Review of Virtual Silence
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Overall Score
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Graphics
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Sound
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Gameplay
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Story
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Interface
Virtual Silence Review
By rjbruin on
29 September 2008
Pros: Story is original
Cons: Heavy use of colors in fullscreen No directional graphics for the player
Virtual Epileptism
Virtual Silence... Sounds good, was my first though, and since it's in the top 12, it'd probably be worth a play.
The game starts with a nice introduction to the story. A mother and a doctor discuss the patient, an autistic boy who can't speak. The idea is to let the boy learn to speak in virtual reality.
I think the story is quite original. You're actually seeing the game from the head of the boy, while you're following the conversation between mother and doctor.
The controls are pretty logical, arrow keys for movement, and the Z and X button are explained before you start walking around.
There is one major error in this game though, which is that you can't see where your gun is pointed at. This can be really annoying when you're aiming for a series of blocks, and suddenly you appear to be shooting upwards instead of to the left. This can easily be solved with a few more graphics, which brings me to the next point of my review.
The graphics are a bit simple, I think. Simplicity has it's beauties, of course, and I think this simplicity fits the game aswell. But the reason I quit playing the game was because of the annoying graphics. For example, when you switch levels, the levels get fuzzy and shaky, and that effect is quite annoying. My eyes are still hurting, but not only from that effect. The idea of switching colors of the screen to make objects disappear, is BRILLIANT, but the intensity of the colors is so heavy, that I had to stop after about 5 minutes, if I didn't want to end up having a major headache, or even epilepsy.
One thing that could have helped here is not using fullscreen. Especially when you're using these extreme effects, just downsizing the game to a window instead of using the whole screen makes this a lot better, I think. You might consider this for a next version, or, even better, an update.
The music and sound effects are quite simple I think. Also, the sound effect get annoying after a while, because they're pretty loud.
I'd say go on with game making, keep my tips in mind, and have fun!
rjbruin
