Review - The K'hyurbhi Lands

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Spoonweaver
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Review - The K'hyurbhi Lands

Post by Spoonweaver »

  This game is a pretty solid rpg. It's got interesting features coupled with traditional rpg elements. Some things that make or break this game are it's graphics, music, character design, party splitting feature, and combat.
  As has been the case lately, FnrrfYgmSchnish's graphics are above average, and his clear and personal style really adds to his games. It's really a treat to play an ohr game with graphics these good.
  The music was placed a bit awkwardly, but ultimately it works. Also, The fact that it's not ripped music is a huge bonus in my book.
  The character design is terrible. Now, I'm not going to say that fan games are bad because they're fan games. And I'm aware that there are online communities of people who make their own characters in the style of popular video game characters such as this. However, making the characters look like kirby cheapens the game. I don't fault Fnrrf for doing it. And I think that this is just the type of game it is. But personally, and as a player, the kirby inspired characters seem super silly in an otherwise serious game. If this game was exactly the same but with different characters it would be better in my opinion. Again though, I don't fault the game for being what it is, and don't think Fnrrf should change it.
  The party split feature in the game was interesting. Basically, pretty early in the game, you have a choice of which character you want to control. Eventually you have to play all 3 character's story, so the choice part is a bit silly. The stories are interesting, and make up for a large part of the current content of the game. However, having only 1 party member makes most of the fights either gimmicks or space bar holders.
  The combat systems that are featured in the game are interesting. The individual characters abilities all seem well thought out, and they really add tot he game.

Overall, this game is neat, but the wacky characters keep it from being a star. 6/10.
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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FnrrfYgmSchnish
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Post by FnrrfYgmSchnish »

It kind of bugs me that you say "the character design is terrible" but then go on to talk about nothing but the K'hyurbhis. It's fine to just not like my character/species designs that much, no problem there... but the impression I get from the review is "everything in this game looks like Kirby," which is a little misleading.
(It's more like "K'hyurbhis look a lot like Kirby, and Blurbys sort of look like a more oval/egg-shaped Kirby with facial hair." The Numnums and most other creatures of Nummorro don't look like Kirby at all, or really resemble anything from a Kirby game as far as I'm aware.)

I also wouldn't call TKL a fangame. There's nothing in there that actually came from a Kirby game, after all... just a few species that have a similar body structure to Kirby. That's like calling something a Star Wars fangame just because one of the main characters uses a lightsaber-like weapon and there's some hooded guys who look a lot like Jawas, but taller.

As for the designs themselves... I'll admit the K'hyurbhis were originally based pretty heavily on Kirby (looking like white-with-red-feet palette swaps of him), and they were even called "Kirbys" up until 2003 or so when the name changed to "K'hyurbhi" (which was when they got their spikes and built-in tattoo-like markings, to make them look less like Kirby.) More recently they even got feet; those red/orange lumps you see in the game are just their shoes (which reminds me, I need to add some barefoot K'hyurbhis in the game at some point.) Now the only real similarity left is their body shape, the whole "round with flipper-ish arms, tall oval eyes, and markings on the cheeks" thing (though Kirby's cheek-marks are just generic red-pink blush ovals now, not the "two or three little lines on each side" thing that the K'hyurbhis have, and that Kirby himself used to have in his earliest designs.)
I've tried to make them not resemble Kirby quite as much as they used to, but no matter what I change (white skin, completely different abilities from Kirby, added spikes, markings, different feet...) I just can't seem to come up with a way to make them "different enough" from Kirby that people don't immediately go "KIRBY!" when they see them, without losing something in the process. Maybe I could make the cheek markings into whiskers or something, since they sort of look like them already depending on how I draw them.

The Blurbys weren't directly based on Kirby, they just have a similar body structure (though they have become more oval or egg-shaped rather than round over the years.) Apparently I really liked making up round creatures with stubby arms and legs when I was a kid (and it didn't start with Kirby, either--I know I made up a few characters with lumpy not-quite-round bodies and Kirby-like feet all the way back in 1991, though they had human-like arms instead of Kirby-like lumpy flipper things.) I think their name was actually derived from "blubbery" in some way (shortening it down to "blubry" and then switching the letters?), with the whole "rhymes with Kirby" thing just being a coincidence. I made them up when I was something like 7 years old, though, so I don't know for sure exactly what I was thinking at the time when I came up with the name. It'd probably be easier to shift their design even further away from Kirby's--I'd probably have them go barefoot everywhere so they no longer have the "red lump" feet at all. The name could probably change to "Blubry" or something like that instead so it resembles its origin rather than just "something that rhymes with Kirby!"

...wow, that ended up longer than I thought it would. Anyway, no real issues with the review overall, it just could be made more clear that it's only the K'hyurbhis (and to a lesser extent the Blurbys) that look like Kirby, not everything in the game.
FYS:AHS -- Working on Yagziknian NPC walkabout sprites
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