Recent reviews by Monkey Frog

I was really excited for this game when I saw the videos and screen shots. When it was announced it was released on EA, I purchased it. I did the tutorial level and immediately requested a refund from Steam!

Firstly, the walk movement is very slow. Soooo slooooow. I found myself pressing the SHIFT key to run so I could at least move a bit more quickly. I felt like I was walking through thick mud the entire time. Hated the movement, to be frank.

Secondly, the camera height (placement of the camera for the first-person view) felt low. It made me feel like I was very, very short in the game. Maybe it was just some of the 3D model sizes or some of the environment design ... but character/camera height just didn't feel right to me.

Thirdly, some models and textures were really nice. Others, not so much so. The issue here, for me, is consistency. It made the environments look like they were slapped together with some models made for other games (some being of higher quality than others). Like they used kitbash objects from different creators with different levels of quality.

Fourthly, the tutorial wasn't fun and didn't engage me. It may have taught me how to use the controls, but it didn't make me want to play the game.

Fifthly, on an ultrawide monitor, the text for the tutorial was a tad small. It was difficult, at times, to read what it was instructing me to do.

Overall, I wanted to like the game. What's not to like about fighting against cool dinosaurs and being hunted by them? But the initial game play was so poorly done I just couldn't continue.

I cannot recommend this game in it's current state.

I purchased this game and was excited to play it. It looked fun, interesting, and very retro. Initially, it did bring back memories of games that I'd played years ago when games like these were quite new and fresh. But it didn't take long for that to rub off and the game to become, at best, annoying. While the graphics are meant to be retro, they are actually pretty blah, imo. It's like they tried too hard to recreate that style of early 3D games and, in doing so, somewhat missed the boat. But I could have lived with that (and even enjoyed the game) if it weren't for these two things - combat and the music.

Combat, in a nutshell, is boring. I was warned, by NPCs early on, to avoid combat, that I could sneak around instead. This caused me to think that perhaps the guards were pretty tough for my new character to handle. Nope. Not tough at all. Just ... boring. I knew I wanted a refund after my first few combat encounters.

But the real nail in the coffin was the music. It's like the designer wanted to create music for the sole purpose of driving you insane! It was the repetition that grated on me, repeating over and over and over and over like an unwanted earworm demanding your attention.

I really wanted to like this game. I really thought I would. It took me a little over 30 minutes to decide to get a refund. Obviously others really like this game and that's great. I didn't. You'll have to make up your own mind.

While my profile says I've only had just over 5 hours with this software, I've actually logged a lot more as I've been using it as an alpha tester well before GameGuru MAX was released on Steam as Early Access software. I'll be frank, over a year ago, I didn't like MAX and thought that it would amount to nothing. I actually had deleted it from my hard drive. Then, back around November, I got back involved with testing it again, curious about how well its development had gone. To my surprise, GameGuru MAX had made leaps and bounds toward becoming something ... great! Let's be even more frank, MAX is still Early Access software. As a result, it's still not perfect, still has bugs, and is still missing features. But you know what? I love this piece of software.

I am an artist, not a programmer. Programming just has never clicked for me. For years I have dreamed of a program that would allow me to create a game with little-to-no-programming and each time one was advertised, it turned out to be misleading. You either could do very little without programming or you simply had to dive in to scripting of some kind or expect to get nothing out of the software. Not so with GameGuru MAX. While it's true that MAX is limited in scope to the types of games you can create, it's expanding. Currently we can create a variety of FPS games, but they are already working on adding RPG and Puzzle elements. This will allow us to create one, the other, or mix-and-match to our heart's content. All without programming!

The graphics are great, too. GameGuru MAX features a full PBR workflow. This means you can create stunning graphics in your favorite programs, import them easily into GameGuru MAX, and they will look great. Albedo, Normal, AO, Metallic, Roughness are all supported. A variety of 3D file formats are also supported, so getting your 3D files from your 3D app of choice into MAX is pretty straight forward. If you're not a content creator then you don't have to worry as MAX ships with well over 1000 3D objects for to use to create your levels. It even has a Character Creator to help you make unique NPCs for your game. MAX even features a fantastic terrain generation system and terrain tools to allow you to custom build your own terrains.

Whether you want to drag-and-drop a game into existence or create your own game from scratch using your own custom made 3D objects, GameGuru MAX allows you to do that. I don't feel hampered at all using GameGuru MAX. In fact, I feel set free to create and explore and make games!

Again, MAX is in Early Release. It is NOT a final product. It will have issues and bugs and have features that are missing or incomplete. It will have pieces that may not work the way you think they should work. That's fine, actually. Why? Because with Early Access we can actually report issue and feature requests on their GitHub account and the development team actually listens. I've had bugs I've reported fixed ... sometimes within a few days ... often by the next release. By getting involved with MAX as Early Access, you actually get an opportunity, as someone who wants to use the software, to help shape the software. That's only possible with a development team that actually cares both about the software and the people who use it. So, why not get involved? I'm glad I did.

I love GameGuru MAX. Now? Time to go work on that game I've been dreaming about making ...

I installed Visage, set a few settings, and then set out to play ... and got bored ... then even more bored. Oh, the mirror disappeared and move somewhere else ... yawn. Oh, darkness makes me slowly go insane ... where have I seen that before. Yawn. And within the first few minutes, I click on something only to get a warning that it's not available yet as this is early access. Yes, I know, but I didn't expect to hit stuff not being that almost immediately. Sigh. Oh, look, a man at the end of the stairs ... darkness ... he disappears ... yawn.

So, a few things. I have a decent system where I can play most games on their ultra settings. I was surprised to get to the settings for Visage only to see everything set to the lowest possible settings they had. I have an ultrawide screen and Visage didn't even have my screen resolution available. I had to go to a .ini file and make the changes there to force my screen resolution. I don't normally have to do this with modern games on my rig.

I answered the phone at the beginning and as I turned to look around, the phone cut into the wall. So much for proper collision detection.

I just didn't find the game engaging at all. It looked bland. I didn't find any incentive to want to investigate anything. I ... was ... bored. Apparently this game is for some people (according to the review), but not for me. And it didn't look all that great, either. There were crushed cans floating a bit above the floor instead of laying on the floor and other minor things that should have been dealt with by the level designer before being released to the public. And this games been in development for how long now? Well, needless to say, despite getting it at discount, I've requested my refund.

I cannot recommend this software. It certainly is easy to use, but that's because it is lacking too many features. In other words, you can put together a very basic visual novel, but that's about it. You cannot, at this time, even change the font to another one, so you are forced to use whatever font the developers want you to use. And what few features Reebyte has are virtually identical to how you would do things in TyranoBuilder. So, you might as well get TyranoBuilder, especially since, by comparison, TyranoBuilder is feature-rich.

This review is edited. My original review follows this one.

Originally, this engine crashed a lot (see original review), but the developers seem quite responsive and several updates have been released since I originally reviewed the engine. I've not tested all the features, but the there have definitely been improvements. S2 is definitely an interesting engine with a lot of potential. I personally think it still has a way to go, but it is at least moving in the right direction.

As others have pointed out, the weather system, water, and day/night system is pretty amazing and, in fact, is one of the things that drew me back to wanting to use S2.

On the negative side, there seem to be some strange graphic artifacts in the real-time renderer, but I've still got to play with the tons and tons of settings made available to see if any tweaks improve it. And the documentation is currently lacking but, once again, like the engine itself, this is being worked on.

Overall, I would definitely say that S2 is worth more than the very low asking price.

Original review follows:

After looking at the videos and seeing what was included, I thought I would enjoy game development in S2Engine HD 2018.1. I was very wrong. I had purchased the version that included the engine/editor and Easy Game Maker. Once installed, I loaded the Easy Game Maker demo scene and pressed the play button. The result? Slow and choppy frame rate. I have a fairly robust machine, can run just about any game on ultra settings, and can develop in other game engines without a hitch. So, I was quite surprised to see how choppy this demo was running.

Next, after watching a few videos and reading up a bit, I decided to create a simple terrain. The S2Engine editor crashed four times before I was finally able to get a basic terrain up. I would click the terrain button at the top and the terrain dialog would appear. The only setting that seemed to not crash the editor was the default one. Sigh. Then I started to sculpt, thought the first stroke was too strong, and tried to undo it ... only to find I could not. Ugh.

After a bit of that, I started a new project and went to load another S2 demo. Not only did S2 crash, but it forced a system reboot! Seriously?!?

I'd had enough. Which is too bad. S2 looks like it has a lot of potential and includes just about everything you would need to create a game. But between the crashes, the strangely murky look to the visuals (everything looked like it was constantly in a fog in every demo), and things like shadows and reflections popping when I moved, it was time to request a refund.

Perhaps you'll have better luck with S2 than I had. But I'm not going to try to use it for my game project.