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Gloop Deluxe (Puzzle) by Toris  NOTE by Editor Don: Gloop Deluxe is payware, but as it's really cheap ($5.50), good and brewn at Toris' home, it'll be included. The download link(s) are for 'Gloop', some kind of a free "lite" version. Have fun! Although combustion-studios are no more, Toris has opened a new site called AeonFlame and is now selling Gloop Deluxe again! If you have played the original Gloop winner of the 15-day coding competition hosted on www.GBAX.com, then you know what the basic Idea is. For those who haven’t it’s a lemming’s style game with a liquid gloop that moves in a more erratic way than lemmings. You have to control the flow with your items, like a line drawer, an antigravity tool, a green or red (two separate items) gloop stopper and Bombs, there is most likely more items, but I have yet to finish the game to find them all. Being one of the only non-official games that you have to pay for it still is quite an excellent game! The graphics are clean and clear, allowing you to see what’s going on in the game quite well and the music is clear and doesn’t have (as far as I noticed) that clicking noise that has accompanied so many commercial games. There are lots of cool visual effects during the game, like when you first start, it says Gloop Deluxe in the background and waves like it’s reflected off water. Also when you run out of time or win the level the screen melts away either green (win) or red (lose) and takes you back to the level selector. Before starting a game you have the ability to select the difficulty, by hitting select you can choose between normal, hard and insane. Then there is also a choice of campaigns, there are six campaigns called novice, intermediate, expert, volcanic eruption, outer space and holidays (US). I believe there are each eight missions a piece, but I have not finished them all to confirm this, but there are forty eight missions in total and six campaigns. Playing on normal I have totally completed all eight novice missions and found some of them quite challenging, but to complete the game you have to do ALL the levels on every difficulty. If you have the whole list in normal, it won’t be there in hard or insane, you have to do them all over again at a faster pace. Leaves a lot of room for replay value, as you have to try and finish all 48 levels on three different difficulties. There is also two different colors of gloop, red and green, sometimes they have there own place to spawn from and sometimes it’s one for both (split into a half red half green ball). They can either have different exits or one exit for both of them that’s blue instead of green or red. Purchasing of Gloop Deluxe is quite easy, you download a tool from AeonFlame that takes your GP32 ID and turns it into a 16bit hexadecimal value that you fill into the order form from the online store, then you are allowed to download Gloop Deluxe. After downloading it you have to wait for a Gloop serial number by e-mail, mine arrived within fifteen minutes of my order, but it may take longer sometimes. You then copy the Gloop Deluxe files into GPMM keeping the directory structure, then also add the .txt file that Toris has sent to you into GPMM and your ready to play! Some of the campaigns are quite hard to figure out, but if you keep on trying you’ll eventually get it, remember this is a puzzle game, you’ll have to use your brain. Once you’ve beaten a level, it is automatically saved and the next time you start up the levels are available, but this doesn’t apply if you uninstall and reinstall from the original copy. If you like keeping yourself busy with mind puzzles I would suggest this game, although it can get a little frustrating at times, just remember that you can always figure out a way to use your tools to your advantage. I personally find the time limit is what prevents me from beating certain levels because you only have so much line you can draw at a time, then you have to erase it (you can erase the line by holding down B and going over it) and it’s kind of hard to get it to erase the right pixels especially if you drew a diagonal line. One advantage to erasing is you can hold down R button to speed up and still erase, but cannot do this with the draw function. If you hit start in a level you are presented with three options, hit start and unpause, hit L and restart, or hit R and quit. During the game the L button allows you to switch items, the default is the drawing tool but this allows you the ability to be drawing hit L really fast and switch to the bomb or whatever items you have in that level. The status bar on top lets you know (from left to right) the amount of gloop that has made it to the exit, the amount of line you have left for the drawing tool, the time left, and what items you have and how many. All I can say is go to AeonFlame or GBAX and either try out Gloop or the Gloop Deluxe Demo and figure out whether or not you’re willing to support Toris and order his game or not, if you like the game the price is so low it won’t deter you. This game will give you hours of complex thinking, fun and sometimes frustration but it is a good game. There is also a Map Editor and a Campaign Editor that come with the full version so you can make your own levels! (there is a small tutorial on how to use them on my site). Download Gloop Deluxe from GP32x.de Download Gloop Deluxe from PDRoms.de
Review by Hooka Nov/18/2004. |
