Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Suppressed Demo]

I'm actually making a game with a VERY similar story (three people escaping a fascist country also based on North Korea, lol) and really wanted to play this to see how it compared, but as others have said it's buggy beyond belief. The poor animation, slow walking speed, use of text to speech, and random freezes make this look unpolished in addition to being unplayable.

zephyo responds:

yeah... this was my first game so I kinda sucked at like everything lmao. thanks for your review on my other game btw. Lots of detail and helpful points.

[I woke up next to you again.]

I got three of the four endings before throwing up my hands.

This is such a gorgeous game. I've always been a sucker for black and white - MadWorld and Limbo are two of the best in my opinion - and this is no different. The film noir, high contrast and bloom make this visually stunning, and the girl is absurdly attractive. If I can nitpick a little, the only thing I didn't like was the weird branches that sat behind the text bubbles. These just looked awkward to me when compared to the meticulous detail of everything else.

The music is nice but not outstanding. Suitable for the style of game, I think.

The real problem with this game is its brevity. Playing through multiple times gives you enough information to recognize that the girl is a fatal attraction, but rather than the message being subtle it comes across as incomplete. Thematically, or as a narrative, this feels like part of a larger story. It's frustrating having so many choices, too, because it gives the illusion of a larger story existing when the amount of content is deceptively small.

[Simplicity]

It's amazing how faithfully this recreates the old ~2003 Flash game era. The graphics look authentic in a way that's imitated but almost never done right.

This would have been a hell of a game 15 years ago. It's still a decent game now. The puzzles are pretty varied in their difficulty which is good, but the time limit seems unnecessary. Combined with the music, you don't really help the player relax and think and instead you seem to be hurrying them up. Not a good model for a puzzle game.

Other than that there's a lot of things you could have done to make the graphics more impressive. Think about lighting, beveling, texture, etc. Rather than just having text as buttons, put them inside of boxes and give them some level of uniformity. Pick ONE font and stick with it, and unite all of your graphics under one color scheme. The chaotic main menu should have some transparent fill over it to bring the menu items into focus, and what you have makes the green and blue level selection and play screens clash too. The time gauge, mute button, clock, etc. all seem slightly off-center and there's a lot of blank space that seems awkwardly placed.

As far as the game is concerned I think what you have is good. The level design is strong, but some levels really are frustrating. I suppose that's what you want for a puzzle game. Some of the puzzles seem to be out of order in terms of how difficult it is, so perhaps you should have other people tell you how difficult each puzzle is and re-order them so that there's a smoother curve.

garylu1999 responds:

Thanks for your review. Your review is the most helpful one so far and I would definitely use some of these tips for future flash games. Thank you.
By the way, about the difficulty order, I actually did have other people try it, but different people did not agree on which puzzles are harder and the way some of them ordered it seemed odd to me as well.

[Yellow]

Pretty good game. Shows just how much you can do without giving the player any instructions. This reminds me quite a bit of a game called Help Helen, though more puzzle and less humor. The music got a little annoying and overall the lack of instructions felt kind of limiting, but this was a fun play.

[Insane Orb]

Can't believe this is the most played game on the site and I didn't know about it until now. This is a surprisingly fresh game. The graphics and sound are clearly in need of a revamp but the gameplay is enjoyable, if someone annoying due to the framerate feeling kind of choppy. The gravity fields keep things interesting as do most of the gimmicks that you find on the playing field.

Ultimately two things brought this game down. One was that the controls felt spastic and much of the time I didn't really feel like I was in control. The other is that there's no break while playing. Something that breaks up the levels and perhaps allows them to be replayed individually would be nice, because as-is it's a mad rush to a huge point value of 75 without any real structure.

[Escape the Can]

The commentary on this game was pretty funny, but the graphics were underwhelming and items were hard to use. The one-screen system made everything look small and the inventory was also unclear - I was never sure as to what I had because the soap just looked like a tiny pink rectangle. Everything in this game needs to be drawn bigger, and the music should probably be changed because as it is it's really annoying.

[Don't Escape]

Excellent graphics, sound, concept, etc. I liked that there were a handful of things you had to do but winning required you to complete all of them, as this made the game non-linear and much more engaging than the average room escape. I was a little annoyed that you could accidentally take the potion without using it on the meat, as this can mess with your completion without you knowing it.

That said, the feedback at the end really helps and warrants replay value, whereas normally you go to a walkthrough and then never play the game again.

Brilliantly creative and balanced perfectly.

[Escape: The Room]

Impressive graphics but there are some UI screws, such as having to guess that you can look under the foot of the bed and not just the head. That, combined with the fake key and having to use the knife in weird places made this unfriendly to play and ultimately degraded this from a puzzle game to a guessing game.

[Circape]

A handful of issues. I dislike that being found is an instant loss, it turns stealth into a game of avoiding under the guise of stealth. You need to punish sloppy play, not make it grounds for a game over.

I dislike that raycasting isn't shown to the player. You can't be spotted through a wall but the visual doesn't reflect that at all. I dislike that the guards turn on a dime and lack smooth movement. I dislike that you can't use traditional stealth mechanics like creating a diversion or hiding in darkness. Sneaking up on guards feels weirdly artificial although as a mechanic it works. Default movement is too slow and I can't seem to pass level 9.

Overall kind of lackluster. The Ultimate Assassin series does everything this game does and more.

[Ridiculous Text Adventures]

This was okay. I liked the writing and the scenarios were funny, but the control scheme annoyed the hell out of me. I found myself constantly mashing X because of how slow the text displayed, and more than once I accidentally picked the wrong option because the highlighted option looped around back to the top.

Other than that, the main weakness here was that the game is short and there are so few options to explore here. It feels very obviously like reading branches of a story rather than actively participating in an adventure, as is the case in games like YFYIAR.