A Wizard's Lizard
Wondering if anybody else has played this one?
Picked it up via one of those indie-bargain promotions and finally installed it last night.
While it is MUCH easier than Binding of Isaac, it is the same kind of twin-stick dungeon-crawl.
The fantasy theme gives is a much more Zelda-like feel.
Also, it is WAY more "family friendly" to play on your main game system...
(my wife HATES BoI, and while I enjoyed the challenge, the art/theme choices left a lot to be desired, IMO)
This game also seems to have an interesting living/death theme where when you "die" you flip over to a Realm of the Dead and can be resurrected or eventually "die" a second time to get a game over.
There are screens that LOOK like they should have "push-able" blocks, a la Zelda, but the blocks are actually only present in either the Realm of the Living or the Realm of the Dead, so to get the chests you have to sometimes INTENTIONALLY "die".
Definitely an interesting mechanic that it will be neat to explore (while suppressing my traditional gamer mentality of "never get hit" )
Picked it up via one of those indie-bargain promotions and finally installed it last night.
While it is MUCH easier than Binding of Isaac, it is the same kind of twin-stick dungeon-crawl.
The fantasy theme gives is a much more Zelda-like feel.
Also, it is WAY more "family friendly" to play on your main game system...
(my wife HATES BoI, and while I enjoyed the challenge, the art/theme choices left a lot to be desired, IMO)
This game also seems to have an interesting living/death theme where when you "die" you flip over to a Realm of the Dead and can be resurrected or eventually "die" a second time to get a game over.
There are screens that LOOK like they should have "push-able" blocks, a la Zelda, but the blocks are actually only present in either the Realm of the Living or the Realm of the Dead, so to get the chests you have to sometimes INTENTIONALLY "die".
Definitely an interesting mechanic that it will be neat to explore (while suppressing my traditional gamer mentality of "never get hit" )
Comments
It reminds me more of Zombies Ate My Neighbors than it does Zelda, but I can see what you're getting at. It looks really cool.
Yeah, the actual gameplay is a bit more like Zombies Ate My Neighbors (along with the undead theme).
Thought it's a twin-stick shooter, like Smash TV, rather than facing/walking-direction shooter like Zombies.
Originally posted by: arch_8ngel
Originally posted by: Br81zad
It reminds me more of Zombies Ate My Neighbors than it does Zelda, but I can see what you're getting at. It looks really cool.
Yeah, the actual gameplay is a bit more like Zombies Ate My Neighbors (along with the undead theme).
Thought it's a twin-stick shooter, like Smash TV, rather than facing/walking-direction shooter like Zombies.
I think what separated it from reminding me of Zelda (and I really never thought much about this until now) is that the enemy movement in the Lizard game is set so that they pursue and converge on you. Zelda enemies (for the most part) moved randomly and indepentent of what Link was doing on screen.
The 2 stick control scheme sounds like fun, and would appear to be well suited for this type of game. I'm probably going to give this a try sometime. Thanks for posting about it!
Originally posted by: MuNKeY
Interesting title for a "family friendly" game.
Ha, very true.
But the main characters is the eponymous lizard, the graphics are fairly "cutesy", and since undead are the primary enemy, there is minimal-to-no-gore.
(and I think my comment was "more family friendly than BoI" which isn't a very high bar when you're comparing it to a game full of vaginal-blood-lasers)
Originally posted by: Br81zad
Originally posted by: arch_8ngel
Originally posted by: Br81zad
It reminds me more of Zombies Ate My Neighbors than it does Zelda, but I can see what you're getting at. It looks really cool.
Yeah, the actual gameplay is a bit more like Zombies Ate My Neighbors (along with the undead theme).
Thought it's a twin-stick shooter, like Smash TV, rather than facing/walking-direction shooter like Zombies.
I think what separated it from reminding me of Zelda (and I really never thought much about this until now) is that the enemy movement in the Lizard game is set so that they pursue and converge on you. Zelda enemies (for the most part) moved randomly and indepentent of what Link was doing on screen.
The 2 stick control scheme sounds like fun, and would appear to be well suited for this type of game. I'm probably going to give this a try sometime. Thanks for posting about it!
Definitely true that enemy AI is of the "pursuit" variety.
My comment was more about the combination of 1) fantasy theme, 2) grid/room-based dungeon crawl, 3) style of item shops
It's a VERY loose comparison
Also, keep in mind that it's of a sub-genre that merges these other types of games with Roguelike elements of procedurally generated dungeons, so it's meant to be replayed.
Sometimes this kind of mechanic can be frustrating, but when it's handled well, you get to relive that "fresh character" feeling of starting up an RPG, and an entire game attempt takes maybe an hour or two, at most, per dive.
Originally posted by: arch_8ngel
Originally posted by: Br81zad
Originally posted by: arch_8ngel
Originally posted by: Br81zad
It reminds me more of Zombies Ate My Neighbors than it does Zelda, but I can see what you're getting at. It looks really cool.
Yeah, the actual gameplay is a bit more like Zombies Ate My Neighbors (along with the undead theme).
Thought it's a twin-stick shooter, like Smash TV, rather than facing/walking-direction shooter like Zombies.
I think what separated it from reminding me of Zelda (and I really never thought much about this until now) is that the enemy movement in the Lizard game is set so that they pursue and converge on you. Zelda enemies (for the most part) moved randomly and indepentent of what Link was doing on screen.
The 2 stick control scheme sounds like fun, and would appear to be well suited for this type of game. I'm probably going to give this a try sometime. Thanks for posting about it!
Definitely true that enemy AI is of the "pursuit" variety.
My comment was more about the combination of 1) fantasy theme, 2) grid/room-based dungeon crawl, 3) style of item shops
It's a VERY loose comparison
Well, all 3 of those do indeed fit
Well, all 3 of those do indeed fit
Practically speaking, another small indie game, "Ittle Dew" is a clear Zelda-like that is worth getting on sale.
It has a neat mechanic of having at least 3, if not 4, distinct ways to beat the game, since there are a bunch of puzzle-based paths that overlap, and you need specific items to take each path.
(there are also some tricky puzzle/item exploits you can do to break through some of the paths without the requisite items)
That one basically plays like a MUCH more puzzle-heavy version of LttP.
(all of the boss combat is puzzle based, and every room represents at least one set of puzzles to solve)
Originally posted by: arch_8ngel
Originally posted by: Br81zad
Well, all 3 of those do indeed fit
Practically speaking, another small indie game, "Ittle Dew" is a clear Zelda-like that is worth getting on sale.
It has a neat mechanic of having at least 3, if not 4, distinct ways to beat the game, since there are a bunch of puzzle-based paths that overlap, and you need specific items to take each path.
(there are also some tricky puzzle/item exploits you can do to break through some of the paths without the requisite items)
That one basically plays like a MUCH more puzzle-heavy version of LttP.
(all of the boss combat is puzzle based, and every room represents at least one set of puzzles to solve)
Watching some gameplay of that, and it definitely has the Zelda feel to it.
Originally posted by: Br81zad
Watching some gameplay of that, and it definitely has the Zelda feel to it.
If you're a Zelda die-hard, it's well worth playing.
PC version with a controller works really well. Tablet version is playable but touch controls are tough on a game like that.
I'd say more than Zelda it's really Neutopia-ish, not that's there's much difference there. But that's going mostly off the sword graphic and giant bats, and the lizard kind of looks like a Neutopia foe, I've not played the game yet.
Good point, in the sense that it has armor in a much more complex way than Zelda (head, body, feed, hands, and rings, I think).
Should I be happy or disappointed that this isn't a thread full of pictures of my penis?
If you were Seth, we'd have some existing material to work with on that front...
But I think the closest we came to pics of your lizard was some photo of you tearing out the seam of your pants doing a flying side-kick at a party.
(maybe I'm misremembering that actually being you in that picture, but that was the implication)
So definitely a lot easier than BoI, for instance.
Though with that said, probably 100% of my surviving the final, lava-heavy, levels was the result of having found an item that let me fly.
That let me go over other-wise-untraversable-terrain, as well as avoiding all ground-based traps (which resulted in deaths during my first two runs)
Getting through the game without the flying item is probably 10x harder, at least.
Still tons of replay value, from here, with lots to unlock.