For the Game Analysis assignment I had the option of chosing between many indie games to provide feedback of my thoughts on the game I chose. This was one of my favorite projects that I have completed so far in the Digital Arts and Media major. This Project consisted of analyzing the developers concepts and ideas that the developer's have created over the course of the game and its making. So what game did I choose?
Tadpole Tales is an 2D hand drawn indie game that is solely based on to clean up the river from the monsters. I believe that the Monsters represent waste in today's society that is thrown into rivers, and the Tadpoles are the creatures that live amongst that biological environment that wanna live in a clean envirorment. Within the game the Tadpoles have the mission to clean up the river, by shooting them with their mouths using a disinfectant that "cleans them up" which gets them closer to living in a clean environment. The Game Developers really put a lot of time into this game as it has a real life meaning, and I believe that they are trying to spread awareness about our ecosystems. What I mean by this is, they want people to understand that our garbage and polution we put into our different biological envirorments is damaging to the envirorment and the creatures that live there. They also are showing us we should be keeping every aspect of the world as clean as possible.
The graphics of the game are not very complex, but they are unique in their own way everything within the game was hand drawn which adds a unique set of graphics to the game. Tadpole Tales gives you the details of the backstory while loading in which added anticipation to help defend the river from the monsters that have corrupt the rivers envirorment. While the tadpoles want the river to be clean and friendly, so we must help defend and “clean” up the river. On the left you will see a picture of a boss fight, I used this picture as it shows how unique the hand drawn art really is. The picture on the right shows a preview of the game premier before you play, I thought they went above and beyond with the short film showing the backstory to Tadpole Tales. Since there are a lot of frames built into the game because it was a hand drawn game put into digital technology the files are really large and it takes a while to load into the game to play, I believe this can be an easy fix for the game developers, to keep the originality of the graphics while having faster loading times.
The settings in tadpole tails are very easy to control you have three settings start extras, and options, options allow you to change the graphics within the game.This is mostly to tailor the best possible graphics to the technology you are playing Tadpole Tales on. Although they are very simple to control, I believe that they have just the right amount so people do not have issues with understanding the options and graphics available within the game. Some game developers make this very hard to understand and it actually turns them away from playing, furthermore, the user might not even try the game if the options are to complex. Luckily, Tadpole Tales hit this right on the money, it is simple, yet a great system. The start button is just in the menu which allows you to play the game and extras shows players the back story to the game and has links to all the creators that developed the game over the years. Within the steam version of the game they added new technology to the game, you can now choose in the options tab between "hard mode" which is equal to normal, and "difficult mode" which is the hardest setting of Tadpole Tales. In all I would say that the game is very easy to maneuver within and is a very pleasant experience.
Within Tadpole Tales you cannot pick different characters to clean up the river with, you have to work your way up by collecting hearts as they give you more health which results in recieving better characters to defeat the monsters and clean the river with. The character that you start with is a Tadpole that eventually becomes bigger as you gain hearts, the second charcter you can earn is the evolved Tadpole that is slowly becoming bigger and more powerful towards the monsters, and the last charcter you can achieve is the Frog, the Frog is the most powerful character in Tadpole Tales, letting you clean the river with ease. I feel that character customization is something the game developer can improve upon as people like to make their character into their own. This would give the game a more diverse feeling and have users more connected to the game.
Within Tadpole Tales you do not get to know the characters that well in a humanly matter, but you do become aware of their abilities and strengths as you clean the river. An example of this is with the Frog, you can kill the monsters faster, in return you have a much bigger hitbox, making it hard to stay as the powerful frog for a long time. What is a Hitbox? A Hitbox is the frames surrounding the character you are using and when you have a bigger character, the hitbox of that character is much bigger than one that is smaller than the character. This is a big deal In Tadpole Tales because the monsters are constantly throwing "garbage" at you and it is hard to dodge these when you are a bigger character.
There are many NPC (Non-Player Character) Characters within the world of Tadpole Tales, including the Monsters, Bosses, and the flies that fly over the river and try to polute the water. In Tadpole Tales you do not have conversations with these characters it is more like you come across them as they are trying to polute the river, while you are trying to clean the river. These NPC Characters throw rocks, bombs, and more at you while you are cleaning them up.
The only function within the game is you pick up hearts to gain more health in better characters along the way of killing all the monsters in cleaning the river up.
As a player in the game, I believe it is very hard to get past some levels because you don't start with enough health to deal with all the possible things like can hurt you within the game. Maybe they should add rounds to the game, so you are ready for the next steps instead of just piling them all into one big round.