ART DESIGN
So here is where the budget of the game
shows a little, and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. The
art is good, and consistent. It's not the best art I've ever seen in
a game, but it more than gets the job done, because it's colorful and
there is good variety. It's a little flat and more 2D than 3D,
regarding shading and texture, but when I first saw it, I honestly
felt like I was looking at something out of a cartoon series from the
1980's-90's...and I liked that. It reminded me a little of the
“Dragon's Lair” art style in a way, and I felt like I was playing
a video game of a Saturday morning cartoon. The dungeons themselves
are decent looking, as dungeons go, and maintain a cartoonish look to
them. Yes, the environment art is repetitive in some places, but
you're exploring a dungeon, after all! The monster art is varied and
is done in the same style as the characters, and the monsters do
maintain a consistently creative design and tone. The character art
designs across 5 different races are done well enough, and I have to
add that I was impressed with clothing styles and armor designs. I've
worked with an artist on clothing design before, and it is not easy
to come up with something original that also looks halfway decent. I
should also mention the background art used for the loading screens
and various enviornments: all of these were done well and were
colorful and detailed. My only complaint was a little graphical
“noise” around the edges of some of the character portraits while
adveturing. Overall, the art design is average for an indie developer
to maybe a little above average, but considering how expensive art is
to commission, I appreciate that so much effort towards variety and
color was made in the art design for this game.
SOUND
This was an unexpected surprise,
because I did not think sound would be much of a consideration for an
indie game like this. I was very impressed that this entire game is
fully voice-acted! Every line of text is spoken for the NPC's you
encounter, and all of it is done with an acting competency surprising
for a one-person indie game company. There are a wide variety of
voice types with varying accents and the lines were well-acted, with
very few instances reminding me that some of the voice actors might
be less experienced. I know the challenges of coordinating and
directing voice acting with different people, so this effort was
impressive and it really enhanced the game experience for me. There
were a few instances where the audio was quieter and less definied
than other parts with one NPC in the library, for a few lines, but
otherwise, everything else came across very clearly. The background
music used for the dungeons and town was suitable, and it fit the
mood, but it wasn't anything that stood out to me as memorable. Sound
effects were decent as well, and some of the battle effects did stand
out above the others. I also noticed some nice little touches, such
as the sound of walking up stone stairs during the loading scene as
you wait to exit the dungeon and go to town.
CHALLENGE AND FUN
The nice thing about the challenge in
Infinite Adventures was that it felt right. Perhaps that was because
I could adjust the encounter rate if necessary, but I also felt that
I rarely ran into monsters that were easy or impossible. I will say
that some of the pit traps that dropped me to a lower dungeon scared
me, because my party wasn't ready for that next level of challenge,
but thankfully I was able to find the exit before my next encounter
fired off (I usually keep the encounter rate at “normal.”) If I
confronted a boss monster that I wasn't ready for, I could always
reload and then adventure a bit more to level up, but most of the
time, my party felt experienced enough to make the boss fights a fun,
nail-biting challenge without being an exercise in anger management.
So far I have suffered only one TPK (total-party kill), but I was
fighting a dragon, after all, so time to level up a little more!
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