EpicMooCow's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Shine]

A good game that was poorly executed. While you have a great and original concept, great art, and great music, it's really disappointing that some of your game play was lacking.

Your main issue is that the camera moves with Lucia. This makes it so that you can unintentionally move the light if you're holding on to it while moving. Since there are many levels where you need to have the light while you're moving, this is really annoying. Also, the fact that the light has a limited speed makes it so that your light just feels really clunky, especially in scenarios where you need to whip it towards you really fast. I can't really offer a solution to this, so I'll leave you to figure it out on your own.

Also, your levels are frustratingly difficult, probably because of the things said above. Once I got to the level with all the carts going sideways, I had to give up. The worst part was that I was blaming the game, rather than myself. If the player says "Oh man, that was so stupid of me," you're doing it right. Mistakes should feel like the player's fault.

One more thing, and this isn't as important. When you're creating a game, blend story with game play. There is nothing more boring than having to read through a wall of text before you can play the game. Trust me, hardly anyone is going to want to read through all that. Spoon feeding the story slowly into the player while they play the game is a great way for them to actually understand what is going on without them getting bored. If there's something you want them to know RIGHT NOW at the beginning of the game, for example, "Why is the light out?" just put it as your description. Although, shoving everything towards the player at the beginning of the game isn't that big of a deal in the first place.

No doubt you are faced with a big issue that is hard to fix because of the style of game you chose, so you can hardly be blamed for it, but it's an issue that should be fixed nonetheless. If you plan on creating a sequel to this game, fix this and you'll have an incredible game.

[Cyber Rush]

Fairly well made game, but it's really disappointing that you have nothing in originality. Great music, great art. The game play feels a bit clunky, but other than that, this was a well constructed game. Next time, try to come up with something more original.

[You Are Disabled]

Yeah, no. What exactly made you think it was a good idea to make the most boring game you could possibly make? There only thing that's even slightly good about this game is the graphics. I'll tell you exactly where you went wrong.

You know how people say, "Oh, when you start a story / game, make sure you add a great hook!" This game took that advice and did the exact opposite. The game play is so ridiculously slow and boring that it almost hurts to play. Then after an eternity when you can crawl yourself to the end of the stage, you have to deal with all of these reapers saying the exact same thing over and over and over and over again. It's like "Yeah, I get it. I'm not accepted, and I'm crippled." I mean, I know you're trying to get a message across, but that's not the way to do it. It's not making me feel bad for my character. It's not making me feel useless. It's making me feel bored.

If that wasn't bad enough, you have to deal with the double reapers some times who will just randomly kill you. Oh yeah, that's a fantastic idea. Let's just screw the player over and then screw him over some more. That's fun.

The story is really dark. Unnecessarily dark to the point of being so disgusting that it almost sickens you to have to read the people talk. For one thing, it doesn't go in with the game play at all. You could literally remove that and it wouldn't change the game at all. Secondly, it makes you look terrible as a game writer for writing that kind of stuff, especially since it's not needed. Now you've got the player disgusted and bored. You're looking great so far.

You just have random clips of music jutting around, and it's really annoying. Sometimes you'll just be playing and you'll hear this five second fragment of poorly made music. At the very least, you could have made sure that the player had something to listen to through this nightmare. But instead, you're leaving the player disgusted, bored, and annoyed. At least the art was done fairly well.

I know I really butchered your game here, but there's no way you honestly played through this game and thought "Wow, what a great game!" I literally had to stop playing at the part where the reaper teleports you back to the beginning of the level. I know that the point of the game was to portray how life isn't fair, but you executed it very poorly. Just because you have an idea for a game doesn't necessarily mean it's a good one.

[I and My Shadow]

Great starting point if you're just working with Flash. It's a game that works. However, beyond that, not much was really done. This is basically a platformer with a twist.

Your graphics are really basic. I know you can't exactly make professional graphics with this, but there's clearly no effort but into this at all. It's clear that they're not the focal point of this particular game, but you can create some basic designs that'll make your game more pleasing to the eye. Also, the sound effect is really lousy, and due to the constant repetition of it, it gets really annoying. If you blend in more sound effects, add music, or both, you can make the sound work.

Game worked, but only if you did it in a particular way. Any collision at all would offset you and your shadow, so you have to be very careful about each jump that you do. Even if you are extremely careful, you're still going to experience small collision. Because of this, the game is difficult without needing to be, which is highly annoying. Beyond that, this is a concept that has been done many times before. You're not bringing anything new to the table.

Overall, this is just a really basic platform game. It's clear that you have an idea of what you're doing though, and if you keep working at it, you're going to have something really special.

[Clockwork Cat]

I'll be honest, this review is slightly biased because I'm getting tired of all the 10 second Ludum Dare games that have been popping around. There's three categories for them. One: Bad, Two: Meh, Three: Amazing, and unfortunately I'm going to have to dump this game into the second category. Here's my thought process:

Okay, yes. You gave me a good, working game. The art worked fairly well. But in reality, this is just something that's not too great that has been sugar coated. If you dig down to the deepest parts of the game, you'll see that this is not much more than basic platforming. You jump from object to object and try to hit checkpoints. There's not a lot of thinking involved, it's just "press these buttons to do stuff and then win the game." So in reality, the game play isn't all that satisfying.

The least you could have done is given me a story. Why exactly is this cat walking around with a wrench? What kind of world am I in? Why can't the clock hit 12? So many questions, and considering what the theme of the game is, you could have very easily added some kind of cute little story line that went with this that would have scored major points. Probably would have easily brought up your score to a five if you had something cool going on.

That's all that can really be said about this review. It's lacking big time in the game play factor, which in the end, always hurts your score. I understand you couldn't do anything too amazing considering this is a game submitted for Ludum Dare, but I wasn't satisfied with what I was playing. I was jumping around thinking "Come on, just finish the game already so you can review it." There was nothing there to make me want to keep playing.

[Just A Trim Please]

The only thing that makes this game redeemable is its music, and I'll tell you why.

Okay, this idea has been done so much, it's ridiculous. It's been done in many different forms, the lawnmower form being the most used. "Go over squares in a certain order without backtracking" is one of the most frequent forms, and the fact that it is so common is going to score you absolutely nothing in originality. The puzzle world is huge, and there's lots of stuff out there that's never been done, so why go with something that has already been done many times already? At least add upgrades or something...

Now that we've gotten that cleared up, I can say that this game isn't that great. For one thing, the art is very simple, almost simple enough to be called lazy, but I'll give you this one just because it's sort of charming in this case. However, you give me this game and you don't even give me any sound effects or animations for the lawnmower? You're essentially just a block of something that teleports around and changes tiles. The only sound effect I've seen is when you run over already mowed grass, which is actually a very nice sound effect. Also, when you start a new level, the sound of the engine starting is also pretty nice, so why didn't you implement more sound effects?

Finally, let's get down to the music. Very, very nice stuff. Sounds great, fits very well into your game, but... oh wait, you didn't create it. That's extremely disappointing, because it means the only thing you did do is the very simple art and coding, and possibly the sound effects. Which means this game probably didn't much time to make at all. However, the game works, the art works, and the music is great. Unfortunately, it's not enough to keep playing beyond level 5, but solid game nonetheless. A more original idea would have scored you a ton of points here.

[The Gentleman]

I decided to give up on level 35. This game could have very successfully have been a fantastic game. However, the way you designed everything very poorly. There's a thin line between enjoyable and frustrating when it comes to puzzles. Allow me to explain.

If you give your player the opportunity to blame the game for their death, you're doing it wrong. If for any reason, a player has to die during a puzzle to learn how to do it, you're doing it wrong. Examples:
"Oh, the umbrella doesn't make me float down when I'm on the ceiling."
"Oh, there was a switch there."
"Oh, that portal brings me there."
"Oh, a giant bat kills me here."
I found myself blaming myself for dying very few times. Most of the time I was blaming the game engine.

Level 35 absolutely killed the game for me. That entire boss was a giant middle finger to the player. Explain to me why jumping on a guy wearing nothing but hat instantly kills me? Where's the puzzle element to that? Now after about five tries, you finally manage to dodge his jumps just to have him throw a whole bunch of canes at you, which takes about another five tries to finally learn. After you've gotten all that down, he just runs at you and stabs you. Do you have any idea how frustrated your player is at this point? Now, for those players who are iron-willed enough to keep playing repeating the level until they can finally attack the boss, the boss will just jump up into the air and kill you again, before repeating the exact same sequence. This is not even mentioning the fact that if the boss tries to stab you, but you miss his head, you do no damage and he gets to repeat all his attacks. Seriously? There's no way you were thinking when you creating this boss fight.

On the bright side, you had some great music and art, but it's not enough to carry your game to success. 3 1/2 stars is actually sugar coating it. Imagine if somebody handed you a cheeseburger, but the patty was filled with wasabi and horse radish. You're like "Oh, awesome, a cheeseburger." Then they bite into it and realize that whoever handed the burger just completely screwed them over. This game is that feeling times a thousand.

SoulGame responds:

Loved the cheeseburger analogy :) I'm affraid you're right ! My beta testers were definitely way too much hardcore players (Imagine that before uploading the game, I lowered the lvl 35 difficulty a lot !) We'll work on making games both hardcore and casual and we'll try to prevent the frustration you describes.

[Knightmare Tower]

To any aspiring game makers out there, let this game be a lesson to you. This game is as good as flash games get, and has definitely scored a spot on my Top 5 List. Let's break it down.

Right from the beginning, just from seeing the art, I was hooked. That's how powerful art is in a flash game. The art in this game goes above and beyond. In an ideal world, this is how all flash games should look. Since a flash game can't rely on game play or music as much as other games can, art is the most important factor.

Game play was beautifully done. Each enemy was pretty much unique, and it wasn't hard to figure out what you weren't supposed to do when fighting an enemy. You earn gold fast enough so that you can constantly develop your character after every run, but slow enough so that you keep playing to develop your character more. Somehow, the author of the game hit the absolute perfect medium in gold collecting.

As far as the upgrade menu goes, each upgrade does something different and each one is valuable in their own right. If a player browses through the shop constantly debating what their next buy is, or if they should save up to get something else, you're doing it right. Not to mention the fact that the more you spend, and the more time you put into the game, the better your character looks.

The game doesn't waste a lot of time with a tutorial. The game play mechanics are simple enough to pick up very quickly, so that the game can say "This is how you play" without the player losing their mind trying to remember everything. Also, the game is fun all the way through. You just feel the need to keep playing until you've unlocked all the upgrades, which is how games should be.

I could say so much more about this game, but all in all, this game did everything right. If more game makers used this as an example when creating their games, I would be giving out 5 stars like they were candy.