Bezman's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Character Select]

Why should we be interested in these characters?

So basically just a bunch of text we can read about some characters?

Why should we be interested in these characters?

Anyway, the text was a tad too small to comfortably read with that font and the 'back' button was atrocious. Use the same style you've got elsewhere on the screen.

Lastly, character art could be better.

I did like the digital-clock-type font you had scrolling along and the sorta zoom blur-derived bg is fairly cool looking.

I just think you need to have a lot more going on here or at least explain why we should care about these characters before the flash becomes worthwhile.

[Starfall]

feels way too swingy

Btw, it's spelt 'Orisinal'.

Lovely music and in-game graphics. The 'submit' typography and the sound-off button, which clashes with in-game colours, let down the graphics marginally.

Took me a few goes to understand the controls, as I was expecting it to work like the orisinal game that it looks so much like.

I liked the addition of different types of stars, but the whole game felt a bit too swingy for my liking. The RNG can make stars virtually inacessible without touching a 'bad' star simultaneously. When that happens, due to the drop in energy, sudden fall and the fact that lower down the screen we get little warning of obstacles, a single hit seems to always cause a death and can often feel like a result of the RNG rather than a lack of skill.

I'd work to eliminate the effect random numbers have, add more variation and continue refining the graphis.

[The Element Machine]

Interesting, though a tad limited.

I thought it was pretty cool when I got all 3 elements running simultaneously.

Kinda reminds me of the 'grow' games by Eyezmaze. Mebbe you could add a goal and go further in that direction?

I'd have liked to see more interactions - perhaps multiple iceblocks falling to make a tower, being able to zap ice as it falls...

Also, graphics are a bit rough.

Does the meter at the top have any significance?

[Dotzee]

Needs a highscore table and larger window.

As others have mentioned, you should really increase the window size.

Also, for this game, a high score table seems indispensable.

Interesting rules and I liked the honest mix of strategy and luck.

I got 247 on my first go and were there a high score table, I'd definitely return to this.

Please update!

[Lemon Smash]

Great happy vibe, but not much fun to replay.

I loved the tune and the happy vibe of the simple graphics.

Cool gameplay and when I first saw the lemon-dropping speed up near the end, I really grinned.

Replaying it to get a higher score, I actually found myself getting kinda tired of it all, thanks to the seemingly random nature. Because of the endless scrolling and the fact that drops are centred around you, logically the best strategy is to just wait for 50s. Not fun.

Maybe make it so lemons disappear after a while?

Also, I think the timer should end 2s after the raining stops, maybe with a giant lemon crushing the dude? Mainly because I find it kinda irksome the way the rain continues through the bell, suggesting it could go to even more ridiculous levels.

[Liriluck.]

I kinda enjoyed it until I got frustrated.

I tried the various difficulties and the only difference I spotted was the # of lives. Anything else?

Seems to me that if you're gonna give us passwords (something I approve of as I hate repeating levels I've already completed) you might as well just give us infinite lives, then maybe at the end subtract an amount from our score depending upon lives used.

ITHCAMEG seems really easy considering the level before and after it

I gave up after failing IREIH several times. Just couldn't get the hang of that one.

There were a couple of levels that stood out for me - like the loop with a left/right arrow at the top left corner and the big field of red.

Maybe tighten up the signals - like for the red fading away, maybe a line could be drawn around the border and when it 'completes' the square, it falls away?

Nice bg.

Some audio glitches with bgm turning off or 'overlapping' when we restart.

You've got some good design skills, but the game still needs to be honed a bit imo.

[X-Dodge 2]

amusing for a minute.

Cool game!

I like these basic, procedurally generated games with infinite levels as a quick diversion.

The graphical style appeals to me for some reason, with the contrast of the square tiles and the red circles.

You do have a serious bug - after failing the game, subsequent play-throughs don't show the life-counter, nor the proper 'shrinkmeter' nor are any 'S' shapes shown.

It took me a while to realise I had to hit 'space' to continue. Maybe make the message pop up in big letters in the centre of the screen?

Shrinking is a cool bit of bonus strategy.

After a few play-throughs, I got tired of the repetitive nature. It was fun while it lasted though.

Maybe try making some properly designed levels?

[OnScreen Version2]

A bit buggy and limited

The first time I played this, a bug popped up. I'd played a couple of games on easy, checked the rules, played a game on hard, then I saw that whatever I did, the ball followed and inexorable path downwards. Despite the saber being the same colour as the ball, even if I positioned the cursor at the bottom to begin with, it'd just keep falling. I tried easy and the same thing happened.

Closing and reopening solved the problem though. It is a mildly interesting game - with a different motion required to most games.

I got 29.95s in hard. Eventually the bug reappeared.

You could add a few things - save a 'personal best' for each mode. Maybe make it so that the ramp up in speed is a tad more gradual, and also add more messages (there only seemed to be 2).

However, it is all very limited. Maybe expand the idea a bit or just try other ideas, returning to this at some later point.

[Throw Me]

Nice visual atmosphere, limited fun.

I really grinned when I saw the varying colours as I rose through the atmosphere and I found a great amount of satisfaction both from finding the 'cloud boosters' and also just seeing myself in space.

Birds are beautifully drawn.

I'd have liked to see some stars mebbe and the design &colouring of the ground objects could be better imo.

Fun for a while, but like most games of this ilk, it seems a bit vacuous and overly reliant upon luck after a while.

[Tactics 100 Live]

A streamlined warhammer

Cool game. Reminds me of Warhammer, but more simplified and kinda streamlined.

I liked the way that there's a fair amount of variety in the units and everything within the individual games seems fairly well thought out (perhaps barring the cumulative effect of high ground on chained magic, and the way the bonuses (affecting the first damage) indirectly affect the subsequent hits - maybe each hit should be calculated seperately?).

I have 3 complaints/suggestions for improvement.

1 - numbers aren't really explained properly. I found that the only way to know how much health each bonus would add, how much the max. range was, how the %s worked... was basically to test out stuff in a 1-player game and reiterate. Took a few plays of multiplayer to even realise how the chain works. That kind of thing seems like it should be in the in-game documentation.

And when creating units, I really think we should have a run-down of their current health/damage/range/speed whilst hovering over them.

2 - multiplayer scoring methods make no effort to discourage quitting.

I'd personally advocate a system whereby points gained/lost depend largely upon the relative scores before the game - like the score you gain for a win could be multiplied by ((opponentsPreviousScore+100)/
(yourPreviousScore+100)) up to a maximum of say, 10 and a minimum of, say, 1/4.

But I can understand that you might want to avoid such complications.

At the same time, I see no reason to not have folk lose 10 points if they quit and more than 2 turns have been played.

3 - the single-player game is lacking. Whilst it's a decent setup for quickly testing out an army or getting to grips with the game, it offers no interest beyond that. It's easy to attain the maximum score and the game offers little variation if we are to play again. Maybe having a larger pool of challenges with 10 randomly selected, with random terrain (though perhaps rotationally symmetrical) would help make it fun to play a 2nd time.

Having pretty much 'overcome' the first problem by working out all the stuff through iteration, I'd enjoy playing far more than I have. My main gripe now (the main thing turning me off) is the number of games that are disconnected. Sometimes due to people, sometimes because of the servers... I can't know which happens.

The game is classy, great graphics, cool sound and bgm.

A few faults, but still well worthy of a spot in the top50.