Adventure Gamers - Forums

Finally just got chance to give it go, two levels in, and I’m just happy to say “hello!” to my old friends. The visuals look a bit more strange “modernized”, and I miss the oddly loud sound effects from the previous games, but overall - I really like it. Not going to judge total difficulty based on two levels (they seem fairly easy, and I remember being stumped in quite a few places in the original games), so I’ll hold on passing judgement for now in regards to this component.

I have no idea why/how these wacky games became such memorable moments from my childhood (amongst all the other titles), but I’m glad they did.

Also, since Pierre Gilhodes did mention Steam keys on his Kickstarter - I’m pretty sure Steam page for the game is a matter of time. Wonder if that means other parts will come to Steam as well? They were the sole reason I signed up for GOG
I’ll gladly buy them again on another platform to show the support to the developer.

Finally got my hands on the game.

I thought it was quite awful.

Everything felt very slow. The characters take forever to move. I hated the fact that you couldn’t save at any time. Also, didn’t like the lack of side-scrolling screens - even the old ones had that!

Saw a bunch of bugs. A lot of puzzles are tedious because the screens are so big, the backtracking is a chore. Also, I felt like a lot of the puzzles were about doing the same thing over and over again, like giving food to the fish in level 2 or punching the eyes in the city…

It takes a long time before the game starts to be a bit crazy like Gobliiins 3, but it never gets as fun. I liked the painting level ok. The dream level had a good concept, but most puzzles didn’t make any sense. Why do I have to make all of the students happy, I thought the goal was to make the mad scientist less evil?

I think the game is, overall, badly designed.

It really feels like a mediocre old-school game. It’s clear that Pierre didn’t play anything since the 90s.

So I’m a bit clueless about who’s gonna like this game, except for hardcore fans.

I mean, I love Gobliiins 3… but I still think this is a bad game. I think it only works because of nostalgia.

I gave up at the lab level.

EDIT: Added spoilers tags.

Joe monsters - 04 August 2023 05:39 PM

So I’m a bit clueless on who’s gonna like this game, except for hardcore fans.

 

I’m not a “hardcore” fan, but I quite liked the game. I didn’t see any bugs in mine, although I got an itch.io version.
I thought the levels were quite clever with a nod to earlier games and didn’t find stuff that was repetitive as annoying as you did.

It wasn’t a game that will blow your socks off, no, and there’s some stuff that could have been done better, but,overall, I quite enjoyed it.

I also forgot about the pixel-chasing, like in the house level. It took me an hour to find an item. It was ok in the 90s. I think it’s ridiculous in 2023.

I know we all love adventure games, but still… Felt like the game was as old as me, and I’m not saying that in a good way.

A lof of recent games succeeded to have a nice old-school vibe while being accessible, fun and modern. I’m thinking, for example, of Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard.

Frankly, I think Gobliiins 5 will age poorly.

I’m not a “hardcore” fan, but I quite liked the game. I didn’t see any bugs in mine, although I got an itch.io version.

I also played the itch.io version. I don’t know if the Steam version is better. Having manual saving and side-scrolling screens would have make the game less horrible to play, and I probably would have, at least, finish it. Don’t think it would have save anything else.

Doom - 04 August 2023 06:27 PM

Wait, but pretty much all levels scroll left-right and/or up-down. Or do you mean you can’t manually scroll through them without making your goblin walk there?

Yes, that’s what I meant. I remember being able to do that in Gobliiins 3, which made everything go smoother. Like, for example, if I wanted Blount to go somewhere, I could scroll, click on the spot of interest, then wait for him to go there while looking at something else, or moving another character. Here, I need to move the goblin somewhere first for the screen to side-scroll. It got old very fast.

Doom - 04 August 2023 06:27 PM

My main criticism as well, but it feels like Pierre enjoys putting those things into his games — Goblins 4 also had plenty of those “puzzles”. Just shows what a great team he and Muriel Tramis made, the games they designed together were anything but repetitive. I did enjoy most of Gob5 though, especially the “crazy” levels. As for the dream level, making everyone happy to change their attitude towards the young mad scientist loser and thus boost his reputation in the eyes of his beloved one felt pretty logical to me.

I actually hated that in Gobliiins 4 as well. Maybe I was more of a fan of Tramis’s work without realizing it, then. For the dream level, it felt like things were badly explained to me. Boost the evil doctor’s reputation and make everybody love him made sense, yes, and I did that first. However, after I was done, I was told I still needed to do stuff. Then I needed to make some random students happy for no reason. I thought the goal was to change the doctor’s past, not give the pen to some boy or whatever. Maybe I did the puzzles in the wrong way… but then, why was this possible?

Doom - 04 August 2023 07:32 PM

Joe monsters - 04 August 2023 06:36 PM

Here, I need to move the goblin somewhere first for the screen to side-scroll. It got old very fast.

I thought he fought to find a balance between side-scrolling and static screen gameplay while trying to implement all the ideas he had in his head. Like, in Woodruff we also had a slow-moving character who had to cross huge locations — alone (!). Yet most locations still fit one screen, they had fewer interactive spots and puzzles, and they were interconnected, making up for an “open world”. Here he tried to come up with a Gobliiins-style linear gameplay and a Woodruff scale. That “dream” level you mentioned could’ve been easily divided into 2-3 levels, but he decided to make it one long level. I also think the perfect balance was found in Goblins 3, I would have rather played a sequel to it, and with Tramis as a co-designer (which would probably never happen).

Yes, I agree with everything you said. I hope he’ll find a better balance for Gobliiins 6. (I heard he wanted to work on that next.)
Is Tramis still making games? That would be nice, to be honest.

Not sure if it was said, but Gilhodes is working on Gobliins 6. He posted this on Facebook:

Two “i"s this time. He confirmed that the main characters would be Fingus and Winkle from Gobliins 2.

Crowdfunding will start next year.

Hopefully, he will work on the side-scrolling, save and .exe issues for this one.

I guess I was a bit harsh on the 5th one, but still, I was disappointed with what he did. I really hope this will be a step in the right direction. Gobliiins 3, while old, is still one of my favorite games.