Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night!
Mike Carletta (2018)
Blurb: Dynamite Powers and Rosalind have escaped the Chinese water torture on Lord Infamy's dirigible.
With the help of their new friend, Melcor, they led the revolt of the singing monkeys of Melodion and
toppled Infamy's oppressive regime.
Now the trio has learned the location of Lord Infamy's superweapon, the Ray of Night -- Mars! As Dynamite
infiltrates the mysterious Martian base, he is ambushed by henchmen with paralyzing gas!
We rejoin Dynamite as he awakens in a new deathtrap…
Mike Carletta has put together a game firmly rooted in 1940's pulp fiction. The coding is solid, I didn't
run into any bugs, and the opening dialog is fun. The game is also cruel. It can be put into an unwinnable
state. And that fist puzzle had me restart the game a few times.
When I finally escaped the deathtrap, an hour had gone by and I had to look at the walkthrough
at the end. I had done everything. Just not enough of everything, and felt a little cheated by that
puzzle. Maybe if the puzzle wasn't so strict when you JUMPed, or if the game gave more clues when you
JUMPed, that would've really helped.
The next puzzle was strange, it had me morphing my body parts into different creatures to get through
the next set of puzzles. I saved at the beginning of it and it became fun trying to figure out what I
should be. But after all that reading to figure out the Laboratory puzzle, I was running low on time.
I made it to the next set of puzzles, and was greeted by my arch nemesis again. I liked seeing him come
back, he has fun dialog. But the puzzle I found myself looking at was insane. I would have to study the
walkthrough just to figure out what was going on. I didn't think that the game gave me any feedback on
the puzzle. Like pressing a button and the game say No, You must have the blue lens in the third slot.
But the whole puzzle was just crazy. I have no idea how people are suppose to figure this one out. The
game says that it was tested, maybe the testers spent more than two hours with it. But I did lose an
hour on that first puzzle, if I had more time, I might have worked on it some more. If there was feedback
from the puzzle.
In the end the game had a fun story, but failed me on gameplay. Having to study a walkthrough to
understand a puzzle is wrong. I should know how a puzzle works from the game, and the walkthrough
should show me what I'm doing wrong. That last puzzle hurt the score.
Score: 7