Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Moovlin PC]

Wow!

GOOD:
Gameplay is smooth and the controls work great. Each has its purpose, and the controls are simple and none of them are worthless like some games with pointless blocks or weak attacks. The graphics have a unique cartoony style to them, but with gradients. The animation for the game and a some cutscenes are good too. My favorite cutscene was going into Sunshine Plains; there's combat at the beginning, and then the hilarious dialog with the trees. The menu is easy to navigate and understand, and I like how it supports keyboard and mouse control, although I would have liked keyboard control for the pause menu. The music is expansive, fitting in most levels, and dramatic. The choices in making the selection were great! One of the best soundtracks ever! The pictures and hats provided a fun distraction, and it was fun to fight Safuma Poll with an afro. Some of the levels are really fun, too, and it's also convenient how your scores are automatically submitted. My favorite levels were the second Sun Station level, Missile Madness, the first two Lavarious levels, both of the ice levels, the Robot Factory, and Parliament. The Parliament especially was an unspeakably fun level to play. It had tons of traps, and beating it without taking damage was a huge challenge. I loved every minute of it.

BAD:
The graphics aren't that good. The two biggest things I noticed were that you used the same ground Movie Clip over and over. For the glass you broke, for the platforms that electrocuted you, for Cheeseworld, Sun Station, and a few other ones, too. Even circular platforms had the same Movie Clip as a support beam. The second one is that you use too many filters. Sunshine Plains uses a not-too-subtle bevel effect on the ground. Bevels like that are scattered all over the game. Another thing is the cutscene animation. Some of it was good (like the scene where Moovlin enters Sunshine Plains), but some (like the scene before the Truff battle and before Lavarious) had poor easing and movements. For Sun Station, you can ground pound on a little platform and fall through it. For Selia Desert, the three 2-sided platforms are almost hard to clear without taking damage, especially while rotating. I've done it, but it's stupid-hard, not fun-hard. Doodleworld has a glitch where you can fall through the floor if you have enough momentum. Mooviball doesn't even roll or support loops, and has a bad principle of momentum. Sunshine Plains is annoying during the flights, and the level goes by so fast you have to memorize it. Gears are worthless. You move slowly in the water level and can't dive. The gears work pretty badly in the Robot Factory, and Midnight Carnival isn't randomized, so if you memorize it you can get an infinite score. Lava Survival is both easy and luck-based. The Truff battle is so methodical that you get bored, and the Safuma Battle isn't long or hard enough. For the multiplayer modes, you roll in the same direction regardless of which direction you're rolling in, and the camera for the collecting game screws up. There's also no confirmation button on the Erase File button. Another gripe is the cutscenes for the game have some really bad jokes (although some good ones as well). The storyline was bad, despite the good dialog. Not much happens throughout all of the levels; most of the levels are excuses for gameplay. Some scenes could be skipped and others couldn't be. Some of the voices are pretty bad, too. Truff and Polypiscis (who also had terrible dialog) were bad, and Bobby's voice was mediocre. When Pamela is introduced, the sheet Moovlin sleeps under is starched. It moves like a solid object and not like fabric. On the topic of Pamela, the boobs are bad. The sound effects were bad too. I liked some of them (especially the bridge in Cheeseworld and the breaking glass) but some, like taking damage, were annoying. On a last note, the menu buttons are very bland and could have used a makeover. Some of them don't even change when you roll over them!

Overall, this game was really fun to play and make, but it's not perfect.

Psychofig responds:

Hah, that's Kwing for you. Of course, no game is perfect. Except Mario Galaxy 2 and Battletoads. But that's beside the point. I'm glad you liked it, and I had a real great time making it with you!

I'll keep all those things in mind if we ever get together again and make a sequel!

[Battle Egg]

Fun

The graphics were only okay, and the layout definitely needed some work. Some alpha gradients and glazing would have been a really nice addition to the interface, which was otherwise very plain. The graphics were otherwise pretty good, but the lighting seemed a little off... Or maybe the art was too precise. It could have used some kind of blurring or lighting effects to make it look more realistic. At some points it looked almost pixelly. The music was so plain I forgot it as soon as I closed out of the game, but the sound effects were very nice and almost satisfying in a way.

The gameplay was fun, but it needed more. It was near impossible to dodge attacks, even with jumping, and there should have been more upgrades. Another thing I noted is you can intentionally fail an early level over and over to get tons of money and get a huge advantage. The levels were also very short, but fun. I liked the change in how short levels were.

One last criticism is that the game seemed to end at a certain point, with no "you win" or anything. It just didn't go to the upgrade screen.

EggysGames responds:

Thanks Kwing :)

[Platformer (same One)]

Good

The graphics were nice. I liked the platforms and background, and the animation had nice easing, except for the player and the coins, which were animated rather sloppily and didn't fit the style of the rest of it. The spikes looked too similar to the ground and I tried jumping on them once only to lose a ton of health, and the font and overlay didn't fit the style of the rest of the game. Also, Coins should have been replaced with Points, or else each coin should only be worth one "coin". It could have used some sound, too.

The gameplay wasn't too good, I'm afraid. There was no momentum or acceleration, the gravity seemed almost wobbly, and there wasn't much work put into the hitTest. I do like the ingenuity of making the VCam follow the player slowly, and then resetting the player if he touches the VCam. That was interesting... But fallible. I noticed falling infinitely several times. I think you were overdoing the hitTests, and you might have gotten away with something like if(player._y>soandso){ or similar.

Overall the graphics are nice but that's about all that you have going for it.

FlashChickBoom responds:

Thanks for the review kwing :). sorry for late reply but i agree with everything said here, like i said barely any work was put into this so its not very good, i can do better graphics, animation and so on but this was just a start, like a test. Ill be sure to make my next game more awesome.... I am making it with you after all :D

[The Stickman's Adventure]

Liked It

Pretty cool game. The background graphics were okay, despite the stick figure being simplistic. The animation for the first boss could have been worked on, though. Not only that but the stick figure's eye was in the center of his head, and the falling boulders were pretty pathetic; you needed some serious redesign on those. For the sake of presentation, it would have been nice if the last level had been a bit longer, too.

The music was good, but got repetitive quick. You should have had shorter levels but more regions of levels.

As for the gameplay... Well, there was a good difficulty level, but even so the sliding around was more annoying than a fun challenge. The rest of it was pretty good, although I didn't know what to do for the first boss for a long time. The gleaming helmet should have gleamed more, to point it out to the player. Other than that, pretty good work! You should also make it so that it shows how many lives you lost at the end.

ShinsukeIto responds:

Alright, sweet. Thanks for the feedback and the 9!

[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.

Matt-Porter responds:

Thanks for this well thought-out review!
I'm glad to share that literally everything you mentioned, has been in my docs for a sequel for quite some time, so we both agree on the shortcomings!
Just reading some old reviews tonight, saw the work you put into yours, wanted to say thanks, even if 16 years later haha

[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

[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

[Colour My World]

Fun

Didn't explain too much. The art style was nice, but the character didn't fit the art style like the rest of the world. There was a glitch where you could make him go to the falling part eternally while on the ground, and it sucked using the mouse and arrow keys instead of implementing WASD. It was too easy to get lost, you didn't tell the player their objective, and the whole melancholy world was a little overdone. If you were trying to be funny, you weren't.

It was too short, the duck movement had no purpose, the game didn't have any difficulty since you just ran across to a (very easy and short) finish. The overly simplistic ending was rather poor taste. I was hoping I'd get some kind of challenge where something would actually try to stop me. Something like the NerfLord from Adventure Quest came to mind. I thought maybe I'd get to fight something that was draining the color from the world and restore it, but no... Just some (rather pointless) trek across random land with no meaning or purpose to the end of some cafe.

Run, click, jump, end. Not nearly enough. Graphics were good but still didn't salvage it by a long shot.

SilverStitch responds:

Well... the ducking was thrown in for kicks, hence why it isn't actually included in the controls.
And this isn't meant to be some full-on game experience. Its just to take a few moments to go slow and enjoi what you have...

[Windows Doors]

Awesome!

The graphics were super realistic! The transparencies were great, and the icons and stuff were pretty accurate. Not much art was based on anything else, but it was still cool. High quality images, loved how you could load your own background.

I loved the sound, too. I can't believe you included the whole Audio Portal! High quality, obviously diverse, and of course fun. I had fun randomizing stuff, but the Media Player was a bit boring. Maybe some different visualizations, or even scripting proper ones. Even so, it was awesome.

It was really stylish and reminded me of all those crappy Windows spoofs. The Newgrounds Forum recreation was funny and sadly accurate, and altogether it was pretty awesome. A couple times I found myself clicking the real Start button on my computer trying to use the in-game Start menu!

Gameplay was utterly incredible. There were a couple neat gadgets to fool around with like the maze (which was actually pretty good) but the chatbot was brilliant too, and I still need to find all the websites!

Incredible replica, I loved how you could connect to the real internet, and it was cool how a lot of the scripting was simple and yet you managed to get it to work in lots of different ways!

Archawn responds:

Proper visualization is impossible in AS2...

Thanks for your review!