Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Magirune]

Honestly this is pretty boring. Aside from the achievements, there's really no reason to avoid dying, and the fact that all enemies give 1 XP regardless of difficulty really breaks the game. Perfect example is that you can spam up and down between floors 20 and 21 and if you can kill that enemy without taking damage, you can farm levels infinitely (there are likely other places where you can do the same thing,) making the whole system kind of broken and also defeating the purpose of potions. Also, even if you're trying to beat the game without dying, you can just use a potion whenever you drop below 50% health. There's no strategy whatsoever as to when you should use one.

Once you get past the weird combat mechanics, the game is puzzle and exploration. Navigating 15 floor mazes is a bit confusing and often tedious, but the puzzle elements are decent, even if it's frequently interrupted by level grinding. Once I got the pickaxe (but couldn't figure out where to use it despite seeing "need a pickaxe" messages earlier) I figured it was time to hang it up and be satisfied with the fake ending.

Between the lack of music, balance, and overall sparseness of anything interesting, this game just feels really unfinished.

FluffyLotus responds:

You should try hardcore mode. It removes the 1xp when the enemies are to easy. That's how the game was originally built.

[Eggbot vs Zombies]

I like the concept - the way the one level expands and you collect more weapons is really neat and has an interesting way of pressuring you. Certain choke points become advantageous to hold, but because of the missions and doors opening, things stay dynamic and you run around the level quite a lot, especially once you start buying health, ammo, and extra lives.

Negatives? There should be at least another enemy type (flying would be good as it would require the player to aim in more directions.) It's also too easy to get big chunks of money at a time and skip to the best weapon of each type, or just rely on the mystery boxes, whose weapons are powerful even before you buy any of them. The missions are few and far between, so much of the game feels very repetitive. With the amount of guns you can buy quickly superseding the amount of content, there's not much reason to unlock them.

The one level gets kind of old after a while, too. You did a great job designing it and it feels pretty balanced, but there's only so long you can play it before it starts to get stale. It would be cool if there were some areas that cost a ridiculous amount of money to unlock (like $1000.) That way the one level could retain some variety even late into the game. Time bonuses on the missions would also give the player a sense of urgency.

I've noticed a few bugs. You can stand on the leftmost obelisk when the mission comes up and enemies are unable to reach you. Sometimes when teleporting to the top of the level, enemies get stuck inside the floor, and when you restart a game, sometimes your Beretta will start with the amount of ammo as the last gun you equipped in your previous game (one time I actually spawned in an inaccessible area - no idea how that happened.)

EggysGames responds:

Thank you Kwing for your detailed reviews they are always really in depth and informative.

[Heaven and Hell]

I remember playing this very briefly when it came out and liking the concept, but never really stuck around long enough to get into it. After getting deeper into the mechanics, I have to say this is easily one of your better games. The original graphics and color scheme are attractive, the concept is good and the dynamic environment keeps things interesting.

As far as flaws, the gameplay is slightly repetitive, with the biggest issue being the way the bubble system works to reset enemies that fall too far down - it's too repetitive and can lead to enemies getting stuck in the same ruts. The items are also generally not too useful. I beat this game with two deaths and never needed much aside from seeds and (at most) one health potion per level. A boss at the end would have been nice also. Some items (namely the bomb) are so underpowered and expensive that they seem like a complete waste, and I don't think I ever used the wings at all.

EggysGames responds:

Yeah this game was big, and it was the last game I made for almost 2 years at the start of my break from game making. It broke me and was missing polish indeed but the idea did come out amazing. I was good at destructible ground at that point in Flash. I need to remake it in unity with polish and physics.

[Tough Growth]

There's very little here in terms of actual content. The aesthetics aren't bad (though they are a bit on the flashy side, with lots of effects and graphics that aren't much more complex than squares,) but I think the biggest issue is the concept to begin with.

At its core, this game is a mix of bullet hell and a mouse maze, with neither being terribly new or groundbreaking concepts. Too often is it possible to cheat by moving the mouse off-screen. More annoyingly, the stages in which the large player box makes it hard to dodge feels more gimmicky than difficult. Similarly, the last area of the game (where you're sent back a level for failing) feels more gimmicky than anything, as the levels are generally easy than the ones previous.

I would have liked to see some more unique obstacles, some deeper level of strategy, or at least some other way for the player to interact other than dodging things.

Jaswir responds:

I wonder, what game would you consider groundbreaking?
Also this game was designed to be a mix of bullet hell and feed and grow.
I do not know any other games that combine bullet hell with feed and grow.

[Rock Bottom]

I'm not sure I see the appeal here. The music and graphics are pretty bland, with the only really attractive element being the color scheme which sets the tone quite nicely.

There are a handful of issues with the rest of it. The dialogue has numerous translation errors, making it come across as awkward more often than not. More than that, the game aspect of this feels inorganic and distracting. The way the brother slaloms up and down is weird. If you get too far behind, both of you fall off the screen. The arrows on the road give you some reason to move up and down, but just feel out of place in a submission like this. The grabbing mechanic also feels kind of weird, especially since you only ever really do it once, and the whole concept of chasing a guy down in the middle of an endless road just doesn't feel realistic. Forward movement feels useless because you never need to go any other direction. The repeating houses get old fast. Need I say more?

Ultimately this comes across as a rather uninspired proof of concept. I see the need for these types of games to exist, but the execution here just felt weird. In your defense, content like this is hard to make right. Some folks at MIT tried (and failed) at exactly this task when they made Elude, so it honestly would have been more surprising to see a game do this correctly. Either way, this game just didn't wow me.

bioszard responds:

Thanks for your feedback, my friend. I'll really think about this issues you brought here.

My goal in this game in this game was just to show that many times we tell things to depressed people that just not help the situation. In my humble opinion, we must just welcome depressed people, making them feel confortable, not encouraging, not judging nor creating expectations based on their own will.

Besides that, I was forced to think about and implement (almos alone) 2 different game genres within 72h, for LD41 (I'm not justifying my fauls, just telling the develop context). You are completly right, my translations skills are not that good, I'll try to improve that. Thanks for your time.

[Eggys Big Adventure]

I played this back on mobile and was impressed with the overall smoothness and playability of the game. There are some minor flaws of course - reused graphics, and some weird physics when standing on moving platforms - but for the most part the game feels comfortable. While it's good that the game is simple (as the controls on mobile really don't lend themselves to complexity) I would have liked to see a bit more environmental variety - perhaps different kinds of enemies, or platforms that offered more than the basic Unity physics prefabs.

Most of the issues dealing with actual enjoyability stem from level design. A lot of the difficulty is concentrated in the earlier levels, and while you can usually skip particularly hard levels and farm eggs elsewhere, it's still weird that the second half of the game (and bosses) are comparatively easy, especially when the bubble level is downright brutal (and frustrating, since it's so easy to slip off of them.) It would have made sense to make all of the levels somewhat easy, but for the eggs to be put in especially difficult places. On that note, it would have also been nice for collecting all eggs in a level to provide something, even if it were only cosmetic such as player skins.

Overall my biggest disappointment here is that the game feels like a very generic platformer, even though I've known you to come up with some really outstanding original concepts such as Nodes, Draw Play, and Battle Fish. Battle Fish in particular strikes me as a game that could be outstanding on mobile, given its simple control scheme as well as how much more enjoyable it would be in a less laggy platform such as Unity.

EggysGames responds:

Thank you Kwing. You are correct I didn't space out the difficulty on the levels as well as I should have unfortunately. I didn't feel it was that generic, since I havn't made anything with physics like this before.

Thanks for the review.

[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.