Desert Child

in library

2.9/5

( 7 Reviews )

2.9

7 Reviews

English & 8 more

Posted on: August 4, 2022

hj_2019

Verified owner

Games: 497 Reviews: 3

Yes, it's simple,

but that doesn't make this a bad game. If you are looking for a game with complicated skill tree, gameplay that requires refined strategy, excellent plot, great graphics, this isn't for you, certainly. However, if you are like me, who just wants to spend some time in a small town, wander around, get some exciting races when bored, then chill out, have a bowl of noodles perhaps, get a burger, earn your money and enter the next stage..... this is your best choice. Every scene/object/character is hand-drawn, no copy n' paste, no fancy combat (but the race is well designed and fun to play), no long and complicated plot, just you and a town, you and a bike, you and the Desert Child.

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Posted on: February 2, 2021

Zerolinar

Games: 501 Reviews: 16

Solid old school combat-racer

Desert Child is a freebie on Playstation Now as I write this, and I played it for longer than I normally play a lo-fi free game. It occupies a very unique niche; just enough of it is retro nostalgia to be kind of cool, that nostalgia is a unique and seldom-exploited niche (80s-90s DOS games,) and it finds enough of its own identity to not be annoying about it. The game boasts influences from Cowboy Bebop, and if you squint a bit you can definitely see the comparison. There's an attempt at a kind of effortlessly cool vibe that actually works, and paints the otherwise simple between-race segments with a fun background flow. The game? Very simple, and it feels like the aforementioned old DOS racer with a bit of extra memory to make the gameplay smoother than you probably remember. And like so much of the era it extrapolates from, the game starts off simple and slowly becomes nightmarish; I found myself specializing in pizza delivery to make most of my money, and the main races rapidly become a spin cycle of obstacles flashing onto the screen with half a second's notice before they make contact with your bike. Maybe you can swerve through this neon jungle on your own merits, but I needed a decent amount of luck. I suppose my one gripe, though slight, is the obvious one; this is repetitive. It's fun to drop in on Desert Child for an hour or so, but not all that often. It does a good job with its twitch-based main game, and manages to pad it out acceptably by making the oversized city wandering segments very atmospheric. This is a somewhat unique trick that more games should take note of; if you can't make the entire game grossly engaging on one level, see what else you can toss in to at least make it a good time.

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