Hangman Ultra
by Martin aka Hard Rock
The game of Hangman brought to your PC.
| Steve Stick aka Hangman, the Earth's hero, received a surprise on Saturday. He apparantly received mail, but Steve never got mail. His friends and agency always used the telephone. Steve opened the letter. It read: "Steve Stick, we have bad news. Apparantly Evil Stickman has devised a gun that will blow up the Earth. We have no idea where the gun is, but we know he left clues. Head to the city. Your first clue will be there. But beware! Evil Stickman will stop at nothing to destroy you. Steve, you are our only hope!" |
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| For a game that is basically Hangman, it has a lot of features. There is a training mode, a story mode with three difficulty levels, and a two player mode. There is a nice menu that lets you choose from among the choices, which you might not expect from a game that looks this way. It shows that there is a lot of quality code under the graphics, which are nothing to write home about. I actually found the story mode kind of fun. The number of words, phrases, and whole sentences makes for a variety of puzzles. The story mode's nine levels do not vary, so while it is very linear, the main difference is in what random puzzles come up in the levels. In Easy you have unlimited chances, while the two harder levels have interesting animations showing Hangman getting destroyed by Evil Stickman if you get too many wrong answers. The main problem is starting the entire story mode over, so you have to be careful. I didn't see any bugs except for what was already documented in the readme file. All in all, while this was a learning experience for the programmer, I found it well done. |
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| Probably one of the worst aspects of the game, it surprisingly doesn't take away much from the game play. While I can't blame Martin for the graphics (which he apologizes for in the readme), I have to say they could use plenty of work; however, I found that they went hand in hand with the story in that both were of such poor quality that it was obvious these weren't the primary concerns of the programmer. These things hide the solid code beneath. This might unfortunately turn off a lot of people who might miss out on a decent game. There are some animations, and it can sometimes be more fun to die witin each level just see the different ways Hangman loses. | |
| Not much to do in this game, so play control is easy to do. I found it pretty well done. | |
| PC speaker sounds when you move the menu arrow and choose letters during the game. Not much else besides. | |
| The puzzles that the game provides are obviously limited and so once you memorize them it becomes boring rather quickly. The good news is that there is a two player mode, where they challenge comes from your opponent and can result in unlimited puzzles. Still, the challenge of the game comes from figuring out which letters make up the puzzle. It is a matter of guessing, but after you get enough letters the puzzles naturally become easier as whole words can be easily found. | |
| What makes this game fun is the fact it is an easy game to just pick up and play. The story makes for an enjoyable laugh as it is cheesy. While the single player game is limiting in that there are not too many different version of the puzzles, the two player mode allows you and a friend to test each other. In itself, the game is as fun as it was when you played it at school, but the limited puzzle set is what plagued home console games like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, since neither had many puzzles. This means more and more repeats that make the game boring for those who have played and frustrating for people who haven't who are playing against those who have. | |
| While the game itself is designed nicely, it would have been helped a bit more by the ability of the game to include an expansion set of puzzles. This alone would have made the game a little more fun, since the challenge level would be increased. As it is, the game has poor graphics and sound, but it doesn't hinder the gameplay at all, which is what counts in this kind of game. While the game is a little fun, I would suggest this game to those people who don't mind a game that requires minimal thinking skills. It isn't for everyone, but as a first project, it was well done. | |
| .zip file: 85KB download | |
| V Planet |