2012 In Review 004 - My Little Gahn & Derp Force

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Gizmog
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2012 In Review 004 - My Little Gahn & Derp Force

Post by Gizmog »

Pre-Thoughts:
I am intimately familiar with this game, moreso than any other 2013 game probably. It's Charbile's Terrible Games Contest entry My Little Gahn, featuring Derp Force. A lot of people dislike Charbile; with good reason, he's kind of an slimehole. Fortunately for him, some of my best friends are slimeholes. The thing about Charbile is that he finds a way to make anything he touches ooze with signs of effort. It's hard to look at his recent projects, Sleepover and this, what should be semi-retarded joke games and he pimps them out with all kinds of scripting and production value. It's like he's slapping us around the face, "If I can do THIS as a joke, imagine what you dickheads could do if you were serious!". It's a great motivational technique and the games tend to be funny on top of it. My Little Gahn is definitely one of the most impressive OHR Games from a technical viewpoint and it's hard to find a viewpoint where it's anything less than great. I'm eagerly looking forward to digging into it again

Thoughts during game:

Custom textboxes, very nice!

I don't remember the intro, man that was a lot of stuff going on at once.

Every song has BASS, damn!

The music really does give this stuff an impact. The "Incoming Meeting" thing still gives me a boner

What's this deal with this stupid pony anyway.. does anyone really like her? I would've preferred Applejack

..got distracted by the game! Teehee!

Post-Thoughts:
Still damn great. There's essentially two games to review here, so I'll break it down according to that. Gahn's storyline is barely a game, you walk around and see amazing things. I've mentioned before that Charbile is essentially our demo-scene in the community, making these great technical showpieces that seem to push the engine to its breaking point in terms of plotscripting. There are so many awesome little effects, so many things I'd love to steal someday. Even though this part is more of an Arfenhouse!!1 inspired slideshow of jokes and effects, it's still really really cool and there's a lot you can learn from it. I would say this part is worth seeing just for the effects and the goofy storyline. It's amazing how the little touches like music stings, text pop-ups and sound effects really make you feel the emotion of what's going on even though it's totally stupid.

Then we come to the second part of the game. Derp Force. If the Gahn portion did a good job of showing you how you can use plotscripting to jazz up a ho-hum game, Derp Force shows you how to throw all that slime out the window and make a fantastic game with slices. This is the greatest OHR Shoot 'Em Up ever made. How have we had 5 or 6 ripoffs of Tim Tim the Magic Gnome but nobody's tried to remake this beauty? The controls are just a little bit sluggish, but as big as Derpy is that's not a major issue. It honest to God feels like the kind of thing you really could've played on a home console back in the day. When I get closer to the enemy and my shots start coming out faster that is such a sense of nostalgia, and when the boss shows up and suddenly the background is moving much much faster that is such a nice little detail that really makes you feel like you're playing a GAME, not a fan game, not a terrible game, an amateur game, an OHR Game, or an Indie Game, but an Honest To God GAME. Kind of a bummer that you can't die and start over, but My Little Gahn is a train that isn't slowing down for anyone. You can lose on your own time.

All things considered, this is still fantastic. Charbile borrowed some of the characters and concepts from Fenrir, and Fenrir borrowed 'em right back for his Terrible Games Wrap-Up No More Villains which I think I also have to review later on. I can see how you might not appreciate the storyline on the randomness, but I'd sugggest it to absolutely everyone as a reminder of what you can do in an OHR Game and how you have no excuse not to go all-out. slimehole or not, Charbile's done something kind of inspiring here and even though I don't know exactly what he meant with his references to Spellshard and other OHR Games in here, I think it's safe to say that he shows us a great deal of potential that maybe we didn't was available to us. I at least feel better having seen it. Thanks, Char.
Attachments
This part was really cluttered. I realize that's probably the point, but...
This part was really cluttered. I realize that's probably the point, but...
My Little Gahn0009.png (6.22 KiB) Viewed 1959 times
Confused by this.
Confused by this.
My Little Gahn0017.png (6.52 KiB) Viewed 1959 times
Love this to pieces.
Love this to pieces.
My Little Gahn0027.png (4.12 KiB) Viewed 1959 times
8/10 on this part. Could've been perfect with a better pony. Applejack? Fluttershy? We really had to stoop to THIS?
8/10 on this part. Could've been perfect with a better pony. Applejack? Fluttershy? We really had to stoop to THIS?
My Little Gahn0041.png (4.54 KiB) Viewed 1959 times
Foreshadowing!
Foreshadowing!
My Little Gahn0038.png (6.25 KiB) Viewed 1959 times
...still putting it out there.
...still putting it out there.
Pirates! (U)_004.png (6.92 KiB) Viewed 1960 times
Last edited by Gizmog on Sat Sep 07, 2013 11:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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