Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Billy Suicide]

I saw this on a website talking about depression, citing this game as potentially offensive, and I have to say I absolutely disagree. This game is a brilliant reconstruction of depression, and it really hits the nail on the head.

First of all, the player is immediately given a feel for how small the world is. Confined only two a four-room apartment, the variety of things for Billy to do are somewhat varied, but all done while inside, and it creates a very constricting, claustrophobic atmosphere. The fact that your financial and mental health are constantly decreasing also shows that just moving from room to room is difficult, expressing the lack of motivation someone has when they suffer from depression.

Most of all I love all of the bars and urges. The player is 'supposed' to finish every task, but at the same time is always under threat of some kind of timer running out. Whether it's the "Did I leave the ____ on?", an urge, or just the depletion of one of the gauges, Suicide Billy pressures you constantly and gives the player a feeling of being under stress. The fact that your financial and mental health is always a trade off, and especially that later in the game the bars seem to both be going down no matter what you do, instills a very strong sense of helplessness and futility in the player.

Adding onto the activities that Billy does, the fact that you see only a small animation for what he's doing makes the player feel very distant from the actual activities they're having Billy do, which is yet another accurate portrayal of what a depressed person feels.

Though the actual gameplay is quite simple, the variables (what Billy can do when he's drunk, on anti-depressants, etc.) are fairly complex, and literally every mechanic in the game is specifically designed to make the player feel what the character feels. This is further exemplified by beating the game, at which you realize you've gotten Billy through a grand total of ONE day after all of that running around. I also like that Tarah's 'reward' is his main motivation for getting through the day; it adds on to the whole thing about your world feeling very small when you play the game.

Onto the more aesthetic parts of the game, I really love the graphics here. The video animation works surprisingly well, and the environment is also very crisp despite looking like a bunch of photographs. There's a very distinct style here, and it works perfectly for what you're doing. It also reminds me a little bit of older Newgrounds fads, and makes me feel kind of nostalgic. The lines that appear over the screen are also a cool little subtlety that makes everything seem just a little bit less real.

The sound is absolutely excellent. The sound effects provide great ambiance, and despite not really being music, they're incredibly effective at making the player feel stressed, fatigued, and generally overwhelmed not only by the urges that pop up, but also by the activities that you do willingly. The little bits of music you hear while listening to music and playing guitar and bass are also really good, I'm surprised you haven't put the full tunes up on the Audio Portal (as I hear that you composed all of those clips yourself).

dlasal responds:

Thanks so much for your review. I'm always happy when I see that someone understands Billy Suicide, and that it still has some relevance even after so many years have gone by. Oh, and some of the music is available here: http://davelasala.bandcamp.com/

[Inner Vision]

Poorly done. First of all, pixel graphics are fine, but these are not. You could have created much more detailed sprites and worked with colors and shading; instead these look like they were done in MS Paint. The music is alright, but kind of plain, and there are no sound effects either.

One big issue here is having to wait for the text to show up on the screen. It was annoying having a reading speed faster than the speed at which the text shows up on-screen, and all of the boxes opening and closing were annoying as well.

There's also the writing - honestly it's just not done that well. The dialogue is unrealistic, and the options aren't that great. Worse, people will continue to say the exact same thing regardless of what you tell them, and worst of all, you don't even see the rest of the conversation if you blow your chances, so there aren't even really 'bad' 'endings.

This is simply an example of a game that was made poorly. Sorry.

LinusPrime responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I might revisit this game in the future and polish it up. After all, I did make it in one month for a game jam.

[Break the TV]

I know Newgrounds has seen other games like this before (Dynamic Systems), and this certainly isn't the best recreation I've played. The graphics and sound are modest, and the gameplay feels in many ways somewhat uninspired. The different devices seem just a little too similar to me, what with the birds, cannons, and guns having almost the exact same functions.

What really bothered me, though, was how the puzzle element of the game played out. I beat a lot of levels just by having a few mechanisms triggering and shooting at nothing. Other times I noticed that something like a falling domino might trigger a bird but not a cannon. Inconsistencies like this gave the game depth but seemed pointless and didn't make a whole lot of sense.

I will give you a 7 because the physics worked quite well, and because I really enjoyed some of the level design, which was mostly well-done. I got 15 levels in before calling it quits - perhaps if you'd allowed players to play sets of four or five levels, unlocking another set after beating the majority of previous levels, it would have been less frustrating to get stuck.

EggysGames responds:

Yeah you make good points, it was definitely not the most well executed game I've done. The game idea had some major flaws.

[Heli vs Tower]

Hmm, seems kind of like a cross between Tyrian and Pursuit Force.

Really good game, I enjoyed just about everything about it. My only real complaint is that you should be able to strafe by holding down the Shift key (useful for backing up and firing), and also the difficulty and different types of enemies should increase a bit more, the only new additions I noticed to later altitudes were tanks. Perhaps some kind of mobile enemies that try to dodge attacks would have been cool, maybe even some boss battles.

Also, the entire game does feel a little lacking. As others have said, more types of helicopters and items would have given the game lots of variety. As it was, the special was basically a matter of waiting for a bomb, holding onto it for as long as you could, and then clearing the screen. Ejecting was a matter of waiting until you were low on health and then ejecting straight into another helicopter. More variables in the items and helis would have deepened the gameplay.

EggysGames responds:

Never played them two games. Glad you liked it. Yeah for a suqual I'll definitely do upgrades.

[Silly Chicken]

Now that's cute. The graphics are really nice and the controls are solid. I noticed you used some of the sprites from Smithy's Quest, and the cows look quite familiar too. I really wasn't a fan of the sound - the effects were repetitive as hell and the music likewise.

The gameplay was pretty solid. As I said, the controls are smooth, although I wish there was a small indicator to tell players when they could set another bomb, and also a timer on the bomb, since I screwed up a few times because I couldn't time the bombing quite right. The game did get pretty hard, but I liked that you could respawn every level, making it much easier. It also felt kind of like a puzzle game as a result.

The minigames were a mixed bag. I thought the typing minigame was hilarious, but the Pokemon battle was lame and simplistic and the final boss pissed me off because of how horrible the controls were. It took me way too long to figure out I was really just tapping left and right and firing constantly.

Overall this game is fun, but considering how short it is, it could stand to have a level editor, and perhaps a bit more polish. For a 2013 game, this seems quite dated.

EggysGames responds:

I like your reviews on all my stuff Kwing. Some of the graphics are being reused a bit lately because I'm having trouble getting new artists :(

I'm glad you liked the chat bit, wasn't sure how that would go down.

Cheers for the overall review.

[Magnetized]

I gave up on the sixth to last level. I have to give it to you, this game is pretty damned good. Nice relaxing graphics and music, and the gameplay is brilliantly simple. I really like how there are three different types of gravity wells and how the smallest bit of timing can have huge effects on where your square goes. I also think it's cool how some parts of the track are reused, and how you can make a really simple level really long and complex based off of how the track works.

I was a little bit put off by the difficulty, yet I feel that the curve was done well. I simply ran out of patience before I beat the game. I also think it's funny how the yellow gravity well is so similar to my game Twins V2, although this is implemented much better, I will admit.

Overall I really, really like this game. However I feel it suffers from a little too much in the simplicity department, which is why levels like the one I quit on had to rely on just getting longer and longer to keep the game difficult. I was also a bit annoyed at how the spacebar is required to change the position of the box in the gravity wells. The game had been doing so well with the one-button control scheme... One of the best one-button games I'd ever played, next to a morse code game and The Impossible Game. Adding another button ruined the charm. Perhaps you could have shown the guide line without the mouse pressed, froze the player on a click, and swapped positions when the mouse was released?

Really great concept, but it needs a little more. Maybe optional paths, collectibles, or enemies.

rocky10529 responds:

thanks! and good advises! i'll keep working on it!

[Rock Hard Coliseum 1]

Nice work, Stone! I'm really loving the animations here. (Did you do all of them? The body types look a lot like yours...) Everything looks great from movements to particle effects to the sounds. This entire submission is just loaded with polish, and it shows. I also feel like you did some really great pairings, putting together fighters with similar styles which really made the animations more interesting.

What annoys me about this is that it seems like some kind of collab that was turned into a bunch of quicktime events at the last second. I'm not too happy about that. "Guessing" who's going to win, and then participating in short mashing sequences just doesn't do it for me. I'm also not really sure what the exact point is. If a QTE is helping the player you didn't vote on, do you just sit and let them fail? Or are the outcomes all predetermined? What determines how the mashing works? Is the difficulty of the QTE dependent on the actual poll from the original battle? And what the hell do I have to do in order to boost my score up to a 7 from a 6?

The whole game aspect of this just doesn't work out for me, and seems like a cheap way to label an animation as a game. Still, the game looks pretty, and looks are the meat and potatoes of this anyway.

Stone-Steven responds:

Hey I appreciate the lengthy comment. Yes, I did do all of these myself. I'm not much of a coder myself, so I tried to give it a little extra interactivity.

The meat and potatoes is the system of calculating and storing the users selections of characters in the RHC that really makes the user interact with the project as a whole. Even deciding what will happen next in it.

[Super Joe]

What a stressful game.

What you've got here is decent, but just feels unpolished. I can understand that this was a warm-up since you're getting back into programming, but there was a lot you could have fixed. I liked the puzzle element of each level being different, but the sheer difficulty of some levels oftentimes made it feel redundant. The old blood splatter and sound effect also roused some gamer PTSD I had from playing Stickya Adventurya.

Overall the gameplay suffered from minor mechanical issues, length, and difficulty. One really obnoxious issue I had was the last level, where the fan simply wouldn't trigger on some of the bullets, killing me. Another one that had me for a while was the level with ice, which had me struggling because momentum was changing so much. On top of the mechanics screwing with me for the right reasons, I also noticed certain jumps not having as much oomph in them as they should have. Little things like that made a hard game tougher for the wrong reasons.

Sound-wise, I feel like you just tossed in some Doctor Who remix and an old death sound effect without much thought. There aren't even sound effects for jumping or bullets. Because of the difficulty of the game but the length, the song got really repetitive, really quickly. A small playlist of different songs, especially something from the Audio Portal, would have given the game variety.

As far as graphics go, I can see you either used placeholders or slopped together stuff that was barely better. I'm not picky with graphics, and I like how easy it was to play because of its simplicity (nothing distractingly flashy) but you definitely could have done a bit more. The backgrounds are fine, but stick figures could have been bolstered a little bit more. You're not bad with graphics, but even if you didn't want to do anything, you still could have ripped some sprites from Smithy's Quest or something. Hell, you could have even used Tricksy!

Overall fun gameplay, but got really frustrating later on. It would have been really cool if you could go back and user new abilities later on, especially like using different items for different levels, so the same levels would be easier or tougher.

EggysGames responds:

Yeah I do agree with a lot of that. It is a bit rushed for a small game and my artists have all been away so I need some new ones for graphics instead of reusing old stuff.

[The Infection]

Really good game! The controls were super slick... WASD, Q for weapon selecting and E for switches. I found it very easy to get used to the controls, although I wish you could walk while crouching. That did bother me a little. Graphics are good, there are even a couple nice scares put in! Excellent atmosphere and the soundtrack was nice too.

The gameplay was a little bit of a letdown; it's nothing I haven't seen before. Just another one of those shooters. The weapon types were nice and kept things interesting, and the melee weapons were strong enough to not become useless towards the end of the game. One big complaint I have is the bosses had too few attacks. Each one only had two different moves, and they were easy to read.

One last thing that really bothered me was the lag. While playing my cursor lagged awfully, moving around in directions that I had moved my mouse in several seconds ago. This seemed to get better when I died and things 'reset' but in the end it feels like something that should have been fixed. Although it wasn't game breaking, it made the game a lot less fun, and discouraged me from trying Survival or Dodge modes.

EggysGames responds:

But Kwing its spooooky