Sonic Overture '95 Review

Have you ever seen original concepts for Sonic 1, and wondered how these concepts could’ve been used in a future Sonic game? Well, Sonic Overture ‘95 attempts to answer that question. Sonic Overture ‘95 is a 2d Sonic fan game that acts as a prequel to Sonic 1. Some of you might remember a fan game called Sonic Overture from 2014. Sonic Overture ‘95 is a revival of the original Overture, done by a new development team. The game is also based around the idea of a 2d Sonic game being on the Sega Saturn. A demo for Sonic Overture ‘95 dropped on itch.io about a month below, which will be linked below. Enough chit-chat, let’s dive into Sonic Overture ‘95.

    The first thing you are presented with when booting the game up is the Sega Saturn’s intro screen, which is a very nice touch. Then the title screen appears, and the first thing you will probably notice is just how beautiful it looks. The 32-bit style, mixed with the vibrant color palette presents an amazing look that looks similar to Sonic Mania. Seeing Sonic in 32-bit just makes me wish we could’ve gotten an actual official 2d Sonic game on the Saturn. I’m probably going to be gushing about the visuals for the entire review, but I don’t have a problem with that. After getting past that work of art, you’re presented with another work of art in the main menu. Here you can choose which zone you want to start with, which is a nice feature. Choose Sunrise Gate, and now you're ready for an adventure. 

    Before I talk about Sunrise Gate, I have to talk about Sonic’s sprite art. It looks magnificent, and it’s very animated, but the thing I love the most is the use of the Sonic 1 blue on him. This little detail is something that still makes me smile, even though it's a very small, minor thing. I’m just so used to seeing sprites based on Sonic 2 that seeing one based on Sonic 1 is fresh air to me. Using this old blue also makes sense in the game anyway, because it takes place before Sonic 1. Anyway, back to Sunrise Gate. Sunrise Gate is an easy Zone, it can be seen as your Green Hill equivalent, but there's a little bit more to the local. Act 1 is your standard affair, but Act 2 has you on top of the bright red, and gold gate, platforming your way through multiple pathways. Multiple pathways is a theme for the entire game, as there are no pits to my knowledge, so falling simply means that you now have to take the more dangerous bottom route. I appreciate when 2d Sonic fan games use this design philosophy, it rewards the player for skill by giving them goodies on the higher path, while not brutally punishing the player for making a mistake.

    Sunrise Gate also introduces a gimmick that is built on throughout the entire demo. There are these totem poles throughout the level, and jumping on them makes Sonic stop. Then when you jump off, you can just keep going. How is this a cool gimmick? Well, it would probably take you until Granite Zone to figure out that you are meant to immediately jump off the totem poles to keep momentum. This flow of movement feels good, especially in Granite Zone when it's emphasized a lot more. The totem poles' reason for existence was unclear on my first playthrough, but after experiencing how Granite Zone builds onto it, I appreciated them a lot more. I hope we see more of this gimmick in later builds of the game.

    The last thing I want to go into while at Sunrise Gate is just how much character, and charm is present in this game. Almost every Act has a cutscene in it, and these cutscenes are done well. Take the one in Act 2 for example. Before the fight with Eggman, you run into him while he’s asleep in his pajamas, which causes him to wake up. Sonic then proceeds to annoy him, while Eggman honestly just wants to go to sleep. This annoyance eventually leads to the fight. I love these interactions, they simply add charm and positivity to the game. I smiled at all of these, especially the one in Act 1 of Granite Zone, which I’ll leave for you to discover.

    Granite Zone is up next, and it’s a revamped Marble Zone, but actually fast, and fun. It still keeps the stone look from the original, but it also has a lot more plant life. The lava is still present, and it might annoy you because it's still easy to fall into the lava pits. However, outside of that, Granite zone is very different. It has a lot of straight platforming challenges instead of the slow, puzzle platforming the original presents. Act 2 also introduces the scrapped ball mechanic from Sonic 1, and I gotta say, this is the best interpretation of it. I won’t explain the gimmick in depth here, but it can be confusing at first. However, after experimenting with it on repeat playthroughs, I found it to be a blast, especially when I began to use it to find different pathways. My only issue with this zone is that the enemy placement is obnoxious. I kept getting hit a lot, and sometimes it felt like the whole level was just covered in enemies. Now I will admit that I’m not the greatest Sonic player so this minor complaint might come down to my lack of skill, but it’s still something I wanted to mention.

    There are other things I can try to describe, like the amazing soundtrack, but I think I have said enough. I honestly probably sounded more like an obsessed fanboy than an actual reviewer, but I didn’t have any issues with the game, besides the enemy placement in Granite Zone. I did read some comments mentioning the game does not feel 1 to 1 like Genesis Sonic, but I can’t really notice that, I also like classic Sonic in Sonic Generations, so take that as you will. Please check this game out if you have not already, and to the Sonic Overture Team, this has been a great experience, and I hope to see more of it. This has been Travis and have a great day.

Click here to play Sonic Overture '95, and click here if you want to watch my gameplay video.

Delta-Gal Review

Delta-Gal is an indie game made by Arthuir Vyater. The game is currently in its early demo stages, with no new builds having been publicly released since this demo from October 2020. However, Vyater’s Twitter proves that the game is still being worked on, with very recent posts showing some new stuff. Delta-Gal is available on itch.io, a link to the game will be at the bottom of this post.

Sprinting through Town.

Delta-Gal is a 3d action game that takes heavy inspiration from Megaman Legends. I have never played Megaman Legends, so I'm not comparing this to that, which is honestly better in my opinion, because I prefer indies to stand out on their own, instead of having me just going, ‘Yes! This game is just like this other game!’. You control Delta-Gal, a robotic girl with a pretty cool design. You dash around and shoot your way through these Metroidvania-like areas, defeating bosses, and finding new abilities, or items to progress. The demo is very short and can be beaten in 20 minutes if you know what you’re doing, but it is challenging, and will likely take multiple attempts to get through one area on your first run. 

The controls are fine in some parts but are a pain in others. I used a Dualshock 4 to play this, so all control references will be with that in mind, but the game does support other controllers and the keyboard. You move using the left thumbstick and control the camera using the right thumbstick. The camera works well, it feels a bit old school to me, but I don't have issues with it. You do have to manually control the camera all the time, it never locks on to anything, which isn’t a huge deal for me but can be annoying to some. The controls take an interesting turn now because the face buttons are hardly ever used, outside of the cross button. The cross button is used to interact with NPCs and to open doors. Besides that, almost everything else is done with the shoulder buttons, using L2 to jump, R1 to shoot, and R2 to dash. Shooting works well, there’s a crosshair, and also a bit of an auto-lock, so I never had to struggle to shoot any enemy. What is a struggle is the dash move. See after dashing on the ground or in the air, if you continue to hold the trigger down, you will start to sprint. This doesn’t work well at all. Sometimes it works, and other times you will just keep dashing. I think it has something to do with camera movement, but I'm not too sure, and it’s still annoying regardless. I would wish for this to be tweaked. One other thing, if you push L1 while dashing, you can slide.

There are also a few other minor controls and functionalities that I'd like to bring up. Firstly there is an inventory used to apply upgrades. This is a nice concept but isn’t fleshed out well in this demo, seeing as there is only one free upgrade to find. There is also a grapple hook that is found halfway through the demo, and lets you swing around. I like this mechanic because you have free control of what direction you swing, and how far you can swing. There is also a sword that you can find somewhere. Pressing the square button uses the sword, and it’s like a spinning attack. It’s pretty strong, but I didn’t use it very much. The last thing I need to mention is that there is a store in the city where you can buy upgrades and items. You buy these using Bits, which are dropped by enemies.

Fighting in the Junkyard.

Now that the long bit about explaining the controls is done, what do I think about the game? I liked the game for the most part, I was having a blast for most of it. Even when doing a 2nd run to capture footage, I was having fun speeding through it. The platforming is great, the combat feels good, and the difficulty is mostly fair. But, there is one major issue. Everything I said up above about the controls, I explained them better than the game does. There are control hints throughout which do help, but there are times, especially later on, that you are left on your own to figure it out. On one hand, you can say that the game is not trying to hold your hand, which is fair, but it becomes a problem when game mechanics are not explained to you at all. The Bits are never explained to you, and you are never told that the shop exists. The shop is positioned in a spot in town where you never need to go, and can easily miss. I know this because I didn’t know the shop existed until I saw footage of it on YouTube, while I was writing this review. It can be argued that I should’ve explored more, and in fact, the sword is also something I missed. However, what makes the sword different is that it's in an area you can only get to with the grapple hook, and you were encouraged to explore a bit after collecting that item. The shop should’ve been placed in a more obvious spot where you couldn’t miss it, maybe next to the forest’s entrance. The shop is also bad anyway because everything in there is too expensive to get without farming. I had 25 Bits at the end of my first run, but the upgrades cost 30 Bits each, and another 60 to expand your blaster arm so you can even equip those upgrades. Enemies either need to drop more Bits, or the prices need to be cheaper because you have to farm to buy anything. Vyater, if you are reading this, which I very much doubt you are, please consider those two things for a future demo.  

Here is the Gear shop.

The graphics in the game seem to be based around the Sega Dreamcast, but I instantly thought the game looked like a PS1 game. This is probably due to the Megaman Legends similarities, both having vibrant-looking environments and characters with a lot of expressions. This game does look great, and its visuals made me smile. The music is also really good, I liked the town theme, and junkyard theme the most. The NPCS also have a lot of charm, and a lot of them made me smile, but I’ll leave those for you to discover. 

I know I was very critical earlier, but I did really enjoy playing this. If you love Megaman Legends or retro 3d action games, you should play this. Just keep in mind the issues I mentioned, and even refer back here if you get struck. I hope we see a new demo for this game this year, or even next week if my luck with Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers remains. But with that, I am Travis, and have a great day!

Click here to view the itch.io page for Delta Gal, and click here for a gameplay video of Delta Gal.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers (Demo v0.17) Review

EDIT 1/7/2024: This review is from v0.17, which is now out of date. Funny that I joked about this, and not even a week later, it's true.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers is a game made by Purple Moss Collectors. It is currently in development, slated for a 2024 release, and has a demo on itch.io that was published on August 9th, 2022. This demo is getting rather frequent updates, so there's a good chance that this post will eventually be out of date, and I’ll just look silly.

    Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers is blackjack, turned roguelike. You select a starting deck, one for each suit, and then go into battle. You and your opponent keep hitting, adding cards into play, until you stand, and the opponent stands. Then whoever has the largest number under 22 gets to attack. Damage is calculated by taking your number, as well as the opponent’s number, and subtracting it. If I got 20, and my opponent has 18, then I will do 2 damage to the opponent. If someone busts, say I got an 18, and the opponent busts at 23, then I get to do 18 damage. Now getting 21 has a special effect depending on the suit. Clubs multiply your damage by 2, Spades give you a shield, Diamonds give you chips, and Hearts give you health. You get 100 chips after defeating the opponent. Chips act as currency, you can sometimes use them to buy stuff. One other thing, you start the game with 100 HP, and you do not heal in between opponents.

   

    Now, if you understood everything I said above, you might be asking how is this fun. It’s just Blackjack, but with some roguelike elements, where the heck is the strategy? Well, hold your horses buddy, I’m getting there. After you defeat an opponent, you get the option to add a card to your deck. These cards are where the strategy comes into play. To explain what every card does will take about 3000 words, and we don’t have that kind of time, so instead, I'll list a few of my favorite cards and describe them.

Booster Pack: Adds 5 to your current score, and gives you 5 random cards. You must immediately play one card, but the other 4 go into your hand. The cards in your hand can be played whenever you want. Can only be used once per opponent.

Ace Up Your Sleeve: Adds an Ace of a random suit to your hand.

Trap Card: If your opponent attacks while this card is in play, the damage is reversed, and sent to the opponent.

Gerald from Riviera: Adds 3 to your current score, and allows you to burn any card from the opponent's play pile, and remove it from the game. Can only be used once per opponent.

Glitched Card: It copies itself to any card in the game. It copies everything about the card, including its value, suit, and effect.

There are many other cards that all add strategy to the game, but that was only a small sample size that I hoped portrayed the idea.

   

 So that’s enough overview, what do I think about the game? Well, to be honest, this game has been very addictive to me, which is ironic, considering it has a gambling aspect to it. I have done full playthroughs of this demo about a dozen times, and I don’t plan on stopping soon. What makes this game so replayable is the fact that every playthrough is different, and there's a high amount of choice that you have in how your playthrough can go. Do you want a white mage-like deck that focuses on healing? You can do that. Do you want a deck that is based around high-risk, high-reward? You can do that. Do you want to just run with the cards you start with like an insane person? Well, you can even do that as well. There are limitless possibilities for how you can do a run, and this is only going to get bigger when more levels, and more cards are added.

    There are also a few other details I’d like to bring up. Firstly, I enjoy the art on the cards. Seeing a card I hadn’t seen for the first time was exciting because I got to marvel at the art. Some cards don’t have art yet, and use a placeholder graphic, but it’s a demo, so that’s perfectly respectable, and the placeholder graphic looks good. Another fun thing to discover is all the references. I won’t spoil all of them, but there are a lot. There are cards based on real-world situation cards, such as a Green card, and a Social Security card. There are cards based on cards in the card collection scene such as card sleeves, and a graded Baseball card. Finally, there are cards based on cards from other games, such as Charred Lizard, which is based on the base set Charizard card from Pokémon, as well as a Get Out of Jail Free card, which is from Monopoly. These references were things that made me smile and chuckle a bit when I discovered them.

    There is so much more I can go into about Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, such as the events that occur in between rounds, but I will leave those for you to discover. This game is one of my favorite games that I played in 2023, and I can’t wait for the full thing to drop. Please, do yourself a favor, and check this game out.

Click here to go to the itch.io page for the demo.

Do you need more convincing? Then click here for a gameplay video from one of my runs.

Have a great day!