I have finished the game and it was not bad especially for splatterhouse fans. Im gonna give my review bout this game here like I did on the ULMF:
Story: 5/10
I didn't really see any interest in the story but it is pretty straight forward. A faculty member brought evil into the school by reciting the pages from the book which kinda reminds me of Evil Dead from the necronomicon. A student named Jessica got knocked down from her after-school nap by an unknown force then she checked the corridor only to find people getting slaughtered or turned into monsters. Armed with only a box cutter, she decided to flee the school while fighting for her life but in the end she manage to save the school from evil and things turned back to normal. FYI the ending sucks and we don't get to see her in it :-P
Gameplay: 7/10
Similar 2D Side-Scroller gameplay mechanics from the splatterhouse series which brings back the good old days. You start out as Jessica with 6 lives and unlimited continues. There are only 5 stages in the game, 1 - 4 has 3 areas while 5 has 5 areas and it gets harder as you move along. The basic controls are just like in the series. You press Z to jump, X to attack, A to attack with any weapons you pick up and S to pause the game. You simply have to fight your way through various enemies while avoiding traps till you reach the far right end which will take you to a new area. Weapons placed along the way can be a bit useful but are very limited. There are some clothing damage for the loss of 2 lives and you can't restore them after eating donuts dropped from the ghost mustache so you will remain naked later on. When you are down to your last life, you get a nice gore or rape animation from enemies which makes it up to Demonophobia and a CG game over screen when you choose not to continue. There is no continue or stage select at the menu unless you've completely beaten the game which means you have to start over after the game over screen, now some players could find this frustrating.
Sound: 4/10
The music seems alright but the SFX can be annoying, repetitive and most don't really sync well with the sprite animations. When you see Jessica getting blown to bits, there doesn't seem to be an explosion sound added along with few other sprites. Too bad you don't have the option to adjust the sound and music volume so you could either play the game in silent while listening to your favorite music album without being pissed by the SFX or as it is.
Design: 8/10
The CGs, sprites and backgrounds are well designed by the author just like the previous games. You can unlock CGs in the gallery after losing to the enemies with a game over screen as well as Dead Anime Mode which will give you a good look at the sprite death animations. The CGs look gruesome and quite a bit scary compared to the sprites with some censorship.
Overall: 6/10
Since this game does bring back good memories from splatterhouse, it doesn't really fit right. It seem that the developer is focusing more on the design than the game. Due to the short gameplay with minimal challenge and cheap scares, most players with moderate platform skills can easily finish the game in around 30 - 45 mins. The Bosses are a piece of cake other than facing group of enemies with traps in the way can be a challenge. The game can be a bit slow on low end machines especially when you have plenty of sprites on-screen. There are also some noticed bugs and glitch in the game where the protagonist gets stuck in an idle animation in some way after losing your last life forcing you to start over and the damage dealt to the 3rd boss doesn't always fit through up close. Bad SFX play mostly during death animations than your regular playthrough. We also noticed missing SFX in some sprite animations so hope we might get to see them in the future updates as well as fixes and other improvements. If you are a splatterhouse fan then you could give this game a go while others might wanna stay away from its unfair $16 price tag on the Dlsite unless you have a fan buddy who owns the game or have them share the CGs for you at least.
Also here's the link to the full game:
super splatter zone.zip
You can even have a look at the tool they used to make this game right here:
Clickteam.com - Multimedia Fusion 2
