When the evil Bobby Khan descended on the peaceful kingdom of Tulipton and stole all the Mystical Orbs, the king was overwhelmed. The orbs were needed to protect the kingdom from the marauding monsters (an unfortunate side effect of building your kingdom in the Monster Wilderness). So with every last knight battling the rampaging hordes, the king could spare only one wizard for a reckless mission to reclaim the lost orbs: Kid Mystic
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I thought I was free when I beat Loonyland, but the nostalgia trip never truly left me. So I played Loonyland 2 but that one's not in the database and fuck it I'm too lazy to add it. It's pretty good. Last few areas ticked me off, 3.5 stars maybe.
Anyway then I moved on to Kid Mystic, a game which I actually had played as a kid non-mystic. I remembered Mike Hommel getting the rights back and working on new features for an updated release, but I never played the thing.
If you didn't know, Hommel/Jamul/Hamumu made a couple of small games based on Dr. Lunatic (recently rereleased on Steam which kicks ass) for eGames, a game publisher that's impossible to Google. The first Spooky Castle was essentially a single world of Dr. L, but Kid Mystic had two more interesting things going for it. The first was that it has RPG elements for some reason, and the second was the box art eGames made. Look at that sucker. They edited Kid Mystic's nose to be round instead of pointed and once I was told this I can never not think about it when I look at this thing.
What was I talking about again?
Well, turns out I don't think making you grind out levels is actually a good addition to an action/puzzle type game anymore. Especially when you have to buy the ability to move at a decent rate. The spells are cool but you can only use them like, once before you run out of MP until way late. It's all still pretty good, but if you're looking at this thing and you haven't played Dr. Lunatic you should give Hommel ten bucks through Steam. If you have and are playing this for nostalgia reasons then you know what you're in for.
The new features include some new levels (one of them is an infuriating sliding puzzle but for the most part they're on the usual level of quality) some fairies that add little modifiers (probably some fun to be had there) a new mode with Tony Hawk goals for some reason (I enjoy the sheer audacity of the concept) and also inexplicably fancy water effects that look kind of terrible and don't fit in with the rest of the art.
Twist ending: I didn't finish this run because sticky keys kicked in and just totally ruined my session because the game's so old and I lost like an hour and change of progress. But I beat it years ago that counts. I don't want to mark it abandoned that makes it look like it's bad. Just... remember to save.
Anyway then I moved on to Kid Mystic, a game which I actually had played as a kid non-mystic. I remembered Mike Hommel getting the rights back and working on new features for an updated release, but I never played the thing.
If you didn't know, Hommel/Jamul/Hamumu made a couple of small games based on Dr. Lunatic (recently rereleased on Steam which kicks ass) for eGames, a game publisher that's impossible to Google. The first Spooky Castle was essentially a single world of Dr. L, but Kid Mystic had two more interesting things going for it. The first was that it has RPG elements for some reason, and the second was the box art eGames made. Look at that sucker. They edited Kid Mystic's nose to be round instead of pointed and once I was told this I can never not think about it when I look at this thing.
What was I talking about again?
Well, turns out I don't think making you grind out levels is actually a good addition to an action/puzzle type game anymore. Especially when you have to buy the ability to move at a decent rate. The spells are cool but you can only use them like, once before you run out of MP until way late. It's all still pretty good, but if you're looking at this thing and you haven't played Dr. Lunatic you should give Hommel ten bucks through Steam. If you have and are playing this for nostalgia reasons then you know what you're in for.
The new features include some new levels (one of them is an infuriating sliding puzzle but for the most part they're on the usual level of quality) some fairies that add little modifiers (probably some fun to be had there) a new mode with Tony Hawk goals for some reason (I enjoy the sheer audacity of the concept) and also inexplicably fancy water effects that look kind of terrible and don't fit in with the rest of the art.
Twist ending: I didn't finish this run because sticky keys kicked in and just totally ruined my session because the game's so old and I lost like an hour and change of progress. But I beat it years ago that counts. I don't want to mark it abandoned that makes it look like it's bad. Just... remember to save.
5 star bias rating but I used to play this on the computer constantly as a kid before I was even in grade school 😭 extremely nostalgic for me and I still really love the primitive 3d stuff, makes for a very distinct and interesting vibe i remember being really captivated by. Super trippy and nostalgic idk, a fun time still
This is a game I used to play on my aunt's computer when I was like 6 probably. I spent forever trying to find it again and eventually found out the creator put like all his shit on itch.io. This actually runs on modern hardware (can't alt tab though).
So this game is incredibly rough game design wise. You can only attack by finding an item that will let you, and sometimes the dev puts it in some bullshit place behind a bunch of enemies you can't kill. Sometimes there are bullshit puzzles you CANNOT figure out on your own. There are extremely dark dungeons with lazers that basically one shot you and are extremely hard to see. There are snails that retract into their shell if you get to close to them, making it so you cannot kill them, and they WILL body block you in door ways.
I can look past a lot of this though because the game is extremely charming/nostalgic to me. The art style is so low poly cheap 90's pc games. The water is like a cool gradient with ripple effects on it. The music isnt amazing but goddamn is it midi. It was also just made by 1 person, so he probably didn't have the wisdom for do's and do not's in game design. Also some actually impressive stuff to me in here.
Overall, really cool game 👍
So this game is incredibly rough game design wise. You can only attack by finding an item that will let you, and sometimes the dev puts it in some bullshit place behind a bunch of enemies you can't kill. Sometimes there are bullshit puzzles you CANNOT figure out on your own. There are extremely dark dungeons with lazers that basically one shot you and are extremely hard to see. There are snails that retract into their shell if you get to close to them, making it so you cannot kill them, and they WILL body block you in door ways.
I can look past a lot of this though because the game is extremely charming/nostalgic to me. The art style is so low poly cheap 90's pc games. The water is like a cool gradient with ripple effects on it. The music isnt amazing but goddamn is it midi. It was also just made by 1 person, so he probably didn't have the wisdom for do's and do not's in game design. Also some actually impressive stuff to me in here.
Overall, really cool game 👍