Score: 7

"Better than a green banana"

submission: Luis in RL

date: November 12, 2009

I liked it. Short, sweet and made me chuckle.

The combination of fast fbf transitions between expressions, eimple tweened movement and longish holds works really nicely.

I think Luis's voice being so hard to understand (thank god there were subtitles) made it a tad less immediate but that's just me being picky.

Score: 7

"Rather cool"

submission: Fiasco

date: September 24, 2009

I love the bold shapes and colours you've got here and your illustration style really comes through in some of the held faces.

I think the running cat looks a bit cheap though, with the sorta slightly awkward ellipses for legs.

A fun watch and I look forward to seeing more animation from you!

Score: 5

"Some good, some bad."

submission: ->The Par Box<- *Final*

date: June 12, 2009

A very mixed bag.

It's a shame that all of the things apart from #12 were just mcs being spawned at the point of your mouse.

I really liked the change in #12 and had fun imagining other possible ways to interact - hoping you'd do some of those things and more.

The different shapes and animations do encourage different sort of movements as we're interacting in order to make pleasing shapes though - something I like.

And yet, there's an awful lot of repetition and a fair few that I think could have been cut out in the name of improving the overall impression. There's a good few variations on each possible movement pattern when it may have worked better to just focus on the best few.

The representational smiley faces felt trite compared to the abstract stuff and the thin black lines around some shapes looked unpleasing to my eyes as did some of the 'hand-drawn' stuff. The geometric shapes look kind of classier and seem better suited to being repeated as particles.

There's a fair few Flash on NG that spawn particles at mousepoint already but if you pursue different ideas in how the particles could move and be interacted with - something I hoped you'd do after #12 - I'd love to see a sequel.

Bird in Flight was cool too.

Score: 8

"Twas fun. Good work."

submission: Run, Darnell, Run!

date: May 2, 2009

The style was really pulled off brilliantly.

I loved the music, flickering darkened edges crazy morphs and rubber-hose limbs.

After the island bit had gone past, the rest of the story was fairly predictable but fun to watch regardless.

My one complaint would be that you could've thrown in some more 'Oh shit!' -type reaction shots from the KKK Uber-kids.

Twas fun. Good work.

Score: 7

"It was a game I shall remember."

submission: Deliver That Fulp

date: April 30, 2009

It was definitely a memorable game and I had fun playing through the various endings.

I would have liked to see more graphic representations of state changes and some animations for the endings. Xyzzy was the only one that actually looked good.

The retro graphics are cool, but the text seemed really unsuitable. A pixel-based font would have probably worked better, I feel.

The game mechanics had the same issue as with most adventure games - it's not enough to just 'think outside the box' or 'work out a solution that would work' - you've got to work out a solution that fits exactly with the designer's intentions and that can be annoying. Hint to others: you can't get Tom to deliver the baby, nor ask April to push or use forceps.

I'm glad I found some solutions below. I guess it isn't my favourite genre...

But it was a game I shall remember.

Score: 6

"Stylish lines and animation."

submission: Picos Popcorn at the Park

date: April 30, 2009

The graphics, animation and music are generally fantastic.

I liked the texture, though it was kinda unsettling having the texture remain static when the camera panned or zoomed.

I wasn't too sure it captured the essence of Pico but it's always fun watching different takes on the character.

And dialogue-free animations are rarer than they should be.

Score: 7

"Fun tempo and funny end."

submission: Chuck Breaks Pico-Day

date: April 30, 2009

The graphics were terrible - in the side-on view specially with the proportions that were neither stylish nor realistic. Also, the voice recordings had a fair bit of noise in the mic.

Having said that, I actually kinda enjoyed this. It had a fun tempo and the ending made me chuckle. The '!' bonus was cool too.

Work on your drawings, but keep making movies. :-)

Score: 7

"Entertaining."

submission: Pico Gets In Shape

date: April 30, 2009

Rather awesome.

I'm guessing the style was inspired by the Pico 2 Gameplay demo?

It didn't make me laugh, but it was engrossing and seemed to sum up NG nicely.

Anyways, did you make the tunes at the start/end? They're totally kick-arse - specially the opening! Are you gonna upload them?

Score: 2

"Desperately needs more variety."

submission: Hot Stuff

date: April 30, 2009

I've seen a few of these games where you need to keep a variable low in multiple instances of an object. The issue here - and often elsewehre - is that working out the optimum way to play is really easy - just 'attend' to each instance in a set order, cycling through ad infinitum.

Maybe throw in some changes to switch up the optimum strategy. Maybe some objects get hot faster than others? Maybe objects like comets, flaming torches and stuff fly in from off-screen and give a massive boost in temperature if they collide - requiring us to douse them before they do. Maybe it's a stove, meaning that the temperature needs to be kept warm (but not too warm)? A balance is more interesting to achieve than just striving for an extreme.

It's a good start and it shows that you're capable of some programming. Keep going! But either think a bit more about the game mechanics or ask someone else to help you in that regard.

Frankly, I didn't find the gamplay frustrating - just terribly boring. After 128s, I just let the boxes explode since it didn't actually seem to be getting harder and I saw no reason to continue.

Score: 0

"Horrible."

submission: AVGM

date: March 18, 2009

Drawing focus to gamers' tendency to continue with unenjoyable tasks - specially when time has already been invested - is really nothing new. Chris Deleon already did this with his maze game and 'reach 40' in his 'game-a-day' series.

To me, this simply epitomises the breaking point - showing the point at which gamers will no longer continue and the game's role as a source of pattern learning or varied experiences has vanished, with the game seemingly betraying our expectations of a source of entertainment with your '10-endings' claim and whatnot.

I bet you're laughing at the many, many man-hours you've wasted around the globe, you evil bastards.