Bezman's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Survival Pong]

long. Could be

Played this a few times. Last play (only time I actually tried hard for all lives), I got 86.

One game I tried experimenting with the ball physics.

+++ Music

-- Gets dull. And no 'music off' button in-game.

++ Noticed how we can't centre the thing so it stays in a straight line... I saw that as a potential gamplay breaker.

+++ Fast acceleration of ball's speed.

---- The game lasts too long, I feel.
I'd personally like to be challenging my high score for a single life.

+ Nice sfx
Though if you wanna make it better, kinda pan the sfx depending on which side it's hit.Either do this via the sound object or via manual volume filters (when you place sounds directly on a timeline).

- typography at start is inconsistent with graphical style

+ I kinda like the minimalism
Though something different might be a nice change from the norm.

Overall
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Slightly different. Didn't hold my attention for long. Could be developed further. Might make a good 'microgame'.

overall

[NGIntern: Progress]

thinking about the

Played it once. Got to about 20000 points (of that order anyway).

Wasn't taking any damage and my life wasn't ever being risked. I then started trying to shoot every enemy that passed and not let a single one through. That game was pretty hard, though I think the challenge may be impossible, given the distance you sometimes have between enemies and the speed. Lost with the first digit still '2'.

++++ At the speed at which the enemies come, we do have time to move in their path and shoot them.

------ There's really nothing in this game that threatens us at all. We will only fail because of over-eagerness, trying to do it faster, boredom... basically, I just have an issue with the fact that you won't ever fail simply by hammering 'a'. Any game that requires nothing more than such repetitive 'dronework' to survive needs some changing, I feel.
Maybe (slow) enemy bullets? Maybe enemies that somehow try and swoop at you? Maybe some obstacles that can't be destroyed?
Seriously, even as a lead-up to a boss, this needs changing.

++ decent music.

- gfx for bullets aren't to my liking.

- I actually think the whole thing looks really generic.

------ and the play mechanics have been seen oh so many times before.

++ No glitches - code seems to work well.

overall
=====
A decent beginning. Nothing worth playing though, I think. I'd suggest you try thinking about the play mechanics. Make it so we need to actually do something other than 'drone work' and it may be worth playing.

t7bros responds:

Thanks for the response. My original goal was simply to get the game past judgement. I may make a version 2 (if I can get things fixed by the end of the month) to be released on May 31, but I have to see if I can do it. Anyway, I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Thanks for your support.

[Throw Ancient Stuff!]

presented, but I

Played it a day or so ago a couple of times. Took me 3 attempts to get the grog. Then I played maybe a couple more times to see if anything changed.

Today I played it once, mainly to review it.

---- I found the gameplay more limited than the presentation led me to believe. I thought that the poking would be a viable gameplay strategy. I thought that the grog would open up new gameplay avenues, not just be a wee get-out clause.

--- The line when we're throwing stuff - it should appear in front of objects, I feel.

--- This is personal preference, but I thought the speed at which the line moved was too slow.

---- I noticed more scarabs come along later on, but the game did seem to progress a bit slowly, I felt.

- I was never sure whether I'd be killed or not by a blow. I did eventually work out that the scarabs stun, but the mummies kill.

I think it could've been addressed in the instructions screen.

+++ Gfx are very nice.

++++ Great sound. Fitting atmosphere and sfx have good 'resonance'.

overall
=====
Nicely presented, but I hate the game.

[Mouse Avoiders!]

it mainly out of

Played starting with multiple mouse avoider. Before reading the instructions, I'd thought you were gonna be in control of multiple pointers at a time. That could actually be an interesting variation on it... maybe give way to some intriguing puzzles...

Anyway, I then finished normal then invisible in that order.

-- During 'normal', I started getting a bit tired as you do retread familiar ground quite a bit. I have played many other mousegames so that doesn't help, but I much prefer it when each new level strives to bring a new twist to the mix. A few of your levels did seem retreads of previous ones.

+++ Invisible and multi- are both interesting variants.

- Apparantly, right-clicking makes the cursor reappear. To counter that, mouse.hide() on each frame, maybe have a central 'controller' mc that does this each frame...

+++ The 'invisible' levels were nicely not /too/ hard.

-- Multi seemed kinda pointless given that it was fairly easy to keep track of which mouse was ours.

- The ending was pretty lame. Crappy gradients. Ugly screen. It'd be nice to have either a celebratory animation or at least different text for each mode.

Overall
======
Not a bad mousegame. Interesting variants. I played it mainly out of curiousity and it was slightly better than I expected.

Your level design could be improved though.

[Word Works]

game, but the

+++ Nice gfx. Periphery (cogs, bg, etc) has a nice consisten scheme and the 3D shading on everything is pretty smart.

- Though I think the scheme is slightly boring. I'd maybe like something either unique and interesting like paper cut-outs, brushed work, whatever, or maybe just something more cartoony.

+++ After getting the hang of it, I enjoyed working out the words on the mode I was playing.

------ The menu scrolls way too slow. Seriously. Having menus scroll so slow is practically a heinous crime.

------ The letters should scroll onto the screen a bit faster, to ensure less of a gap between each puzzle.

- Though I enjoyed listening to Ani Difranco, it'd be nice to have some sfx in the game to give actions more resonance.

overall
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Looks like a good game, but the delays when waiting for the menu or the letters to scroll left a rancid taste in my mouth.

[Concatenate! v1]

I hate it when luck

Played the 'ponder' mode first (as it was first on the menu) then got muddled as to what was going on.

I just didn't think the rules could be what they actually turned out to be.

I then read the instructions, then played the 'progress' game, where I got to about 2000 points.

+++++ Seems like a big dictionary.

+++ I like the aliteration.

- I think 'prepare' should maybe be at the top, so folk click on it.

-- I think 'ponder' should maybe end when you reach 200 points, seeing as you've completed that game...

------ I'm basically not too keen on the game mechanics. I feel that with it being random what selection we get next, the RNG plays too large a role in determining our success.

--- The scoring system isn't really properly explained.

+++ It is fairly original though.

overall
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Nice game, but I hate it when luck plays such a big role in my success.

Maybe for your next project you could make a game based off Scrabble - we'd use the tiles/points system from that and we have to make a word and try to get as many points as we can from each word.

I think that'd be a better basis for a game and you could surely make that.

[Music Path]

I mess up. That's when

Saw this before via JayisGames and liked it then. I wasn't too keen on the whole having to start over though and think I just played 2 games. This time I again played 2 games getting to level5, then 6.

+++++ The whole game has an almost hypnotic element to it. Uncovering the sounds on the blocks... as the line slowly meanders...
Touching each block to make a sound is fairly satisfying.

++++ Very simple to understand gameplay.

--- On a couple of occasions, the line started moving before I was ready, by my mouse just happening to be in the spot that activates in. When I played this a while ago, I died a couple of times that way.
I think you should change it so we need to actually click to begin each level.

++++ Very clean gfx.

--- Having to restart when you die is really aggravating.
Maybe 3 lives or something similar would be nice?
Or maybe an alternative mode, where we recieve one 'penalty point' each time we hit the walls. So the object would be to complete it with 0 penalty points. Maybe those modes could be Normal/Easy to the current Hard?

As a suggestion, I was thinking maybe having multiple paths would be nice. We could maybe get bonus points for going back and touching both paths?

Also, as mentioned, if you are gonna stick with one path, the music could be better yet. Though I do love the strums you end each level with and the music as it is has some nice qualities. But if my actions were uncovering a tune like XJapan's Endless Rain (a kinda light classical accoustic piece) it'd be even more splendid.

Hope to hear your plans regarding this game.

I do look forward to seeing the next iteration.

It brought me some joy as is though.

It's a game I enjoy playing until I mess up. That's when the game awakes me from the tranquil state it's helped me enter.

[Portal Protect]

game, but I just think it

Played it, getting to around level 4/5. got 19k points I think. Started getting bored, was dropping down...

+++++ Relevant subject matter. Captures the imagination.

++++ The various modifiers do bring about some interesting variations.

--- Though it kinda seems like generally we'd practically want to avoid the flashing things once we decide what we prefer - there's not much to encourage us to go through the different modifiers.

------ I don't like the way the game seems to have little interesting variation.

-- Not to keen on the way there's no losing state.

overall
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An interesting game, but I just think it needs more variety in the game mechanics.

You know, this kinda reminds me of my own 'Skears DX' game. Which has far less interesting gfx but more interesting levels imo.

unknown911 responds:

Thanks for the helpful input!
By the way, you lose when you go under -1000 points.