Bezman's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Caravaneer]

I dislike this.

It's a well polished trading game that seems to have a fair few variables to play around with. But it's just lacking in urgency and sections seem trickier than necessary.

I couldn't actually work out how to attach a cart.

The battles quickly became simple once I had developed enough AP and were just a repetitive affair. Without any time limit or anything of that sort, I felt no real need to venture outside of the starting route between the 3 cities the sherif suggested. I basically felt no in-game push towards changing up my play.

I liked the graphics for the town maps.

[Icycle]

Very pretty. Reasonably well designed levels.

This was a beautiful game.

I loved the textures, shapes and colours you used. And the concept is arresting - who can resist the allure of the naked cyclist?

Ultimately, it was just a joy to see each new environment.

Level 7's penultimate stage seemed like a big leap in logic - far more so than any other point. I had to stop playing, look at a walkthrough... then (just before the video whosed what needed to be done), I realised it myself. But others have said that level 7 completely stumped them so I think that the concept of using a growing platform to rise should have been introduced earlier, in a simpler form. The gaseous 'lifts' were well introduced, by comparison.

If each level was a puzzle, this would have been fine. As is, the incongruity sticks out in a game that can otherwise be relatively easily completed with perseverance.

I enjoyed playing through the game but I was a bit disappointed with the ending. I was hoping for some sort of conclusion to the story rather than just a scorecard.

I don't anticipate trying to collect all bubbles without dying - that would just be a test of perseverance and learning by rote. However, I applaud the fact that the challenge exists.

A great game, but the level-design (whilst fun) isn't /quite/ to the standard of the graphics.

[Anthony the Ant]

A mixed bag of inventive animations.

Really impressive for 5hrs work.

I think it might have been better with buttons - it's tricky to click the mouth (I had to zoom in to do so) and buttons would ensure we could see all the animations.

My favourites were definitely the falling (though that could have been a tad faster) and the shoes (really nice and smooth 'smoke').

When he bounces the head, the arm goes over it when replacing it. I think you should have taken the effort of making a 2nd arm on a layer underneath the head, to use for those few frames.

Amusing. Really impressive for 5hrs and I look forward to seeing the stuff you spent longer on.

[P.in.g]

worse than many alternatives.

I really don't think Pong makes for a decent 1p game without some serious twists.

I mean, Breakout was made to serve that purpose and works well but there's a ton of other directions you could take it in. As is, it just seems uninspired with no ideas to call its own.

The collision detection seems broken too - when I first played, I hit the ball twice with my bat, lost both times, then thought that maybe that was the twist - that I had to realise to let it hit the wall. After losing a 3rd point, I again hit it with my bat and thereafter it worked as expected. In my 2nd game, the CPU lost a point when the ball was near the centre, as did I.

I liked the end animation though.

[1924]

A mediocre platformer, made annoying by a gimmick.

I struggled through with the excessive dialogue screens, purposely avoiding extra items I might normally collect and trying to minimise the number of times they popped up.

I'd hoped that maybe the ending would give some meaning to them - explaining their necessity or placing them in some broader context at least.

As is, it seems like a mediocre, if short and easy, platformer, made twice as long and infinitely more annoying to play by your gimmick.

Whether it's meant to be funny or provide food for thought, I don't really get it.

[Tuper Tario Tros.]

Hoping for a sequel!

It's great to play an original concept but this didn't quite live up to its original promise.

I liked the beginning, starting with classic Mario, before explaining how to carry on.

It was fun getting to grips with this idea, making platforms for Mario to nagivate the ravine, but when it came time to either scroll on or simply play tetris, it really semed like there was no interplay between the two 'games'.

My favourite part occurs towards the end - by destroying the top few layers of blocks just after the ravine, we can enter the lower passage, providing access to all the ?s and goombas. For this moment, the game seemed to click for me, one game truly adding meaning to the other.

Maybe a sequel to this game could expand on that, with red coins that are the challenge to get to but give you silly amounts of points and a tally of how many you collected (out of how many) at the end. Just now, with the similarity in scoring potential between acessing such areas and simply placing new ?s for Mario to hit, theres insufficient motivation to do that.

The ending was a fun twist, adding a genuinely new element, though the rules were a bit unclear. That I should win after only completing the outline seems really wierd to me

It remains well worth playing, even if only for curiousity value but I think it'd take a sequel to really make this shine.

[->The Par Box<-]

Some good, some bad.

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.

FatKidWitAJetPak responds:

I am making a sequel actually that will have 100 effects and many of them physics controled. These effects were all tween controlled with a program called Fuse where they change different colors, blur, glow, e.t.c. You might think most of them are shot out of the mouse when in fact, they are just created when you move your mouse. I wanted it to be simple top control, so i made everything with the mouse.

Thanks a lot for the review. :)

[Deliver That Fulp]

It was a game I shall remember.

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.

[Hot Stuff]

Desperately needs more variety.

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.

JackBond1234 responds:

Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah, at about 128 seconds it basically becomes impossible and you have to let 5 of the boxes explode and work on slowing down one until eventually it explodes.

I tried my best on the mechanics. It being my first time, I still have some tricks to discover. :)

[My first Flash game :D]

Promising.

Wow, that beanstalk was annoying.

Unless I was super-precise with my jumping, I'd hit my head and fall down a step. Except that as I did so, my mouse would then move below the beanstalk, making me fall all the way down.

Actually, I 'only' failed 3 or 4 times at the start and only once near the end. But having to repeat a section like that, which I'd already done, just seemed super-annoying.

Though I've often seen the mouse used to aim and fire, never have I seen it used quite like this. Maybe you could have 1-screen puzzles, force us to think about both the mouse and the character's movement... Maybe rather than just a button that opens a passageway, have a button that closes some doors and opens others. Add enemies. Maybe there's a puzzle about pushing buttons at the right time to let ourselves through and keep enemies away...

Anyways, despite the beanstalk annoying me, I'll have fond memories of this idea. Charming music, fun graphics, novel idea.

There's very little to do, though - it feels like a tutorial and there's a fair bit to walk between each point of action, so to speak. I was hoping for something to happen after the long descent through the water.

Not a great game in and of itself, but I really look forward to seeing this turned into a fuller game.