Makis Adventure

The game is solid, but very short, even if you complete all of the unneeded side quests. It's a solid platformer with some very light metroidvania aspects, but mostly just solving some simple traversal puzzles/challenges on a few islands and fighting bosses. The central gimmick of changing into different sharks is okay, but nothing in the game is very deep or challenging. It's pretty good, but it can be beat in 1-2 hours, so consider getting it on sale.

a bit buggy, but over all i had a great time playing this. love how it goes from 2d pixel art to n64 graphics.

This game takes me back to the times of my NES. All the side scrolling game antics you could hope for from the old school days and a little 3D action added when you swim in shark mode once you get out of the first area.

short but very entertaining game, loved the animation

"Makis Adventure" is a short 2D action-adventure, where you control a little imp-hero that can turn into a shark, determined to save a small archipelago from a demonic entity. The gameworld is quite unique and although you can can complete the game in around 2 hours, the world has many sidequests and minigames to offer. Also the 3D world-map traversal is a pretty feature. It is sadly not without flaws, a little janky in the movement (got stuck in the wall after some chain-grapping-wiggle for example). Also graphically there seem some minor texture errors (saw some black lines between the tiles sometimes). Nonetheless a fun and earnest title from a solo-dev worth a look!

The first thing I want to state is that I didn’t buy this game because of the steam page. The trailer, the demo, etc. None of that grabbed me. I thought the demo was fine but very unpolished when I played it years ago. I have no idea if it has improved since. So why did I buy it? Because I followed the developer online for over a year and seeing his effort to try to be a professional game dev is honestly impressive. Say what you will about him, but he tried doing everything he could to make Maki’s adventure a success. He is even working on a few projects because he wants to continue to be a successful indie dev. I think most people would have given by now, but he didn’t. So I bought Maki’s adventure just to see if it’s good or not. And if it wasn’t, then he could keep the sale just because I respect the effort. So… about the game itself. Within the hour I played… It's fine. The controls, music, level design, etc. are all fine. Nothing that made me think “amazing!” but it works well together. I know that’s anti-climatic, but that’s just how I feel. It certainly feels like a first video game and it has a soul. I don’t vibe with that soul as much as I wanted to, but I do vibe with it enough. That’s why I recommend it, because it feels like a game made with love. I do want to point out a few issues I have. The pixel art is off-putting to me. The shading isn’t as good as it could be, and it ends up making all the art not feel as stylized as I feel it should be. It’s not ugly, just far from the best pixel art I have seen. Also, the different pixel sizes just look bad. You can make good game art with different pixel sizes, but there’s an art to it. And I feel that Maki’s adventure fails at using different pixel sizes in an appealing way. I don’t need the best graphics in the games I play, but I feel I have to point these out because issues with the art stood out way too much. The English script really needed a professional editor. There’s no typos or grammar issues. The issue comes with how stilted and awkward the sentences read. If I had to guess, since the developer is from Germany, English isn’t his first language. Characters don’t use contractions, so you often read “do not” instead of “don’t” in casual conversations. Some dialogue has three short sentences in one textbox and it reads strangely. I wouldn’t mind if it was only a few times, but it happens too often for my liking. And with how much dialogue there is in the game, it adds up fast. Also, getting hit feels annoying. Like, the screen freezes in an uncomfortable way. I don’t hate it… but it really takes me out of the flow of combat.