Anjelo's Province review: This game...Just this game.

Hey, I'm finally using this blog as it was intended! Whoop-de-doo. Let's start off our reviewing right with an excellent little game that I found on GameJolt:

This game is called Anjelo's Province: Anjelo Land 1, it's a collaborative effort between a user called CrazyRiverOtter and someone called IndieAnjelo. And before I even start, I'm going to be straight with you guys:

I did not like this game in the slightest. I absolutely loved it.

Another little digression I'd like to make: I should mention that this game is a remake of another game titled "Super Anjelo Land", which was created by IndieAnjelo. I haven't played the original and I won't right now. If I play it, then I'll start comparing the two and I don't want to develop a biased opinion towards either, so I'll just look at the remake.

Now then, on with the review.

There is SO much I can say about this game and I still wouldn't be telling you everything. The game itself seeks to parody handheld titles, and the way it does so is fresh and fun. While the game plays more or less like a rip-off of Super Mario Bros., it doesn't FEEL like a Mario Rip off. Slight tweaks have been added here or there to keep the game from being too much like Mario though, such as the ability to jump in mid-air if you've fallen and the ability to shoot...things...you've collected right off the bat. (I don't know what they are, but they look like bottle caps, so I'm just going to call them bottle caps, kay?) While the ability to use your bottle caps as weapons is there, the game doesn't entirely rely on you to use them, and in most cases a stomp to the head is better than wasting your bottle caps with shooting. The enemies are cute and fun looking, ranging from a literal cartoon bomb on wheels to mice that throw brick looking blocks in a large arc.

Anjelo controls similar to Mario if you took out the run button and replaced it with a shoot button. Shooting works fine, being a straight shot that doesn't arc; but the shots are relatively weak, taking two or three shots to kill an enemy as opposed to one good stomp on the head. Jumping works like a combination of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Donkey Kong Country, in that you can hold it when stomping on enemies for a slightly higher jump and you can jump in mid-air if you fall off of a cliff respectively. Aside from this, the controls are really smooth and it stops the game from feeling cheap. If you mess up, most of the time it's YOUR fault, not the game's.

That being said, there are a few negative things to be said about the game.

There are a few spots where the game feels cheap. Mostly in castles, there are ledges that are incredibly close to the ceilings. There are these bomb enemies that explode shortly after being stomped, and sometimes they're placed on these ledges, and it's difficult to get past these bombs. This isn't really an issue if you shoot at them, but in the first castle, there are NO bottle caps to collect and shoot!

Another issue is that the music loops are somewhat messed up. When the music loops back to the beginning, the game freezes while the music loops. It's no more than one or two seconds, but it can really be jarring when you're in the middle of avoiding something and you suddenly freeze for a few seconds, only to unfreeze and immediately drop downwards.

My final issues has to deal with the bosses. They're great, but I found a glitch on the first one where he immediately spawned on top of me after I stomped him, and I got stuck on a wall on the second boss.

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Other than that, I have no issues with this game and I recommend it to anyone that enjoys a challenge.

I will place a link to the game's page on GameJolt for you to download below. See you guys next time!

--Betaman

LINKS:Anjelo's Province Game Jolt page