Review of Poxie by Lachie D., 2005

Written by Daniel Verkamp (Semptember, 2005)


Poxie, created by Lachie Dazdarian of the Kentauri 
game design team, is a 2D game that pulls gameplay elements 
from Pacman and platformer games. The game concept is based 
on an obscure QB game called Panic Vicious by HUR. Poxie is 
written in FreeBASIC and compiled for Win32 operating systems. 
It features sound effects and music and detailed, animated 
256-color graphics.

The entire game has been designed in a way that immediately 
evokes thoughts of the "golden years" of computer games. The 
low resolution and color depth combined with carefully hand-drawn 
graphics and well-crafted, carefully-placed animations, along with 
the delightful vertical parallax scrolling, put this game 
graphically on par with any DOS action game from the mid-1990s. 
This is by no means a point against Poxie; in fact, it is the 
highest praise I could give any 2D game. A few times, the colors 
used for the textual display or the characters coincided a bit 
too much with the background, making them hard to distinguish, but 
this is probably just an artifact of the limited number of colors 
available. The technical details are taken care of in a professional 
manner - the display is always smooth, with no tearing during 
scrolling, and collision detection is pixel-perfect. The depth of 
detail was very good for such a small game; for example, the way the 
stages are connected (the forest seen in the distance on the 
first stage becomes the setting for the second; the castle in the
background near the volcano shows up in the subsequent stage; and 
so on).

The gameplay itself is relatively easy, but it takes a little while 
to get the hang of the concept. After a few times of playing, the 
game can become frustrating, mostly because it is possible to put 
yourself in certain-death situations without any recourse. There are 
also the times when a special item appears but, despite your best 
effors, you cannot reach it in time. That said, the simple gameplay 
requires a steady hand and a mind for problem solving in order to do 
well. This challenge, besides the graphics and audio, is enough to 
keep a player's interest in the game for a number of hours. There is 
no true "platforming" involved, in the sense of jump'n'run-style games, 
but the draw of the platformer still exists in this game, and gravity 
plays an important part.

The controls are minimalistic (only two directional keys are used) 
but certainly sufficient and in fact essential to the gameplay. The 
controls feel responsive and make sense intuitively.

Audio during the game is an essential part of the experience; playing 
to the sound of a gentle, flowing river or happily chirping birds 
adds immeasurably to the game's enjoyability. Well-mixed sound effects 
are used throughout the game when important actions occur. My only 
complaint here is the use of a sound effect that I am quite certain 
I heard in The Time Warp of Dr. Brain... if you ever played that 
particular Dr. Brain game, you'll probably notice it immediately, 
but regardless, it doesn't detract from the fun of the gameplay.

The game feels complete and polished. It is not long or complex, 
nor is it meant to be. All in all, it is what many game designers 
aspire to create: a finished game with a well-defined, unwavering 
purpose. Poxie knows what it is and doesn't pretend to be something 
else. The lack of any appreciable storyline is not important; this 
sort of game could only be made less enjoyable by tacking on a story 
after the fact.

Only once during testing did the game crash; I assume it was because 
of the "miscellaneous program crash" described in the readme. Also, 
there were a few times that I thought I was in the launcher area and 
supposedly safe but still triggered a death when touching an enemy. 
These minor details did not affect gameplay adversely.


Ratings

Graphics: 
8/10
Sound / Music:  
7/10
Gameplay / Fun Factor:  
6/10  

Overall rating:
7/10