Swordigo

Year: 2012
Genre: Role-Playing, Platformer
Website: --

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Shane:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 14.0
• Playthroughs: 1
• Rating: 7/10

Lee:

• Platform: Android
• Hours logged: 6.0
• Playthroughs: 0
• Rating: --/10

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Notes and Discussions:

• Shane (2/19/2014): This game was a welcome distraction during the holidays.  I installed it originally because I had burned out from too many consecutive hours of Kingdom Rush... and Ridiculous Fishing was doing it's annoying "I won't pay attention to your controls now, nah nah nah" thing.  Hannah's Grandma had just fallen and broken herself and I was sitting on my mother-in-law's dog... In all I ended up with several hours I could dedicate to the game while I couldn't do much more than hang out.
  
  What I found was just enough story to keep me curious (if not interested) but not enough to get in the way.  This is, after all, really just a platformer that has a few simple map puzzles built in.  They bill themselves as an RPG but I wouldn't go that far.  I never ended up immersed in the world, but I didn't care.
  
  I could talk about the magic/gear combinations... but the only part of the game that really mattered was the progression from map stage to map stage while collecting gems and experience to make killing things easier.  All of that was easier when I didn't think about it too hard.  The last couple "stages" had some decently challenging timing puzzles that I enjoyed.  Then the game was over.  And I smiled.
  
  Swordigo still sits on my hard drive.  I don't think I am going to go back to it but I feel warmly enough about it's presence that I will drop it only when I need the space.  It deserves at least that much respect.

• Lee (3/11/2014): I wanted to like this game more, but I really don't care for platformers. When I was a kid, I didn't have the patience to put enough hours into Super Mario Brothers to beat it. I played it a lot, but after dying in the same lava pit 300 times or getting whacked by tail of the level's boss after finally making it through the maze of fireballs and ass-puckering, bottomless pits, I remember wanting to scream and throw things. This game was like that at times. "Where the fuck is the Easy mode??"
  
  I did, however, manage to make it exactly 50% of the way through the game before finally giving up. At one point, I quit for a couple weeks after getting stuck trying to beat a hooded, fireball-shooting boss at around 42%, but I came back to it and killed that bastard. I'm not likely coming back this time. Games should be fun. Grinding a game to the point of frustration is not fun to me. It just reminds me how bad I suck at platformers.
  
  Despite my frustration and eventual surrender, there were a few things that I did enjoy about the game, including the simple, on-screen controls. There were icons for "move left," "more right," "swing sword/pick up item," "jump," and "shoot fireball." Using the double jump feature to get up on ledges was pretty fun (but having to use it to solve puzzles was frustrating at times). The adventure and exploration parts of the game were enjoyable, and I was also intrigued by the simple character leveling mechanism. Not losing your XP after dying was a nice surprise too.
  
  I had originally wanted to play through some of the old Nintendo platformer games (Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc.) as part of this video game project, but I am second-guessing that plan a bit now.