Computer Repair Simulator Spotlight

How many times have you had a computer issue? how many of those times did you wish you knew what things were so you could go in and know exactly what the problem is? and how often have you opened up your pc and gone " shit.. there's so much going on where do i start"

if you were anything like me for a very long time then you probably tick all those boxes, but what if i told you, there's a way you can mess around with a computer with no worries of breaking something, no issues if you forget the thermal paste, no issue if you don't ground your self... and it could be used to teach kids basics without spending $1000s on old hardware?

Computer Repair Simulator does just that, the aim of the "game" ( if you can even call it that id call it a teachers aid and sell it to the school boards wink wink) is to bring computer repair to schools and business around. The goal is to use this "game" to train people and help them to understand what does on inside a computer, at least that's how i see it.

some back ground on the devs themselves, the team is composed of 3 people,a lead programmer-Garrett Swindell,a marketing and web developer Euthimis Kexagioglou and their graphics artist Brook Swindell, all with full time jobs or still at school them self's.

the project its self is not funded in any way and is instead backed by the creators themselves with both software and money they have put into the project.that said they are looking into other funding methods to help speed along the processes to avoid delays where they can.

so far the "game"(really need a new name for it as its not a game )has been in development for around 9 months, that may not sound like a lot of time but when factoring in the fact they all have full time responsibilities and only being able to work on it in spare time leads to slower development, not much they can do really.

CRS can be picked up on their website in the alpha stage here------http://s627866874.onlinehome.us/alpha-game-downloads


now on to actual "game-play" the game plays as a person who works out of their shed repairing computers for anyone who calls, this can be anything from replacing a ram stick to adding a new agp (accelerated graphics port) all the way down to removing the solder from the underside of the connections.

it used basic wasd keys to move around the table you work from with the mouse wheel being used to scroll in and out, one thing id like to note is that you can not invert the mouse wheel scroll which may be a small issue for people who play with inverted controls.

Lets gt into how a " round" plays out shall we? picture this...

GamePlay

your standing in your shed on a sunny afternoon , your phone rings.. " hello there seems to be something wrong with my computer it {xyz} can i bring it around?"
you are then given the pc to work on, you must first check the work order to find out what the problem is, from there if you dont  know what part is what, they offer an inspect tool to will flash they broken parts in red to indicate what parts need to be replaced, after you have identified which parts are broken you get on to the "fun" part,

you must individually remove each part one by one until the broken part can be taken out, so for example, if the cpu is dead, you must first take the screws from the side panel off, then the panel its self, then the 24pin power plug. then the cpu fan plug, then the fan clips, the fan... all the way down until the last drop of solder is removed and the cpu can be removed.

now that you have the broken part taken off you go into your inventory and find the broken part along with anything else you have taken off, you have either the option to sell the broken part, or you can repair the broken part, from what i can tell in the future you will have the option to buy new parts or just repair them based on how badly it is broken but at this stage all you can do is repair the part.

Great parts fixed,now you get to re assemble the pc, this is where the game takes its turn from game into teacher aid like i mentioned before, this is the part where you get to teach people how a pc goes together, no admittedly you cant show the force needed to tighten a screw, or feel the force needed to latch a cpu( if you haven't done it before its a little scary using that much force on something so expensive)

now what happens if you forget something? well nothing.. the game wont let you finish the job until everything is done, at the end of this i will have a link to a video of some game-play with some of my experiences.

for how well the game plays, with the small bugs i found with the wasd keys not working, easily fixed by just clicking the mouse its a solid 7/10 you cant say this game doesn't work because it does the game-play is solid and it just ..works

Visuals


the game looks.. as you would expect, its clear that its just one person working on it, but thats fine, you dont need bright flashy lights and over the top colours on a simulation game, especially if you are trying to show pc parts, a ram stick should look like a ram stick, a cpu fan should look like a cpu fan and so on and so on, i do like the fact that if you open the shed door you can see a lake and a couple tree, but i feel they could have done a bit more with the inside work shop space, all you have is a relatively empty peg board aside from a couple screw drivers, a desk lamp a blue anti static mat and a couple cupboards behind you, i couple posters or even a car model in the the back ground could have further improved the atmosphere, im giving the visual aspect of the game a 6/10 just because i dont get the impression of being a guy in a shed fixing pc like they are going for.

Fun

This is a hard one to give a final score on... because its all subjective at the end of the day, but to me , the person who picked the game up because of it looked interesting not knowing what to expect when i hit the download button.. i had fun, its exactly what the game implies, its a simulation game based around fixing computers, now that might not be fun for everyone,and thats fine you have to remember this isnt the sort of thing they are trying to sell to the masses, this is a very perticular type of product that i feel is perfect for who they are aiming it towards so im giving it a 6/10



Finale thoughts on Computer Repair Simulator, for what it is, and the amount of time they ave spent on it its good. its no AAA title but they arent trying to be , the aim here isnt to take over the sim world and have everyone rushing out the door to replace that broken cmos battery on the clients pc, i keep bringing this point up but its a teaching aid, polish it up maybe add a bit more personality to it in way of design ie that car model i said or a poster, and take it to the board of studies in your area with the amount of time we spend on computers these days and how young kids are being taught how to use them this would be a perfect demonstration tool for a teacher to show off


Remember to check out the games website http://s627866874.onlinehome.us/
and while your at it give us a follow on twitter over at https://twitter.com/Spotlight_gr
anyone that wishes to get in contact with us our email is spotlightgamesreview@gmail.com
check out our youtube channel over at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RoOKJBv1BU3yRQFV20ejw
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link to game play of the game   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vglScmZ-Q58

Artificial Selection Game Spotlight

So recently I reached out on twitter for any devs with playable  builds of a game they have or a game they know someone who’s is working on, and asked if they wanted some press, and with what I thought was a lost cause, I was contacted by the one of the creators of the game Artificial Selection, a game that has been in the works for a while now and is even going on the steam greenlight program later this year, so after a little back and forth from them I was given a Dev build of the game to do a spotlight on, which I have over on my YouTube channel, if you’d prefer to just watch the game and see what it’s all about, you can head over to www.youtube.com/larryplaysgames

But… for those of you that would like to read my thoughts on the game I’ve decided to to a full write up of my thoughts and idea so let’s get this started shall we?

Firstly I’d like to reiterate that this is a Dev build and not a public release of the game so anyone who wants to play this I’m sorry you’ll have to get in contact with the devs, and maybe, you might be able to work something out no promises though.

So what’s this game about? It’s a 2D top down shooter, that’s what it is, nothing new, but… instead of just using the normal weapons upgrading system what they have done is to “mutate” the weapons which I thought was a really nice touch this is done with creates that you can pick up, but I’m getting a head of myself a little aren’t I, let’s start from the beginning,

The first thing I saw when I loaded the game was the menu screen, its vibrant RGB neon coloured grid back ground really made the darkish blue menu buttons pop, the buttons themselves have small electrical trails in them around the words, which I thought made it stand out more. There are 7 menu buttons in total and I’ll use them kind of like a table of context for the post to explain the elements in each.

Campaign: So the campaign starts out with a basic story of a good guy having to stop a bad guy from unleashing a terrible weapon on civilization, pretty basic story line but from what I was told the main  feature of this game wasn’t the story as much as it was the gameplay, think of the campaign kind of like a tutorial, it teaches you the ropes on how to play so your can jump in and make your own maps to play with friends, kind of like with AAA titles like call of duty, you play the first little bit of the story mode to learn how to play, then you go and jump online to play with friends. So with this being said there are still 8 playable levels with only one of the not having any enemies to kill just power ups and health points this is just before the boss door.

Controls are pretty standard WASD to move, left mouse button to fire main weapon right to fire special, 1234 to swap between weapons, R to reload(game will auto reload but if you want you can manually do it) and the spaced bar to dash.

The enemies in this game don’t go on patrol rounds per say, they are activated via sound and sight, so if one sees you it will come after you and alert the others, just like it will do if it hears the sound of your weapon firing, which I thought made it more fun and challenging, trying to see how far I could get without being seen was a nice touch.

Destroyable environment, not something a lot of games have but something more should, gone with the days of just barrels or pots being broken to give you things, while this game only has specific things that hold items, the fact that I could sit there and spam a wall till it broke was pretty fun (and no you can’t just skip to the last level… I tried).

The music for this game was created by one of the developers of the game Chris mills-bowling, he has a YouTube channel with tons of his own music on it links to this are over in the description of the video if you want to find out, its mostly upbeat techno influenced, relying heavily on both a synthesizer and drums but also using a guitar and even a violin during the open of the track, this all combined adds to a create a fantastic sound track for the game, if I had any complaints about it, it would be that it is quite repetitive, I understand that making a song that lasts for that long will become repetitive, and that there are only so many sounds one can work with.

The more you go through the game, the harder it gets, right? Well yeah it wouldn’t be a challenge if it was easy, to many games these days are too easy to beat, and this one is kind of the same, yes it’s hard to beat the boss, but it’s the boss it should be hard, but the a part from just adding more to the screen on later levels, I didn’t feel that it was really a challenge, which is where the arena comes in.

Arena: Want an arena mode? Yeah this game has it, and boy is it fun, I felt it was just what the game needed, and granted this was what the developers wanted the game to be, I would have been quite happy with just playing this, with a max wave size of 10 waves with a possible 50 mobs each wave and an actual difficulty setting, it was where I spend most of my time with the game.

Editor: Ever thought “dam if only I could make my own levels in this game and make it how I want!’? well they have you covered in this one with a possible 33 different textures to use as walls and a total of 28 different ground types, I doubt you’ll have problems finding room to place the whopping 64 different spirits, now apart from those in the editor mode there’s really only 2 other interesting things, there’s a load/save feature and a test mode, where you can spawn in a player and test out your idea, if you watch the video I go over one of the small levels I made as a test of some of the textures.

Credits: It’s just what it sounds like, it’s the credits it has the names of all the people who worked on the game, including the names of people they got sounds from, they fly across the screen which is nice, but it makes it a little hard to hover over the names to find out what they person did on the game.

Settings: With things like volume, resolution, an in game fps counter there really isn’t much you can’t change in the game, vsync to particle physics, having a good setting menu is key to a game, if you can’t have the game run the way you want, you won’t want to play it. So having the ability to do so was defiantly a tick in the right box.

Simulation: This was one of the things I wasn’t too sure about, pressing this button will play out a 10v10 match on the back ground, while I agree it is a good thing to show as it shows what the game looks like, it felt like there was too much going on, onscreen. Maybe have it as a watchable video or something, but having it playing on the back ground was just a little too much for my liking.

Exit Game: Not much I can really say about this, it was a button to exit the game.

Now comes the part of the review/spotlight that most people look for, a score rating, now here at SpotlightGameReview I do things a little differently the game is broken in to 3 section, Gameplay, Visuals, and Fun, I go over each really quickly and give a score out of 10 for each for a possible best score of 30

Gameplay: With the use of the standard WASD keys and the mouse, the game was very enjoyable for both me, someone who uses a mouse and keyboard often and even others in my house hold who are more console oriented, we all agreed that the mechanics and the way the game was set out was good simple, But yet good for replay ability. With that said I give a 7/10

Visuals: The game was full of onscreen action tons of partials fly all over the place, explosions and dead robot bits, but while I enjoyed this, others felt it was a little overdone , now granted you can turn the partials down to the lowest setting, but to play that low just didn’t give the same immersion 6/10 

Fun: This is the big one, how fun was it, if you’re a fan of beatem ups, that what it is, while it has a campaign that’s not what the game was designed for, its designed as an arena game, see how long you can survive, if your also a fan of casual gaming, it works well as something to sit down with a couple of people and try to beat each other’s score, But, if you like to sit down for a game and play the story sorry but this isn’t for you. Still though 8/10

So my final score and thoughts of the game 21/30 or for the % people out there 70%

The game is fun, don’t get me wrong I had a blast with it but being someone who isn’t really a fan of that style of game I wasn’t fully devoted to playing it, and I don’t think I’ll go back to the game until it’s at least on steam greenlight…