Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Steve from gamers and access dot net and today we were looking at offspring and flame for a heat signature which is our series that I will be expanding now to be a more analytical look at what makes these indie games so great and why you should pay more attention to them offspring flame is available on Steam it is a platformer game that is actually based on a to quote the games about section poor forest creature that has misplaced all of her children and you have to fight through the levels basically throwing these baby Pikachu things at different obstacles or walls or challenges and you're using them very similar in in the way that Yoshi's Island or Yoshi's Story used the Yoshi eggs of course in the older games if you're familiar with those you are basically picking them up and throwing them to complete challenges and then your goal ultimately is to get them to the end of the level and save them all which is where it differs slightly from Yoshi's Story so that's the basic mechanic it's it's just a typical platformer you're running jumping and throwing all of that good stuff and completing different obstacles which means that the game is highly level focused because in platformers as many of us know it is going to be skill and level focused putting major emphasis on dexterity and of course the developer's ability to design a fluid level offspring flames levels are very fluid and they make you want to replay them after getting through them the first time that's something that really made me play through this and hooked me immediately some of the levels wear you out and you kinda you say bump that I'm not gonna do that a second time and you're just happy to get it over with but for the most part the timings and goals set by the game the gold award silver award which is basically just completing it and the developer time award means that it is a time trial based challenge system you are not required to beat them in a certain amount of time because the timer takes up and not down but it does keep you playing and the timings and goals are set so accurately that you are often within reasonable reach of the goal maybe a second or two and that provides encouragement to achieving it so that's where the natural playability comes in it the game and I'll be using the sword a lot the game naturally lends itself to just being highly playable and very easy to just run through and kind of play for a while and have fun and take it easy while still having a very challenging obstacle or level to complete so it's not like it's easy mode but it does appeal to both casual players and more hardcore platformer players so it is uh it is very good at educating the player again it's it naturally lends itself to educating the player actually and it's levels are fast enough for dine stands more as a point of learning unless as a point of punishment you'll make mistakes on each major step of the way it's just that's just how these platformers work we all know it you're gonna fall down the hole or fall into lava or throw your baby into the pit of acid so sorry I swear I didn't mean to and you'll make these mistakes definitely on the way but the important thing is that the mistakes are highly obvious it's you know immediately why you failed or screwed up or whatever you know why and that makes it that much easier to overcome there's never a question of why the heck that I just died right there you know and you can kind of study what just happened and figure out okay I need to jump here and then duck here or whatever in your next patch through the level and and that just means you're gonna die another three seconds later to something else and then you'll figure that one out and you eventually make it through the entire level without dying and then you start speedrunning it because your first time through you'll probably see okay I'm five seconds away from getting the gold time I can totally do that you grab gold then you get within a second or two of the developers time and you see the developers ghost character running through the level if you're close enough to his time and when you see that that's kind of when you can study exactly how he plays it and try to beat his time which is actually fairly challenging that's the biggest challenge of the game so it it all makes you feel very smart actually when you complete these challenges and only to immediately die and the cycle repeats itself but in and out inevitably leads to your completion of the level and it's it's just really well-designed that's all I can say about it the challenges are hard without being prohibitively frustrating and they still require dexterity and planning to overcome in some cases so everything seems to flow very well together and it's all I'll definitely thought out it has a fun look to the game it's just it has really good art style and fun characters and a fun idea in general just throwing these babies around to overcome things so that's the word of the day for this game it's just fun and I guess naturally flew it as I said earlier so that's what makes it good is just everything I just said why you feel you feel smart when you complete the challenges you don't feel like you're getting beat up when you keep falling and dying and it'll let you skip a level and go to the next one if you feel like the current one is just is too tough for you or you don't like something about it so dine may make you lose 30 seconds probably less and it's always obvious what the cause was but not necessarily obvious what the solution is and that's where the game comes in with its reward of both trial and error players if you're one of those it will reward you just as much as it rewards the slower more strategic and thoughtful play styles so if you see something that looks like it might work and you can see it from where you are but you're not quite sure you know can I throw this thing and jump and catch it and then throw it again will that work or will I die you can try that and you might lose a couple seconds it's really not a big deal which makes it perfect if you're not the type of person who will sit there before the game the level starts and say okay this is my path I'm gonna take go the game is welcoming and encouraging of multiple play styles its accessibility makes it fun for challenge driven players and more casual players and the egotistical I'm so smart mechanic that rewards you for for completing a playthrough quickly or even just completing a level if it's a particularly tough one is what drives the whole game it drives it all home and that's what makes it's it's the adhesive the entire reward of these platformers is to make the player feel good about what they did and feel skilled and feel like they're learning other it's not like there's a story holding it together we know that okay there's a baby and whatever you got to save a big deal it's you know just like lemmings you're it's all skill and fun and and there's some exploring element to it too of course it's also accessible in its graphics which make it a solid travel or laptop or play at work game just because it is going to be playable on nearly any PC of course you can check our website for more PC builds on that but that's that's off spring fling that's everything you need to know so go out there and check it out it is on Steam currently for $8 I highly recommend it I picked it up for three during the sale but I would buy it for eight definitely I really enjoyed this game and I don't enjoy games a lot anymore I've played a lot of them so it definitely gets my vote in terms of something highly playable highly accessible that you can have fun with without getting too enraged and without without it being too easy as well so check that out and we are working on more hardware videos this week as well as more of course game based videos we'll have some stuff online soon for you to check out on castle story and other games that we've covered previously so definitely give all that a look if you like this video please like it comment and subscribe subscribe subscribe it really helps me make more of these and I will talk to you guys next time