Galneda's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tacktamania]

What revolver has 19 shots in it, and uses a "clip?"

It's not very challenging. I don't think the shields actually deflect the bullets, and the only melee enemy that'll actually do me any damage are the blonde white guys. The little antler gremlins can just pile up at my feet, and do nothing to my health. The zombies don't attack either. The only threat to my health are the ranged attackers and you just click them a bunch. Without any diversification in the environment, this gets boring pretty quickly.

MaxonClakson responds:

The Zombies and Gremlins are not meant to do any damage at all and serve more as a training enemy, and despite it's appearance, the revolver is not actually a revolver but a pistol designed to look like one. The shield also blocks bullets if you time it correctly.

[War Criminal Embezzles Money From the IMF]

I'm guessing there isn't a win-state or a fail-state? I was chasing enemy ships just to see if I could get a game over. I think moving forward, it would be beneficial to have an endcap on the game, one way or another, win or fail.

Sepnome responds:

Thanks, this game is still in development. Im hoping to add new features.

[Kill Lola Bunny]

Fucking stellar. I love you guys.

Yomuchan responds:

Glad to hear that you enjoyed it!

[Shuffle World]

There's some fucky things going on, many of them are evident on Level 12.

For one, the character we control seems to have an unstable hit-box to how he lands, as if his lower corners are rounded like a rombus. This is really noticeable when you're trying to land on one tile right on the other side of a jumping hog or a spike trap- he'll land on the tile but kinda slide off, and it doesn't seem like a momentum overcorrection on my end.

Secondly, if the terrain the character is on is too high, several things happen in a switch.

On level 12, if we start on the top left section and that's "1" , I position myself at the extreme edge of 2, inboard to the middle. I swapped it with the platform below it, but my character stayed suspended in mid-air. After the terrain is done switching, I plummet to my death atop a jumping hog right below me.

Another thing that sometimes happens is the hogs will have inconsistent autonomy. At first I thought they were too easy of an obstacle, and thought it was an interesting addition to ramp up the difficulty so that the hogs will sometimes charge after a while, but the more I played, the more I started to realize this may be accidental. I'll die on one, and they'll back up sometimes. Sometimes they'll start moving forward when all they did was jump after I died. But SOMETIMES I'd swap tiles, and they'd be in a position, through timing, that enabled them to charge forward indefinitely, onto other sections.

I wanted to vote top score on it because this is a really interesting idea, but I think some bolts need to be tightened on this. More variety of enemies, more consistently in the existing enemies behaviors, and more deliberate platforming physics that feel sturdier on our character, as well as tightening the core game mechanic.

Still, really cool idea and the polish is there. I hope this goes far for you! Keep up the excellent work, and never stop!

MrNannings responds:

Thanks that a big reply. Need to study on that. I have updated the movement but the other things you mention I still have to process.

[Winter Falling: Prototype One]

Extremely difficult. I've played four different games, and I can't seem to win. Will return to this to see if I can figure this out.

Rarykos responds:

Hmm so I should perhaps make the first challenge a bit easier.

Thank you for your persistence!

[Space Manager]

This game is a waste of life, only incentivized by the inclusion of NG Trophy achievements. But even they are undermined by the measly value given to them at 5 points per achievement earned. It's disproportionate to the time and effort spent, even if that effort is letting it farm itself overnight or at work.

It's boring and maddening. We aren't even given the satisfaction to SEE the base we're building in action. We're just staring at the art asset of a planet, and the art assets of the menu. We can't even stare at the art assets of everyone in the leaderboards-quite a few of them are either default tankmen or a black box with the text "PENIS" in the middle.

Like it feels like a prank. Like you're fucking with us, chasing the magic dragon so we might afford some of the modules on the next page or something. Spend Fifteen Million Q on a cargo block that'll rake in 50,000 Q per minute. Are we mining crypto-currency for you or something, are you offloading our computer's processing power to do some fraudulent shit?

I'm done, man. This is hardly a game and the trophy achievements are less valuable than the time wasted trying to get them.

igorpets responds:

welcome to the clicker - time killer (if you didn't know :)

[Just Passing]

It's almost there, but not quite. It looks and sounds great, interesting premise and setting. I don't think the "is this loss?" joke works in reference to a vertical stack of rocks.

At first I was frustrated at how limiting it was when I wanted to explore, but after I got to the train station, I got the jist of what was going on...this soul is mentioning how they love popcorn...that soul is mentioning how they love soda...etc, etc...

When I approached Farmer Bob, his initial greeting "WOOP" noise felt like it was layered over itself 30 times in a deafening, startlingly loud greeting. I tried recreating it by continuously chatting with him to no avail, it seemed like a one time anomaly and I'm not sure what's causing it. It definitely clipped audio and it didn't seem intentional.

Then I walk over to the giant crow right next to him, and just as I got to him he was walking towards me at the corner of the farmhouse next to the scarecrow with a shirt. This, somehow, lodged us both from being able to move. I was stuck in place and the giant crow seemed unable to move as well. I had to close the game from this bug.

JoelLikesPigs responds:

That’s unfortunate. This game was made in a relatively short amount of time so I apologize for the amount of bugs and other issues - I’ll be fixing this by this week

The loss joke has a relatively low chance of occurring and I wanted to initially stick it on a gravestone - but ran out of time making the asset for it - I’ll remove it for now until I get the grave stone made

[Abobo's Big Adventure]

Phenomenal! Top 50 of NGs TRUE ALL TIME.

I have never laughed out loud, or thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay of a flash game like I have this....EVER. From beginning to end, it's just non-stop entertainment. ESPECIALLY with the challenge.

The NES games were particular very hard. Especially with no such things as continues or what have you; once it's game over, it's game over. Even still, while this flash game MERCIFULLY allows us some continuation on a chapter by chapter basis, it's still very challenging, and ALLLL the more satisfying once we earn that ending.

To the NG achievement whores, this is nothing short of a complex goldmine for you.

I'm personally a Mega Man fan, so I was a little miffed that Megabobo couldn't slide; that would've REALLY come in handy for the boss fight with Robobobo. That's really my only huge criticism, and yet I cant bring myself to score this any less than a 10. The craftsmanship along with the entertainment value is too great to ignore.

I actually laughed out loud A LOT while I was playing through this. It just screams NG humor, while simultaneously brining something fresh, yet nostalgic to the table. It's unreal! I absolutely loved this. The boss fights, the mechanics, it's just a wild, wild trip. I especially love the Balloon Fight DEATH BLOSSOM special! Abobo would have been a fantastic Last Starfighter!

I have 2,700 characters left, and really the rest of the body of my review would have been gushing over everything I liked. A lot of time was spent on this, and admittedly, the hype that was attributed to it with the front page countdown clocked immediately implied to me that it might suck. I'm SUPER RELIEVED that when NG makes a countdown clock for a submission, they mean business. This absolutely exceeded my expectations, and it rocked my socks off. This was damn fun, and really funny. 5! 5! 5! 5! 6!...err...5!

This was excellent! Damn all the haters, for they do not matter!

And hey, Haters! Try playing this on Firefox like someone who's not a fucking idiot. lol

Thank you for the badass game.

Abobo responds:

We argued a bit over whether to allow sliding, but decided to not include it since it was not in the original megaman 2 that the level was based on.

Thanks for the review, we love hearing from people like you that really connected with and "get" the game!

[Trippin Kitchen]

Not bad for a game jam!

I can appreciate a game that tries to teach the player patience under circumstances of urgency...while I was frustrated about tapping "A" in the wrong order, (repeatedly swinging 1, 1, 1, 1! 1!! 1!!!) I quickly learned to pace myself for the first volley 1...2-3...then, luckily, Grandma can spaz out and I can unleash a flurry of 1111111's until even Flour bags don't stand a chance.

While that game mechanic was unique to me, I'm also all too familiar of the character not wanting to turn around in mid attack. Poor timing on my choice when I initially began an attack in the wrong direction? Possibly...but it seemed "sticky" to me when she wasn't responsive enough to turn around after a finished attack, and cover her back.

The introduction gets the point our clearly, Even though this seems to be a predicament where Grandmas seemed to have forgotten her meds moreso than just drinking expired milk. But what was daunting was the game's method of showing us our progress.

I just beat the game, and I'm still unclear as to how it treats the wave / round / level increments. Is it...five waves = +1 round, 5 rounds = +1 level? Just before the explodey carrots came in, I was beginning to wonder if the game had an end... after the explodey carrots, I wondered if I was near it. As I zoned out, it seemed the waves of baddies after the explodey carrot was introduced was thinning...it actually got less challenging, even though there's more enemies, and this could be attributed to mastering Grandma's combo patterns. Then all of a sudden FRIDGE BOSS, but it turned out to be more a survival mode...held out, defeating the baddies, and we got a neat pose and a sort of underwhelming ending. One play through, I never even saw what the Game Over screen looks like.

By being a Game Jam submission, that alone seems to dodge it of fault, but if I were to criticize anything, I'd sum it up to it just lacks depth. Even for a Grandma tripping out in her kitchen not unlike a cartoon interpretation of the mother in Requiem For a Dream, it lacks deeper mechanics, clarification, and payoff.

A breezy, fun timekiller, the music was excellent, and so was the art. The wide-angled background looked awesome, though there seemed to be missed opportunities with changing the sky outside of the windows. Grandma's floppy titties did so with grace. Good job, y'all!

Mattster responds:

Thanks for the review!
All round has 5 waves (except for a few which seem to have 6 -.-), level 1 has 2 rounds, and each level after has 1 more round. The waves were quickly put together last-minute, so that's why they seem unbalanced. Most of the time was focused on gameplay rather than wave design.

There were lots of features and ideas for this game, but time became an issue since as it is a Game Jam game.

MC was pretty proud of those floppy tits.

[Madotsuki's Dream Dock]

I don't get it.

For starters, "Warned" is misspelled in the beginning...err...warning.

But this isn't very accessible to your audience. Usually, during a point and click adventure, you're pointing and clicking at different things, and typically, sometimes, actually go on an adventure. The idea of which implies different environments, or things of significance to a story going on. While I admire your creative license on the concept, I stand by that it's not very accessible.

You hype it up to be a Halloween, scary type of flash. Yet you have the most non-threatening, calmest, what I can only assume to be anime soundtrack imaginable in the background to a girl staring at a body of water in the dark from a dock...more accurately, the BACK of a girl's head...even more accurately, the back of SEVERAL anime girl's heads. Sometimes she's a traffic light. Sometimes she's a street lamp. Sometimes she's decapitated. This makes no sense.

There's no explanation. Not even for the hooded man walking in the background, and his identical whiter cousin floating in the lake. There's no explanation as to why she turns into C-3PO and changes a color filtered layer over the whole thing. Or the multi-colored amoeba that descends among the sky. Why does she turn into a little girl, that when clicked multiplies herself over and over again until a very pixelated picture of a ghost woman consumes the background and screams? It's all very disconnected...a lot of waiting and clicking one spot, hitting one button, for little payoff. All over an obscure anime that you can't possibly assume the majority of your audience would be familiar with.

I imagine this took quite a deal of programming, and for that, I admire it's craft...for I KNOW THE HORRORS of Actionscript, lol. But I didn't really connect with this.......

....okay, admittedly, I didn't expect the startle at the end, but the graphic's pixelated quality detracted from what terror it was trying to emote. The sound? That was spot on. If it were louder, it may have made up for the visual quality...but I'm pleased that the jump scare couldn't have happened early on...not sure how it could.

The lack of diversity in interactions hurt it's score a little bit too. What was the point of that vending machine if it didn't do anything? Why make the girl on the further dock a button that does nothing? Why do we only get to stare at the back of the heads of so many characters? The lack of details are frustrating. Though at least the dock itself looked good. The white thing that seemed to be an amorphous blob of limbs coming out of orafices? Well, not to be rude, but that wasn't scary, nor did it look neat. If you truly wanted to go for psychological horror, you could have dug much, much deeper, and not relied on a Japanese Kid's show for influence. ;D As it was, it was a startle at most, and only at the climax. The rest was dulled perplexity.

Halloween is my favorite holiday, so despite all of my criticisms, I'm still voting 5, despite the score on the review itself. Give us more things to work with, and REALLY dig deep if you're going to try and scare us. Keep up the good work! You should aim your next flash into a direction of greater complexity. Challenge yourself, and kick some ass! :D

-Review Request Club-

Pienkaito responds:

Great review from club. Never expected less.

First of all, it's not based on anime. This animation is tribute to a 2005 independently produced surreal adventure PC game by homebrew Japanese developer Kikiyama. (Thanks wiki)

I can understand the non-logical aspect, because... Well, if I am making a tribute to a game that makes absolutely NO SENSE AT ALL in the first place, then I can only say this, even though it's a bit harsh: "What in the fuck is this shit?!"
It will lead to many confusions and endless open questions, so that it will render this animation on itself as uninteresting and boring if you haven't played the game, which is unfortunate. ;_;
The animation contains various sections of the game, so everything you see actually appears in the game in some sort of way.

In short, it's not a japanese kid's show. If it was, then they are seriously fucked up.

This was actually never meant to be scary in my opinion. It's very open to the audience to find it either calm, depressing or scary. (Excluding the last part, which is a lame attempt to scare someone)

I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE PROGRAMMED THAT FREAKING VENDING MACHINE. >=(
It was a nice easter egg in the game...
Speaking of content, yeah. It may seem lacking, but the game itself is exploring world and interactive with objects. That's that.
It would have been a nice jump-scare, if Madotsuki (the main girl) simply twisted her head like in the movie "The Excorcist". I actually planned to do it, but time was faster than me.

By the way, you should check the game out if you have NOTHING else to play. It's...surreal.
I also think that making this in less than 3 days is surreal as well IMO. lol

I really want to thank you for this constructive review. It totally pleases me and at least a few people left their opinion on it now.

PS.: Grammar and spelling mistakes are unintended. (obviously, haha)