Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Girado - Twirling Experts]

Almost really good. The graphics are sharp as hell, the music is catchy, and the gameplay is tight. There are some major issues with gameplay though. First, I really don't like how you have to use the spacebar to take back a move. Implementing the scroll wheel as an optional alternative might have been a nice way to make sure the game maintained a mouse-only control scheme.

I think different modes might also have been a nice idea. The time limits were really daunting to me and made me feel uncomfortable about experimentation, especially with such a unique game as this. The bonuses that you collect were a nice way to mix things up, but I wasn't able to get a very clear view of how many there were in a level, and that was also kind of discouraging.

Anyway, I feel like this game would have been really fun if you'd had some kind of racing mode, collecting mode, puzzle mode, etc. instead of one linear campaign that seems to assume everyone is comfortable with the control scheme before they are.

[Scale of the Universe 2]

When you make a sequel to something, you're supposed to really make it pop. I don't see too much added in this edition. Sure, you put in some extra objects and pretty colors, but in the end it's still the same thing. Worse yet, it scrolls much slower, making it extremely tedious to scroll from the far end of the scale to the other. There's also some lag from all of the filters you used in the objects.

I should note that the thing that bothered me the most about this was the horrible commentary you put in. It was so informal and casual, filled with fake chumminess that it made me want to puke.

Seems like you saw that the first one was popular and wanted to republish it with an advertisement slapped on the front.

That being said, the scale itself is still as interesting as it ever was, but you're really just submitting the same thing and people are looking at it in amazement all over again.

[The Doctor's Run]

Hilariously awful... WOW. So where to start? The graphics are all ripped bitmaps with poor quality, either squashed or stretched to insane proportions that just make everything look bad. Filters are applied to every object but are obvious and overused, and really don't help with the polishing. The sound is just one song looping over and over. The gameplay is boring, has no instructions, and no real strategy, as the apples and custard spawn in the same place over and over, leaving you standing on the exact same spot to maximize your score. And to make it worse, the game doesn't even end!

kirrrbyyy responds:

I totally agree with you. I hate this piece of crap.
But thanks for playing!

[Nightmares of Leia Ray]

Fun. Atmospheric. Too short. This point-and-click horror game really impressed me (and I was quite shocked to discover that it was made by you, Luka!). The gameplay is fun and mixes point and click elements with a couple puzzles to spice up the gameplay! The black and white artwork looks incredible, and animations such as the black explosion thing and the moving silhouettes looked so smooth they were almost hypnotic. The music was also awesome, and really added to the mood.

A few low points... One, the game was really hard at points when you were just trying to find something to click, forcing me to use the tab button a few times. Second, the 'scares', or dead bodies and shit, seemed kind of cheap and not very effective. Yes, they set the mood, but they didn't draw me INTO it. And of course it ended way, way too soon. My only other complaint is that I felt that for an atmosphere this intriguing and for graphics so great, this really deserved to have a good story, but there really wasn't one.

[dotHack]

The Only Winning Move is Not to Play

Gosh, does this remind me of Thermonuclear War. The graphics are simple and look nice, which make this game feel easy to play except for two quirks: One, I wish darkened hexagons that were not currently moving anywhere had some kind of notification when they turned dark, like a white ripple coming from the hexagon. Second, some kind of timer such as a rapidly turning hourglass or a bar filling up repeatedly would have been nice. Since the numbers only changed every second, I kept getting this uncomfortable feeling of lag, even though nothing was going wrong.

The sound effects were good, albeit a bit repetitive. The music was similar; I would have liked if you had several tracks that shuffled themselves during gameplay. For a game as repetitive and methodical as this, neglecting to use Audio Portal integration was a dealbreaker for me.

Now onto the gameplay... This is kind of like the Japanese game Go, only there are a lot more flaws. The first of these is that it's always obvious where to go. Once you realize that the more tiles you dominate, the more resources you build up, it's inherently obvious that you should spread where you can and prevent the enemy from doing the same. Worse, the AI lacks any kind of strategy and seems to target random tiles whereas you can eliminate one group of enemy tiles at a time in order to prevent them from growing.

Where your tiles should go is obvious, and the only thing that ever screwed me up while I was playing was when arrows would disappear due to lack of resources coming from a particular tile. I feel like this is the wrong reason for this to happen; I would have preferred if the arrow turned a different color and went on standby mode until the tile built up enough resources to continue moving them to another tile. Another thing that bothered me about this was that it seemed like a really cheap excuse for making the game 'real-time'. Forcing the player to constantly re-routing their resources from place to place kept me busy enough not to realize how much strategy this lacked until I was several levels in... But unfortunately I did realize it, and I must say it shows how incredibly tedious this game can be.

I only made it 12 levels in and I have no interest in going farther. This game is addictive only because it puts the next level right in front of your face before you can think to stand up and walk away from the computer. Even so, it was a good effort. Perhaps more complexity would add more depth to this game, although tons of powerups and stuff might also wreck its elegance.

[Wink: the Game]

Excellent

I played this game a long time ago and somehow lost track of it because I kept confusing it with Thing Thing. I'm glad I finally found it again!

The graphics are minimalistic but very cute, and the simplicity of everything really makes it feel 'good' to look at it. The animation as well. Most of the in-game objects seem like highly polished placeholders, and for some reason I really like it that way. My only complaint is that on some surfaces which only have on color and nothing on them, you can quickly lose track of how far you've run in one direction, or how far you've fallen from a ledge.

The sound is excellent!! The voice acting is witty and done excellently, the music is really dramatic and high quality, and the sound effects are very satisfying to listen to.

The gameplay is quite complex, but works out well. I love how simple things work out with only a few extra buttons aside from the arrow keys. Certain things such as the ledge mechanism make the game look extra polished, plus stealth games are something that Newgrounds needs a lot more of.

I think the difficulty is balanced pretty well, motivating the player to use stealth, but the thing that really pissed me off was how easy it was to get lost. The up and down arrows are all but useless for looking up and down; it only gives you an extra 50 pixels of difference! Being able to look 400 pixels in any direction might have been a bit better. This is what caused me to miss the platform that lead up to the guard holding the Wind Staff the first time I played this, and it took me way longer than it should have this time around as well. Trying to figure out where every little nook and cranny is makes the game way too hard for the wrong reasons, and makes otherwise exciting gameplay tedious.

Even so, this game still turned out incredibly. I have to say I'm really glad I found it again!

[-Stick War-]

I Never Reviewed This?!

This has got to be one of the greatest real-time strategies ever created! Balance an economy with an army and overtake the enemy!

The graphics are great. Animation is mind-blowingly realistic and the stick figures are really good representations of troops. The ground and statues look gorgeous and the menu is also very well polished.

The music is great and the sound effects work too. Voice work is a nice addition and makes it feel more modern, though I wish there were more.

The gameplay's the best, of course. Each type of unit is unique, and all of the upgrades are equally tempting to get. There's a lot of strategy involved, yet taking control of a character also adds an action-like element as well. I cannot describe how great this feels to play!! The only problem I have is that there aren't any huge advantages or disadvantages due to position; adding elements like mountains or water would be a cool idea, and impeding the movement of troops would also make battles drag on longer for more strategic play.

AWESOME JOB!!!

[This Game Makes Sense]

Decent

This game looks to be done fairly well, with good animation, really good graphics, catchy music, and nice sound effects, but it suffers from incredibly difficult gameplay with absolutely no motivation to move on; while fun for a while, dying over and over because the controls are ridiculously slippery gets annoying when you aren't unlocking anything at all.

thinking-man responds:

The main thing that I impressed myself with, is making a working platformer engine that isn't glitchy at all.