Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Little Knight]

This is a game that screams Ludum Dare all over it. From the quirky control scheme to the 8-bit aesthetic and music to the short (10 level) design. And yet, regardless of whether or not this was made in two days, it really feels like it was. The jumping mechanic is unreliable, and the controls are overall not that great.

Plenty of one button games already exist, and none of them have ever needed an attacking mechanic. In this game it doesn't feel like it enhances the game, rather it's a kind of gimmick. In some cases I noticed the sword actually extended the vulnerability hitbox and so attacking an enemy was causing me to die. The run/jump button was also weird. In some cases you could wait a second or two before starting the level to throw enemies out of sync, but other than that, having a button to run was pretty pointless. The jumping and bouncing was something I've seen in games before (Pix n Love Rush, for instance) and the "collect two, get to finish" goal for this game was not a particularly new or clever implementation of that idea.

Overall this game is beyond forgettable. Controls are meh and level design is meh.

[Hydrogenic]

This was surprisingly fun. Simple concept, but well-executed and original, if somewhat short. My main criticism here is that the existing concept doesn't require that much thought to it - the stage shrinks at a constant rate, meaning it's always getting harder and thus there's no element of timing to it - just play as fast as you can, all the time. On top of that, the way that the game is as simple as collecting one thing and avoiding another lends itself only one important mechanic - figure out where you'll land if you press the spacebar, then construct a back and forth path to gather all of the electrons. This concept gets old quite fast and as a result, wouldn't make this game very fun if you developed further on this concept.

[Arcalona]

This is several orders of magnitude larger than any other game you've worked on and it shows. Most everything looks and sounds great, though the music gets old somewhat quick. Gameplay wise I felt like this was pretty good, though as others have said strength and critical aren't terribly useful. I liked the mix of resource management/RPG elements, though at the end things seemed to take longer than necessary and I ended up using my computer's clock to skip forward and max out my stuff. (Respecing stats would be nice by the way, some abilities are unlocked at weird points that make it hard to have a consistent build from start to finish.)

I ended up stopping at World 5 due to a persistent freezing issue, but up until then I found myself making good use of many of the abilities and generally finding the game to be well done.

[Broken House]

This game was really bizarre - seemed like a throwback to the old '06 era escape games. And it's even made in Flash! I thought the puzzles were mostly the right difficulty, though some of the hints were a little vague and the 4th hint was really hard to find. I also got really confused as to why everything was so scrambled. Things being broken is one thing. Things being on the wall is another. Graphics and sound were above reproach, and overall everything was pretty average and unassuming. Still fun for the few minutes it lasted.

[Heaven and Hell]

I remember playing this very briefly when it came out and liking the concept, but never really stuck around long enough to get into it. After getting deeper into the mechanics, I have to say this is easily one of your better games. The original graphics and color scheme are attractive, the concept is good and the dynamic environment keeps things interesting.

As far as flaws, the gameplay is slightly repetitive, with the biggest issue being the way the bubble system works to reset enemies that fall too far down - it's too repetitive and can lead to enemies getting stuck in the same ruts. The items are also generally not too useful. I beat this game with two deaths and never needed much aside from seeds and (at most) one health potion per level. A boss at the end would have been nice also. Some items (namely the bomb) are so underpowered and expensive that they seem like a complete waste, and I don't think I ever used the wings at all.

EggysGames responds:

Yeah this game was big, and it was the last game I made for almost 2 years at the start of my break from game making. It broke me and was missing polish indeed but the idea did come out amazing. I was good at destructible ground at that point in Flash. I need to remake it in unity with polish and physics.

[Tough Growth]

There's very little here in terms of actual content. The aesthetics aren't bad (though they are a bit on the flashy side, with lots of effects and graphics that aren't much more complex than squares,) but I think the biggest issue is the concept to begin with.

At its core, this game is a mix of bullet hell and a mouse maze, with neither being terribly new or groundbreaking concepts. Too often is it possible to cheat by moving the mouse off-screen. More annoyingly, the stages in which the large player box makes it hard to dodge feels more gimmicky than difficult. Similarly, the last area of the game (where you're sent back a level for failing) feels more gimmicky than anything, as the levels are generally easy than the ones previous.

I would have liked to see some more unique obstacles, some deeper level of strategy, or at least some other way for the player to interact other than dodging things.

Jaswir responds:

I wonder, what game would you consider groundbreaking?
Also this game was designed to be a mix of bullet hell and feed and grow.
I do not know any other games that combine bullet hell with feed and grow.

[Rock Bottom]

I'm not sure I see the appeal here. The music and graphics are pretty bland, with the only really attractive element being the color scheme which sets the tone quite nicely.

There are a handful of issues with the rest of it. The dialogue has numerous translation errors, making it come across as awkward more often than not. More than that, the game aspect of this feels inorganic and distracting. The way the brother slaloms up and down is weird. If you get too far behind, both of you fall off the screen. The arrows on the road give you some reason to move up and down, but just feel out of place in a submission like this. The grabbing mechanic also feels kind of weird, especially since you only ever really do it once, and the whole concept of chasing a guy down in the middle of an endless road just doesn't feel realistic. Forward movement feels useless because you never need to go any other direction. The repeating houses get old fast. Need I say more?

Ultimately this comes across as a rather uninspired proof of concept. I see the need for these types of games to exist, but the execution here just felt weird. In your defense, content like this is hard to make right. Some folks at MIT tried (and failed) at exactly this task when they made Elude, so it honestly would have been more surprising to see a game do this correctly. Either way, this game just didn't wow me.

bioszard responds:

Thanks for your feedback, my friend. I'll really think about this issues you brought here.

My goal in this game in this game was just to show that many times we tell things to depressed people that just not help the situation. In my humble opinion, we must just welcome depressed people, making them feel confortable, not encouraging, not judging nor creating expectations based on their own will.

Besides that, I was forced to think about and implement (almos alone) 2 different game genres within 72h, for LD41 (I'm not justifying my fauls, just telling the develop context). You are completly right, my translations skills are not that good, I'll try to improve that. Thanks for your time.

[Eggys Big Adventure]

I played this back on mobile and was impressed with the overall smoothness and playability of the game. There are some minor flaws of course - reused graphics, and some weird physics when standing on moving platforms - but for the most part the game feels comfortable. While it's good that the game is simple (as the controls on mobile really don't lend themselves to complexity) I would have liked to see a bit more environmental variety - perhaps different kinds of enemies, or platforms that offered more than the basic Unity physics prefabs.

Most of the issues dealing with actual enjoyability stem from level design. A lot of the difficulty is concentrated in the earlier levels, and while you can usually skip particularly hard levels and farm eggs elsewhere, it's still weird that the second half of the game (and bosses) are comparatively easy, especially when the bubble level is downright brutal (and frustrating, since it's so easy to slip off of them.) It would have made sense to make all of the levels somewhat easy, but for the eggs to be put in especially difficult places. On that note, it would have also been nice for collecting all eggs in a level to provide something, even if it were only cosmetic such as player skins.

Overall my biggest disappointment here is that the game feels like a very generic platformer, even though I've known you to come up with some really outstanding original concepts such as Nodes, Draw Play, and Battle Fish. Battle Fish in particular strikes me as a game that could be outstanding on mobile, given its simple control scheme as well as how much more enjoyable it would be in a less laggy platform such as Unity.

EggysGames responds:

Thank you Kwing. You are correct I didn't space out the difficulty on the levels as well as I should have unfortunately. I didn't feel it was that generic, since I havn't made anything with physics like this before.

Thanks for the review.

[It's Just TIC TAC TOE]

A weird pick for the front page, to be sure. I liked this, but it's still rather simple. Adapting to the moving or beating the boss still isn't terribly difficult and the game just isn't long enough. The sound design and graphical quirks are excellent and this looks polished, but I don't think this was ambitious enough.

[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.