Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Paper-Draw]

Considering the Flash Forward Game Jam was announced on January 2nd, this isn't bad for two weeks worth of work. However, the physics are pretty badly broken, mainly regarding the hitboxes. It's always a good idea to have an invisible hitbox inside of the player character that's a bit smaller than their sprite to give them a small amount of leeway when squeezing between tight obstacles.

On top of that, it seems like the platform physics only register ground; the player can jump up through ground and emerge on top, which is a really effective way to cheat through many of these levels.

The UI is kind of ugly, too. Normally this isn't a huge deal but in a few instances it becomes actively difficult to read the instructions that are being given.

The inspiration from Draw Play is clear and as one of my favorite games growing up it's cool to see it still being remembered fondly.

[XOXO Puzzle]

This is a big step up from the earlier version. Most of the levels are easy, but a few you do have to work for.

My biggest frustration was that it didn't seem clear where the letters would go in the levels where the position they ended up in changed (like alternating adding on the right and left.) Having a clearer indicator than just "R2" would be more visually appealing.

The timer seems like a dumb addition, I would rather have the game track my best completion in terms of moves (maybe two tiers of completion, one for par, and one for the fewest moves possible.)

[True Idle Game]

This is a really good parody. The typos, bad font, bad UI, etc. all bring the whole thing together. The only thing wrong with it IMO is that the sound/music/more games buttons don't explain what they are. It's funnier if the player sees some text to suggest what a button should do, so the message that pops up is a response to the player's choice to click it, rather than the player just clicking everything.

I also think the actual idle part of the game might be more compelling without a timer.

[Pixel Puzzle]

It's a not a bad concept (though simple) but is there no way to register when the player has solved a puzzle? The pieces don't snap into place. I also dislike that you have to click on the area where the pieces spawned from to rotate them.

Graphics and music are simple, gameplay could be decent but putting the pieces together and then just going back to the parent menu to do another feels really underwhelming.

Veinom responds:

I wish I could fix the 3 problems you mention (and I tried multiple times) but they are beyond my programing skills. So this is the best I could do. I understand why someone would expect the pieces to snap, but the game works fine as it is and the concept is clearly presented. And that's a win in my book.

[XOXO]

Maybe there's something I'm not getting here but I thoroughly loathed this. The music is cute and the animation is nice and smooth, but I have no idea how you're supposed to control what's going on. I seemed to have the best luck just mashing buttons as fast as I could and hoping I got lucky. The fact that you can't control which symbol you select makes it impossible to strategize, I'm not even sure there's a puzzle here.

[Badass Beatrice]

Taken in isolation this is nothing special, there were plenty of early 00s games (a few on Stickpage and the Whack Your Boss series) that had a choose-your-own-animation theme to them. That said, the level of fidelity here in recreating that vibe is really impressive. The B-voice acting, the art style that makes generous use of the line tool, the fonts, and everything else create something that genuinely feels like it could have been made in the era that this harkens back to.

There are a lot of ways you could upscale this for a better final product, such as more content (Pico's School is a fully-fledged game after all,) more animations, etc. or perhaps having something more to say other than being a period piece that mirrors a very specific era, but what you have now is fine.

[Doula-Ball]

If any game screams old school Newgrounds, it's something like this. A pinball machine themed around labor? The theme, art, and voices are cheesy and hilarious.

I like the rules a lot; the player is asked to hit a variety of things such as holes, ramps, and bumpers. I also like multiball a lot, it allows the player to be more active since normally the ball spends a lot of time away from the flippers. Unfortunately the physics are pretty broken, with the flippers being too short to accurately aim and the ball glitching through obstacles causing most of the drains. It seems you compensated for this by making the center drain nice and lenient, but I would rather the difficulty not come from unfair, glitchy drains in the first place.

[King of Buttons]

I played this a long time ago and was finally able to find it again.

The concept is simple but never tries to be more than what it is. I think the biggest issue has to do with replayability and content. Some medals (even ones not reflected on the Newgrounds API since medals didn't exist yet) would be nice, otherwise the only way you can compare your performance is through the (now dead) leaderboards.

After playing all four modes, Reflex is really the only one that feels enjoyable. Time Attack and Endurance are kind of boring, and Challenge can be memorized and it feels a bit contrived to hunt around for the one right button.

[Hexiom Connect]

I really, really enjoyed this game. In a sense, it's not much different from a jigsaw puzzle, but the fact that any of the pieces can be adjacent to any other pieces and that it isn't immediately apparent if certain pieces are incompatible adds something unique to the problem space. Starting with a huge mess and gradually determining which pieces have to be in certain locations is amazingly satisfying.

The biggest issues as far as I can tell have to do with player guidance:

The path sections that can't be moved are nearly the same color as the moveable pieces, making it hard to visually track, sometimes making me try to pick up a section that I couldn't, or making me second-guess pieces that had to have been right because I didn't realize which ones were glued in place.

The fact that the pieces have to be manipulated in-place causes a lot of visual noise. Being able to drag around pieces on the side of the main area would allow the player to store them out of the way, or to experiment with their placements without limitations.

Finally, it was at times hard to keep track of which pieces I KNEW were correct, sometimes picking them up by accident even though I would have known not to had I double checked. Some way to lock pieces in place (as well as color-code locked pieces) would have made the process a lot more pleasant.

[Aquacubes]

This game definitely shows its age, and the mobile games that would follow this in the next decade have made this quite redundant. That said, there really isn't much to this game. You hunt around for ways to get groups of four, and that's mostly it. The time limit is too aggressive for the player to really want to think about their moves when the short-term gains outweigh it.

Simple and enjoyable but no reason to play for more than a few minutes.