Welcome to the official blog of My Owl Software, creator of the excellent Apple Jack games!



Monday 18 June 2012

Apple Jack 2 responses

Hello!

I've had lots of positive (and one negative) reaction to the game so far, so I thought I'd use this post drop a few links on yo' asses.

First, Indiegames.com found the intro very funny and used words such as 'interesting' and 'creative' to describe the game itself. It should probably be pointed out that they only played the demo though, the cheap sods. Read it here

Adam Pettifer writes for a group of websites under the Your Local Guardian banner, and liked it a great deal, saying "I don’t remember enjoying any 2D platformer quite this much, not Sonic 1 or 2, not Super Mario World on the SNES, nothing.". Slightly over the top possibly, but it's great to read something like that! Read it here

Indie Gamer Chick wasn't a fan of Apple Jack 1, so I wasn't expecting a great deal of gushing praise from her this time around. And so it proved to be. She preferred it to the first game, but ultimately she doesn't much like difficult platform games, and didn't think the adddition of a rewind mechanic helped enough to ease the pain. Read it here

Critical Hit start their review with a disclaimer stating that one of their staff, Kate Willaert, did the cover art for the game (which is true - see a few posts back). This doesn't take the gloss off of a very positive review though, which praises the graphics, the music and the level design, and awards a score of 20/20 Read it here

Will Porter at Hookshotinc said that the game 'stapled a smile onto the front-side of my fizzog', which is as good a place as any for it, I suppose. 'Highly, highly recommended', he goes on to say, and uses the term 'pluck-n-chuck' to describe the gameplay, which is too good not to steal and claim as my own. Read it here

I think there was another one but I can't find it at the moment.

There should be some more reviews coming soon if my inbox is to be believed, but in the meantime you could always take a look at the official Apple Jack 2 threads at Neogaf and Rllmuk. They were both started by the excellent Matt, who goes by the name of toythatkills.

I'll be getting a patch ready for the game soon, and many of the bugs and issues mentioned in the above threads will be addressed. A couple of crash bugs in particular are high on my list.


Finally, Gamers Dissent did this playthrough of the first few levels, complete with commentary, which I enjoyed greatly:






6 comments:

  1. Hi,I love the applejack soundtrack, where can I find the artist and what genre is this type of music?

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    1. The soundtrack isn't up yet, but the band can be found at http://thiseden.bandcamp.com/

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  2. This game is amazing. The best Xbox Live Indie game I have played in a long time. Game plays smooth, has a nice art style, and the level design is fantastic! I liked this game so much I went out and bought the first one.

    You have gained a fan! I will look forward to any of your future releases.

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  3. Hi,
    Just wanted to say something about this game. I’ve been a games player for over 30 years, and have played pretty much everything on every system from the Atari 2600 to present day. I can honestly say this is probably the best 2D platformer I have ever played. It is full of neat ideas, you have pitched the difficulty curve just right which means every level is totally memorable, and it is an absolute joy to play. Admittedly I have nearly smashed the joypad up the wall in places, but that just confirms how strong the addictive curve is on it. I have played every 2D platformer on every system, and this is right up there with any of the industry classics such as Mario World, Mario 3, Donkey Kong County, and then before that Rainbow Island, Bubble Bobble, the list goes on. Just wanted to say thanks for managing to rekindle a retro genre and yet somehow make it fresh and exhilarating to play. If anyone has even the slightest interest in the 2D platformer you really do need to give this a go, because gems like this don’t come along very often.

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  4. That's great to hear! I tried to make each level memorable and while the difficulty is too hard for many, I think it's generally what I wanted it to be.

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