Splendidland is artist Samanthuel Louise Gillson. She is most famous for her “don’t talk to me or my son ever again” meme post, and character design for a few enemies on Deltarune Chapter 2. Her website is www.splendid.land .
Anyway her games are megaman sprite game, FRANKEN, and Formless Star. All these games are free, and none of them are long. This is a review of those three games.
Megaman Sprite Game
https://megamanspritecomic.tumblr.com/post/65735240451/megaman-sprite-game-released-on-october-31st
what
FRANKEN
https://splendidland.itch.io/franken
Short, fun RPG that reminds me of old GBC RPGs I used to play. A great throwback to relive retro gaming, in the space of 2 hours instead of 20 hours. The store page estimated 30 mins – 1 hour, but I am very slow at games.
I think its cute enough, and has things to offer outside of nostalgia. Its got a nice vibe and great character designs, and a fun story. This story also riffs on RPG tropes, and its not very surprising to anybody familiar with the past decade of meta RPGs, not that predictability is bad. It would have been electric if it was released ten years earlier, but its not bad now.
One detail I really like is the dissonance between the field sprites and character portraits. Although the game only has one artist, it gives the impression of a game with multiple artists and multiple visions for the same character, which feels very true.
Another detail that I like is that Cid Pollendina is here.
Formless Star
https://splendidland.itch.io/formless-star
Speaking of GBC RPGs, just by coincidence, I had played Dragon Quest Monsters 2 last year. One thing that DQM2 does is have randomly generated “worlds”, as part of its Pokemon-like multiplayer mechanics. It’s a mechanic I was thinking of when I was playing Formless Star.
Its a little exploration game about finding weird creatures. It scratches the itch of finding weird guys, and I think if that sounds good to you then you should give it a go.
There’s no point not going for 100%. You can end the game early, but the 100% ending doesn’t take long to achieve and the additional scenes for completion are the best in the game.
I had trouble finding the last creature, a UFO who’s gimmick is that only one spawns per map. The in-game hint wasn’t very helpful for this one, which is unusual, as the in-game hints are otherwise very helpful. There was probably also an element of bad luck in my experience. Oh well.
final score
