Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tuper Tario Tros.]

This game is almost completely ruined by the ridiculously slow scrolling speed of the map. Building bridges is also so easy you could fall asleep doing it. The concept is interesting but its execution makes it actively unpleasant to play.

[Lava and Aqua]

Very good puzzle game, I really like the concept and the execution is smooth and satisfying (undoing moves is a great feature.) I liked that the water could sometimes be hazardous, it made it so that there was more to the game than just "lava good, water bad."

The one thing I disliked was how formal most solutions were; being exactly one step ahead of failing for so many of the levels really hammered home the fact that most of the time there's ONE solution, so solving a level is the player uncovering that one solution. Because of that, the experience doesn't feel very personal, so much as it feels like they're running along a very deliberate path the developer has laid out for them. This also lends itself to some unintentional hints; when you block one lava path with one turn to spare, it confirms to the player that they've done something correctly, so they know with confidence they'll never have to undo past that point again. Reduction of the solution space makes a lot of the levels easier than they probably should be.

I also disliked how many of the later puzzles had timed blocks on them, this again felt like a cheap way to point the player in the right direction by basically telling them what order they had to do things in.

Overall the game is pretty easy, with level 16 being the only one that really stumped me.

[Destruct Blocks]

It's a simple concept but offers a surprisingly modern take on the cursor maze genre. I wish the hitboxes on the spikes had been squares or at least static circles instead of moving along with the spikes themselves, and the isometric view really is the way to go to the point of the 3D graphics feeling kind of dumb.

Other than that, pretty good if simple.

[Sliding Puzzle]

I can't help but wonder if this is shovelware. The game itself is coded well enough, but feels like a cheap excuse to show off some artwork, most of which doesn't look finished as the scanned/photographed pencil art just doesn't show up that well on a digital screen.

While functional, it's really simple and not very engaging. It's also rather silly that the different images have their own leaderboards when all of the 3x3 and 4x4 puzzles are identical to each other in terms of difficulty.

JG0328 responds:

Thanks for playing. It isn't shovelware, I just like to share what I do and try to learn with each different game.

[Fvog DEMO]

I assume the snowy area is the end of the demo?

The isometric artwork looks great but there isn't much else here. The biggest weakness is lacking any kind of objective display, or even recognition that you've finished one level and are moving onto the next (this is especially bad because of the big, open level design which doesn't even suggest where the player should be going, and a slow movement speed which makes exploration painful.) I had no idea what the things were that I was collecting or what they were for, and had to guess that I had to collect sheep in the beginning. I don't know if the rhythm minigame had some score requirement for me to move on or if it just plays for some amount of time before loading the next level. It really left me in the dark. Similarly, I have no clue how I beat the fire boss since I'm pretty sure all I did was walk into it to end the fight.

When you work on a Game Jam that has a deadline, it's better to get a single vertical slice of a game and build on that before adding tons of level art and minigames. One level and one minigame could have been fleshed out really well in this time, but instead you have two minigames, a boss, and several levels, ALL of which feel at least partly broken.

[CLUSTER OC]

I agree with other reviewers that the animation is very good here. You could have easily competed in the "animations with interactive elements" category for the Jam.

Unfortunately the game itself is short, frustrating, and unrewarding. The baseball bat-wielding character is the most overpowered due to reach, but even then the only real strategy is to run away from the fight and let the other players kill each other until you go and fight the last one. This is surprisingly hard because of how quick the AI's response time is.

Not much else to this game, there's no story and the whole thing is over in 10 seconds if that.

[Karla's Quest: Spotter Demo]

At first I thought this was going to be an escape room and was a bit disappointed to find it was just an Eye Spy.

The art is solid and does give off the vibe of early 00s Flash games, but what this game is really lacking is content. There are only four items to find, and the only reason they're difficult is to find is that them being blacked out makes it unclear what the objects even are (specifically the phone and wallet.) A greater area to explore (perhaps you can go into different rooms) and maybe some more puzzle elements (or at least more items to find) would make this more interesting.

Vile523 responds:

Understood, thank you for your suggestion. I'll take it into account for the full game.

[DANSurge]

Everything works right, but the game is a bit boring as there's no consequence for failure and you can always replay the same challenge again and type in the correct answer immediately (since it's not randomized nor does it have any anti-cheating mechanism.)

- The Voice is too quiet compared to the sound effects.
- Text answers should be case insensitive.
- Multiple choice questions would be better with buttons; only use the text box when you have to.
- If you're playing through the harder challenges, you have to manually change the page to the harder challenges every time you're sent back to the menu, it doesn't remember. The game also doesn't remember which challenges you've beaten.

That aside, the plainness of the graphics and voice make this feel a bit boring. Neither are bad, they just aren't aesthetically exciting.

[Yu Dragoon 2: A flash Game]

The smoothness of the 3D here really can't be understated, it really is completely seamless. While normally a pretty simple thing, the diagonal running animations also are a really important touch that contributes to the fully 3D feel of the game. This seriously looks awesome. If your engine can handle it, I would like to see some kind of platforming or verticality so that the third dimension can actually do something other than be a cool graphical illusion.

Gameplay-wise, there's a lot missing. As others have said, the camera is too zoomed in to have much spatial awareness, and it's also really hard to make out if you can hit an enemy from front or behind (it just makes more sense to run around and attack from the side.) The single attack, lack of dodging, blocking, combos, etc. make this feel almost like Sword of Vermilion in terms of blandness, and as an unfinished game there's obviously nothing in the way of upgrades or progression yet.

Honestly the only thing this game needed in order to succeed was a teammate to take care of some of the boilerplate code needed for a combat and inventory system.

TeamTamago responds:

Thanks, all this feedback is really helpful! I'm already working on a version with these things implemented. Also verticality is going to need some clever tricks and the like but it's totally possible.

[Backstage Fighers]

The art is solid, but that's about all that you've got. Even in terms of visuals, the game looks a bit shaky (literally) due to the health bar moving with the player, probably an issue with the dynamic camera that would make it more straightforward to dock a smaller health bar just above the player character, rather than trying to put it in the top left of the screen (alternatively, shove the level, player, and enemies into a Movie Clip and manipulate that for your dynamic camera so the UI in your _root never moves.

Enemies can attack from so far off screen you can take damage without realizing it. Similarly, you can kill enemies from so far away you barely see their death animations.The bullets change direction when the player does (I don't know how you could even get that to happen without intentionally coding that it.)

Past the first like 3 enemies is an infinite loop of a town with nothing in it. You couldn't even tell the player they reached the end of the game?

Ultimately feels like an unfinished Alien Hominid clone.

MoneroBTW responds:

yo man, thanks for the ideas, we are goin got fix everything!