EpicMooCow's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[C.O.R.E]

Might want to focus on actually creating the game before releasing it. Allow me to explain:

For one thing, the music obviously doesn't loop properly. You already know this, but I'm using it as a valid point because you shouldn't have released the game if something as noticeable and annoying as this existed in your game. On the bright side, the music sounds really nice, and it would fit very well if you got it working.

The tutorial is absolutely ridiculous. When you walk into a class, the teacher doesn't teach everything they will be teaching that year in the span of an hour. You're introducing your player to a ridiculous amount of important material very quickly. The player does not have the capability of memorizing all that stuff, much less have the patience to read a whole bunch of text on the screen. I guarantee you that most players either left the game before they had the chance to finish the tutorial. Even I skipped most of the tutorial.

I played the game for about ten seconds before the game just froze. I don't know what happened, but I went to go fight an enemy and the second I hit "Z" the game froze. You cannot possibly release a game this buggy and expect people to play it and love it.

Also, while the graphics are really nice, they don't work well. For example, the acid puddle doesn't work right. It works more like a wall. Go back through the tutorial and check for yourself. In the end, it just makes for some dissatisfying graphics.

While you're bringing me a pretty broken game, it's a game that can easily be repaired. With some work, you could have a great game in the works here. Keep working on this game, however, don't try to do anything else with it until you can bring us a major update that fixes most of the major flaws and allows for an actual playable game. If it's possible, keep me updated on this. I cannot wait to see the direction this game goes.

[Zombienation Human Escape]

Really nothing too exciting. There's no action to this game at all. Essentially, find zombies, run circles around them until they're dead, and then revive anyone who is down. Then they drop money which you can spend on upgrades and stuff. Bland entertainment that brings nothing new to the table. At least allow me to shoot my gun instead of having my character shoot automatically.

[Rise]

This game was a massive disappointment. I opened it up thinking that it was going to be a fun Adventure RPG. Instead, I got this bland, buggy, game.

Let's start off with the game play itself. I encountered the potion lady at least 6-7 times in a row. That wasn't just a one-time thing either. In one play through, I must have gotten at least four situations in which I encountered the potion lady five times in a row. That's simply unacceptable. For one thing, the stuff she sells isn't that important in the first place. All that really matters is the health pots. Buy like 50 of those and you're set. The rest is just useless garbage that you probably won't end up using. Secondly, each time you encounter her, you're missing out on the opportunity to earn gold by fighting enemies. Thirdly, you're going to have to deal with massive difficulty hops. After like a 6 time encounter with the potion lady, I was suddenly dealing with much tougher enemies.

Let's talk about the enemies. For one thing, you completely screwed up the armor on all your enemies. Bandits, test subjects, and goblin captains are practically wearing nothing, and yet if you stab them you do more than twice the amount of damage of a slash. If you're telling me that wearing a t-shirt is more effective than wearing a full set of battle armor, you're completely insane. So basically, slash is completely useless. Not to mention the fact that I completed the entire game without having to use anything except stab. The rest of the stuff is really only there for show.

Decisions really have no impact on the game at all. I mean really, they rarely come at all, and when they do you don't really get anything out of it. Okay, so there's some food on the ground. I eat it and get +1 / +2 health. Woo, so glad I made that decision. What's even worse is climbing through the tower and then just obtaining a random mana drain gem. Are you serious? At least have them make a decision about it. Same goes for the cherry. As nice as it was to have a random full restore in your game, it's far too luck-based. There's so much more that I can complain about as far as the game play went, but if I went over everything I'd be here all day.

Let's talk about the art. The art was fairly nice to look at. I can definitely see a lot of effort and some talent went into making those models. But honestly, there's no action to this game at all. It's just bland, excitement. Nothing ever moves on the screen. It's like "Look at this picture! Now look at this picture! Here's the same picture again! And again! Now here's a different picture!" I don't want to sit here and watch a slideshow for the rest of the game. I'm surprised I even managed to make it through. Also, while I'm discussing art, I should say that the music was sort of enjoyable. Kind of wish you had more variety in the types of songs you used.

Keep in mind, I played through only once, and only as one class, and I've already got all this to say. I literally forced myself to play through the whole game so I could make an accurate review, that's how bland this game was. Two stars for effort.

[Jimmy's Resurrection]

Alright, let me just start off by saying one thing: There is nothing memorable about this game at all.

For one thing, the story doesn't make any sense, and it confuses the player more than anything. How can you be killed by a window? Somehow that fails to make sense to me. Also at the beginning of the game, you take it that this will be a fairly serious game, but in reality everything seems to be kind of silly. For example, the villain is a saxophone-playing colossal? When you reach the end of a stage, you pull your pants down? I was confused what was going on. Is this game supposed to be funny? Because you definitely didn't put me in the right mindset for it, and because of that nothing in this game was humorous at all, but rather just annoying.

You did a fairly good job with the music, but I can tell when it loops. That's a problem that you might want to fix.

The controls can be fairly confusing when wall jumping and gripping onto the walls. Also, the difficult hop from level one to level two is far too extreme.

I could say more about this game, but there's nothing worth saying. I would channel most of my effort into creating a reasonable story next time. I can't tell whether you put effort into this game or not. The animation is pretty smooth, and the music is good, but I just don't see how you could have failed that hard with a story if you actually put in the effort.

3kliksphilip responds:

Well, thanks for the detailed review, even if it wasn't too favourable. From what I've gathered there's nothing too wrong with the game, your main gripe is with the story and that it was possibly too difficult because you didn't try it for long. Which is fair enough as well. I assume you're American since we British have a more bizarre and eccentric sense of humour in general. It is possible to be killed by a window (defenestration- Jimmy died in the first place because we loved that word and had to include it in the previous game where he died. Kind of unfair to rate this game down because you can't imagine it happening!) and who's to say what happens after you die? Why can't there be a heavenly sax man forcing you through portal-style traps again and again? Where's your imagination?!?!

Oh and he pulls his pants down in an abstract celebration. In the final stage he pulls them down and reveals that he has finally become a man. Once again it's not something I like to say because I'd rather people would encounter it by themselves and interpret it in their own way, but you forced me to this!

Just out of interest, what would be a better story? Why does there even HAVE to be a story in an arcade-game? Annoyingly I've made more story-led games in the past and people have clicked past it to get to the action. I guess it's lose-lose in the world of flash games.

[Dark Reality: Two Doors]

This game doesn't even deserve a full review. The puzzles were put together with no attention to the player's perspective at all. After the first room I got bored and stopped playing, and I doubt that unless you have serious determination, you wouldn't even finish the first room. Not worth playing at all.

[Stonelegs 2]

When creating a game, it is important to realize that just because you have an original idea does not mean that it's a good one. While this was an original idea, it wasn't a very good one.

I'll start off with story line. I doubt that you were going for a serious story line, but at least put some kind of effort into the story. I mean, you almost made me leave with the introduction scene. "warrior from a village" Oh boy, never heard that one before. "someone he loves is kidnapped" Wow, this storyline is brilliant, I can tell that lots of effort was put into it. Not to mention the animation quality is horrid, and the character design was sloppy. If you want to hook players into your game, you can't just make a lousy introduction scene.

I'd be willing to bet that you spent less than an hour on the music. I've taken a whack at making 8-bit songs and I've made songs with similar quality in less than 10 minutes. The songs aren't good and are too simple. You might as well be playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in the background, because the music didn't help with the mood at all. As a suggestion, I would have recommended some kind of music with a more adventurous feel to it. I would look at early Sonic games.

The pixel graphics are really starting to get overdone. You're not really bringing anything new to the table graphic-wise. Pixel graphics are a way of saying "I'm too lazy to put any work into making a video game, so I'm going to take the easy route and just make pixel graphics." What's worse is that people actually enjoy that crap. I'm not asking for super realistic graphics, but I mean at least try, especially for a platform game. At least have some kind of art style, something like Yoshi's Island.

Okay, now to get into the actual gameplay itself. It was boring. I had no fun playing it at all. It's a platform game where you can only jump. Why did you think this was a good idea? Removing an element of a game does not make it better. Then the whole stone smashing thing was introduced and it wasn't really like "OH WOW, THINK OF ALL THE THINGS I CAN DO WITH THIS" but rather kind of a dull surprise. Not to mention the controls were done horribly. The sideways sensitivity was way too high, I moved too far constantly and any level that required me to do even a slightly accurate jump had me trying over and over again to get it right.

The only thing that I can imagine that might have saved this game is comedy. If you had actually given me at least ONE thing to look forward to, it could have been that. In fact, you passed up the opportunity to have comedy in your game. Because of this, you're missing major story elements that could have been clarified.
- Why does he have stone legs?
- Why is she getting kidnapped?
- Why does the village no longer exist?
There's more but I won't get into those.

I'm not trying to butcher your game here, but I would not recommend making a Stonelegs 3. I don't know how you could possibly save your game idea here, but if you can figure it out, go right ahead. It's clear that you have the opportunity to be a good game developer, but you definitely need to COMPLETELY reconsider your approach towards making games.

[bit Dungeon]

This game really confuses me. The graphics are nice, the game play is nice, the music is nice, and everything was just really well done. I thought that I would just level up my crit as high as possible just for the hell of it. I figured by late game I would be able to 1 shot almost anything.

I was completely wrong.

It was going fairly well up until level 3. Then for some reason, I hardly ever crit anybody, monsters did a hell of a lot more damage, and they also had a hell of a lot more health. I was spamming the hell out of my magic trying to block attacks, but by the third room I had lost all my health and I died. I feel like I'm doing something wrong, but I have no idea.

[Deep Space Dash]

Awesome game, I really enjoyed it. I really want to see more games like this. Only thing is that this is a little short, there's no real variation in the music, and getting Money Bags is a real pain. Looking forward to a possible Deep Space Dash 2?

DoodleBin responds:

I'll look into it. :)