Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[AP Integration Tutorial]

Good Tutorial

It was a bit vague though. While the scripting was functional, you could have been more specific about what things did. Since so few lines of code were used in it, you could have either added more or elaborated more on each bit. For instance, you could have gone into more detail about how sounds are coded as variables and whatnot. Not only that, but your scripting style could use a bit of improvement. While you don't name variables "cow" and "boat" anymore, there are still a few things that would clean up your script so it was nice and shiny before it was put into a tutorial.

Still, good effort. 5ed.

[M-Bot The Game]

Bad

This game is pretty awful... First off, you're supposed to be playing as M-Bot but I have no clue what anything had to do with Newgrounds. There were a couple Newgrounds icons, M-Bot, a completely random background, and some orange guys that seemed to hold absolutely no bearing on anything. The boss Col-Lab made a bit of sense, but not much. In truth, it was majorly lacking in concept, which was my highest hope when I clicked on this game in the first place.

Next, there's a huge problem with the gameplay. One other reviewer stated quite nicely that there's way too much going on, and he's right. All sorts of fickle decorations fly by the screen ultra fast, and it's obnoxiously distracting. I can play DDR with seizure-inducing lights flashing in the background, but this is actually worse. The color scheme was good, but too repetitive considering how many different objects were on the screen at once. Next, the controls were pretty sloppy. I couldn't move very well, and hiding the cursor was really annoying. While there are keyboard controls, I still would have preferred some cleaning up on the mouse control. I had to keep shooting to keep M-Bot under control because my mouse sometimes left the game screen without me even knowing! Clicking and holding was the only way to make sure the game obeyed me, but that had setbacks of its own, including major ass lag. This game took up 470 MB of RAM on my computer, and I doubt even half of that was the bullets, though I'm sure they didn't help. Next, serious balance issues. I shot with a 1-shot cannon and it took forever to upgrade it. The next thing I know, I have a 2-shot cannon and I ended up getting it upgraded in about five seconds. What the hell? My last complaint for the gameplay is that the game fails to tell you what's going on at all. There was no health bar (no health, even, it seemed), no progress bar (which it desperately needed because I couldn't tell how far I was through the level and it didn't seem to end), and not much else to tell you what to do.

The music was obnoxiously repetitive. While trying to un-jam my overloaded computer I ended up hearing it quite a lot, but I didn't need to listen to it long for it to drill my brains out.

Last are the graphics, which I can't say much bad about. There were too many, and they lagged, but they were damn good. The 3D visual effects were incredible; tons of TV shows and movies fall below the line this game set. The short cutscenes further displayed the visuals.

In conclusion, this game was pretty special, and yet, still... Bad. Sorry, it didn't make the cut for me. This was definitely not worth the 35 MB wait. If I had to give one suggestion, it would be to store some of the data for this (music would be easy, graphics maybe harder) externally, and use loadMovie and loadSound to make the original file smaller. Maybe you could have split this into several parts instead. I don't know, the memory has to change. Even apart from that, though, I couldn't have enjoyed this game.

[Santa's Gift Grab]

Didn't Like It

It was decent, but it was overall lacking. The music got repetitive and obnoxious, the graphics were pretty bad (even for pixel art), and the gameplay got very repetitive and very tedious.

The art was simple, but usually with pixel games or retro styled stuff you want to make the lighting good, even if it's pixelated. You didn't. The proportions were nice, though.

Music was minimalist and obnoxious. Got old quickly. Spend a bit more time seeking out sound effects and alternate songs.

The gameplay was pretty bad... It started okay, but there were several problems with it. The ladder climbing was pretty weird, for one. You could walk across a hole as long as there was a ladder in it, or move from one ladder to the next easily, which was just strange. Next, it was damn unforgiving. You had to collect ALL of the presents without getting hit ONCE. That meant if one level was too hard, you were stuck on it if you couldn't beat it. It would have been nice if every time you beat a level you unlocked two levels, and completing either of those two levels unlocked the next two, to keep players from getting stuck. Having optional levels would also give purpose to the fact that I got points for collecting presents.

[Holiday Hop]

Decent

The graphics were good in the game, but the graphics for the menu were pretty simplistic, bordering on terrible. The buttons needed some serious texturing polishes.

The music was incredibly obnoxious AND LOUD!! I had to turn the volume way down.

The game itself was a bit bland. It needed powerups and stuff, aside from the platforms and trampolines. Additionally, it was pretty unforgiving. Hit the bottom even a little and you're gone, dead... It should either have a little more leeway or at least make it so that you have a lives system, like bouncing up while you still have a life. Also the star slid around way too much!

Overall it was decent, but needed levels and powerups... Badly. Maybe some kind of super-drive mode where you could jump high for a certain amount of time, too.

[Tower of Greed]

Amazing

This was one of the best games I've ever played. It looks like you're hiding behind the style of nostalgic 90s games to appeal to players that grew up around that time, but you really don't need to. Even if this game had modern-looking graphics, the simple gameplay would still easily annihilate the competition.

Graphics were pretty good. The pixel art is way better than I could do, but the lighting on the ladders looked kind of weird. You might wanna think of polishing that up. Also, I don't know if the little white guy you control was a tribute to an existing character, but if not, he needed more detail.

The music got kind of repetitive, but I actually liked the sound effects (even if they got repetitive too). I'd personally suggest adding more songs tacked onto the current one, maybe with a random playlist or something to spice it up. Kraftwerk and Nullsleep are huge recommendations here, although you might also consider Nine Inch Nails if you're appealing to the demographic into the whole sprites, big headphones, 8-bit, etc.

The gameplay was pretty interesting. Tower of Greed is a game of risk and reward, security and insecurity. While you had a sense that everything could go down the drain instantly, you also got immense satisfaction from locking in a medal. The player moved great; I loved how fast he could move. Also, the gems were placed pretty well. It was usually just out of your way to lure you on a long chase.

There were a couple problems I had with it, though. For one, a few diamonds or items were extremely hard to pick up without getting killed, when diamonds and items with the exact same value could often be obtained by easier means. To remedy this, it would have been nice if you had an extra kind of gem (like a red ruby) to rectify the strange learning curve. It would have made it easier to give better rewards for harder maneuvers.

Also, the jumping enemy and stair-climbing enemy were pretty unbalanced. Sometimes they'd jump right off the screen, but sometimes, either at a low level (like 4) or a high level (like 40), one of them would literally stay on top of me to the point where i couldn't shake him and I kept getting hurt until I died. This is a very, very serious problem that can slash a player unfairly.

The shield powerup was a bit useless, meaning that 1/4 of the time you picked up an item it was fairly useless. I also couldn't see the difference between survival and arcade.

Lastly, it would have been nice if you had an adrenaline mode where the stage moved a bit faster. I found myself craving action sometimes and being denied it, but would have loved something where you could barely keep up with the pace of it all.

[Bounce (Platformer) -SG-]

Needs Lots of Work

It's decent, but it needs a lot more. For one, you need to learn how to draw. Give the character some lighting, and maybe make him a bit more than a ball.

Second, the ground needs way more texture. Just create a Group over your current ground and make it artistic. You could draw lava over the red spots to make it look more cinematic, or maybe grass over the ground or something, or polish up the yellow sunbeams. That would have made tons of difference.

It seems like you might be using copy/paste tutorials... The engine at the beginning reminded me of FeindishDemon's tutorial, while the space levels reminded me of Ball Revamped, except that it had way better hitTest for the corners. I think you'd have used the same hitTest for the entire thing if you had written all the script yourself.

It needs way more levels for the different realms, like Neon and Space, and it also needed something like a Level Select you could go back to. The balance was whack.

One more note was that the inverted colors thing was stupid. You're just redoing the same level with different colors for no reason? Come on. You changed ONE of the levels for it, and that's it.

Lastly, the V-Cam was way too small, giving the player a bad view of the map. Just use the Free Transform tool to make it bigger.

Needs tons of work, most prominently in the graphics area. I used to draw graphics almost that bad, but the important thing is not to let a single color take up to much area of the screen. Even using Bevel filters is better than it.

SyndromeGames responds:

Thanks for the thought out review! I am going to do a collab with an artist for my next game concerning the artwork. (WOOT) Not gonna have a V-Cam, or very much reworked V-Cam. And to be totally truthful, i DID use a tutorial. It's not like I didn't put any work into this, I've put COUNTLESS hours into this game, whether it was reworking the code to meet my needs, or making the levels, I did a fair bit. Is using a tutorial really like cheating though? If you are in school, and you learn how to do something from a teacher, and you use what he teached you in the test, is that cheating? The tutorials are made for people to learn. Well, thank you for the review, I will certainly keep what you said in mind.

-Jacob

[Inculcation]

Started Out Great

Graphics are amazing. Great proportion, great realistic art style, but my favorite part about them was the lighting. It was very intricate and really set the mood nicely.

Sounds were good too. Good quality, definitely spooky.

The gameplay was good but it was a little obscure and abstract. You could only blow up a plastic bag in one spot, and the answers to some things are in odd places with little reason. Since the player's on drugs it makes more sense, but it seems like the story fits the gameplay instead of the gameplay fitting the story. Also, it could have been better if you randomized the codes and the displays, like displaying random numbers that corresponded with random answers. It would have made walkthroughs harder to exploit the game. The crap in the hallways that appeared and vanished made no sense, either. Also, I didn't like the learning curve. First try, F, second try, S. Is it really supposed to be that rigid?

The rest of it was damn stylish, though. You played on the horror element of keeping the player ignorant, which made it scary as hell. You couldn't tell if they were aliens or if it was some conspiracy or zombies or what. I actually thought it was zombies until I saw the windows bricked up. Damn scary, though. By the time you get to the point where you can kill yourself with a collapsing ceiling, it loses a little of its edge. It's just unrealistic, and weird that you find clock hands lying around in random places. The entire game reminded me of Reverb fused with a generic point-and-click. It needed more, like the lock-picking minigame and stuff like that. The game is too spontaneous.

As for the epilogue, I thought it was rather cliche. Most of the people in the US are already so ignorant we probably don't need drugs to be brainwashed into killing people. Look at the school shootings and stuff; it happens every week. While it's interesting that the player is on drugs, and it wasn't what I was expecting, it might have been better if there were no explanation. It would be unsatisfying but at least you couldn't ruin anything. It was decent, I guess, but definitely not as good as the rest of it.

[Moovlin PC Demo V2]

Awesome!

Alright, consider everything I haven't talked about in this review to be perfect.
1. The storyline and music were a tad cliche, but cliches have to come from somewhere.
2. There were a few issues with acceleration while crouching.
3. The enemy's bar should have faded so you knew how much time you had to attack.
4. If you hold run and pause, then unpause, he slides.
5. The flips still had a bit of a delay when you were on the ground.
6. Boost power doesn't decrease if you stop.
7. Moovlin's graphics are a little iffy. It's good, but you need a way to make his expressions look better. Just using lines doesn't cut it. You just need to redo his face.
8. It's still too strict with the leaderboard.
9. The street level is too misleading.
10. The boss battle was too methodical.
11. Mooviball's acceleration was whack.
12. I could fall off a platform as Mooviball and die before hitting a platform below.
13. Sunshine Plains' flower was way too hard to jump on.
14. Moovlin was too fast in the Plains.
15. The background is sometimes black. Make a background for those instances.
16. The subquests seemed to lag a lot.
17. The subquests didn't have cutscenes or anything.
18. Moovlin had so much health that the only threat was falling off the map. You should make either a health bonus after level completion or give him less health so enemies are dangerous. They did delay you for a bit, though.
19. If you pause and exit the battle with Truff, nothing mutes.
20. Needs more Mooviball levels!! Try doing loop the loops and stuff, speed boosts, and rad jumps.

Good demo, but fix stuff.

Psychofig responds:

1. Evil politician that is hell bent on taking over the world, and two robot recruits from a federation that try to stop him. That sounds exactly like... wait... nothing.
2. Didn't find anything wrong with that.
3. I will fix that, THANKS.
4. Oh wow, just noticed that. Will fix, THANKS.
5. I can make the delay shorter, but there still has to be some or else it is not realistic.
6. Since there is no boost power access in the demo, you're wrong on this. It decreases when you use the Boost.
7. Yeah, yeah. I can't change it now, since the cutscene faces aren't just one MC. It's cartoony, but you get the point, right?
8. Improving the jump feedback will probably stop alot of people from dying prematurely. I will get onto that, but the system will stay. Only people with skill should have access to the leaderboards....THANKS
9. I'll clear up the signs, THANKS.
10. Each boss is different, the battle lasts a max of 2 minutes so it shouldn't be a bother. I will improve graphics on it though...
11. No it isn't...
12. Hittest error, will fix. THANKS.
13. Might make it bigger, dumb floaty mechanics... THANKS.
14. You noticed it, eh? The cutscene after (not in demo) will explain why.
15. I'll make a nice background for the save states and death screen. THANKS.
16. Will optimize....
17. They aren't supposed to, since they don't have anything to do with the advancement of the story.
18. I'll make a health bonus. Don't worry, the next couple of levels require you to stop running and time everything, I'll dose them in obstacles...THANKS.
19. I can't fix that glitch, I dunno. 3 Audio tracks run in one frame and the mute won't work... I'll see what I can do, but if I can't fix it quick I won't bother. The player can make an exception...
20. Yup, there will be about 4 in the full game. Maybe more... My engine isn't good enough to support loops, but I was thinking of speed boost and maybe some anti-gravity, I dunno. It's all relative.... THANKS

[Seven's Second Adventure]

Extremely Boring

This is basically a bad version of Smithy's Quest by Eggy.

Graphics: The style is kind of neat, but the coloring is off. You can see really neat pixel art in things like Final Fantasy Tactics, but you just don't see it here. But I will congratulate the artist on making so MUCH of it. The map is really, really big. Some of the graphics were just minimalist though.

Gameplay: Extremely boring. It took me about 30 minutes to beat (timed by listening to an album with better music than that of the game's provisions), and I felt so unfulfilled afterward. You included a lot of references to Newgrounds users, which is probably what all the hype is about, but this is really nothing special. There's no time limit, nothing that really requires skill, it's just walking back and forth across a long-ass map a couple dozen times. It would have been nice if there was a minigame or something, just to pass the time. The scripting, although functional, was pretty simplistic as well.

The references to other users was neat and ebbed away some of the original boredom, but it couldn't salvage repetitive gameplay and mediocre graphics. Sorry.

Magical-Zorse responds:

ok, cool

[T E T R I S ' D: The Game]

Badass!

Graphics were good. Your animating style was always sort of peculiar, as it looks like you use the line tool for your sticks... Nevertheless it was pretty smooth. The interface and other graphics were well done too. The red death line was kind of unnecessary; once you fall off you're pretty much done for, so you could have made it invisible.

Sound was pretty sweet, as always. Good rhythm, melody, and timbre. Didn't get repetitive after a while, either. Would have been nice if there had been sound effects, especially for the blocks falling into place.

Great gameplay... I had a lot of fun playing it! The squishing script wasn't too sensitive, although I 'died' getting hit on the back of the arm by one of the blocks, obnoxiously. There were a couple glitches, too, such as standing halfway between a block and dying if you moved, or dying while walking into a few corners. Other than that, the randomization was pretty good, especially because every piece fit perfectly. I would have preferred if the arena had been a bit wider, and if there had been walls instead of a gaping abyss, but that's preferential stuff. It could have used more depth, like powerups and stuff, or a highscore board in particular. The medals were a tad generous, as well. I also disliked using J and K for the commands; it would have been nice if you could use A and S instead, since most people are more comfortable with those; maybe even customized controls. Other than that it was pretty good.