Asphodelus ver 0.1 (review)

Write and read reviews of games that have been uploaded to Slime Salad.

Moderators: Bob the Hamster, marionline, SDHawk

Post Reply
User avatar
TheLordThyGod
Slime Knight
Posts: 218
Joined: Thu May 14, 2015 9:18 pm
Location: Muscle Shoals, AL, USA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Known Universe
Contact:

Asphodelus ver 0.1 (review)

Post by TheLordThyGod »

Asphodelus is a game released in 2018 by ChalkFlower (Px).

The player controls a girl who is in a bedroom with only one working door leading out onto a balcony. Interacting with her bed displays a clothing item and then changes the environment to nighttime, and another door becomes accessible. This door leads to an infinitely looping stairwell containing several doors. Sometimes doors work automatically, sometimes they require a key press, sometimes there’s a delay; it’s hard to tell what is actually a working door.

I entered a door and became trapped in a dark room with a background that looked somewhat like stained glass windows. I could find nothing to interact with and no escape, so I restarted the game (later on I figured out how to get a Stained Glass item and exit this room, but it wasn’t immediately clear). This time I picked a different door and found a light switch as well as a control for the game’s audio volume. Through another door is a grain field where I found a Sickle item. Through another door is a purple void, nested inside which is a silhouette of a girl. Another door is locked. The next leads to a dark room that says “NO DATA.� The next contains some mechanical looking NPCs, shelves, and conveyor belts. A passage inside leads to a room full of glitchy visuals; I couldn’t figure out what, if anything I was supposed to do here (or even what tiles were traversable).

I knew from the game’s opening instructions that I was supposed to be finding items and depositing them on the stairs (though I have no idea why). I found two items and deposited them, which caused two colored circles to appear on the stairs. I never figured out the purpose or object of any of this, nor did I ever understand the benefit of the “wake up� feature (except that saving isn’t allowed while asleep).

This is a fan game that relies so heavily on foreknowledge of Yume Nikki that it forgets to make any sense in its own right. The art looks really super nice, but I never had a clue what I was supposed to be doing or why. After 30 minutes of not understanding anything, I gave up.

A password discovered in-game allows the player to extract a ZIP file containing a second game called Tahotome. It’s a shmup. I died really quickly. I don’t think I ever took out an enemy.
Attachments
Okay?
Okay?
asphodelus0003.gif (4.28 MiB) Viewed 2260 times
Last edited by TheLordThyGod on Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
...spake The Lord Thy God.
Post Reply