Konductra
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Metareview: Konductra
Reviews have been slow in coming for Konductra, the new DS puzzler from indie developer oeFun. Maybe the horrifically boring all-about video we showed you not long ago put everyone off. Or it could have been the yawnariffic gameplay. We're open to examining multiple possibilities here. Nearly every aspect of Konductra is raked over the coals in these reviews -- the methodology of gameplay, the missing element of risk that makes puzzle games exciting, and even the production values. In other words? Eminently skippable. But is it less fun because we've seen other, more exciting puzzlers on the DS, or is the gameplay itself flawed? Read on. IGN - 65%: Konductra gives you too much control. In other puzzlers, blocks or tiles assault the playing field relentlessly - cascading into the pit in Tetris, or crashing down from orbit in Meteos. It's constant. It doesn't stop. Playing those games is playing for survival, trying to manage the stack and keep from being overwhelmed. Konductra isn't Tetris or Meteos, and no direct comparison is implied. Those games are simply used as examples to illustrate a quality Konductra lacks - a sense of danger.Worth Playing - 50%: As a puzzle game, Konductra isn't expected to be a graphical powerhouse, and it isn't. The menu screens are graphically unimpressive and unwieldy (rather than simply picking an option, you must "highlight" it as if you were playing the game). The game board itself is simplistic and rather dull to look at, with only four colors and a non-existent background ... Konductra does manage to pull off a pretty good soundtrack. Trance-like peppy music plays over the gameplay, oddly out of sync with some of the early gameplay, although it does a better job of matching more intense difficulty levels. One nice addition is the game's full-voiced tutorial, although the game is not really complex enough to require such a detailed feature.GameSpot - 42%: Even with seemingly so much going on in any given game, Konductra is boring and lifeless. A little personality could have helped matters, but the bare-bones presentation is unremarkable. There are no alternating skins, so you're stuck with a generic pulsing blue background surrounded by bland grey-and-white conductors. The blocks are shimmery and colorful, but no nicer than any number of free Flash PC games on the Internet. Accompanying it all is a small set of grating MIDI techno tunes that will make you glad you have the option to turn off the music.Overall verdict? Ouch. But when there are so many brilliant handheld puzzlers, it's bound to be difficult for anything else to make a splash unless it's just as good, and it looks like Konductra simply isn't.
Konductra site goes live
The site for the upcoming Touch Generations title Konductra has launched, chock full 'o goodies for the puzzle savvy gamer. Touting fully-functional Ranking and Scoreboard listings, the site will feature live stats for Wi-Fi multiplayer, including wins and losses plus overall ranking, and high scores including ranking for the single-player experience. The game, which is due to release later on this month, charges players with creating and destroying colored tiles to either attack an opponent or earn points. The final game will feature Wi-Fi multiplayer, along with local multiplayer, and is also to include Task mode, which is a single-player match-shaping mode, along with Score mode, which is your basic single-player mode where the name of the game is to score as many points as possible.Next up for the team is a Wii title.
Konductra team working on Wii title
If you're dying to get your hands on the Wii, likely you've already purchased, and undoubtedly enjoy, Nintendo's handheld. As such, DS Fanboy reported on a little title known as Konductra a few days back where one Ian Dunlop, President of oeFun and international man of leisure, spoke about his DS puzzler. Well, turns out that his company also has a title in the works for the Wii. Will oeFun be announcing a Wii version of Konductra? A very likely scenario, we believe.[Via Go Nintendo]
Ian Dunlop chats Konductra
It's no secret that we here at DS Fanboy enjoy puzzle games. Whether they be multi-colored blocks or...well, they are always multi-colored blocks, but that's besides the point! We love 'em. We want to hold them. In fact, soon we will marry them. So when we were flying through the vast cyber spaces and stumbled upon this interview with oeFun's President Ian Dunlop, we knew a post had to be generated. Ian apparently worked on the original Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, so he definitely gets an internet high-five for that. The idea behind Konductra is the same behind most puzzlers; grouping together similarly colored blocks in order to erase them from the game board will help the player proceed. Where other games such as Meteos and Tetris put a dose of gravity into their games, Konductra doesn't play like that, allowing the player to use the touch screen and move blocks to any place they desire on the game board. Click on for the full interview and a more intelligent in-depth description of the gameplay along with screenshots.
