Super Kablamo
November 9, 2011 5 Comments
I hereby make the following irresponsible, mean-spirited blanket statement towards the entire gaming industry, Indie or otherwise: if you make any shooting game that is not done from a 1st or 3rd person perspective and you force the player to wait any amount of time for your gun to “reload”, I, Kairi Vice, accuse you of being intentionally boring. Especially if that game is a cross between Space Invaders and Centipede where you don’t want to be stuck on one screen waiting for your gun to reload. Why do you hate fun so much, developers?
And yes, I’m aware that Indie Gamer Chick blowjob recipient Dead Pixels involves reloading. Fuck you, Brian, at least that game was fun. Super Kablamo is Mirror Universe fun, where the object is to be so bored that you’ll submerge your own head in liquid nitrogen just because it’s more stimulating. I complained in the OTO review that the game had no direction. Compared to Kablamo, OTO is fucking Magellan. I could tell what was just a wall, what was to be avoided, and everything was distinctive looking. In Kablamo, I had no clue what anything was. The entire screen is spammed with so many things that picking apart what is an enemy and what isn’t is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Only here, the haystack is coated in piss and the needle is a retarded octopus.
Nope, you can't possibly make sense of this mess.
Hey, I’m a sucker for this type of game, but it does so many things wrong. Pretty much the only thing it got right was the blade weapon. That actually was fun to use. Otherwise, there is nothing of value here. There’s little to no information provided on how to actually play the game. No screens identifying enemies, or explaining what the flowers are for, or why there’s giant-sized red blood cells all over the board. I have the ability to suck things up. Why? I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!! It doesn’t seem to do anything anyway so maybe it’s there as a distraction. There is a screen that explains how the power-ups work, but it’s done in micro-text that you need a telescope to decipher. As far as the actual game goes, you can move anywhere on the screen but you can only shoot one direction. Enemies chase you along the bottom, then crawl up underneath you and you have zero defense. Wouldn’t this style of enemy lend itself better to a TwickS?
And then there’s the ammo thing. First off, I’m not even sure why sometimes there is an ammo gauge and sometimes there isn’t. The game does not explain it either. It seems to come about randomly. Regardless, I want to pose a question for you: how good would classic 2D shooters be if you had to pause to reload your gun? Imagine Space Invaders with it. Or Contra. Or Centipede. Or Gradius. Or Smash TV. Those games would be ruined.
Sometimes it might work. Dead Pixels for example, or.. um.. Dead Pixels! But Dead Pixels was a zombie game that catered specifically to tension and conservation. This is just a generic shooter, like Final Failure. The game has enough trouble managing to be fun without this feature. This is something that people should have warned the developer about ahead of time.
And just to be clear, since this was felt by some to be a glaring omission in my OTO review, no I didn’t play it with four player local-only multiplayer. However, I did manage to briefly play two player. And you might be surprised to hear that it didn’t get any better. I don’t know why people assume everything is better with more people. It might be true of dying aboard the Titanic, but that’s supposed to be horrible experience. With or without more people, Super Kablamo is an incomprehensible clusterfuck and I would sooner recommend shoving a vacuum hose up your ass and giving yourself a Hoover Colonic.
Super Kablamo was developed by Meh Games
80 Microsoft Points feel naming yourself “Meh Games” is likely not the best way to start your development career in the making of this review.
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Gameplay footage courtesy of http://Indies.onPause.org
Indie Gamer Chick 
I quite like the nonsensical visual design, but unidirectional fire is a serious problem when enemies can sneak past you. I’m going to try it out, out of curiosity as to whether I make any more sense of it than you did. Hmmm.
Ok, well the flowers seem to be just cover. As to the rest…yeah, I have no idea. You’re right; this game really needs some sort of explanation. If I knew what was going on, I might find it mediocre. As it stands, it’s pretty bad.
Whatever man, I still liked it. 😛
The reload thing is the gun power-up combining with something else. The game explains fuck all for how things work so I just pieced things together on my own.
As for enemies getting behind you: bomb. The only defense. I wasn’t a fan of that either but lots of shooters are crazy cheap so it didn’t break the game for me
An instruction manual would’ve freakin’ helped! All you would have to do is display a page explaining how to play the game! Most indie games have like, little to no depth in game mechanics, so only a page would suffice in most cases. Shots look pretty though. 🙂
That is a big failure in a lot of XBLIGs. Assuming everyone will be able to play your game with no manual or instructions. Also, the reason I never tried this game was because the cover scared me.