#adventure island games

[todayimgonnaplay]

Today I'm gonna play: Heart Star

I never knew Heart Star was a browser game, as I'm only familiar with the mobile version. I did play this a couple years ago but never finished it completely, so I decided to revisit it again.

Mobile gaming tends to get a lot of flack for the amount of low-quality (not to mention age-inappropriate), money grubbing games out there. It comes to a point where there's a stigma that it's only casual, or that it's not counted as ''real gaming''. It also doesn't help that the store (in the case of Android, it's been a while since I owned an Apple device) doesn't promote a lot of high quality games either. But there are a couple of hidden gems out there, if you look hard enough!

Heart Star is a pixel puzzle platformer where you switch between two unnamed characters, and navigate through levels to ensure that the two characters will find a way to reunite and be together. I'm not new to this kind of game, as it reminds me of Fireboy and Watergirl, which is a browser game. It's a free app, with 60 levels in total. As you progress, you get new mechanics involved to provide new challenges; teleporters, moving blocks, spikes, and more. Often times you need to use the characters themselves as part of the puzzle to complete the level.

The levels are intricately designed; difficult but simple once you figure out the solution. I've seen some puzzle games suddenly introduce a new feature and then bump up the difficulty with them, but this one creates a ''rest'' period for every new feature that pops up, and then slowly increase the difficulty. They're also short enough to play on-the-go, or just have a casual session to finish in one sitting, which is pretty neat! One issue I did notice during gameplay is that there seems to be a 1 second delay before being able to immediately switch to another character. This isn't much of an issue, just sometimes I was confidently able to speed through a level after failing multiple times and found a solution but the delay ended up costing me mistakes.

The visuals are cute, the characters look endearing and tell a story by their own without having to utter a single word. And this is a stretch but, if you think about the basis of the plot as you play, you can see the sense of determination that the characters have for wanting to be together. One surprising but welcoming aspect is that the graphics have a very practical function that can extend to beyond what its current purpose is. You get to know which character you're controlling based on the colours, icons, and transparency. It's very in your face that this may be translated somewhat well for people with accessibility issues such as colourblindness.

Sounds are also done really well too. Hearing the little sound effects when falling off or being damaged by a spike are effective (the former is also strangely adorable..). They're planted well that you get great input feedback from your actions. The best part to me is the music, it's repetitive but feels extremely nostalgic, like I'm transported back to the Gameboy days, especially when playing Sokoban which was also a puzzle game. I ended up finding myself singing along to it as I played.

Overall Heart Star is a mobile ported puzzle platformer done right. Especially for a free game, I think it's an interesting case to learn from for level design and providing input feedback to the player.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - The Caribbean

[jupijitter]

Retsuko from Hello Kitty Island Adventure Game by the Nintendo Direct

[oldschoolfrp]

The party battles minions of the necromancer Kazanjian on the Wizard's Island (Jerry Frazee's cover for Wizard's Island, supplement for the Silverdawn play-by-mail game, Entertainment Concepts Inc., 1983)

[potato-lord-but-not]

some characters nobody even knows or cares about 💪💪

[gameboydemakes]

Take fate into your own paws as you journey through The Dog Island!

If you liked this, please visit my Patreon. Any amount thrown my way helps and is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Patreon] [Twitter] [Instagram] [Kofi]

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

[y2kwavesarts]

JOHNNY THUNDER & JUNKBOT ARE HERE

JOHNNY THUNDER & JUNKBOT ARE NOW ON MY ETSY

JOHNNY THUNDER

JUNKBOT

UNBOXING VIDEO:

NEWGROUNDS

ETSY

[nintendometro]

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Go For Goal 'Go! Go! Beckham! Adventure on Soccer Island' Game Boy Advance Support us on Patreon

[arcanetrivia]

"My gift to you. Just remember where you got it. STAN'S!!!" - Stan

"Hey, you can talk! Who'd have known?" - Elaine Marley

*gruiik gruuiiik* - Ghost Pig

"Oh yes sir. I feel so lucky that you happened to capture my ship, then murder me and everyone on board..." - Bob

(all by Gomorama on Twitter)

[justdoll]

Me and my friend Hello Kitty 💕

[lookslikethatsallthetimewehave]

In your opinion, what's the darkest thing in Poptropica?

Oh... wow. You know, some people might be surprised at some of the dark stuff that's happened/implied throughout the franchise. And from such an innocent looking world too :)

I guess I'll make a list of some stuff that stands out to me:

24 Carrot Island 

The 4 children were kidnapped and brainwashed by Dr. Hare probably for months.

Astro-Knights Island 

Mordred almost died in a crash, and had to replace half of his body with robotics. 

Mordred kidnapped the princess because he wanted to marry her. And her parents most likely thought they were never going to see her again, since they had no way of going after her.

Counterfeit Island 

It's implied that Black Widow was gonna torture the player in order to get answers. 

Reality TV Island/Wild Safari Island 

Villains allowed to be on reality tv… and being treated as celebrities... WHAT.

Skullduggery Island 

Captain Crawfish probably killed a lot of people. Cause… pirate.

Steamworks Island 

The entire backstory of this island: the people were doing experiments on plants, when the plants mutated and tried to kill them. The only way they could survive is by freezing themselves.

Captain Ziggs sacrificed himself to hold off the Plant Monsters. Mayor Crumb must be feeling pretty depressed now that she's free and forced to live without him.

Red Dragon Island  

The Shogun being a pretty terrifying tyrant. 

Shrink Ray Island  

POV: you're an elementary school student and your teacher's star pupil. You trust him, because he's a nice teacher. And then he goes crazy and kidnaps you.

Mr. Silva threatens to shrink CJ and the player to the point where they can't be seen by anyone, which is kinda dark honestly. 

Blimp Adventure 

Dr. Cumulo Nimbus sets fire to the rain to all the islands. 

Game Show Island  

Robots take over and enslave humanity. 

Ghost Story Island  

A really depressing murder mystery/ weird love triangle story that involves several character's deaths.

S.O.S Island  

The ship sinks and everyone inside almost dies. Also a child.

Vampire's Curse Island  

Count Bram outlives his wife, and goes crazy. And he kidnaps a child due to insanity. 

Cactus von Garlic has killed many vampires. But not all vampires in Poptropica are evil (if Haunted House is any indication). 

Twisted Thicket Island  

The forest creatures turning into stone. I'm not 100% sure if they're still alive in there or not...

Poptropolis Games Island

The island sinks back into the ocean, with people still on it. Some of the ancient islanders are waterlogged (but still alive, for some reason).

Lunar Colony Island (Book)

The PASE workers are oddly sociopathic to Glen John's situation, only caring about Glen helping them. Glen is 13 btw.

Super Villain Island  

Zeus almost winning. He blew up the world for no reason. Also, there's something really scary about the way he blew up his own island.

Zomberry Island  

Zombie apocalypse. 

Virus Hunter Island  

A pandemic almost happened. 

Monster Carnival Island 

Ringmaster Raven's backstory: Pretty messed up. 

Edgar is an orphan who ran away and joined the carnival. He put a lot of trust in the Ringmaster and seemed pretty happy… and then the Ringmaster hypnotizes him and uses him for his scheme. Pretty messed up. 

Survival Island 

Myron Van Buren. Enough said.

Mission Atlantis Island 

The alien was trapped underwater for years and died.

PoptropiCon Island  

Omegon taking over the convention center, and turning the people into Hench-Bots.

Arabian Nights Island 

Scheherazade attempted to steal the player's soul… what the heck.

Graphic Novels

The kids almost died… several times. (A Saber tooth tiger and polar bear almost maul them, they almost fall to their deaths, they almost freeze to death, they are almost stabbed to death by Lieutenant Rogers, they almost got erased from history on the Ancient Egypt Island, they almost burned alive in a volcano eruption, etc)

The ancient Egyptians are erased from one timeline, and a bunch of people on earth died... and it's unknown if they were brought back, or what.

When Spencer Albright is murdered, Jonas is so overcome with grief that he completely loses it and becomes murderous like Octavian. Jonas is 18-20 btw.

The backstories for the main characters (Octavian is forced to let Paulla die, Mya's mom abruptly dies and she goes through depression, Oliver’s dad walks out on the family).

Octavian's fate at the end is this: he accidentally jumped through the portal before the universe he wanted to go to fully formed. Because of this, he jumped into the in-between point of universes, and was split into an infinite amount of versions of himself. Sounds complicated, but is incredibly messed up.

Mya was seriously considering leaving her own timeline, even though she would be leaving her family and friends behind. Whether or not she knew this is unknown, but if she did... kinda messed up.

And… that's it. No more dark things that stick out to me after that. Probably because after this, they fired the writer who was responsible for most of the dark undertones in the franchise. OOPS!!! >:(

I think the darkest stuff comes from Monster Carnival, Survival, and the graphic novels.

[skykitrekii]

[aeodoodles]

Anonymous request for me to draw Honey Girl, from the Adventure Island series!

[allhailkingsquest]

I picked up two of Molly Nemecek's (@jakface) double-sided King's Quest/Monkey Island charms at Fan Expo! 🎉 If you're in Toronto for the con's final day tomorrow (Aug 25), drop by Artist Alley booth A28 for your own, or buy it online here.

[jitterbugbear]

there is a lack of adventure games that don't depend on combat, i don't want to kill the creatures... let them live...