CNET Editors' review
Once you get past the preposterousness of a rolling eyeball that totes a magical paintbrush, the gameplay in Ocular Ink quickly becomes entertaining and challenging. This stylish, if unpolished, freeware game earns a top rating for its original design, smooth mechanics, and amusing story.
From a top-down view, your anonymous hero strives to save his village from a megalomaniacal pirate. Your paintbrush can move objects, spawn explosions, and transport you home. As you progress through the levels, you'll learn more of the story and gain powers for your fancy brush. A mouse-gesture system controls your attacks. Drawing a tight, small circle creates a strong local explosion, while scribbling a large circle leads to a wide, weak blast. While difficult to explain in words, the controls are intuitive and easy to learn. RSI victims beware: There's a lot of mouse movement and clicking.
The villains' names all feature amusing eyeball puns (Samur-eye, Eye-clops, and so on), and the whole story is infused with a wackiness akin to the classic Earthworm Jim series. There's no chicken gun, but the walking arms are freaky enough for us. In a day when originality is rare, this unique action game deserves a good look.
Publisher's Description
From Pistachio Productions:
In a strange and twisted land where evil, dismembered body parts roam the countryside, you play the role of a young paintbrush-wielding eyeball that is determined to free his home town from the fearsome clutches of the evil eye-pirate known far and wide as Patches Deadlights. Travel through bizarre environments, learning new and powerful attacks with your paintbrush.
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All versions:
3.2 starsout of 22 votes
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Current version:
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"It has good design but it has some graphics problems."
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
I like the storyline and the quests. The paintbrush is a nice touch and adds a bit of humor to the whole thing
Cons
The graphic are completely messed up at parts and the first couple times I ran it on my xp computer and it kept closing and saying graphics driver or something has failed. MY screen at that time would be completely discolored.
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"Excellent game"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
Being a free game and all, and with a bare minimal 20 mb size, it's pretty fresh and feels very nice when playing it. It offers a new type of game play that you should give it a try when you have the chance. If you don't download this game, your definitely missing out.
Cons
There was a few bugs and I wish there could be more upgrade choices but it was alright and there wasn't a lot of issues that really took away from the game play.
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"Fun, awsome creativity, but a bit touchy on the controlls"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
This is a fun game, and realy creative. I love to see such odd ball design in a game, expessially in this day and age, where 80% of the games are clones of each other. The controlls where quite different but added some pretty nice game play, using the mouse as a weapon, in the form of a paint brush, fun stuff. This is just a fun game, great for a quick play. All in all, it's a great little free game
Cons
I raved about the game but the reason it didn't get 5 out of 5 is because of the controlls, tho quite creative, they where a bit touchy. I found I needed to draw out what I wanted a few times like the 5 pointed star to warp back home, I tried to draw that multiple times, but you'll find you may not need to get home that often. I would try to draw one attack but another attack would form, not that it didn't get the job done, I just didn't want to do that. But this doesn't really mess up the game experience in the least bit. You can get around the controlls easly enought to play the game.
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"Innovative but Choppy"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
The paintbrush thing is one of its kind, unless you count Okami. The world is large and colorful, and the file is pretty small.
Cons
It's extremely choppy on EVERY COMPUTER I OWN. Even my 2.2 Ghz machine falls apart and suddenly I'm not playing a game, I'm watching a slide show.
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"Does not work with XP"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Cons
After downloading from the alternate site because the first time could not open .exe file the second time after installation it still did not work.
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"good idea bad game"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
it had a cool idea it has cool graphics
Cons
to get home QUICKLY you are supposed to draw a 5 pointed star EXACTLY and i dond see how it is supposed to be quick because i couldent even do it with the outline! the tutorial is easy apart from the star part but then it suddenly goes to hard when enemys are coming for you and you have to move mushrooms around.
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"FUN !"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
Interesting plot and playable for a few hours.
Cons
Hard to move the character around.
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"Best concept freeware game ever!"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
Awesome interfacing...Excellent graphics...Amusing storyline...Great way to waste time!
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"Innovation meets Character"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
You play an protagonist eyeball: rolling around, collect ink, painting stuff, and generally doing things the local ocular hero would do.
The game is 100% character, as you fight alongside your comerade eyeballs.
Awesome innovative gameplay. You collect ink, and with the mouse, which is a paintbrush, you can paint the environment. Drawing a line from something to somewhere else flicks the object at a rate governed by how far you drew the line of ink. This is your basic attack, as enemies can be flung into object, eachother, and walls -- or the other way around.
If you scribble the ground, you can cause an explosion based by how much ink you invested in the scribbling.
The cel shaded graphics tie the game together with sufficient visuals that fit the game perfectly, and are professionally crafted.
It's especially interesting to see a site of battle after the fact, with paint everywhere on the ground with streaks of splattered blood.
Clean on my low system resources, too. No slowdown.
Ocular Ink brings a nice break from the mundane in what is an ocular adventure with a gameplay system that is just completely pure fun.
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"weird, but entertaining"
Version: Ocular Ink 0.92
Pros
nice cell shading, looks quite good for a free game; also runs smooth on my modest pc (athlon xp 2200+, 256 ddr, ati 9200)
Cons
a little weird at first (eyeballs, kidney & stuff) but fun nonetheless
