The sad thing about Mahluk: Dark Demon is that it’s almost a decent game. Graphically, it emulates LIMBO’s silhouette artstyle, and does soThe sad thing about Mahluk: Dark Demon is that it’s almost a decent game. Graphically, it emulates LIMBO’s silhouette artstyle, and does so pretty well: the environments look suitably grim and all the monsters are suitably creepy, as well as being fluidly animated. It only stumbles a little when it comes to the last area, the Castle, where the backgrounds are that of generic light grey stone, with only a few constantly repeating décor elements, and it simply looks considerably worse than earlier silhouettes. The soundtrack is fitting, if unmemorable, and the sound effects (i.e. monster death cries) are pretty great: the odd lack of whirrs and such for some mechanical traps like buzzsaws is only clear omission.
Storyline is as simple as it goes: Mahluk wants to kill evil King Kindar who trapped him in hell: you get two opening screens of text telling you that, and you get one more after defeating each boss. Notice the “after”: while it's obvious you'll be fighting Kindar at the end, two other bosses are completely unforeshadowed (first, Bugh, is literally a giant fly out of nowhere, and Samator the ice-spitting thing is equally sudden.), though neither is anything else in the game. You occasionally encounter an NPC telling you how evil King Kindar is as you run past them, but that’s it. While collecting scraps of lore around the level might not always be optimal, in this case it would have certainly been an improvement, both making the game more interesting and actually encouraging exploration.
As it is, the levels do have a few nooks and crannies off the mandatory path, but visiting them is almost never worth it. As you won’t encounter anything to do with the story, or any unique sights or sounds, the only viable reward is unique loot, which doesn’t exist in Mahluk’s world. Instead, you buy your few available upgrades in the main menu shop, and the only things you find in vases/chests are coins, gems (instantly converted to more coins) and potions giving you 3 magic projectiles a pop (lost upon death). It’s difficult to describe how underwhelming it gets after a while, especially since you’ll soon collect so many coins (which do not get taken away upon death) that they’ll no longer be a meaningful reward. The only upgrades that are worth buying are, in order, more health (from 3 to 5), scythe (more damage than sword, and can reach enemies slightly below you, unlike heavy sword) and powerful dash (insta-kills nearly everyone, and makes the fights a lot more fun.) You also have a spell capacity increase, but it’s so rare to get 3+ potions in a row and thus go above the default capacity, or indeed, actually use enough spells to need that extra capacity, that it’s pointless. After all, these spells are as lame as they come: a generic fireball and ice bolt, both dealing same damage as a regular sword attack. While ice bolt at least has the decency to freeze enemies for a while, fireball is nothing special. Both projectiles are also cancelled out upon hitting enemies’ projectiles thus making them even lamer.
In all, however, the enemies are generally weak and hardly a threat. This is particularly true in the first few levels, where it’s mainly slow zombies, slightly faster/tougher bipedal spider things, bats that fly in a perfect straight line without ever chasing you, and orcs who can at least swing a club. Later on, there are some giants who at least warrant a powerful dash (and are quite fun to kill that way), ghosts that are not a threat normally, but usually appear during the already tough platforming sections, and ranged enemies which can annoy: both due to their attacks themselves, and because of their ability to still generate projectiles while being frozen and/or after just getting killed! Even so, they are nowhere near as much of a challenge as the game’s platforming. It’s tough, full of various traps, screw-yous and general pixel-perfect stretches, which is why the inability to buy jump height increase in the shop (which would’ve been far more useful than anything to do with combat) is so maddening. The 3 bosses are quite lame: not only are they a lot easier than the game's "normal" levels, they actually get easier relative to each other. Bugh and Samator both have only 2 attack patterns they repeat ad infinitum, one after the other. Kindar has 3, but is actually the easiest boss: you can simply jump behind him, in the space between him and the wall, and keep on cutting him with your scythe until he dies.
In all, this is not a good game, but I was nevertheless sufficiently interested in its design to finish it. I believe the creators do have the potential to make a much better game later on, though. They have skill with the aesthetics and got the gameplay basics right; now they need to work on things like checkpoint placement, story/lore placement, designing progression/upgrade curve that makes sense and creating more interesting enemies and bosses.… Expand
