Shipwreck Torrent Download [License]
- asiginiminel
- Sep 12, 2019
- 12 min read
Updated: Mar 18, 2020
About This Game Shipwreck is a top down adventure game in which you must travel the land, explore dungeons, and defeat monsters to earn safe passage off the island on which you are stranded. Shipwreck is the first game from Brushfire Games, a small game studio in Redmond, WA, run by brothers Nick and Joe Gravelyn. Shipwreck was created by these fine folks: Nick Gravelyn - Programming/Design Joe Gravelyn - Programming/Design Ty Lagalo - Art Dan Waters - Music/Sfx 7aa9394dea Title: ShipwreckGenre: Adventure, IndieDeveloper:Brushfire GamesPublisher:Brushfire GamesRelease Date: 25 Feb, 2014 Shipwreck Torrent Download [License] TL;DR: A short but okay hack 'n slash adventure with minor puzzle elements.While a spawn of a genre pretty much defined by Legend of Zelda games (specifically NES and Gameboy versions), Shipwreck left me with a feeling of barely positive "meh". Let's get down to details.In the beginning of the story there is a shipwreck that leaves everyone else but the protagonist dead or missing. It is a stormy night. You find yourself stranded on a beach and as the luck would have it, there's also a sword on the shore near you. You can swing it at a wide angle to attack monsters or bushes. Curiously but traditionally, both are filled with money and apples.Moving, sword swinging and other item use is easy enough, even familiar if you have played other similar titles like the aforementioned top-down Zelda games. You've got only two slots for items, presumably because you have two hands and the interface has space for pretty much only two items at the time because of the art style. Considering that particularly in some boss fights, albeit also in some dungeons, you need to juggle three or four items in short succession, the limit of two items is rather inconvenient.Continuing the story, after wandering around the beach for several uneventful screens you finally find yourself in a cave, a dungeon. The dungeons are by far the best part of the game: there are monsters, traps, locked doors and even some nice puzzles. If you are a completionist, you generally need to solve the puzzles to acquire all big hearts that increase your maximum health.In later dungeons, the puzzles become mandatory, and this effectively makes those dungeons the best (especially the sand dungeon and the lighthouse). You can be stuck for a short while when pondering where to go, only to notice that you can fall to an unvisited room by jumping down a hole on a higher floor. Rooms could be dark requiring you to carry a lantern (in my concern the only valid reason for having mere two slots for items) to see around and some walls or boulders can be smashed broken with a pickaxe. Bow is used regrettably little being useful only in one or two boss fights.Speaking of which, every dungeon has a boss fight of varying difficulty. Some are ridiculously easy, like the first crab boss (admittedly the first one should be easy) and the worm boss that just goes in circles and you can beat him without much resistance. Others are way more difficult and require you to study their attack and defense patterns closely. I especially liked the rock and slime bosses, the rock guy actually managing to kill me twice.Monsters are only found in the dungeons. There are only few different ones and all of them die by swinging them twice - exactly twice. Sure, the slimeblobs split into smaller slimeblobs, but every slimeblob dies with two strikes regardless of their size. Same is true of every snake, ghost, spider and bat you see. Consistency might be the key but it's peculiar with monster healths. Monsters being rather boring it's a good thing that they actually stay dead after killing them, even if you leave the dungeon.The cool twist of Shipwreck is that you can only heal (in addition to staying at the inn) by eating apples (and the occasional bread) that are found lying around in bushes and carried by monsters. Before the boss fights it is a good idea to stockpile food for additional health. Unfortunately, as money is found basically everywhere and there is a shop for food, this renders health a trivial matter later on.I spent a long time exploring the small world after the first dungeon. The storm was still going on, but the world was empty of any other activity: no enemies, no people, basically nothing happening anywhere. When the storm finally ended, the town sprang to life (of motionless villagers but at least they talk to you) but there was still nothing going on in the wilderness. The wilderness is really an untapped opportunity for exploration and monster whacking for the developers. Just a couple of farm houses and a cemetery (where nothing exciting happens, as realistic as that is) doesn't really cut it.In Link's Awakening you wanted to escape the island, and Shipwreck snatches basically the same storyline in that respect. There's a big bad boss that stands in your way but has hidden in the most inaccessible place possible: lighthouse is locked by four magical seals for some nefarious reason. In the case of Shipwreck though, let's just say that I was refreshingly disappointed that sometimes the bad guy is just the bad guy. With no special twist of any kind, I was nevertheless mostly disappointed, even though the boss was rather difficult and for once I almost ran out of food.Lasting only 4 hours (even 2 hours for the faster players), I can tell that it's worth its cheap price. To me it was not a very special experience, but it was not all bad either, so I would score it as something between mediocre and decent. It might help with your Zelda itch but afterwards you'd need to fire up your old console anyway.. Shipwreck is a retro style top down adventure game that is quite obviously influenced by games in the Legend of Zelda series. It's a fun experience. Basically, your ship gets wrecked on this island, so you need another to leave. You adventure to get one, but the only way to do so is to use the one ship on the island once the mayor allows it. So you end up having to help the mayor solve the island's problem. A ghost showed up recently, locked itself away in the island's lighthouse, and has been causing storms which disrupt the people's way of life. You must stop this evil ghost. To open the lighthouse, you need to obtain four seals, each in their own dungeon protected by monsters. Typical adventure stuff. Go to the dungeons, get new items, use the items to complete the dungeons and fight the bosses. Get the seals. Do the final dungeon, beat the final boss, and win the game. Also, you more than likely will be able to get all the achievements just by playing normally, which is good if you care about getting achievements I suppose. The music is alright. The retro style is nice if you're into that. And you get to run around hitting things with a sword. What can I say? It's fun. However, I feel this game has some rough downsides. While it's clearly inspired by Zelda games, it seems to lack a lot of what makes Zelda games so entertaining. There's not much story in Shipwreck, instead just surviving on a main plot. That's fine by me, but some people will see this as a point of disconnect. My point of disconnect was moreso from the fact that there's a distinct lack of characterization. The main character has no personality or lines, but that's because it's YOU. The part that bugs me is that none of the people in the game have any real personality. Everyone is rather bland and most of the townspeople will say nothing of consequence to your journey or the world building. It makes them feel very forgettable and doesn't motivate you to help them. All the villain does is cause storms, so there's not a lot there to make you really hate them or understand them as a villain, which is sad for the main villain of the game. So your only real motivation to beat this villain is to leave the island and beat the game. Kind of a weak motivator. Another strange thing is the overworld. Zelda games have overworlds, but... they have things in them for you to do. In Shipwreck, there are a decent number of screens on the overworld to explore, but there's no point in exploring those extra screens. There are no enemies to fight in the overworld. No secrets to find. I believe there are one or two houses to enter. One has an item you'll need, the other might just have some treasure. But there's a desert, a swamp, a forest, even a graveyard in the overworld that are all empty. There are dungeons in four of the areas, a town in the center, and the final lighthouse to the North. That's it. The areas leading to the dungeons are just small mazes. I can understand this being cool for one, possibly two areas. But all four? It feels a little bit like padding. Why not put some enemies in here? Thow in some puzzles or terrain I need my new item from the previous dungeon to overcome. Something more than just a change of scenery would've been greatly appreciated and give the overworld more purpose. The dungeons aren't too bad. I just can't help but feel like the dungeon bosses could've been cooler. Maybe that's just me. The puzzles in dungeons were also a bit lacking. There could've been more or just trickier ones that required more thought. Still, I will admit the dungeons were probably the best part of the game. I think having more items would've opened up a lot more possibilities here. You can equip any two items at a time, but there are three empty item slots. I can't imagine why. Perhaps I've missed something, but it just feels like there was supposed to be more items than what we ended up with. Plus, none of the items were that creative. Sword and shield are basic. So is a bow. Having two slots for healing items, one for each specific one, is a bit silly since this is the only way to heal on the go. I like that you keep all the health you pick up because of this, but switching to the healing item every time can get tedious. And the pickaxe is probably the saddest item because, while it's cool for the dungeon you get it for, it serves no putpose outside of that. Why wasn't breaking rocks to get to new areas or breaking walls in other places part of the gameplay? Why was the pickaxe a one and done dungeon item? It just seems like such a missed opportunity. Also, while I liked the retro look, I wasn't too fond of some of the art and color choices, but that's not a big deal.Overall, Shipwreck is a cool little game. It just could've been so much more. There's lots of good ideas here, but they need to be explored. The adventuring in this game isn't much, even though the gameplay that IS there is solid. It is also fairly short, as I beat it in one sitting. It's only three bucks at full price. I'd say that, if you're a Zelda fan, or want to get into Zelda games without the stress of learning all the references or paying full game prices... this is a good start. But if you're a Zelda fan... don't come into this expecting Link's Awakening 2. It takes the basics of Zelda games and cuts to the chase, sacrificing most of the charm. If it was more expensive I wouldn't recommend it, but it's not bad for the price. If you're looking to test out Zelda basics, or if you're already a big Zelda fan, you'll probably appreciate this game. Otherwise it might just be too bland for your taste. Make a sequel expanding on these ideas and I'm sure I'd give it much more praise. I'm easily suckered into Zelda type games so make those improvements and you have a sale right here already.https:\/\/youtu.be\/eP7Q41HetLg. I just got all the achievements for this gamePros: its short, its cheap, its a fun zelda-like gameCons: its a little too short and the developers don't intend to add any DLC or stages to the game. There isn't much use for gold past a certain point. "Shipwreck" is a game I had left on my wishlist for a long time before I finally picked it up on the cheap. I am prone to getting the "Zelda itch" for top-down action-adventure games with atmospheric dungeons, challenging puzzles, memorable characters, engaging story, and -- maybe most importantly -- secrets and treasures. Playing "Shipwreck" has left that itch virtually unscratched.I hate to be too hard on "Shipwreck", though. The developer -- Brushfire Games out of Seattle-- is obviously a small independent operation, and I am sure they put tons of love into their product. There is a lot of effort on display here, but not enough for me to recommend this game.Controls for "Shipwreck" are pretty responsive and intuitive, and I dig some of the soundtrack. However, spritework, story, writing, environments, goals, and that ever-elusive "game feel" just don't cut it.I was unable to feel immersed while playing "Shipwreck", which is disappointing, as it is in the same style as some of my favorite games. Perhaps I have been spoiled by similar titles from producers with bigger budgets and greater pools of creativity and experience, but I still think "Shipwreck" walks an awkward line of wanting to experiment while trying to pay homage to its predecessors."Shipwreck" is certainly not worthless and is far from junk. I think there is a lot to learn -- for both Brushfire and other aspiring game designers -- by playing this game, dissecting it, and reflecting upon it. If you have the time and means to play "Shipwreck" and are interested in making games, I recommend you do so. I also think this game could be rewarding to new and younger players. However, if you are an experienced gamer looking to lose yourself in an exciting new world, you may want to steer clear of "Shipwreck's" unpolished and sometimes choppy waters.There are not many games on Steam like "Shipwreck" that I would recommend. One exception, however, is "Anodyne", another game that is not perfect but was, to me, shockingly immersive. Off of Steam, "Link's Awakening" would be my go-to, and is most likely what inspired "Shipwreck".. This game plays like someone wanted to make a 2D Zelda clone, but didn't realize what made those games fun.There are no secrets, no hidden walls, no rewards for exploration here. No fun little item interactions. Just a whole lot of empty screens, and a game that feels like the developers ran out of budget after finishing the sprites.It's a shame, because in playing through it I kept thinking to myself, "This could have been fun and full of heart if only they put a bit more effort into it.". Simple Zelda-like game, although about as short as the price tag implies (2-3 hours of playtime even if you go for 100%, assuming no deaths).+ The dungeons are good and atmospheric. They're complex and involve puzzles, but not unreasonably so.+ The boss fights manage to be unique and engaging even though you're mostly just fighting them like you would normal enemies. However, some of them are awfully short.+ Gorgeous pixel art. The game never stops looking good.- The item selection you're given throughout the game feels uninspired. The crossbow sees very little use outside of combat (and it tends to be impratical in combat, too), and the pick becomes worthless the instant you're done with the mine dungeon. There could've been done a lot more with riddles involving clever use of your items.- The overworld is maze-like, empty and boring. There are no enemies to fight, no secrets to discover, and on your search for the various dungeon entrances you'll often have to backtrack a couple of screens because you'll run into arbitrary dead ends with nothing in them.- Combat has hitbox issues and as a result feels very rough and somewhat un-fun. The game often registers a hit on you when the enemy\/projectile didn't even visually touch you, and some enemies (the small slimes are the most obvious offenders) will sometimes not register as hit even if your sword clearly went through them.- There are several points in the game where you're forced to take damage to progress, something I've never been a fan of.Overall, I did have my fun with this game, but... So much more could've been done with it. I'm a little disappointed.Is it worth getting? At this price, yes, if you like the genre. Just don't expect too much.. I didn't like this. The whole thing felt like a Game Maker tutorial project.It's short. Really, really, really, really short. You can get 100% in less than 2 hours.Graphics and screen size are built to be remeniscent of a Game Boy Zelda, but the high-quality sound effects and music clash with the 8-bit graphics.Overworld is just a big empty maze with no enemies, no secrets, and no interesting puzzles. It's just a bunch of shrubs and dead-ends, like the developers simply forgot to add monsters, or decided there was no point.Swordplay is painfully awkward, and enemies don't make a satisfying "crunch" sound when they take damage or die.Dungeon puzzles amount to nothing more than "You have to go through hallway X before you go through hallway Y." There are only about six types of enemies to fight in the entire game, including bats with the most irritating flight patterns I have ever seen in any Zelda-like.There's practically no story. No unsettling themes, no NPCs who tell you anything relevant, no huge conspiracy or plot twist. The bad guy is exactly who everyone says he is, and you kill defeat him to stop the storms and sail off the island just like everyone tells you to. The game makes no effort to hide the fact that you're just going through the standard motions of a Zelda game, but with none of the parts that make it fascinating or addicting, like using new items to solve puzzles or finding secret areas.Any positives? Well, a few. In this game, instead of enemies dropping hearts, they drop apples, which you can collect and eat later when you need them. Alternately you can buy bread from the shop which heals four hearts at once. I thought that was very good idea.The desert dungeon was a total blast. It was huge, had great atmosphere, and had some actual puzzles. It was the only time when the game felt like it was reaching its full potential. The Lighthouse was a bit annoying, but it was also a very well-designed and challenging final dungeon.The soundtrack feels too overproduced to fit in a retro Zelda game. Nevertheless, it's quite pleasant to listen to.Overall, I give this game a giant "Meh." It's not terrible, it just felt uninspired and pointless. Achievement hunters looking for an easy 100% should get this game. People looking for a homage to Link's Awakening should get this game, only if they're willing to lower their expectations to the absolute minimum. Otherwise, try Anodyne, which is a much more involved and heartfelt take on the same concept.. hello Zelda. long time no see :). A fun, little old-school RPG diversion. Contains well-planned dungeons, and plenty of nostalgic charm. Well worth the price.
Comments