TheJaredWilcurt's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cleansing]

If you want your game to have clear "you must do this to beat a level" objective. then don't flash CHOICE CHOICE in the first 5 seconds of the game, just to say after two screens "The choice you made doesn't let you play anymore". That's not a choice. If you give me a scary demon monster, I'm going to use it to eat villagers and sheep. That's like, the whole point of a demon wolf thing with teeth the size children.

If you simply take out the word "CHOICE" this would make the game anything above a zero. blammed for utter stupidity of developer.

[Reverie]

Heads up to the author, the game is unplayable on lower end machines. Game freezes up on my netbook due to to much CPU usage of the game. Consider adding in quality settings that effect things beyond the quality of vector rendering (right-click > quality >low had no effect, still froze up. If you're using any movie clips that have post rendering done to them (adjusting hue/sat/dropshadow/etc), have an option to disable them. Anything that is being blurred in real time by flash is a huge framerate killer on even decent machines, but on weak ones it makes the swf unplayable. You can still maintain the same look by prerendering it. You'd need to create a 24-bit transparent .png file of the effect, rather than having flash just generate it. then overlay the png as just a regular graphic (or movie clip) and have it's opacity animated. Would increase filesize, but decrease cpu cycles for end users. You could counter act this though by starting the game once only the elements that are required to play the first level have downloaded. By the time you get to the end of that level, the rest of the elements should be done. You could put a 1 frame of code to check at the end of that level, if the user is on dial-up they would just wait for the download to finish at the end of that level.

Also I should note the freezing up occurs on the third stage (with the door, then ledge, then huge drop) in normal view. And it especially occurs in the J view on all prior levels. So whatever you're doing in J view it's really effecting slower machines.

[Slime's Cake Quest]

Controls make it unplayable. I had to break out Xpadder and a SNES pad just to make it even partially playable, but even that didn't save it. Unplayable game.

MintPaw responds:

You're unplayable!

[Eggstinction]

Loses it's charm pretty quick. There is no room to improve on the skill level, the only "skill" involved is the false one given by not telling you how to play the game. This should be a bonus level, or demo/tutorial level for a proper game, not the entire thing. It's horribly imbalanced due to the random item spawn and lack of reward for killing the ground minions who are more of a threat than the ships. Just so many things that could have been done better. This is fine to throw at someone at the end of a platforming level as a quick bonus for points, but as a game it just doesn't cut it. There's no indication of how to get the rage meter to fill. No explanation about the boosted jump you get from crouching. Nothing to inform you on how the weapons work and what combination to use them in. I get that since this is ALL you made, that is the point. But that's not good game design and you know it. A better way would be to have a progressive leveling system where you are introduced to elements as you go and the enemies get harder and more plentiful on each successive stage. As you go more and more weapons become available AND THEY ARE EXPLAINED. The map you navigate changes to accommodate different strategies. Maybe some in game goals, such as protecting other eggs from being destroyed. or bring something back to the cave without dying. You already have item pick ups. just duplicate the blue shield, change the image from the blue orb to some floating meat, or firewood, or a thing of water, or whatever it is the other dinosaurs need. You pick it up and have it until you get shot too many times, or until you reach the other side of the level.

However all of this would require more work on your part to design those levels and test them. And that may be asking for too much for a game that's already buggy with weird enemies floating in air that can't be damaged, the player randomly going under the map, no pause option, etc, etc.

2 stars, could've been 3 if you had independent volume sliders for narrator, sound effects, and music.

You guys are so close to making a professional product, rather than what feels unfinished and a little broken.

[Ninja and Blind Girl]

Not bad

Needs some work for the sequel, but not bad. I'm curious if the HP/MP ever stop being upgradable. I got to 120HP and 1000MP. Tried to beat it without buying Hill or Falling Stones. It's possible to beat level 23 without them, but 24 and 25 require it.

The art style of the characters and the all of the animation should be improved for the sequel. Also the Defensive AI either needs to be fixed or replaced with something else, like long range, duo (meaning they team up and fight with someone else, however won't fight on their own), Slow (stops or slows down multiple enemies), or Anti-Air. All sorts of possibilities for various fighting styles you could be considered. But as of now, there's no point in doing anything but Aggressive for all three.

Under the upgrade menu for the ninja's, there should be a thing in the top corner with the names of each so you can switch between them quickly and compare who's been upgraded with what so far. Also, if you're going to lay text out vertically, center it so it's not aligned left.

And for fucks sake, create an options menu for the sound. Two words: VOLUME CONTROL.

Implement the 11 achievements for Newgrounds as well.

[Xeno Tactic 2]

what were you thinking

It's obvious you didn't want to make the same exact game only with minor upgrades, and that's commendable, but this is just bad. There's barely ANY tactic to it. The first one really was about trying to skillfully complete a level using different tactics that you develop ON YOUR OWN throughout the game and that and it was amazing. Learning each weapons pro's and cons and how each enemy is effected by them. The game is just too different from the original to work right. There are some good ideas that should be applied to a third game that's much more like the original, but this one is just awful. And the requiring you to go to a different site to play the last 3 levels is just PANTS ON HEAD RETARDED. cut it out, you know better.

I've played the first one hundreds of times, and I've played this one maybe a dozen, it's just not good. the stacking of weapons is a good idea. the having ultra weapons that cost a ton and take up more room is cool. the ability to build walls is pretty dumb. the weapons being able to be placed anywhere is dumb. the weapons not blocking the enemies path is the worst thing ever.

I'm sure this game has some real depth, and you can get pretty advanced with it, but it's pointless because it's just so bad no one will invest the time to even bother. Make another one, I beg of you. The first is my #1 favorite flash game. I see it's name on my profile under favorites and just instantly think, damn, that's such a good game. Which just adds to the disappointment in the sequel.

Do better, we know you can.

[Newgrounds Sig Maker 1]

good start, needs some more work though

the menu isn't very readable, like the words Font and Border. and you need to embed your fonts into the flash (Uppercase, Lowercase, Numerals, and Punctuation). it converts them to glyphs and saves them, so the person using your flash doesn't need to have the same exact fonts as you, cuz if they don't, they just show up as times new roman. also could use some higher quality raster images, a lot of them get pixelated when they're blown up to larger sizes. may want to change their properties to set them up for smoothing also, if you haven't already.

pm me if you need any further explanation or directions on what I'm talking about.

quasimondo com_archives_000572 php
(replace spaces with periods, replace underscores with slashes)
that page will show you how to let people save out the image they create. the print screen thing works fine, but this is just one more touch that could make it better.

other than those suggestions, it looks good. could use some more images to pick from, but not too many, I'd say 50 tops, and maybe like 25-30 backgrounds. changing the color of your text would help also, and since it's aimed at the design impaired, or at least program impaired, maybe picking out 3-5 colors for the text that would work well with the current choice of background. just some ideas for you to mull over

[600 Volt Pong]

needs work

it's just not playable yet, needs a lot of work.

1. when the ball leaves the room it should reset your paddle at the center as the ball drops
2. the ball should switch which side it drops towards after each out
3. mute button
4. pause button
5. different difficulties
6. improved graphics
7. scoring system
8. different levels, so it starts out easier, you go to level two and it adds difficulty and as the levels go on more variation and surprises
9. high score submission/scoreboard

1 = most needed
9 = would be nice

Finish off the game and resubmit it

[Bubble Tanks]

You've reached the end of the world, go back

few things this desperately needs:
1. a mute button, for the love of
2. P = pause
3. high score/submit score

some stuff that would be cool:
when you eventually get to the state with an orb around you, you should be able to keep growing untill you take up about 40% of the bubble arena you're fighting people in, then when you leave that arena bubble after killing everyone, instead of going into the one next you, the camera zooms out some and you get to start battling arena's, and so on. where the game would just be ever expanding.
I'd suggest keeping the screen clear of any interface (like it is). put all that extra junk in the start menu for when they hit pause (mute, current score, save game)

and maybe have a way to see how many bubble points you are away from leveling up again, cuz I'm like 110% sure I'm done leveling up right now, but there's no way to be sure, other than to go to every single room and kill everything (currently at the NW corner of the map). it doens't have to be represented numerically, like 150/500 or 85%, it could just be a big bubble with a little one in it that's slowly growing as you collect more bubbles from killin' stuff.

you should be able to eventually do everything that all your enemies can do, keep growing/evolving to adopt their powers, even have a red shell for a while (like when you're so big you take up most of the arena, just before you out grow it and start fighting the arenas). once the camera zooms out and you're so big you're fighting a room your next upgrade could take away the red shell, and those giant red bullets that come out of your butt wouldn't be so big compared to fighting the rooms you were just in. so the game could just continually evolve and grow, since the big bullets are now small, you can keep leveling up to bigger ones.

with a save function, you could save your character to come back and play where you left off, or even battle against other people in the online multiplayer zone to see who has the biggest strongest guy (there would be lots of room for ideas in multiplayer)

anyways, I'm full of ideas, hope some of those will help make something cool, but mostly, just put in a damn mute button

HeroInteractive responds:

Great ideas! Thanks, I'll definitely be thinking about them as I consider features for the sequel/expansion.

You can turn off sounds and music through the settings menu before you start the game. An ability to change these settings while in-game would be nice though.