Topic: Technosphere Reload

So I was lucky enough to get a copy of this game as a gift and since there isn't already a thread, here we go:

My first impressions after slightly less than an hour:

Pros:
Visually the game looks real cool. I'm really digging the sci-fi atmosphere. Sound effects are basic but effective.
Controls seem responsive and the momentum feels... how to describe it? I guess it feels right for what's going on. I feel like there's a lot of potential here and will play more when I have more time.

Cons:
Is there really no music? I mean like, 45 minutes of game play and nothing so far. Okay to be fair it took my like 20 minutes to get through training mode, but why would that be silent too? There's some ambient noise and the sound effects for various things but no music at all. Makes me wonder if it's a glitch or not, but I'm really not a fan of that.
The menus are pretty basic too. At first I thought the HD rumble and invert axis options were not usable because of the way they were grey. But know you can still click them. It just confused me at first.

Not a con really, just a personal opinion
Is there no story or context? Not that this style of game needs it, but some of the text kinda suggests there is/was/is going to be. I saw something about "the mission to save the human race" or something but nothing else.

Thank you very much for your honest thoughts about the game!

Yes, we are well aware of the cons. Please remember that we were responsible for porting the game, not how it plays. Yet, we had a lot of fun with Technosphere and later missions are really entertaining. Hope that more people will enjoy it.

@BlackRoseProject From a porting perspective then, assuming that indeed there is no music - then I see no problems whatsoever. The game seems to run perfectly well from a technical perspective. In my opinion it is a top quality port job.

The port is a pretty solid one. I did notice some frame drops here and there and at times the image seems overly soft. There also looks to be a lack of anti-aliasing, so the edges on certain assets looked a little rough. I would also consider having the HD Rumble as the default option because it is the preferable experience (at least for me). I also noticed the game over screen says “Spheres is over” which seems like a weird translation from another language. The game felt solid though and completely playable. I didn’t experience any crashes, clipping, or bugs and there didn’t seem to be any input lag in handheld mode.

The developers seemed influenced by Super Monkey Ball, Metroid Prime, and Marble Madness. I like the color palate of the game and how it gives the game a more cyberpunk style. The physics in the game feel natural and when I died it felt like my mistake. Occasionally foreground objects would obscure the ball, so giving the objects a transparency would help in those scenerios.

Perhaps the biggest criticism I have of the game is the overall lack of a distinct personality and an overall sense of speed. That’s what elevated games with a similar theme like Thumper to greatness. I know this is intended to be a platform game, but it lack some distinct feeling of propulsion (a bass heavy soundtrack would help out with that) or momentum.

Still having fun with it and will see it though till the end.

Cheers.

No music in the first 45 minutes of a game that has the word "Techno" in it?
I hope it drops some banging tunes after such a build up.

On a side note of comparison, I recently bought Burial's new album (Tunes 2011-2019) that is 25 minutes of ambience before the first (extremely soft) beat drops, which makes it all even more bold and meaningful. In normal circumstances you wouldn't even register the soft beat, but in this constellation it has an almost overwhelming effect. Would be nice if a game is so bold to achieve the same, but I haven't played Technosphere yet so it could go either way.

@SKTTR A bit off the topic of the forum, but you brought up Burial. The EPS are some of the best stuff. I remember hearing “Rough Sleeper” a while back and being transported to another place. He’s great at communicating this haunted and transcendental environment that most people find themselves within. Love it.

I haven't had a huge chance to dig further into it, but my initial impressions echo a lot of what was said. The lack of music makes it a bit sterile, etc, but the overall gameplay is really good!

From the porting perspective, however, that you guys are interested in, the one thing I'd point out is that, playing handheld, on the Switch screen, the contrast of the screen is such that visibility of what's ahead isn't always great. Things look like pits when there's a balance beam, moving platforms aren't always as visible as possible. The gamma for the game doesn't always play well with the Switch's handheld display. That might be something you guys could address on the porting side! I probably died due to not being able to clearly see where things were more than any other reason in my so-far brief time with it.

Yep, I can agree with most of what has been said: music, even soft background music, would have been nice, contrast is indeed an issue in portable mode, and personally, I would have liked an option to also have vertical camera movement, or like @NotTelevision said, they could have made signs and walls transparent when necessary.

But other than that, and the fact that I'm really not all that good in these types of games, it's still a solid little title, and would probably be a tentative recommendation for fans of Marble Madness type games.

@ThanosReXXX I did indeed love Marble Madness back in the day! One of my most played NES games. Though Madness was often an excellent description. I still think this is more Monkey Ball, but yeah, I can see the space for comparison a bit, good call!

@NEStalgia I think that although the comparison is easily made, Monkey Ball obviously never consisted of static levels, so in that respect this game couldn't be more different. In Monkey Ball you were actually controlling/manipulating the playing field, not the ball itself. And Marble Madness as such is a better comparison, because of the 3D environment, stationary surfaces, and controlling of the marble/ball itself.

Monkey Ball is more like these classic wooden games, that later turned into plastic ones, in which you have to maneuver small metal balls/marbles into holes (or alternatively, had to avoid them):

I was able to redeem a code to download the game for free.

At first I thought with the title music and 'sphere' in its name it could be some sort of Tetrisphere, but since I read a bit about it here, and heard the names Marble Madness and Super Monkey Ball I knew what I was getting into.

So far I played through the tutorial (and you know I love games that don't hesitate to kill you in the tutorial so you need to replay all of it) and stage 1, then the game softlocked after a neat story-explaning video cutscene at the start of stage 2. Anyway, I quit and reloaded the game and was back at my last checkpoint. The overworld's structure almost seems openworld, with forks in the road that I wasn't able to traverse back (yet) and collectibles in hard to reach places, but with lots of checkpoints that save your game and keep frustration away.

The game has a great aestethic and atmosphere, but the gameplay seems to be all the basics of a game in the genre without the overtop level design of a Super Monkey Ball or the tightness and fluidity of a Kororinpa (at least so far). Also, having no gyro motion at all is kind of a bummer since those are perfect for the genre.

I hoped it was just the tutorial that has no music, since the title screen has a neat tune. And I'm glad that's the case. Stage 1 and 2 have ambient background noise, and a diverse set of good sound-effects make up for the relative quietness (except the score counter at the end of a stage that sounds like an annoying alarm ringtone made by pitched-up Sonic rings). All in all it's a calm game where you need to concentrate on the parcour in front of you and solve the occasional puzzle, so the ambient sound adds to the atmosphere and pacing. Though I'm sure there will be more, once you get deeper into the story and to new stages.

It's getting late, but I'll be back soon enough with a deeper look.

@NotTelevison Yeah, I love the Rough Sleeper / Truant EP. That was the first new release since I got into Burial in 2011. Both tracks are on the new compilation/double album as well.

@ThanosReXXX OMG I haven't seen one of those in over 20 years! I remember my babysitter had one when I was a little kid and I played with it a bunch!