Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[PewDuckPie - On the Run]

Overall this just seems like a more frustrating version of PewDiePie Adventures, only you can't play as Stephano or Piggy, and you have no abilities.

Since you've taken down the old version of this game, I'll just paste my old review right here:

Damn, how did you get Pewds to play this on the day it came out?

Well, it appears that the two of us have something in common in that we've both made very difficult PewDiePie-themed Flash platformers.

As someone familiar who played Eggy's original Unfair Platformer before the rage genre exploded, and as a regular on Platform Racing, I figure I'm probably immune to a lot of the dificulty in this game. Even so, I still found the traffic light in the first level to be unpassable.

First off, I really like the graphics. They're goofy and colorful, although the ground is rather redundant and the background remains constant rather than panning over gradually. The intro is really well-done, although I think the animation could have been a bit better than Pewds' legs simply rotating back and forth. The music is also redundant but I really like it, especially the change when you enter the cloud chase scene.

Onto the gameplay, watching Pewds play this game gave me a prelude to its difficulty. I actually made it to the traffic light on my first try, believe it or not. The physics are a little clunky, seeing as the player character is fairly slow. The enemies are total bullshit even though I was able to outsmart them 90% of the time. The wonky physics are actually a greater cause for concern than the 'surprise!' deaths that most rage games are known for, which I think is interesting and also makes the game much more fair once you get used to it. The few gimmicks I did notice, such as the 'infinite' hallway, were clever.

The cloud chase is also interesting. The platform engine you're using makes it very hit and miss. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. I've tried to figure out how to outsmart the traffic light and I've noticed a few things:
- The cloud vanishes just before the creature bits away the floor. This should give the player time to jump to the left, but I've also noticed it become out of sync with the dinosaur attacking BEFORE the cloud vanishes.
- In one playthrough, I noticed a little gray pattern replace one of the pieces of the floor right next to the cloud before it begins chasing you. I haven't gotten this phenomena to occur again, but I assume it may be a shortcut?

Had this game a bit more clear instruction, I'm sure I would be able to review more than just the first level. As-is, the trick to beating the first level is simply too ambiguous, and I think I've given a more than fair review of an unfair game.

Now that that's out of the way, I do want to congratulate you on the new intro, which looks nice as hell, though it is a little on the long side. I also figured out the trick to the traffic light but honestly it's probably close to 90 degrees in my room right now and it's making me too agitated to sit through enough of the game to beat it again.

zoyer responds:

That was a really nice and mature review. The best and most fair review i've got so far on my game. I have no idea how I managed to get Felix to play this game so fast. I had luck i guess and i think his fabulous dress made him want to play it a bit more :D

This was actually the first version i uploaded but i took it down because i wanted to change the title of the game. Then when i had uploaded the new version I saw that pewdiepie actually had played my game and had linked to my old game so noone could actually press and enter the game themselves so I deleted the new version and saw i could take back the old one so i did. So that's the story behind that :)

The traffic light is actually really simple, you just have to do exactly what the shroom-guy says. You have to wait for the circle of the traffic light to turn green and not jump when the text comes up and tells you to jump, you always have to remember, it's an unfair game :) The horse that appears if you jump before or do not jump at all, it has nothing to do with the bricks that dissapears under you. The cloud dissapears automaticly, just go to the very right and it will dissapear, the horse only shows up if you jump before the light turns green or if you decide to not jump at all. But if you jump when the light turns green, then the floor will dissapear.

I realised when the game had been out for a while that i should have made the first level easier, at least i know it now so won't do the same mistake again. The game was super unfair before it got realeased completely but i had some testers so they could help me out so it wouldn't be that unfair and impossible. Thanks for the review and everything :)

[Ultimate Assassin 3 (New)]

I've been picking away at the missions over the course of several weeks and I have to say this is one of the greatest stealth experiences EVER. The randomization keeps things fresh and the different layouts are varied and fun. There are so many different ways to play and the achievements really keep you coming back.

After beating the last level on Professional I have to come back to congratulate the programmer on an awesome job well-done.

I have two suggestions for improving this game, but short of that I don't think it would be possible for this to get any better.
1. Make a mode where you can only see where your mouse is pointing. This way the guards aren't the only one with a limited field of vision. Basically the player would have to move the mouse where they wanted to look, and they wouldn't be able to look past walls or other obstacles. Guards' field of vision would not appear unless the guard themselves were also visible.
- Ideally, the above suggestion could come with a better system for using the speed and invisibility boosts. With WASD, you could hold shift while moving to dash, and hold shift while standing still to become invisible.
2. Make it so you can distract guards. Maybe clicking on the screen would allow the player to throw a rock which could fall or collide with any walls it hit. When used point-blank it could be the same as knocking on a wall.

Anyway this is a really amazing game. Full points for this!

[Super ShyGuy Universe!]

Holy shit, I had forgotten all about this. Man, what to say? The sprites are re-used way too much and could have at least stood to be more subtle. The frequent lack of backgrounds or utilization of pixelated, low-quality Bitmaps really brought down the overall visual experience. Picking one landscape with some light foreground and a consistent, fitting graphic for the platforms would have made the game look much, much better.

The physics are atrocious. The jumping is awkward and the character bounces gently wherever he stands. Frequently the only way to beat a level is to spam the jump button and force your way through a ceiling into the platform above. The level where you push blocks around to make it to the to is particularly frustrating, since you have very little control over which way the platforms are being pushed and it's just as easy to push a platform the wrong way.

The turn-based battles may be the worst part of this, however. Basically you have one or two attacks and a heal ability with limited usage, which you use when you are low on health. It's just like a game of chicken with some luck involved. Wait as long as you can, heal, and repeat. What's worse, it's the same for every goddamned battle! I eventually quit after the Kratos battle because the luck factor was just ridiculous, and I was sick of redoing the easy missile escape.

Overall what this game is missing most is coherent gameplay. No part of this experience is really challenging in a good way. There's really no way to get 'better' at this game, no strategy or skill that the player will develop, nor any way to customize the player. This is sloppy and unpolished. Titles like The Communist Pixel prove that superior PSP Flash titles exist.

[What Happened to Dad?]

What am I supposed to feel about this? The graphics, sound, and pretty much everything are wholeheartedly lacklustered. A slowly, simply told storyline is rather uninspired and even if it's a true story, this really isn't the way to capture it. This is the embodiment of a substandard art game.

Next time add in some actual gameplay. The music would be fine if it were a bit more varied.

[Interactive Buddy v.1.01]

All things considered, this is effectively a better pet sim than, say, Club a Seal. The different skins make it very easy both to want to care for and obliterate the 'buddy' you get on-screen, and the dialogue is also quite funny. I also like that this is a neat cross between physics games like The Torture Game as well as those pet sim games, which is why I originally thought of Club a Seal.

The items you get are quite fun to play with as well. The system of throwing objects is very easy to do, and the rate at which items spawn make it easy to simply delete and respawn an item rather than pick it back up. The items could stand to be a little more varied, however. There were a lot more weapons than there were things to entertain your buddy with, which is a strike against you. Variety is good. A dozen weapons that knock your buddy unconscious (and force you to wait for several boring seconds until he gets up) are not.

The modes are also a little gimmicky, though I'd rather have them than not have them. Certain things like the earthquake are completely unnecessary, while low gravity could be genuinely fun to play around with. The scripting engine access is the icing on the cake, although I don't know the names of any of the variables so I wouldn't know how to go about messing with the source code. Oh well.

Overall this is probably one of the best sim games out there, especially for when this was made. I think adding something like food would have been kind of neat, and also some different terrain rather than that one blank room (which Tom aptly notes is Matrix-like).

It might have also been nice if your buddy could interact with you more spontaneously, such as throwing the baseball back at the user after catching it, and the player having to catch it too. There could definitely be a lot more added to this game rather than just objects and a physics engine. I like that you can try and get a higher amount of money in one, three, or ten seconds, and I also like getting money too. Couldn't there be a better way to use money rather than one-time purchases? Maybe temporary consumable items that cost a certain amount, or special items that cost money for each spawn? There could also be some kind of challenge mode where you have to inflict a certain amount of damage within a certain time using certain modes, or some kind of more advanced baseball game. What I'm saying is that this game has high potential for some more involved gameplay but doesn't deliver.

Still, this is a really fun gadget and I'm glad I went back to reconnect with it even nine years later.

[Pride and Punishment]

It's... Unfinished. What am I supposed to say about this? You have the makings of a really good and attractive game, but there's nothing here! What gameplay is here is also rather slow. The bow could be drawn faster, the jumping could happen faster. I also noticed you spawn at the top of the screen if you hit the spacebar.

I don't know why you can't finish this game. If your FLA got corrupted that's one thing, but otherwise hell, I'd finish the damned thing for you.

glitchs2d responds:

This was for the Newgrounds Game Jam, and done in only around 48 hours. I'm going to release an update for the game soon once I get things working the way I want. Also the space bar is the way how it is for testing reasons I forgot to disable it when I uploaded, since i was so pressed for time. The new one will have a lot of fixes, and be much more of a game than what it is in its current state.

[Glitch Lab]

So lame... Graphics and music are unremarkable, and while neither of these are important, either could have salvaged this from being an overall bad game.

The gameplay is so gimmicky - almost like This is the Only Level, yet it claims to be glitchy. No, this isn't glitchy. Goat Simulator is glitchy. I noticed no actual glitches in this game, which is a real shame because glitch exploitation is actually quite fun. Invisible platforms and flashing colors, however, are hallmarks of shitty indie rage games, and I really don't appreciate that this is an imitation of those. To be fair, this game was neither hard nor frustrating, but I am really upset with the false advertising. The ending was also cheesy and fake as fuck, and not in a cool or funny way. Points for concept.

[Gap Monsters]

God I hate puzzle games like this but this one is so well done I have to give credit where credit is due. This is brain-bendingly difficult. How the hell did someone come up with this? I really like how there's a significant difference in difficulty between a star completion and a normal completion. The gameplay is simple yet clever and varied, and has the potential for both skill and strategy-based gameplay. The graphics and sound are simple but don't need to be complicated. What little physics do exist in the game are coded well.

I really can't think of anything that this game needs. Possibly more of a plot, different themes, or a better soundtrack. Other than that this is really amazing.

[Super Ninja Party Pooper]

Wow. What the hell Vince? Simple repetitive graphics, music, and gameplay. The one life system is annoying, but worse the fight isn't good to begin with. All you do is shoot, jump, shoot, duck, and repeat. I had to dodge the bear a grand total of once, otherwise it was just a really brainless exercise.