Unlimited Trees' Sonic 1 (SAGE 2017 Demo)

I was originally going to try and get a trailer made for this, but I realized that would not only take too long but I also don't want to waste Looney's time, so I decided to just release this early

SAGE Booth
So Unlimited Trees' Sonic 1 (UTS1) is a dumb ROM hack turned Fan Game that was originally going to be a 1 act rom hack, but after a ton of frustrations, was turned into a fan game, and now will be a full length game. At the moment, the game has been in development for 2 months and only has half of the main game done. So, this is just a demo at the moment.

The game's story starts at the end of a previous adventure. Sonic has arrived at the Egg Plant and is about to win a fight. However, turns out it was all a distraction, and Eggman was secretly taking over South Island aswell as investigating a mysterious 7th emerald that has seemed to be lost in time. Eggman even managed to snatch another Emerald, and plans on using all the emeralds to not only control the universe, but to control time itself.
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Make sure to read the readme file btw. Credits are also in the readme file, the beginning of the game, aswell as in the extras menu.

 

I've played it so review time. For me art is outstanding but I can't say the same about physics and levels, because physics feels way too off (I know it's game engine fault, but still it affect the gameplay in negative way - rings, that can't be touched, delay with interaction with objects like in the casino-like zones with these objects from Casino Night Zone from S2). About levels, I hate Mean Bean Machine and Pac-Man parts, because in Pac-Man section I lost life instead of rings and this is more frustrating than fun, because I need repeat it all over again and it's getting tiring and in Mean Bean Machine part, it will take some time until player will realize to use special moves and it would cost many lives like in my case. Special Zones - U.T. is Straight Line Zone, but with aesthetics art and no slopes, Remake of Warehouse Zone from Retro Sonic fan game has top notch art, but it's ruined by engine physics and recreation of GHZ - my fav zone, because totally fresh art, least annoying level design for me - my only nitpick is enemies placement that is similar to Splash Hill from Sanic 4 sometimes. I'll not judge music, because it's usage of copyrighted stuff in majority and I have a habit to judge custom OST only. But it's ok for my ears, but SFX is too loud comparing to music.

Overall, I didn't have fun with this game, but I appreciate your work and... Keep improving! I have high hopes for this project.

 

Ugh, this was just painful to play.

The physics are not very good. I don't mind when the physics are not 1:1 to the originals, but these physics are just not good. They are pretty slippery and when I have to do precise platforming, it's a chore. The collision is pretty broken at times, and I've gotten stuck in some walls a few times. The invincibility frames after when Sonic gets hurt are too short, in my opinion, but I'll talk about that later...

The level design is either too bland or too obnoxious. It's too bland when there's nothing really "outstanding" going on, and it's rather linear. It's too obnoxious when there's too many things going on at once, especially with bumpers. I didn't like the overabundance of them in Sonic 2's Casino Night or Sonic CD's Collision Chaos, and I didn't like them here.

Each level has a gimmick taken right out of a different game:

The first level uses Puyo Puyo, and my god, what a pain that was to get through. For starters, the controls are awkward. You have the WASD keys for controlling Sonic's movement, J to jump, and then the arrow keys to move the beans. I find that to be too much to handle, and I often found myself losing track of myself with these controls. There's also the fact the beans don't turn solid until they land and that was quite disorientating for me. I lost so many lives to this one gimmick.

The second level uses Pacman. It plays pretty much like Pacman, except it's much slower and more dull. It goes on for too long and it's not even that challenging. The collision for the level within this gimmick was pretty weird and I kept getting pushed into directions I didn't want to go in.

The third level uses Portal. I found this to be the best of the three here, but I found it to be a bit dull, since there really wasn't anything "threatening" within this gimmick. The portal objects themselves were pretty glitchy, as I kept teleporting back and forth when going in them.

Each level also has a unique boss for them:

The first level has a boss that constantly throws the GHZ ball at you in the first phase while electrical sparks shoot out of the wall and wrap from the top to the bottom out of the floor. When you hit him enough times, Eggman no longer shoots the GHZ balls, and instead shoots out even more of those sparks. The problem with this boss is that way too many things happen at once and I kept losing track of Sonic as a result. In combination with the short invincibility frames I mentioned earlier, it made for a really cheap and frustrating boss. Both times I beat it, I died at the same time, and because of that, it sent me back to the beginning of the level.

The second level has this flying caterkiller thing that also shoots fireballs and sometimes fireballs rain out of the sky onto the grassy platforms. Once again, I find that there are too many things happening at once, although not as much as the first boss. I also found it quite difficult to even hit Eggman. Another boss I pretty much got frustrated with and moved on from there.

There third boss is surrounded by a large bumper and spikes fly from the sky along with a row of bumpers. Again, too much is happening at once and I lost track of Sonic. However, I was able to beat this boss my first time, because I kept getting bounced back from the bumpers and I was able to gather my rings that I lost after getting hit. So, I was able to spam the hard roll attack thing while doing that.

After going through those three levels, I checked out the other three levels found in the extras, and they really weren't anything unique or special:

Unlimited Trees Zone.... pretty much like the SHC entry you entered last contest, except neverending. Next...

The warehouse level wasn't really anything outstanding or unique. All I really remember from it was the Wacky Workbench art in the background and the background saying "Sonic Mania" and "Retro Sonic".

Green Hill Zone... it's Green Hill Zone, except with the aforementioned problems. Nothing special about it still.

The artwork isn't bad by any means, but I found that it can get too busy at times and some sprites are just downright ugly, in my opinion.

The music choices certainly aren't terrible, but because of the frustrating gimmicks and bosses I had to deal with, meaning dying over and over and constantly getting stuck, I got sick of the music pretty fast. Although, there are some tracks that I found pretty forgettable.

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So, in conclusion, I found this to be a rather bland and frustrating experience. Whenever a level tries to make itself unique and outstanding, it just ends up being not fun and just frustrating or bland. A combination of bad design choices, glitches, poor controls, and frustrating gimmicks resulted in an overall negative experience.

As a quick note for level design, if you have to have a sign that shows you how to pass through a certain part of a level, there's something wrong...

 

Hey people. I spent the past two days working on a quick little patch which fixes some problems, aswell as changes and adds a few things which I forgot to add.
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If people like this version better, I'll also upload this to the Showcase.

Changelog:
-Slightly modified physics
-Added goggles in Egg Plant Zone when going underwater
-Slightly changed layouts of EPZ, HFZ, and BPZ, aswell as there being a new pathway in BPZ
-Fixed invinciblity frames. They're now longer when you get hit, and you can collect rings you drop while flashing.
-Added changes to bosses to make them a bit easier/better. You can also use Hard Roll/Spin to block attacks from projectiles
-Slightly changed each mini game in the main zones to make them slightly better.
-added a few songs to the sound test which I forgot to add.
-Other minor things and fixes.
-Oh and there's icons to the thing I guess lol

 

FINAL DEMO VERSION DOWNLOAD
Here's the final version of the SAGE demo. Not that much different from the patch from yesterday, but it does add a few minor things.

Changelog:
-Debug Mode added by pressing 3 during Title Screen
-"PLAY MANIA FOR MY BOI BRAD" screen is moved to the Sound Test (in the CHOOSE A SOUNDTRACK menu) and can be seen by selecting sound 99
-Other secrets I forgot to add
-Maybe some other things I forgot

 

Well I make a post about every year now, so here it is. The physics feel just a bit off to me but it still feels great. The music gave me flashbacks to Sonic R when I seemed to have a hard-on for the game, and believe me, I seriously loved the music from that game. Let's see... The gimmicks are kinda nice, didn't expect to see (spoilered just incase you don't want to read about specialties in the levels and just try it. Go ahead, you may like it.)

Spoiler

a Mean-Bean-Machine

gimmick in there, which I thought was kinda cool. Now, I have only played a bit of the first level and will most likely add to this once I have played more of it.

 

So the hack became a fangame? Well, okay then!

I'll try it out and give you my throughts as soon I finished playing.