Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Epic Battle Fantasy]

I remembered playing this back in the day but never beat it. After seeing EBF5 in the portal, I decided I didn't have time for a 30 hour game and decided I'd give this another go instead.

It's decent, but the gameplay is a bit drawn out and monotonous. Not knowing the type of an enemy except based on the damage you deal is a bit annoying, and I found many of the items to be significantly more important than others while in the shop (potions, ethers, and revives are by far the most important, and ethers get used the most.)

I liked the idea of balancing healing and damage with Goku at the end (the fact that Judgment heals you makes this interesting, as your mage might heal the swordsman, but is better off using Judgment to heal herself.) However, aside from that, the game doesn't have a ton of strategy to it, and not knowing how long until you reach the shop or how long each wave lasts makes the game feel longer than it otherwise would.

matt-likes-swords responds:

Yeah, if you only play the oldest game, you're gonna get an outdated experience.

[Light Puzzles]

For as obvious as the first few puzzles were (the pause after you solve a problem seems just a tiny bit longer than it should and makes the first handful of levels a bit annoying,) the level design here ended up being a very pleasant surprise. Right around level 18 I started having fun, and when levels started having 3+ light sources I actually had to start thinking.

There's a lot of fairly obvious puzzle elements here, with the typical systems of solving them; mutual exclusion, backtracking, etc. but a few of them (typically ones that involved multiple light sources sharing a mirror) were really clever. I also really liked that the light beams were nice and generous, making it so that it almost never felt like you were finessing a pixel-perfect solution even after figuring out what you were supposed to do (Nodes had this issue and it could be a real pain.) The beam-splitting levels at the end drifted into this territory a little bit.

It was a bit annoying to have to go back to easy levels once you started exploring the "one source hits multiple targets" mechanics. In fact, it might have been good if you'd formally divided these levels into sets (1 source 1 target, 2 sources 2 targets, 1 source 2 targets, split the beam, etc.) so that the ordering of the levels actually made sense.

A lot of the puzzles that had an obvious partial solution also ended up being annoyingly easy. It's pretty common for puzzle games to throw in "bait" to make players try wrong solutions, but your bait is too obvious.

The later levels (40ish) can end up being a bit overwhelming due to the raw search space of the problem, though the all-45-degree mirror puzzles struck me as more tedious than anything. It felt like I was solving a maze, which was a pretty sharp contrast compared to the earlier ones. Toward the very end (50-55) the puzzles got so complex that I really didn't understand what I did even after I solved them. Being able to pause and look over my own work would have been kind of nice (especially since I finished several while still having mirrors left over.)

It does strike me as a bit odd is that the mirrors are stuck in their orientation. For the sake of the puzzles it makes sense, but I wish there was some in-game explanation for why you're not allowed to rotate them yourself.

I also wasn't a fan of how the same graphical elements are reused for every level. It wouldn't be asking for much to add just a little bit of variety. Similarly, the targets you hit look kind of lame. Plus, Unity affords you so many cool tools when it comes to shaders and textures, why didn't you just use some easy presets to make something look a bit fancier?

Some definite design flaws but overall a really good game. I usually don't stick with puzzle games long enough to finish them but this one was worth it.

[Viewpoint - A Game of Perspective]

Very strong Echochrome vibes here as far as the "2D player in 3D space" shtick goes. I struggled a lot earlier on until I realized you could click and drag to adjust the angle - that helped a lot with respect to having spatial awareness of the level layout. After that it ends up being surprisingly similar to a sliding puzzle in that the player can move an arbitrary number of tiles along any axis provided that said axis is facing the camera.

Aside from the blue blocks it can sometimes feel weird when this happens; for instance, it seems like the player will snap to the surface closest to the camera, but it just feels so weird to see it happen, even if the logic is internally consistent. It means the game tends to follow its own logic (which is better than no logic at all, but still a bit more frustrating than being able to use your own intuition.) Actually, I'm not sure this IS how snapping works; on 16 I tried to move the player onto the green tile, only for the player to stay on its own axis even though the green tile was closer to the camera. Maybe the player only snaps if the tile it's moving to would be invalid along its current axis? I really wish the snapping were a bit more intuitive.

It would be nice if there were a compass and "this side up" indicator on the side of the screen. There were times when I wondered why I couldn't move a certain way until I realized I was telling the player either to walk off a ledge or climb a vertical surface.

[Demonic Defence 2]

I remember looking for this game back when I was in middle school after seeing the hit success of Demonic Defense 3, but it wasn't on most of the big game sites at the time. When I finally found it then (and now) I quickly realized why.

The clicking mechanic really doesn't work here. The hitboxes of the things you're fighting is too small, and your inability to fling enemies backward makes the game unnecessarily hard. Mashing the mouse over and over just doesn't feel that fun. Graphics are alright for what they are but it just doesn't feel like something you would want to play long enough to unlock endgame things like Nuke.

[Magirune]

Honestly this is pretty boring. Aside from the achievements, there's really no reason to avoid dying, and the fact that all enemies give 1 XP regardless of difficulty really breaks the game. Perfect example is that you can spam up and down between floors 20 and 21 and if you can kill that enemy without taking damage, you can farm levels infinitely (there are likely other places where you can do the same thing,) making the whole system kind of broken and also defeating the purpose of potions. Also, even if you're trying to beat the game without dying, you can just use a potion whenever you drop below 50% health. There's no strategy whatsoever as to when you should use one.

Once you get past the weird combat mechanics, the game is puzzle and exploration. Navigating 15 floor mazes is a bit confusing and often tedious, but the puzzle elements are decent, even if it's frequently interrupted by level grinding. Once I got the pickaxe (but couldn't figure out where to use it despite seeing "need a pickaxe" messages earlier) I figured it was time to hang it up and be satisfied with the fake ending.

Between the lack of music, balance, and overall sparseness of anything interesting, this game just feels really unfinished.

FluffyLotus responds:

You should try hardcore mode. It removes the 1xp when the enemies are to easy. That's how the game was originally built.

[Niner]

This is really good as hypercasual games go. Won't say much about the graphics or sound since they're so plain, but the gameplay is nice. It took me a while to understand that the best strategy is to delay merging numbers and to keep a large pile of them somewhere so that you can add new numbers to a pile, or synthesize a new one if the next number you have to play is one that you don't already have on the board.

Having the game recognize when you reach 9 or attempt to reach 10 would be nice. Right now it feels more like an objective to reach 9, except that the only real effect it has on the gameplay is making it harder (a savvy player would postpone reaching higher numbers for as long as possible.)

I would also like if you could see maybe 2-3 numbers into the future rather than only the one you're about to place. I got a few game overs having to make 50/50 decisions, only to find out that I could have kept going if I had placed a number in the other vacant square.

Last, you could tweak the difficulty of this game by adjusting both the maximum number as well as the size of the board. The difficulty seems appropriate at 4x4 with a max of 9, but you could increase the difficulty by increasing the max number or decreasing the board size, or decrease the difficulty by doing the inverse.

Surprisingly fun game.

[Defend Your Castle !]

Not a ton to say here. This game is old and simple. The graphics are clean but not flashy, and there's really not much to do once you have an archery range other than keep a tab on your upkeep and slowly max out your defenses. Very repetitive, though it's definitely good that you added more content later.

[Just Slide!]

Decent game. The concept is simple and relaxing, but most levels are too easy. Only five or so actually require you to figure out a partial ordering. What might be interesting would be a system that allowed the player to draw over the map and "mark off" areas that need to happen in order. In this way the game could be harder but the player would be given the tools to keep up with the difficulty increase.

Logging the number of moves used to complete a level (and rewarding players for doing it in fewer moves) would also be super nice.

[The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 4 part 2]

I'll be honest, I had no idea these games were still coming out. That said, it's a real treat to see Fancy Pants alive and well - especially with all of the improvements you've made over the past 14 years. The animation is smoother, the juice is juicier, and the level design flows super well.

Legit the only thing that seems lazy here is that some of the floating platforms are reused and can make the game look slightly redundant, but there's so much else going on it's really hard to care about that.

[Interview Simulator]

Gosh, I really have no idea where to start with this. The fact that this was frontpaged really makes the memeability of this game a non-sequitur, but credit where credit is due, it's an amusing submission.

I am gouging you for points, but not for the reason you might expect. The poor quality visuals, inconsistent UI, etc. play into an unintentional aesthetic that developed in early 00s Flash games, and I don't mind it being used again. What ends up bringing this down is a general lack of content. It's too short, and as such there's not enough buildup for the jokes, so they don't hit as hard as they could have. FilmCow's skit "The Interview" does a great job of this, as it actually starts off serious and quickly devolves into madness. Don't Make Mommy Cry is another good example of this while utilizing the same quiz game genre.

The concept is solid, but there is a lot more that could have been done here. Sound could have made this funnier, and having a better spread of graphics (maybe have some of it look professionally done) would have made it more jarring/funny.