Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bird On Bird]

This is the first puzzle platformer I've played in a LONG time that felt like a good organic mix of ACTUAL puzzles, ACTUAL platforming, and a concept that wasn't overly contrived.

The concept of "you can jump an extra time for every chicken you have" is intuitive and immediately understandable, and the way that each stacked chicken increases the size of your hitbox makes the game difficult in a way that feels logical and fair. The extra mechanics (such as the buttons or spiky chickens) add a bit of depth to the gameplay, but from a development standpoint what I like is that you don't use them to bloat the game with logic puzzles; virtually all of the logic required to beat the game deals with the same stacking logic that the core mechanics are built on.

The graphics and music are cute (and I don't want to take anything away from your collaborators) but the concept and execution really stand front and center.

I do have a few criticisms:

One, the main "level select" area is nice, but toward the end of the game it can be frustrating running around trying to locate the last few levels you need feathers from. Having a map (just for this area) would have been helpful for someone looking to get those last couple ones.

Two, the game can glitch a bit. If you fall a long distance while pressed against a wall, you fall through the floor. I noticed a chicken do this once or twice as well.

Three, the game's performance can get a bit shaky. Lowering the quality helps a lot with this.

Starblinky responds:

Thanks so much for the review!
Really appreciate the great feedback (and compliments)

And yeaa.. there's an issue with being able to fall through the ground. I discovered it like a few weeks before launch and with the amount of spaghetti I coded this game with I really don't think that will ever get fixed. At least it's not too bad.

A map would be a cool idea, I agree it might be a bit frustrating to have to find all the feathers you missed..

Thanks :)

[Portal Defenders: Tower Defense]

Okay, so last year's games were solid but this is the real deal. This game is fantastic.

I was a big fan of the creative liberties taken as far as tower defenses go. Only a couple places to put towers, only three types of towers, and one of them requires the player to micromanage where its troops move. These creative choices are weird and unusual but ultimately make the game a lot more interesting.

I found pairing the cannon with tankmen worked well at the beginning; tankmen forced enemies to stop, so the splash damage from the cannon could be maximized. Toward the end, as vehicles and flying enemies became more prevalent, I found myself using the turrets more. I do wish the turrets and cannon had more distinct differences, as by the end of the game, once the tankmen became less useful, they seemed very similar.

I find a lot of what makes the game remain interesting toward the end isn't so much that it becomes harder so much as the change in strategy relies on the expectations built through previous levels. For instance, I beat the third to last level using only turrets, which from an outside perspective is a stupidly simple strategy, but becomes unintuitive within the context of previous levels requiring you to use the tankmen a lot. This hampers replayability a lot. Another balance-related issue is that the last few levels actually aren't that difficult; most of the excitement comes from the power creep on both sides as your fully upgraded towers bash away at huge damage sponges (oddly enough I was able to kill Bizarro Tom really, really fast.)

Everything outside of the mechanics is basically flawless. The graphics, animation, voices, music, etc. all look great. The voices sometimes repeat just a bit too often, but in terms of style and presentation this game looks incredibly polished and the fact that this exact game could hypothetically have been made in 2005 (during XGen Studios' golden age if that puts things into perspective) is mind-blowing.

9/10 for overall quality, enjoyability, and execution, -1 for some balance issues and lack of replayability.

BoMToons responds:

Great review, and I agree with every point. Thank you for diving in to that depth! I agree that we do a 180 on the player with expectations (basically a lot of the development was nerfing how powerful the Tankmen are and introducing enemies that nullify their advantage).

Re: replay-ability, it's kind of our team's style to give you an intense, one-time, story arc in our games and we sacrifice some of that replay-ability to drive home those twists and turns/surprises on the first play through (speaking of which I'm glad you got the idea loud and clear of the "escalating power war"). It's a trade-off, but we don't pretend this is more than a web-game made for a game jam... if we were ever to expand this concept for a bigger game, I think we'd massage the mechanics you mentioned quite a bit (in addition, making upgrades more unique and having upgrades branch your tower specialties).

I'm glad you realize and appreciate that this was built with pre-2009 era tech (AS2) It even runs super smooth on most mobile devices...

[Beat Drill Galaxy]

This is pretty solid, and when you compare this to stuff like Ice or Burn the Earth it's clear this is several giant leaps ahead of the kind of stuff you've done before.

The menu, UI, and general vector graphic style all look immaculate. The physics are weird but it's interesting that each level has its own gimmick to keep things interesting. No one would ever know pixel art was your strong suit from looking at this.

The music isn't bad, but it really doesn't fit for a rhythm game. Your looping synths are working against you here; they work great when the game isn't centered around the music itself, but when the dynamics of the song determine the action in-game, more progression and complexity are going to be what give the game its complexity as well.

Obviously there are going to be sacrifices made with the deadline of a Game Jam breathing down your neck but there are a couple things I think would have been easy enough to implement without being too difficult.

The objects on screen should have different colors. This would be the easiest way to tell them apart while playing and really doesn't take more than about 30 seconds of work to change. Sound effects could also be a nice touch (with the option to toggle on and off.) The songs are a bit too long, and especially for easier songs it can be kind of boring to sit through them. Not having a fail state and not being able to see the score during a song takes any sense of tension away. Last, this is a simple enough game that you totally could have added a joystick or some other way to control the game on mobile.

Last note about the general design is that shorter, harder songs (and a fail state) would provide greater encouragement for the player to redo levels and try to perform better.

ShinsukeIto responds:

Thanks for the review Kwing!

Really appreciate the game design feedback. I agree with all the things you've noted here - especially shortening the tracks. I underestimated the impact of level design when making the tracks and building the levels out, and is one of the glaring issues I have with the game.

I did learn a lot from making this though. And if I were to update this (or make an improved version) I might look at getting you to play test it!

[Newgrounds Snowboarding]

For as cute as this looks (and as nostalgic as it is to see Kerrigan after LegendaryFrog has been MIA for so long,) it's just not that fun to play. The different tricks are identical gameplay-wise, as they take the same amount of time to execute, and most importantly you don't bail if you're doing a trick when you land. This makes the game extremely low stakes, as you pretty much can't lose unless you attempt flips.

Some suggestions:

- Basic game balancing would dictate that each of the tricks has a start and end lag, with the slower tricks having the greatest point payout, such that you execute (and finish) a trick BEFORE landing, otherwise you bail. The size of the jump would then determine when to use each of these tricks.
- Make linked tricks multiplicative rather than additive to incentivize players to take the risk of chaining tricks back to back. Show a timer for how long the player has until their combo runs out, and don't let the player do two of the same trick consecutively (otherwise the player will use the fastest trick repeatedly to get an infinite combo.)
- A bounty system where the game asks the player to perform a combo with several specific tricks in it would also help add a sense of tension to the game.
- Make the camera zoom out, especially when the player becomes airborne, so that the player can more accurately assess how much hangtime they're going to get.
- Make the slope only have a finite distance, so that the player is incentivized to take more risks in order to achieve a high score. If the slope is infinite, the best way to get a high score is to take no risks at all.

As for things not related to the game balance, I noticed a glitch where the game didn't recognize that I had already purchased some characters, asking me to buy ALL of the characters with money I didn't have and thus making the game impossible to play. The characters, while well-drawn, all play identically to one another. The game itself has a pretty low framerate and the slow animations only exacerbate a feeling of slowness to a game that should be anything but. Last, the controls are a bit too responsive and make this feel more like a platformer than a snowboarding game. The jump specifically weirds me out, I think holding and releasing to jump higher might make more sense.

MSGhero responds:

Thanks for the feedback. We would probably need about 5x the time we had to implement these things, but it's still valid. Though, the framerate is 60 fps, so you're probably experiencing something you think is the framerate.

[Cat Burglar & The Magic Museum]

I remember you posting about this on the forums and playing it before it was officially released. While some work could definitely be done to improve performance (the money particle effects are particularly bad - they should just have an animation where they fade out instead of programatically moving toward the player) the tradeoff is that the graphics also look pretty great.

Similar to my thoughts on the beta version, there's not a ton of strategy here. It's more of a touchy-feely thing where you try and guess how long you've been making noise and err on the side of caution. Security never increases fast enough to be especially punishing if you decide to be overly cautious. What is nice is that you can actually escape security this time! As many people said, in the earlier version you were basically dead once the guard was coming. I'm glad that both gloves and boots have a purpose now.

All in all the simplicity of the gameplay makes this pretty casual and sets a certain ceiling for how engaging it can be, but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable.

Starblinky responds:

Thanks for the thought out review.

And yes I find some people are put off by the hyper casual nature of the game but that’s understandable.

The game has definitely come a long way.

There is not much optimization for the game so it could lag on older devices unfortunately. Once the jam judging is finished I’ll upload a new version with a bunch of improvements.

Thanks again 🙏

[The Flash Flood 2021]

The voice acting for this is hilarious. Pretty simple in every other respect - the sprites aren't especially detailed and there's very little gameplay to speak of.

I did find saving the people to be a bit annoying due to how small the clicking area was. I assume that's the point, but lack of checkpoints made it quite frustrating, especially since you still have to wait for the water to fill up the whole screen after saving everything.

Cyberdevil responds:

You're a tough critic Kwing. :) Simple sprites yes, suppose most of the drawing time actually went into the text here, and details you barely notice like the hundreds of minuscule bubbles as the water floods or the stars on the last level. But would definitely have been more detailed if I'd started this earlier/had more levels/probably have opted for checkpoints then.

Regarding the limited level count, maybe you'd be intrigued to know each item you click is actually a button within a unique MC with a runtime that syncs to the rising water level, and either directs to the game over screen on root after a certain frame count or to the last frame in the MC with a stop statement if you click it. The whole game's made with very basic goto/play/stop functionality. Would've probably had time for a few more if my coding skills were a bit more suited for this type of stuff, but in a way I do like figuring out workarounds like this with the most basic prerequisite programming knowledge that allow for games that probably seem at least a bit more advanced than they really are; paradoxically enough are maybe really unexpectedly complex because of said workarounds. And that's the nature of Flash I feel; why it's always been so awesome! :) Anyone can really do anything. No heavy skills required as long as you get creative with it. The optimal blend between game and animation-based functionality, where you can find shortcuts via the latter to make things seem more like the former, or whatever it is you strive to do.

Anyway you do provide fair critique. Waiting for the water to reach the top gets a bit slow when you're playing just to get back to the final level, could've maybe added a counter that each item adds to, and then sped up the water thing when it reached a certain amount hmm... will try that next time. Thanks for feedback; play!

['Brain-Toasting Dungeon']

It took all of about 2 seconds for me to recognize you as one of the guys that got really far into the animation deathmatch several years back. You really do have a trademark style.

Given that you're an animator by trade, it's no surprise that's the high point of this game. Everything is visually stunning. The game itself is pretty simple and the bad endings are extremely short, but if you enjoy it as an animation rather than a game, there's really not much to complain about.

Cute, fun, simple, short. Not a ton of replay value but it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Butzbo responds:

Wooow that's right!!, the classic NATA tournaments!!
Yeah part of me wanted to make some more elaborated endings, and even more branching routes, but ended up lowering the scope to finish well in time hahah.
thanks Kwing!!

[FAST FOOD FUNKIN']

Damn, if I'd known you were making this I would have been happy to throw down a verse for the soundtrack! The instrumental is fantastic. The rapping is a mixed bag but it's not bad. There's not much art but what I do see is quite nice.

The concept is simple but not bad. The swiping makes it pretty clear this was designed with mobile in mind. The fact that the arrows go down instead of up makes me think it would have been better to have ASDF as the desktop controls. Having played DDR for years my eyes are trained to recognize arrows when they're going up, but I think anyone would be able to handle the patterns if the linear pattern represented four keys that were also laid down in a linear order. The other obvious change would be for some button that takes the next order if you're on desktop that doesn't involve swiping such as the spacebar (I lost several arrows reaching for my mouse when I saw "swipe" on the screen.)

Unfortunately the issue that I really can't get past is that the arrows are straight up broken. The timing seems to be off, but even experimenting with hitting them early or late, I found the process of hitting them to be extremely inconsistent. I'm not sure what went wrong here but a fix is definitely necessary before this is really playable.

BrandyBuizel responds:

The game is designed for mobile but fully playable on the keyboard alone. I added your suggestion about using the ASDF keys, but in order to keep WASD for some players I instead made the use of the 1234 number keys work in the place of ASDF. Additionally you've always been able to use the right arrow key to swipe instead of reaching for the mouse, but that was unclear so I modified the UI to reflect that as an option! Lastly, the key presses/hit registration is much more generous to the player now so I hope you'll come back and try experiencing the full song :)

I regrettably had to rush publishing the game to make it in as part of the Flash Forward Jam, but I've spent the last few days cleaning up the game to be in a more fun/complete form so please enjoy!

[Diaphanous 0]

I nearly beat level 5, but when I got the jewel on the far left and couldn't get back to the chest I had to quit. This game is just too damn hard.

The mechanics feel a lot like a vertical Meat Boy. Jumping and stomping are extremely fast, as opposed to MB's super fast horizontal movement. This gets really interesting with the relatively slow falling speed, as a LOT can happen while you're airborne and this makes sticking landings especially difficult. I sometimes noticed I landed on people but still hit the spikes anyway. Very annoying.

I would highly recommend putting in some moderately difficult levels between 2 and 3, even on difficult games you never see difficulty ramp up this quickly.

Some other suggestions: Don't restart the music when the player dies. It happens too much and players will never hear more than the first 10 seconds of any given song. Give the spikes a bit more glow/contrast with the rest of the level. You can play these levels by instinct but everyone else has to use peripheral vision, so do what you can to make that part easier for us. I also think jumps where you have to wait for certain obstacles to go in and out of phase should be changed so that the window of opportunity happens with each cycle of animation. Waiting for two obstacles to go into phase and missing the jump anyway is probably one of the most frustrating things you can experience in this game.

The graphics are interesting (especially the psychedelic effects) but ultimately pretty basic. Though for something this challenging where you stare at the same things for a long time, it might be nice to have something even simpler, or at least just more high contrast (getting back into what I said about the spikes.)

All in all the game is fun and brutally difficult, but eels more difficult than rewarding, especially as there's no real downtime where you can take some time to breathe between the hardest parts.

EDIT: So I decided to give this another go and got to level VI. I've collected as many gems as I could see (one on far left, two in the small jumps on the right, two in the big jumps on the right) and it's still saying I need one more gem. I restarted the game and my save file was deleted so I got sent back to level 1. Some kind of bug?

HapPie responds:

Thanks a lot for the review, music restarting was a bug and now is fixed, thanks for pointing that out. I´ll look into making levels less frustrating in general as well.

[alter Matricks]

For as simple as this is, it's surprisingly addicting. Unfortunately the puzzle element ends up being pretty shallow with only two colors - I can only assume that's why the viruses are there. Ultimately I found the viruses make the game more tedious than difficult, but once the difficulty ramps up I did find myself actually thinking and playing actively. I still think that, even with the Matrix theme, more colors would have allowed the difficulty to feel more organic.

Some of the later levels lag a little too.

Foumart responds:

Thanks for the feedback. It is being taken into account for the current and upcoming updates.