Flight of the Hummingbird

Okay, I finally got to play this one, and I really enjoyed it. I think it did a great job of building up the superhero as someone believably lame. Not so lame that we're venturing on Squirrel Girl, but just competent and powered enough that maybe he should be doing circus acts instead. I thought the flying mechanics were pretty cool, but I really had trouble mentally mapping this one. I've really discovered that growing up with pictured adventure games has left me handicapped unable to create mental maps, and this one required lots of thought. The majority of the puzzles seemed to make sense - fuel the rocket, figure out the right dance of power switches and flying through hatches. I think I hit the 2 hour mark when it got to the blast-off for the rocket (I didn't find the crowbar, that one was kind of unfair), and that was a good cutoff mark for judging, I'm glad it was split in 2 like that. One thing that I had trouble with was convincing myself to go down into a trap pit, even after I saw there was stuff I needed down there. I was expecting some sort of monster, but there was nothing. A fight there would have been cool. The rocket thing was interesting, and I felt really boss when I figured it out, but I wonder if some sort of ASCII art could have been used here:

[A lame attempt at ASCII art, blogger html throws a fit at me using carrots and I don't much care to look up the web-safe way to represent them]

See? It's a... rocket ship... with 3 thrusters firing west and 2 firing south (pushing you up and north)... Okay, I suck at ASCII art, but I bet it would have been possible! Look, I even named the ship: the Dread.

Inside the spaceship had another cool touch, I absolutely LOVED how there was a crate full of stuff to take out the major superheroes, but instead he got The Hummingbird. It made me wonder, what would have been The Hummingbird's weakness? A big flower? Some sugar water? The mind boggles, in an amusing way. I did have some trouble dealing with the guards and had to resort to hints. In the end I got 45/51, and I'm sure I lost points for screwing up the rocket re-entry. I wonder if there was a peaceful way to get rid of the goons, maybe unlock the gaming consoles? All-in-all, a great fun game, with a fantastically detailed minor superhero. The puzzles and implementation could use a bit more detail, but nothing that detracted too terribly from the game.

[NOTE: a fellow author suggests The Hummingbird's weakness is Insulin. I love it]