Chel-Z, Why Don't I Love Thee?
-Ben Palmer IV-
The Fanguide Review
Anticipation was building on iOS gaming fora (irregular plurals, yo) following the Android release of Joshua Hale's Chel-Z, a game whose description and trailer had this reviewer weeping pixelated happy tears while awaiting it's inevitably Jesus-E arrival on the App Store.
You play as a robot with a human brain, which is hilariously ironic, since we're playing this game as humans ON our robot brains. Points for that, Josh. The game avoids belaboring such details in exquisite fashion by subjecting the player to a minimum of exposition at the onset. "Hey, Dr. Boss, you scoundrel!!!...ah well, oh, hey, I'm playing."
Let's just get this out of the way: Chel-Z has gooey gobs of potential, but misses its mark in a few glaring areas. Like, flashing neon signs of "whoops," people. These whoopsies, however, are not beyond the reach of an update or two.
The pixel art is pitch perfect for old schoolers like myself who spent countless hours living our younger years through the NES. The colors are obviously brighter, deeper, and exhibit a broader palate than classic 8-bit games, and this works in the favor of the fuchsia-framed Chel-Z. She's a beaut.
The chip tunes are certainly catchy, if repetitive. After all (or before all, as the case may be), Josh Hale has been a D.J. since the mid 90's. Legit. Thank you Arcane Toaster and DJ Emergency for the soundtrack.
There are 36 rooms to explore, and they provide a fair amount of variety in the way of layouts and enemies with which to grow accustomed. These 36 rooms feel like far more, which brings us to the quibbles portion of this review.
Number one: there is no map. After spending some time with the game, what might not seem like a big deal at first glance ends up being the single biggest design oversight. Chel-Z is billed as a Metroidvania type platformer where the formula for progression is: find an inaccessible area; find an item to allow entry to the previously inaccessible area; access the new area; repeat. Unlike Metroid or Castlevania, however, there is no way to see where you are in relation to where you've been. This oversight results in a type of exploration which is needlessly meandering instead of anticipatory. It would be nice to pause the game, glance at the map, and quickly have some idea of where to go. The current setup artificially lengthens the time it takes to complete the game because of the demand for uninformed and repeated backtracking. This brings us to our next misstep.
Number two: save points. When playing a game consisting of 36 rooms on a mobile device, an auto-save feature is absolutely a reasonable expectation, especially when said "rooms" are far longer/wider than the screen on my iPhone 6. Gamers who played Shatterhand and Battletoads on the NES had a different set of expectations and experiences back then than those same gamers who have played Mos Speedrun and League of Evil on their iPhones. The paucity of save points reeks of a type of challenge which harkens back to the worst elements of 8-bit action games, such as maddeningly frequent deaths resulting in lost progress. This brings us ever-so-insidiously to the next quibble.
Ads are present after every death - some longer and more data-hungry than others. There is a $4.99 IAP ad-removal option, but it feels more like paying a toll than buying a ticket. If you turn off data and WiFi to try to cheat your way around this requirement, you're stuck until they're turned on again, but nice try. On principle, I want to support the game and developer for this effort, but it feels a little dirty. Watching an advertisement for the latest über colorful freemium match-3 game will probably end up inspiring more rage quits/deletes than purchases when deaths feel as cheap and exploration as inflated as they do in the initial version of Chel-Z.
The ads are an understandable part of the game, and if you opt not to pay five bucks to remove them, they will still not slow your progress as much as trying to figure out where to go next.
Number three: controls. In the first few minutes of Chel-Z, the touch screen controls will probably feel tight and responsive, and the idea of having three rather than four directions on the control pad is as inspired as it is simple. This was done wisely to maximize visibility of screen space, which is successful some of the time. You'll still lose sight of the character beneath your left thumb regularly. Shortcomings with the control mechanics reveal themselves as play continues.
You may as well be holding the down arrow (which is nonexistent in Chel-Z) to charge a super jump for every jump, because you're going to feel as though you're getting maximum effort each time your snazzy bot leaves the ground. Even though there is actually a difference in jump height between a quick tap and a hold, the practical implications are usually imperceptible.
Also, there is an unavoidable arc that will haunt your descents. Momentum is king when in the air, and you will be reminded of this often when you think you're going to land on a platform, only to plunge juuust past it into a previously unassuming lava pit where you are consoled and motivated by a tile-matching advertising witch, cuddly cookie bear, or something.
My overall impressions of Chel-Z are not as negative as the review would indicate to this point. I'm only being harsh because of the level of obvious potential which is not being actualized. Honestly, the addition of a map alone would probably bump this game up to the sort of experience that would warrant multiple play throughs. There has already been an update released since the game's launch, and the developers seem receptive to players' observations, so perhaps this could still become a reality. As it stands, it earns 3 out of 5 fans.
YouTube trailer:
iOS:
Android:
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