Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Suppressed Demo]

I'm actually making a game with a VERY similar story (three people escaping a fascist country also based on North Korea, lol) and really wanted to play this to see how it compared, but as others have said it's buggy beyond belief. The poor animation, slow walking speed, use of text to speech, and random freezes make this look unpolished in addition to being unplayable.

zephyo responds:

yeah... this was my first game so I kinda sucked at like everything lmao. thanks for your review on my other game btw. Lots of detail and helpful points.

[Simplicity]

It's amazing how faithfully this recreates the old ~2003 Flash game era. The graphics look authentic in a way that's imitated but almost never done right.

This would have been a hell of a game 15 years ago. It's still a decent game now. The puzzles are pretty varied in their difficulty which is good, but the time limit seems unnecessary. Combined with the music, you don't really help the player relax and think and instead you seem to be hurrying them up. Not a good model for a puzzle game.

Other than that there's a lot of things you could have done to make the graphics more impressive. Think about lighting, beveling, texture, etc. Rather than just having text as buttons, put them inside of boxes and give them some level of uniformity. Pick ONE font and stick with it, and unite all of your graphics under one color scheme. The chaotic main menu should have some transparent fill over it to bring the menu items into focus, and what you have makes the green and blue level selection and play screens clash too. The time gauge, mute button, clock, etc. all seem slightly off-center and there's a lot of blank space that seems awkwardly placed.

As far as the game is concerned I think what you have is good. The level design is strong, but some levels really are frustrating. I suppose that's what you want for a puzzle game. Some of the puzzles seem to be out of order in terms of how difficult it is, so perhaps you should have other people tell you how difficult each puzzle is and re-order them so that there's a smoother curve.

garylu1999 responds:

Thanks for your review. Your review is the most helpful one so far and I would definitely use some of these tips for future flash games. Thank you.
By the way, about the difficulty order, I actually did have other people try it, but different people did not agree on which puzzles are harder and the way some of them ordered it seemed odd to me as well.

[Manhattan Project]

I have no idea how I beat this before, this game is ridiculously hard. I'm not sure I understand how you can destroy everything and get a x2 multiplier or a x1 multiplier - seems like you're supposed to cause a big ruckus all at once but then keep minor explosions going on afterward? Weird mechanic.

The game is pretty and the sound is well-done but it lags pretty badly as the game progresses, making me think you might be keeping data allocated for things that have spawned.

FrozenFire responds:

Yeah this game was poorly optimize sry

[Fleeing the Complex]

Kind of an interesting choice for the #1 game in the portal right now, though I suppose the lack of difficulty is probably what's responsible for the lack of 0-bombers. The art, animation, and sound design are all pretty good, although there are a few animators out there (Stone, Oxob, Terkoiz, Hyun, etc.) that could have done it better. Most of all I liked that the voice acting was fairly realistic and didn't sound cartoony as tends to be par for the course with this type of game (especially with female characters.) I think the amount of content that remains available after viewing all of the animation is quite impressive, too. And of course the references are bound to draw some attention.

Anyway this is a pretty solid game. I think I would have enjoyed something a little more involved but there's little to complain about.

PuffballsUnited responds:

I agree with everything you said!

[Deterministic Dungeon]

Aside from being able to manipulate the game by timing your clicks, there's really nothing different about this game. I don't feel like this singular idea merits an entire game. It looks cute but ultimately the rolling just becomes a slightly controllable gimmick that slows down the pace of the game considerably. It's also weird how you don't roll for all of the attacks made against you. Anyway, the idea is cute but it just doesn't feel that interesting to me. I was expecting a game with the protagonist being an NPC and the player, being the RNG, decided whether or not to help them. Oh well.

PestoForce responds:

I like your idea for what you were expecting, you should make that game!

[The Cloud]

You offer absolutely nothing new to the portal by having made this. Everything from the gameplay to the graphics are completely devoid of content. This is thoroughly boring and uninspired.

JackAstral responds:

By content do you mean depth? Also, thanks for trying it out anyway- sorry you feel that way

[Grumpy Turtle]

I really love the music for this but is there a reason an otherwise harmless game is pushing nightmare fuel out of my speakers?

Anyway, this game isn't bad. I like that hitting knives doesn't really do anything except stop your upward momentum, which means it's really helpful to hit them if you're already on your way down. The launch pad kind of pisses me off since it's hard to predict how long it's going to be off-screen especially when paying attention to everything else. Most of all I think it's somewhat unfair because of the random falling patterns - after a dozen serious attempts I still can't beat my 2nd attempt which got me up to 500 points, and I don't think I'm getting worse at the game.

EggysGames responds:

Oh wise kwing

[Escape The Car HD]

Good but extremely frustrating at times. As others have said it can be hard to figure out what you can click on and what you can't - a different cursor would help, and I wouldn't mind the option to go back or look at different views being highlighted rather than just clicking near the edges of the screen which left me very frustrated at times. A single word change would also have made this much easier... The 'instrument panel' you refer to is called a DASHBOARD.

Afro-Ninja responds:

Yes but it is more specifically the section that contains the gauges ;)