. There is an indicator to the bottom left of the screen that tells you how much strength/ life and magical power you have left. The enemy dwarves leave behind lot of health and potions so it’s relatively easy to keep your powers up to full strength. The right mouse button is the most powerful. Your mouse cursor dictates the way your dwarf throws potions and moves. You have to use a combination of the mouse and arrow/cursor keys (or the WASD keys) to move your dwarf around the field. (I took me a little time to figure this out) Both mouse button use your sword to attack with . Then the left bitton is also used to throw small amounts of mana at your opponents and the right button throws large gobs of mana. By holding down either or both buttons you can increase your attack to melee level. When you kill an opponent (and there are lots of them coming at you all the time) sometimes a potion will be left behind. To collect it you have to walk over it within a specified time, so make sure you pick them up because they contain health packages as well as new spells such as ice rain, meteorite shower or explosions. There are five types of packages:
Elixirs – that give life or magic power. The amount of blood left behind after an opponent has been killed can be adjusted via the options menu if you think it’s to much for your children. (Assuming you’ll let your children play this game)
Angels – gives +1 life but no more than 5
Scrolls – gives new spells
Traps – Cause Ice Rain, Meteorites, explosions and the power to throw
your enemies far
Auras – Give you new abilities such as running faster, attacking faster as well as others that when reading from the help menu seem a little cryptic.
You can earn up to five lives in game. When you are killed you get a message saying “You’ve Been Beaten – Now you will be resurrected” This will depend upon how many lives you have left, which are indicated at the bottom left of the screen next to the life force and mana level indicators.
Images:
Images will be posted later today. I’ve got to go to see my daughter at ballet in a few moments…….If you only see a couple of images, check back later.
All on one page:
http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Brave%20Dwarf/
As a slidesow:
http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Brave%20Dwarf/?albumview=slideshow
Conclusion:
I know a lot of community members are going to knock this game just because it’s from ‘Some Company. And in part I do agree, because there is something missing that would give the game some polish. However I’ll be keeping this game as it’s a challenge. I managed to get through several levels but was killed after taking a screen capture for the review. From the time I played this game, there didn’t seem to be any variability in the levels, each one blending into the next after a short message saying you were progressing to the next stage. I hope someone will report that there is different scenes, otherwise this game will become boring very fast.
This is worth 6 out of 10 in my estimation. Unfortunately, some company’s games seem to be impossible to capture with the video capture programs I use (Camtasia and Capture Wiz Pro), so again no video this week. Sorry.
Music:
The games music can be found directly in the games folder, but I cannot tell which file is which, so if you wish to change the in game music, you,ll have to do it by trial and error. Make sure you back up all the ogg files, then systematically echange them for the music you like. You’ll have to convert the files to the .ogg format and re name the tracks you use using a suitable audio converter. You can find a couple of these in the freeware library; either/or will do:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/freeware/dir/54858/Download-Free-Audio-Converter-CS.htm
or
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/freeware/dir/53902/Download-Daniusoft-MP3-WAV-Converter.htm
or
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/freeware/dir/50186/Download-Free-MP3-WMA-WAV-Converter.htm
