Giveaway of the Day - Azangara

This was a rather recent giveaway. It’s still a good platformer with perhaps too few levels.

This was given away just a few months ago anf received 96% thumbs up from 300 votes and received 90 comments. Check them out by following the link below:

http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/azangara/#comments

I’m off to more appointments today so I’ve just copied my numerous posts from October with some slight editing.

Activation:

I had no problems activating this game. Once installed I closed the game as instructed and went to where the installed games folder was located; I then placed the configuration file that was part of the downloaded zip file into the games folder as instructed; then returned to the game and it said registered on the first screen that you get, which is a small configuration screen that allows you to choose your screen resolution. The screenshots link I gave below includes an image of that particular window.

Introduction:

I’ve played through the tutorial and training levels which were worryingly fast to navigate through, eight rooms in each castle, and as you would expect from tutorials and training, they were relatively easy, showing you the obstacles and objects you can use. Once into the actual castle levels, of which there are five, my concerns about the levels being short were thankfully not confirmed. The levels are reasonably long and complex enough to give a child some challenge.
The game does support joystick operation, but unfortunately there is no mouse enabled, so it is basically a keyboard controlled game, using the arrow keys and the space bar. The game can be saved and continued at a later date if you wish.
Follow the link below for screen captures of the game:

All on one page:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Azangara/?start=all

As a slideshow:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Azangara/?action=view&slideshow=true

My opinion:

This is a very well made 3D platform game, with enough game play to entertain the family for at least a few days. I didn’t play out the first of the full castles, but the first room did seem fairly large. As someone pointed out previously, there are some quirky screen resolutions, 26 in all starting from 320 x 200 to 1680 x 1050. Some of the traditional resolutions are missing, but this should not stop you playing the game as the borders which can be affected when you play in some screen resolutions don’t impinge on the actual game routes and in no way spoil the gorgeous graphics.
If you follow the link to the homepage below you can get some idea as to what each of the other castle levels looks like. I said that I think there were only five main levels as the tutorial and practice levels were included in the advertised seven levels. I think ‘I may’ be wrong on that score, even though from the map it looks like there are only 5 castles to explore once you’ve finished the very small tutorial and practice levels as when I look at the seven images of the seven castle (over on the games home page), the first two do not correlate with what I saw in the tutorial and demo levels, which basically used the same rooms to practice. Also you get bonus levels which make this game a little more worthwhile to download.
http://www.azangara.com/en/index.html

Please follow the links above to see the images I have posted. You will get a very good idea by following the images via the slide show, but if you are in a hurry, you can follow the link that takes you to a page full of thumbnail views.
This is an excellent family game, which IMO is worth a good 7 out of 10. I don’t usually play platform type games, but this one, which I think is much better than Turtix that was given away some time ago is a worthy game giveaway.

One seriously negative comment though; it’s not worth $19.95. Firstly, there isn’t enough game play to justify such a price, I have similar 3D puzzle/platform games to this that were bundled into a 20 games pack for the same price. I’m not saying it’s ‘not’ a worthy game, but honestly, Axysoft, you really need to drop the price to a reasonable and fair price (for example $5 to $10 max, and throw the snake game in for free.

If a few developers started to cotton on to this idea and actually did drop their prices to a fairer level it may force the others to follow suite. (Or is the price regulated throughout the developers/distributors world? It seems like it).

For those having problems, please do check the ‘read me’ again, just in case you didn’t follow it correctly. My version is definitely the registered version and it plays really well. It really was a breeze to install even though it’s different to what you are used to from the game giveaway team.

If you don’t have 3D emulation, you may have problems running this game; however this is unlikely unless you have a computer older than about 7 years as you only require an 8MB graphics card, or emulator, which really are ‘ancient’ by today’s standards. That doesn’t mean to say that the graphics on this game are poor as they are not.
If you download the demo from the home page, using the link above, the configuration file we are given will also activate that game.
On looking at the map, the castle images from the tutorial and practice castles are much smaller than those of the other five castles, so it may be that the five levels or possibly seven if two are hidden off the map) are much larger than the 8 rooms you got in the first two. I really don’t have the time to check the game further today though. Reading the blurb about the game, it does seem that as you progress the castles become harder to complete, possibly as each castle is bigger than the next. This is just supposition though, lol.
As Donald from the previous comments pointed out this is the same game as ‘Dungeon Rider’ and is free all the time from gametop (just google it as I have to go now. Though if you don’t like anything downloading with your games, this will not be for you as whenever you close the game down you are taken to the gametops home page. This will happen with any of the games you download from gametop; however, there seems to be no other problems with it, such as pop ups and other malware. I’ve been downloading games from that site for several months and have got several really cool games from them.

Thank you Axysoft for another of your excellent games, and also a big thank you to the game giveaway team for providing this fantastic service; which really brightens my mornings most days