Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Jump Quest]

I tried. I really did. Even though this game has no menu, presentation, or instructions at all, I went ahead and tried to score a single point in this damned game. Actually, that wasn't the hard part. The hard part is landing safely, which by rights should award you 10 points considering how damn hard it is. The squares you're supposed to avoid are way too slow; even with the jumping animation, it's very unlikely for you to be able to clear the square by the time you land. Worse, the squares come in groups and frequently it's IMPOSSIBLE to jump over them when they come together. On top of that, the game does not keep track of your score or really do anything other than stick you with one game over after another. The game isn't even decent enough to give you a game over screen, it just resets.

It might be your first game, but did you not even consider making it a little more balanced or skill-based?

kosiak97 responds:

An apology, I forgot to add to the description that there was a double jump. I fixed it now so maybe it will be a little bit easier. Although I did not think of adding a game over screen, but if it is that important, I'll have no problem adding it. Thanks.

[Stick Beard]

Pretty good. This is a little more showy in terms of graphics than it is smooth in terms of animation, but ultimately it's still really damn good. The game is colorful, the gems are really fucking hard to get, and the soundtrack is well done. I liked that the choices were varied but simple, however on replay I realized that there's really only one path to the end (Natives and Forest simply don't have routes) and that kind of left a sour taste in my mouth, since it tamped down the replay value considerably.

Factoring in that you can replay the dead-end routes like Natives and Forest for infinite gems, and that the gems are really only useful for upgrading your ship in the final level (why do you collect gems during that level, anyway?) it just seemed like this was a little lacking as a game. It makes up for these shortcomings by being very attractive, though.

Solid submission, but not really worth more than one playthrough.

Stone-Steven responds:

wow, I appreciate the solid and lengthy review!

[Just Button]

I don't see why people got stuck so early in this game - I made it to level 22 before I had any problems at all. The issue here is just that the game is not motivating at all. Everything from the graphics, sound, and gameplay all scream generic to the point where I can't understand why anyone would bother making this. Maybe you created a nice functional platform engine and decided to release it on its own? I don't know.

I stopped trying for stars at around level 8. I quit at level 22 because I had to make a jump between a floating crate and a robot in midair and I kept dying in midair even though it was plainly obvious I hadn't collided with anything at all. Boo.

[D.O.E.S]

I thought this was a joke when I first played it. In fact, I still think it is. From the obnoxious little jingles to the fact that your luck seldom ever rises above one, there's really nothing in this that can even be considered a game. Maybe I just don't get it. Or maybe you should have actually included a tutorial somewhere in your game that said something more than "click stuff, things will happen."

All I noticed was that I had no way of controlling what I uncovered, unlike, say, Minesweeper which gives the player hints which can help them logically determine things. Without any guidance, it's more like drawing from a deck of cards than exploring an area. Moreover, the combat system is impossible. You click on an enemy to deal damage, get countered for missing, and have to hurry up or you'll take damage. This would be nice if enemies didn't have a tendency to screw you royally. For instance, some enemies respond to an attack by dashing out of the way, meaning you can only hit them one at a time. If you try to be cautious, you may encounter a bomb and unwittingly cause your own death with your slowness. The only way to learn is trial and error, which would be fine if the game were more fun to begin with, but it's not.

Some randomly generated games are fun. This isn't one of them, the reason being that it takes far too much control away from the player.

Surn responds:

lol

[Aperture Laboratories]

I felt my brain go numb playing this game. The graphics are redundant, and the cubes come down at the same speed rather than being randomized. The powerups are dull, the bosses are VERY dull, and above all it's just repetitive. You shoot a bunch of things that mindlessly come down with no attack or movement pattern of their own, collect powerups, and repeat indefinitely. Sadly there are no portals to be found in this game either - that could have been easy if you'd made missed shots fly across the side of the screen or something.

[Html color quiz]

I thought this would be about hex colors. This is very dull. The colors seem to be modified by prefixes like "light" and "dark" and frequently I'll see something that I will guess correctly only to think that the game is full of shit - I encountered a white panel that was considered lavender. Kind of a pain in the ass, really. I'm glad it was as short as it was, but this is way too hard for what it is, especially considering it just isn't fun or worth the effort.

Menus look overall butt-ugly, which is ironic since this should be about recognizing subtleties.

[Feed and Grow]

I liked it a lot. The Fishy influence was strong here, but this game is a hell of a lot faster than Fishy! I liked that there were different movement patterns - the green viruses moved randomly like the worms, but the pink blobs actively chased or ran from the player (luring them away from green viruses was thrilling), the larger teardrops moved sporadically, and the evil amoeba had gravity wells. This made the environment much more adaptive and dynamic than the original game.

My only real issue was that the difficulty was fucking intense. I had a larger creature spawn right in front of me multiple times, which really sucked. It felt as if there was a minimum distance the organisms had to be from the player in order to spawn, but that distance should have been extended in the direction that the player was moving. It would have also been cool if you could observe larger creatures consuming smaller ones, similar to flOw. I also hated that the gigantic pentagons did literally nothing but move around very, very slowly. In the end they killed me because they blocked off about 70% of the screen and I began taking risks to rush out and grab food because I was bored. A very anti-climactic end-game. Surely there must be more ways tricks that the enemy organisms can have - projectile attacks, eating other critters, merging with their own kind, working together to surround the player, leaving trails of acidic slime?

I would have liked to see the player's rotation change to fit the direction it was moving in, because as-is it appears as if the player is just sliding. This game could also benefit from more attractive buttons and animated backgrounds instead of imported photos.

Very fun game but it seems almost as if you planned for players not to be able to make it to the end. My final score was 12090 and I feel like I would try again if I thought there was more to the game than there is now.