Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Super Hero Chronicles]

Addicting, for what it is. The concept/graphics/music are a little too repetitive and simple for my taste, but the actual shooting element does have a charm to it, especially when you get powerups. In my opinion there need to be more enemies and more attack patterns. The levels could also stand to be a little shorter since they're so repetitive as it stands now. I wish I understood how the powerup system worked too - there didn't seem to be a countdown or any explanation as to why my split lasers were disappearing.

glitchs2d responds:

Yea if I ever make a sequel there will be a lot of mechanics to the game that will improve. My game programming has improved dramatically since then, but I have yet to actually start working on part 2 of this game. Maybe once I get some free time. But your meter on the right side is what affects your lasers (except when you have the beam laser). It was a combo system that I made that would encourage players to kill all the enemies in order to keep their laser going. Thanks for playing.

[D-Pression]

Huh, had to look up a tutorial for the very last level and it would appear I took the long way around for the two 'blank' levels.

Anyway you did a really smooth job with the programming. I really like the slipping and sliding and the wall jump mechanic is just comfortable to use. The obligatory puzzle element was fun, although sometimes frustrating and a little gimmicky due to it having the whole physics flair going on - sometimes made things harder than they should have been.

You really could have stood to improve the graphics. They're simple, they're cute, but they're OVERDONE.

The real reason I'm docking so many points is because I'm sick of programmers dick riding The Company of Myself with these simple 'symbolic' puzzle platformers with crummy graphics, melodramatic and even more melodramatic one-liners scattered throughout the levels. At least The Company of Myself and Fixation had a plotline. This is just a bunch of drivel.

Another really big thing that bothered me is that with such simple games you really lose a lot out of the experience when it's just one level after another. There's a heavy puzzle element, sure, but it would be nice to see some new mechanics partway through the game, or even an open-world kind of environment.

This is not a bad game but conceptually it is the most infuriatingly jump-on-the-bandwagon game I've seen in a while.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Thanks for the long review, Kwing! I agree with most of the criticism, and most of them can be explained by the lack of time I had when making this. I made it for the Stencyl Jam 2014, but I had my most important school exams in between :)

The programming is pretty smooth, but could still be improved, I think. Stencyl made it somewhat easy though (even if it took a lot of time for me). I'm glad you're happy with the movement though! The physics thing was probably too difficult for most people to realize for themselves. I should've hinted on it more, and made it a bit more obvious that you had to use friction :/

I agree with the graphics too. Then again, I was in a real hurry while making this! I finished this game in the last minute, but I still had time to make small updates later. There's still a lot that needs to be done, I think.

I actually had to make pretty much all of the "story" or text in the game in about 5 hours, and only 10 minutes or so went to actually thinking about what I wrote, as it was time consuming to place the text. If (when) I make a huge update to this game in the future, there will be a lot of changes :D

I would've wanted some new puzzle mechanics too. I originally wanted to make some levels where the "shadow's" movement was inverted from yours. I also waned to include some with many "shadows", and some with upside down gravity, to confuse the player. Alas, I had no time, as I earlier said. The only thing I had time for was to include two levels where the "shadow" couldn't touch you, but had a very similar room to yours, as you might recall.

Thanks again for the long review, I'm grateful that you took some time to write out your thoughts! :3

[Catch the Pacman]

I can't be the only person to think this... Why is the AI so bad? I see tons of the Pacman (Pacmen?) running back and forth in place while you casually stroll over to them and kill them. What is the function of those zombies? Why is the movement speed so slow? Why does the player rattle around inside the walls instead of fitting snugly between them? There's something seriously wrong here.

By the way, shouldn't there be several ghosts? This would be cool as a strategy game where you have to outsmart the enemy but this is just a slow chasing game.

sex92toso responds:

1.I agree with you with the pacman, since I started the game, I could been fix it yet.

2.The function of the zombies is to kill you. Maybe I should make them faster. I´ll see.

3. I do not understand what you mean by "player rattle"

4. I liked the idea of several ghosts, could you give me your opinion so I get an idea?

Thanks for the review, seriously.

[Choices: a poem]

I'll give you half marks because the idea is cool. The aesthetics could have been improved without any real skill - use a bright color and a decorative font on a dark background to make it look artsy, really that would have been enough, maybe tween a block uncovering the text to give it a simple animation? The simplest tricks would have brought this miles ahead.

As far as the poem goes, it's really not great. I tried a few and they're kind of dull. The rhymes are not particularly clever and seem contrived, plus your rhyme scheme is exclusively in couplets. If I were you, I'd piece together a bunch of words that rhyme and make it such that rather than take entire couplets and paste them together, individual lines with common rhymes would be stuck together. Maybe that's what you did but it didn't seem like it.

Vert responds:

Incisive and very much to the point, I couldn't agree more with you on the first paragraph, but that sort of aesthetics issue has always been a weak point for me, which is why, for future projects, I'll make sure to have someone on board to take care of these things.

As for the poem itself, fair points, I guess I wasn't ambitious enough with the sort of rhyming structure I used, partly this was because it was already quite hard to tell a branching story like that within the confines of what I did, but that's a poor excuse really. I wouldn't go so far as to calling it boring, I'd have thought that the stories themselves were good enough to compensate for that, but it's a very fair critique to make.

I do hope to at some point give this a go again, with a new poem and new choices, although the bar has been raised quite highly, thanks to 'Relive Your Life' (which is quite close to what I wanted to do originally).

Many thanks for the feedback, greatly appreciate it.

[Billy Suicide]

I saw this on a website talking about depression, citing this game as potentially offensive, and I have to say I absolutely disagree. This game is a brilliant reconstruction of depression, and it really hits the nail on the head.

First of all, the player is immediately given a feel for how small the world is. Confined only two a four-room apartment, the variety of things for Billy to do are somewhat varied, but all done while inside, and it creates a very constricting, claustrophobic atmosphere. The fact that your financial and mental health are constantly decreasing also shows that just moving from room to room is difficult, expressing the lack of motivation someone has when they suffer from depression.

Most of all I love all of the bars and urges. The player is 'supposed' to finish every task, but at the same time is always under threat of some kind of timer running out. Whether it's the "Did I leave the ____ on?", an urge, or just the depletion of one of the gauges, Suicide Billy pressures you constantly and gives the player a feeling of being under stress. The fact that your financial and mental health is always a trade off, and especially that later in the game the bars seem to both be going down no matter what you do, instills a very strong sense of helplessness and futility in the player.

Adding onto the activities that Billy does, the fact that you see only a small animation for what he's doing makes the player feel very distant from the actual activities they're having Billy do, which is yet another accurate portrayal of what a depressed person feels.

Though the actual gameplay is quite simple, the variables (what Billy can do when he's drunk, on anti-depressants, etc.) are fairly complex, and literally every mechanic in the game is specifically designed to make the player feel what the character feels. This is further exemplified by beating the game, at which you realize you've gotten Billy through a grand total of ONE day after all of that running around. I also like that Tarah's 'reward' is his main motivation for getting through the day; it adds on to the whole thing about your world feeling very small when you play the game.

Onto the more aesthetic parts of the game, I really love the graphics here. The video animation works surprisingly well, and the environment is also very crisp despite looking like a bunch of photographs. There's a very distinct style here, and it works perfectly for what you're doing. It also reminds me a little bit of older Newgrounds fads, and makes me feel kind of nostalgic. The lines that appear over the screen are also a cool little subtlety that makes everything seem just a little bit less real.

The sound is absolutely excellent. The sound effects provide great ambiance, and despite not really being music, they're incredibly effective at making the player feel stressed, fatigued, and generally overwhelmed not only by the urges that pop up, but also by the activities that you do willingly. The little bits of music you hear while listening to music and playing guitar and bass are also really good, I'm surprised you haven't put the full tunes up on the Audio Portal (as I hear that you composed all of those clips yourself).

dlasal responds:

Thanks so much for your review. I'm always happy when I see that someone understands Billy Suicide, and that it still has some relevance even after so many years have gone by. Oh, and some of the music is available here: http://davelasala.bandcamp.com/

[Inner Vision]

Poorly done. First of all, pixel graphics are fine, but these are not. You could have created much more detailed sprites and worked with colors and shading; instead these look like they were done in MS Paint. The music is alright, but kind of plain, and there are no sound effects either.

One big issue here is having to wait for the text to show up on the screen. It was annoying having a reading speed faster than the speed at which the text shows up on-screen, and all of the boxes opening and closing were annoying as well.

There's also the writing - honestly it's just not done that well. The dialogue is unrealistic, and the options aren't that great. Worse, people will continue to say the exact same thing regardless of what you tell them, and worst of all, you don't even see the rest of the conversation if you blow your chances, so there aren't even really 'bad' 'endings.

This is simply an example of a game that was made poorly. Sorry.

LinusPrime responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I might revisit this game in the future and polish it up. After all, I did make it in one month for a game jam.

[Break the TV]

I know Newgrounds has seen other games like this before (Dynamic Systems), and this certainly isn't the best recreation I've played. The graphics and sound are modest, and the gameplay feels in many ways somewhat uninspired. The different devices seem just a little too similar to me, what with the birds, cannons, and guns having almost the exact same functions.

What really bothered me, though, was how the puzzle element of the game played out. I beat a lot of levels just by having a few mechanisms triggering and shooting at nothing. Other times I noticed that something like a falling domino might trigger a bird but not a cannon. Inconsistencies like this gave the game depth but seemed pointless and didn't make a whole lot of sense.

I will give you a 7 because the physics worked quite well, and because I really enjoyed some of the level design, which was mostly well-done. I got 15 levels in before calling it quits - perhaps if you'd allowed players to play sets of four or five levels, unlocking another set after beating the majority of previous levels, it would have been less frustrating to get stuck.

EggysGames responds:

Yeah you make good points, it was definitely not the most well executed game I've done. The game idea had some major flaws.

[Heli vs Tower]

Hmm, seems kind of like a cross between Tyrian and Pursuit Force.

Really good game, I enjoyed just about everything about it. My only real complaint is that you should be able to strafe by holding down the Shift key (useful for backing up and firing), and also the difficulty and different types of enemies should increase a bit more, the only new additions I noticed to later altitudes were tanks. Perhaps some kind of mobile enemies that try to dodge attacks would have been cool, maybe even some boss battles.

Also, the entire game does feel a little lacking. As others have said, more types of helicopters and items would have given the game lots of variety. As it was, the special was basically a matter of waiting for a bomb, holding onto it for as long as you could, and then clearing the screen. Ejecting was a matter of waiting until you were low on health and then ejecting straight into another helicopter. More variables in the items and helis would have deepened the gameplay.

EggysGames responds:

Never played them two games. Glad you liked it. Yeah for a suqual I'll definitely do upgrades.

[Silly Chicken]

Now that's cute. The graphics are really nice and the controls are solid. I noticed you used some of the sprites from Smithy's Quest, and the cows look quite familiar too. I really wasn't a fan of the sound - the effects were repetitive as hell and the music likewise.

The gameplay was pretty solid. As I said, the controls are smooth, although I wish there was a small indicator to tell players when they could set another bomb, and also a timer on the bomb, since I screwed up a few times because I couldn't time the bombing quite right. The game did get pretty hard, but I liked that you could respawn every level, making it much easier. It also felt kind of like a puzzle game as a result.

The minigames were a mixed bag. I thought the typing minigame was hilarious, but the Pokemon battle was lame and simplistic and the final boss pissed me off because of how horrible the controls were. It took me way too long to figure out I was really just tapping left and right and firing constantly.

Overall this game is fun, but considering how short it is, it could stand to have a level editor, and perhaps a bit more polish. For a 2013 game, this seems quite dated.

EggysGames responds:

I like your reviews on all my stuff Kwing. Some of the graphics are being reused a bit lately because I'm having trouble getting new artists :(

I'm glad you liked the chat bit, wasn't sure how that would go down.

Cheers for the overall review.

[Magnetized]

I gave up on the sixth to last level. I have to give it to you, this game is pretty damned good. Nice relaxing graphics and music, and the gameplay is brilliantly simple. I really like how there are three different types of gravity wells and how the smallest bit of timing can have huge effects on where your square goes. I also think it's cool how some parts of the track are reused, and how you can make a really simple level really long and complex based off of how the track works.

I was a little bit put off by the difficulty, yet I feel that the curve was done well. I simply ran out of patience before I beat the game. I also think it's funny how the yellow gravity well is so similar to my game Twins V2, although this is implemented much better, I will admit.

Overall I really, really like this game. However I feel it suffers from a little too much in the simplicity department, which is why levels like the one I quit on had to rely on just getting longer and longer to keep the game difficult. I was also a bit annoyed at how the spacebar is required to change the position of the box in the gravity wells. The game had been doing so well with the one-button control scheme... One of the best one-button games I'd ever played, next to a morse code game and The Impossible Game. Adding another button ruined the charm. Perhaps you could have shown the guide line without the mouse pressed, froze the player on a click, and swapped positions when the mouse was released?

Really great concept, but it needs a little more. Maybe optional paths, collectibles, or enemies.

rocky10529 responds:

thanks! and good advises! i'll keep working on it!