This Game is Not Fun – Little Adventure on the Prairie Review

Little Adventure on the Prairie is a hack and slash adventure game where you follow a young man with an insatiable appetite for destroying anything that gets in his way. Little Adventure on the Prairie was developed and published by Infinite Madaa. I believe this was Infinite Madaa’s first game and it shows. It was first released for mobile in 2017, then for 3DS one month later, and then it was released for the PS4 in 2018. For this review I’ll be focusing on the PS4 version.

Story

There is none! Seriously, the game is just 12 levels of hack and slash mehness. Not quite greatness. Not even goodness. Just mehness.  Since there’s no story, there’s no real reason for the character to be doing what he’s doing. The character just walks right and attacks everything in his path. There are no cut scenes before or after any of the levels and there is no ending cinematic either. 

The store page basically says the same thing, “A short and fun platforming adventure game. Venture through 12 levels of pure slaughter and mindlessly try to kill all the monsters that are facing you.

Want to finish the last level from the first time without dying? Try using the different items throughout the levels to overcome all the monsters and obstacles easier.”

Doesn’t help with the story but at least it’s something. Also, spoiler alert, there are no items that offer variety. 

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Fighting trolls in front of poorly overlaid background art

Walk right and press square to attack. There are also platforming elements as well. Occasionally, you will have to jump over a gap or ascend a series of ledges. You’re never really in danger of falling in a pit as your character jumps like he is on the moon. There are also hazards scattered throughout some levels, such as lava ground. These hurt you some of the time, but not all of the time.

The goal of each level is to defeat a certain amount of enemies. Most will be encountered on your way to the “end” of the level but you may have to seek some out. Most stages are linear (i.e. you go from the left side of the screen to the right side) but there are one or two stages that require you to explore more. 

Each level can be beaten in minutes without really trying. I beat each of the 1st stage levels in under a minute. Most stages can even be beaten in 30 seconds. You can beat the entire game within an hour.

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Standing on an enemies head and attacking works as well

Critique

The main point of the game is hacking and slashing your way through various levels and, to be honest, the hack and slash elements aren’t good. There is no real indication of your character hitting an enemy and the enemies hitting you (aside from a quick flash of red). It would be nice if hitting the enemy would cause the enemy sprite to change and to cancel the enemy’s attack, but it doesn’t. 

The same can be said for when you’re hit. An enemy is able to drain most of your health bar because there is no “grace period” before getting hit again. In most games, your character would be invincible after getting hit and flash for a few seconds to indicate that. Here, your health bar just lowers.

There are ways to avoid getting hit though. You can either stand far enough in front of enemies or swing like a maniac and hope to connect or you can jump on their heads and swing your sword.

Although it may be considered cheating, I prefer the latter because it’s a pretty funny sight. There is even a chance that you can jump over the enemies and attack them from behind. You are not supposed to be able to jump over the enemies so you can attack them without getting hit.

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Dragon enemies need hacking and slashing too

The sad part about this game is I had to use the trick where you jump on the enemy’s head in order to beat the game. The trick works 99% of the time, but some enemies can still attack you. You need to start the entire level over if you lose all of your health. It’s annoying when you’re at the end of the stage and lose to the last enemy.

The artwork looks decent enough and you can tell some effort went into the background and foreground art, but the art isn’t spliced together well and you can see lines where the background images don’t match. The Characters look good and movement is fluid. The music is not the best, but you don’t really get a chance to listen to it since the levels are so short.

You have a base attack and defense stat, of 1, at the start of every level. There are stat increase items scattered throughout the level. Your strength increases by .5 for every sword icon you pick up and your defense increases by .5 for every shield you pick up. They’re a good addition to the game, but the fact that they go back to 1 at the start of each level is annoying. They also drop back down to 1 if you lose a life as well. This is especially frustrating because the enemies seem to get stronger and stronger as the game progresses. 

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Not even sure what’s going on here…

Verdict

I’m reminded of one of my favorite MST3K quotes, “Can we make it a law that, in the future, films have to be made by filmmakers?” the first thing I thought of when I played this game and I thought to myself, “Maybe we should leave game development to actual game developers.” While the MST3K crew was probably serious with their comment (given it was made in regards to the movie Hobgoblins) I’m only joking around. I’d never want to discourage anyone from making games, but this game needs a lot of work. I don’t think it was quite ready for primetime. 

Although, I will say it’s kind of ingenious of the developer. Rush out a poorly made game, load it with valuable achievements (gold trophies in this case), make those achievements easy to get and achievement hunters like myself will pay the obscenely low price to play the game.

That being said, the game was not fun to me and I honestly only purchased it for the trophies. I enjoyed having a laugh or 2 at some of the abrupt scene changes and poorly overlaid backgrounds. Give this game a try if you’re looking for easy trophies. It’s cheap enough that it’s worth it for the trophies alone. Otherwise, give this a pass.

one point five

I give Adventure On the Prairie 1.5 weirdly spliced background images out of 5.

 

   

One response to “This Game is Not Fun – Little Adventure on the Prairie Review”

  1. ““Maybe we should leave game development to actual game developers.” 😀 you’re right !!!

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