Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ruffle:Another Mission]

Eh, it's okay. I like the silhouette-based graphics a lot, but the gameplay is in a pretty rough state. The first and most obvious issue is that J and H are pretty unintuitive keys for sniping. Given that this game uses WASD and won't have mobile integration, mouse aiming makes a lot more sense for shooting. The controls also feel weird regarding the platforming, specifically some of the jumps which require high precision.

Probably the biggest issue is the lines that you and the enemies have to telegraph where they're aiming. The limited range (both for the player and enemies) is inconsistent and makes it frustrating to know when and where you can be hit. Some kind of delay and audio telegraph would be nice, as it would give the player a chance to run the other way or try to quickscope enemies. The meat and potatoes of the game (running into the aiming path of an enemy, then sniping them before the line rolls over you) became intuitive with enough practice but never really felt enjoyable.

It's not a bad concept, but it feels clunky, as the actual challenge (timing when to come out of hiding and sniping quickly) feels pretty far removed from the actual concept of a run and gun.

speed8327 responds:

thanks for the feedback. ...really appreciated it.

And about the game controller layout, the game was developed with Mobile-first design approach ( arrows key movement and A/B button for sniping and shooting). So, it had to map the desktop controller layout.

But at the last minute of publishing because of this ruffle's GitHub issue ( https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/1972 ), had to drop the entry for mobile device (for time being).

If on getting more request and follow, I might upload another version of this game using openFl and haxe, adding extra levels with some extra playable characters with different abilities that might make the game more enjoyable.

So, stay tuned.

[Stupid House]

Man, this game slays! The first and most obvious thing to point out is how well the different filters (transparent PNGs?) work. The illusion of a curved-screen CRT and film grain really amp up the atmosphere, especially with the strange TV character that gives you hints.

Speaking more on the graphics, they're kind of all over the place. Some of the textures (shown by the TV, mirror in bathroom, plant) look really high fidelity, whereas others (most of the exploration) have the trademark angular Flash game "feel" to them. The jarring switch between art styles sometimes feeds into the surrealist theme, but at other points feels like a discrepancy in quality. For example, the clock room looks gorgeous and simply feels like a different style, whereas the ladders you traverse really are TOO simplistic.

The puzzles themselves are actually substantive - the first one is fairly simple, whereas the next few (including exploring the different rooms) gets trickier. There are only two issues I have with the puzzles themselves. First, the piano puzzle requires you to tap some pretty small surfaces. On desktop this is fine but on mobile, players are going to struggle to hit the exact notes. Second (and also dealing with the piano puzzle) is that there are so many keys it can be hard to track which one is correct, especially with the 3rd note which is a lot harder since several of the keys make a similar sound and you really have to pay attention to the interval it makes with the 1st note to get it right. It's nothing too terrible, but I do think it might have improved user experience a bit to take away some of the keys on the keyboard, both to make the puzzle simpler as well as to make the keys easier to tap on a phone.

A separate thing I'd note about user experience is that some of the animations and game loops you get stuck in really feel like they take too long. Accidentally clicking on the TV guy and watching the hint animation, or accidentally clicking on the door loops can be really tedious. At the very least, a skip button for the hint animation would be nice.

The only other thing I want to mention is that I was waiting for all of this to mean something. Obviously this isn't the most fair question to ask, as many other games of this ilk don't explain anything at all, but the environment of this game is so different and memorable that it's hard not to want to explore this world further or get some kind of answers.

[This is the Only Level]

I remember playing this a long time ago. It's a cute concept, and the single level feels very Game Jam-ish in style. A handful of the puzzles feel pretty similar to each other but all in all this is worth the time to play. The friendlier version of PT, if you will.

[Ball Revamped 5: Synergy]

While the most polished looking Ball Revamped, I feel like this is missing something that BR4 had. The synergy system is cool and allows for some neat puzzles, but the mechanics never feel fully realized. Similarly, the alinear style of the game feels like it has potential but mostly just feels like you never get the complete experience, especially since there's no clear way to be sure you've beaten all of the levels upon replaying the game. The alinear puzzle and exploration aspects don't really blend with the arcade style of carefully avoiding obstacles, and while this game is far less frustrating than BR4, I'd argue it's less rewarding as well.

Still, the beauty of the graphics can't be overstated and the music has gotten a big overhaul as well. I specifically loved the elemental animations for the ball, and the effects on the four colors shown.

[Ball Revamped 4]

This is the Ball Revamped I remember from my childhood! It's no wonder I liked this game so much, considering how polished it is for the year it came out. The physics are far improved from the previous games, the glimmer and shadow effect on the walls finally feel like actual graphics and not some kind of placeholder, and the music is catchy (despite the loops being very short.)

If there's any one thing I'd criticize it would be the general lack of design in lieu of powerups. There's a lot of content to be sure, but a big chunk of the middle levels feel more like a showcase of different features (bombs, lasers, fire, steel, darkness, etc.) than actually making challenging levels out of them. As a result I found myself struggling the most with the first couple worlds as well as the last 5 "countdown" ones. The final boss also feels kind of gimmicky in that there's really no point in avoiding the attacks so long as you can get to the goal when it pops up. Having the player be able to react to them in some way (especially requiring some tasks to be done to make the goal accessible) would make it feel more like an actual fight.

That said, this still holds up wonderfully! Performance isn't the best on Ruffle but I successfully made it to level 55 before having to download it and play the rest in Flash Player.

[Ball (Original Demo)]

Stupid me, I quit at level 44 before realizing there were only 45 levels. Oh well...

For 2004 this is plays pretty smoothly and still manages to be enjoyable nearly 20 years later. It is simple, but that's the point of a demo, right? Plenty of obvious things to change here, namely the music, textured walls, etc. but the core physics feel good, if a bit frustrating for some of the more difficult levels.

[Tricky Keys]

For this being a Game Jam game, it's really nothing short of incredible. Or maybe a sign I need to stop doing Game Jams solo. Either way, this is a really neat concept. Pixel art is so overdone, but the actual theme of a Windows 95/98 computer looks fantastic and really gives a sense of charm to the whole game. The puzzle platformer thing is also pretty done, especially when it comes to indie titles, but it really does fit the theme.

Level design is tight and doesn't pull any punches. However, I found a lot of the earlier levels to actually be harder, whereas later levels were longer but easier. Most of them felt pretty well-balanced, though the final level was a bit too long (the difficulty was appropriate, it felt like the puzzle elements should have been spread among two levels instead of one.) Fortunately the one level where I felt the difficulty was bordering on too much also happened to be the final level, so I also appreciate that the outlier also happens to be the closest thing this game has to a final boss.

There are really only two flaws to this game that I can think of. First, a few of the background elements are a bit too vibrant, making it seem as though the player could actually interact with them. A simple transparent black filter over them might make it a bit more clear what's part of the level and what isn't. Second, seeing the virus tap the keys is useful, but it's really annoying that you have to look at the other end of the screen to see what's going on. The amount of looking back and forth between the controls and the game world can feel frustrating in a way that doesn't feel entirely fair. There are a handful of things that could have been done to make this a bit easier to digest, such as having some kind of wind-up animation to show when the virus was about to hit a key, but I can also see these making the game too easy at some points as well. Overall I think there's a way you could have telegraphed the key presses without sacrificing too much of the game's central mechanic.

[Comic Reader- Art Forum Battle Royale Volume 1]

The art is great at some points and at others very inconsistent. Hard to put a rating on that as I don't think the better artists should suffer because others are stragglers. I'm also not sure if that's the point of this being a battle royale - is the competition only within the confines of the comic, or did the original forum eliminate competitors when their art was trumped by the art of a competing artist?

As far as the rest of the submission, it's pretty clunky. The page flip animation is a bit basic and could have benefitted from being just a bit longer and smoother. It's also disorienting that the frames change only after the animation finishes. There should definitely be a mute button. Most importantly, whatever zoom-in feature is advertised in the help menu doesn't appear to actually work, and this makes most of the dialogue completely unreadable.

dw bro i got u

I'm assuming the comic book panels are stored within a single Movie Clip, and you're navigating between frames on that Movie Clip? If the registry point of that MC is the center of the stage, try this code:

https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/abb76c2053be98383cbedbfe78546171

Mabelma responds:

Thank you tons! For the wonderful feedback I will definitely put it into practice for the next version, and I appreciate the code greatly! I’ll check it out 🙌🙏

[Spot & Click]

I was surprised by how well a simple concept translated to a solid game. Spot-the-difference games feel pretty dead at this point but keeping everything in motion made this much more difficult, especially due to one or two differences that were only present at certain parts of the animation (like the birds.) The first two thirds of the game went pretty fast, but the last third starts getting ridiculous. Would be nice if there were a warning before going back to the menu, and maybe an animated (and quieter) victory screen as winning can be a bit jarring - you just click and instantly see a new screen pop up. The difficulty is also highly variable. It might have been nice to have a few levels ranging from easy to hard, but given how much work went into the art and animation what you have now is probably sufficient. Spam-clicking is too useful; it would be nice to have some kind of cooldown on clicking differences (even if it's like 2 seconds) to discourage it. Offering some kind of zoom feature would have been useful as a means of looking at smaller details up-close, though I can see this not translating well given that the entire background is constantly moving.

Last thing I'd mention with regard to the game experience is that performance is a bit shaky in Ruffle. It's not bad, but the jerkiness can make it a little hard on the eyes, especially when looking for small details. Swapping the graphics from vectors to rasters by exporting and re-importing as bitmaps would probably have improved performance.

Though it probably doesn't need to be said, graphics are beautifully drawn and animated, and the lo-fi music fits. These are definitely the highlights of this submission and it shows.