Haggard's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lincari]

It was very confusing when I tried playing this without looking at the tutorial here. I didn't know what the hell was going on. So, I had a look at the tutorial and things became clear. An interactive tutorial would've been nice or maybe some kind of a "video tutorial" where you show some scenes of the gameplay and explain what is going on.

Anyway, after I got the hang of this game it became very interesting. I like that you have to think ahead to develope a strategy and to maximize your points. I think economists will LOVE this game since it visualizes "consumer choice" quite nicely, heh. "If I 'consume' this card right now, I get 9 points. But if I wait one round and 'consume' the other card which gives me 1 point, I can get 18 points on the next round, since there's a multiplier coming up!"

Very nice. ;)

{ Review Request Club }

Kwing responds:

Thanks, the strategy was exactly what I was trying to incorporate ;)

[Kirby's Cutter Shoot!]

The basiscs are all there. The controls work fine, the graphics are all right and the gameplay is good enough to waste a few minutes with it.

Now you should try to improve on what you already have achieved. Some additional sounds would be very nice. Some sort of "hit" sound, so we know that we hit an enemy for example. A short story line would improve this game as well. Some short scenes between the levels/waves for example. A description of the enemies... all minor things, but overall, they would vastly improve your game.

Last but not least, the screen is a little bit too small for my liking. Kirby and the enemies are nothing but small dots.

{ Review Request Club }

Lionelion responds:

Thanks for reviewing! Yes, sounds shouldve been added, ive been told by several others, and it would definitely improve the game, but thanks though.
I wasnt really going for much of a story line other than just "defeat the enemies to get ahead" since its just a run-and-gun game, and i didnt think too many games in this genre had such storylines. That also goes along with adding in short scenes between the levels, that just wouldve made it something a little different than what i was going for. Not to say its not a good idea, but just not something for this particular project. Perhaps for something in the future though.
I do kinda agree with the enemies being a little small, but i couldnt really help that at the time.

[Santa Quest]

Needs work

The title screen with the bouncing snowflakes was awesome, I really liked that addition.

The explanation of how the game works is well written and easy to understand. I also like the controls you chose. "WASD" is a pretty common layout and aiming and shooting with the mouse is also a good choice.

The game itself was a bit disappointing. I was hoping I could run through various maps shooting different enemys, not just rockets and candy bars in a single room.

However, the game itself runs very fluently and the homing effect of the candy bars and rockets makes this game very hard, so it's not a game where you can reach high scores by simply playing it once or twice.

I really wish you could add more to the game, though. Various levels, different enemies, maybe even powerups. With this game you showed that you are able to create short games with appealing graphics. So you should try to take it to the next level (no pun intended ;) ) and create longer games.

{ Review Request Club }

shrimpchris responds:

Thanks for the complements. That means alot. Most of my response to SCTE3's review applies to your as well, so I don't think I'm gonna write it again. But please do refer to that.

Anyways, I'm working on a longer, more complete version of this with power ups and everything, so you'll see how I do when I submit the full version and request reviews. ;)

[Super Brick Duel]

Interesting

This is a pretty nice game, I like the idea of putting bricks behind the paddles that have to be destroyed first. Only problem is that the game can get very tedious if you have to destroy brick after brick before you can finally score a point.

I liked the addition of power ups, they add more fun to the game. What can be better than to freeze your opponent and then score a point easily?

Fourplay looks like it can be great fun, but I couldn't play it since I'm alone right now. A CPU mode would be very nice to have there. It would also be nice if the game screen didn't scroll up and down the whole time, can get very annoying after a while.

I liked the addition of the tutorial modes. This can really help you to get better in this game and I liked the varity of the tutorials.

Overall, this can be a fun game for a few boring evenings. I think that Fourplay can be really cool, but since you need three other players for it it's unlikely that too many people will play it. It would be really nice if you could add CPU players to that game mode, so you can have some fun even if there's only one or two human players.

{ Review Request Club }

JPB responds:

Regarding the slowness/boringness of the game, I felt the same, until I added the powerups, but it seems more powerups wouldnt have been a bad thing. CPUs in fourplay is really fault of my laziness, turns out the 2 player hard AI was retarded in fourplay, should've spent more time. Thank you for the review!

[Gravity Bob]

Good game

Well, there are quite a few gravity related games out there, but I don't think none of those games has such a cute main character, lol

I really liked the music in the menu. Sounds awfully familiar, maybe I heard this track in the audio portal or in a different submission, or maybe the menu music was inspired by some other gameing related track which I just happen to know.

The in game music wasn't that appealing to me, but luckily you added a mute button. I always appreciate if a flash author adds a mute button, because even the best in game music can get annoying after a while. So it's always nice to have the option to turn it off.

The gameplay itself is pretty good. The controls are very simple and they work very well. It takes some time to get used to the gravity related acceleration, but after a while I was able to manouver Bob through most of the levels. I haven't beaten the game, but I think with some practice even a "no continues" playthrough would be possible.

Overall, while the game idea isn't that original it is at least executed very well. Good controls, nice graphics and a very nice main character.

{ Review Request Club }

ProfessorFlash responds:

I like Bob as well. I originally wanted him to be a furball, but when the artist gave him fur he looked like a hobo who needed to take a bath :D. So fur had to go, but he still looks cute :).

Thanks for the nice review.

[Lost Catacombs]

Nice game

This is a pretty nice game. A mixture of Indiana Jones movies and Sokoban, the game. The riddles are ranging from very easy to pretty hard, so the long time motivation definitely is there.

Maybe the tutorial is a bit too long. I was hoping to finally start the "real" game, but room after room another explanation popped up, telling me what to look for and stuff. Maybe it would be better to give a basic tutorial, then have the player play the first set of levels and then increase difficulty later on with additional traps and switches and some more explanations. That way the player won't feel drowned in tutorials.

Also, the view is a bit weird. I have to push up to move up and right on the screen. This can get confusing and sometimes I found myself pushing statues that I never wanted to push, just because I got confused with the view and the controls. Maybe a full top view or a view from a "straight line" (where "up" is "up" on the screen) would be better here.

{ Review Request Club }

SantoNinoDeCebu responds:

Yeah, the tutorials where an awkward one because I felt I didn't want to cram a lot of features into single levels at the beginning when they are being introduced or there is too many obstacles that the player wont understand being thrown into the mix at one time, that was my logic anyway. Can never get tutorial balancing right!

[I Want Your Blood!]

Bloody quiz...

This is a pretty good quiz about a very serious topic. I wanted to donate blood for quite some time now, but never got around to it. Something I should put on my list of New Year's resolutions, I guess.

The graphics are very bland. The background isn't that appealing to the eye, but at least the text is readable. The musical choice fits the halloween theme, but most of the time the songs didn't loop too well in the game, which was slightly annoying.

I like very much that we can learn something from this game (I learned which day's the world blood donor day, for example). I also think the questions are very well chosen.

On a sidenote: There seems to be a bug with question 20. I got the answer wrong and yet I still proceeded to question 21.

{ Review Request Club }

IceDragon64 responds:

What is stopping you!?! If you send me proof that you have donated blood, I will put your name in the Notes! Do it and get others to do it. It is a GREAT feeling when you have done it. As you sit with the other guys who have done it afterwards you feel like you are ONE OF US!

Ah thats just it, in order to make sure that the text is 100% clear and large , the bgd has to be reasonably simple. I don't see why so many people complain about the Bgd in our quizzes- most quzzes have far less art/pix than ours. Nevertheless I will think about improving it for the next quiz.

Sorry about the music quality- the DS just ALWAYS have difficulties with sound and this took hours just to get it this good.

You guys just don't get it, do you? If you re-read the response you got for your chosen answer, you will see why you had to go forward. Just think about where else we could have sent you. Sorry guys but we thought that would be obvious.

Thanks very much for your review

[=Button Tutorial 2=]

Good tutorial

I'm not too happy with the background colour. I think black text on a white background still works best for longer texts. Granted, it always looks a bit boring, but why change around something that works so well?

Anyway, I really liked this tutorial. You explain very well how to create different kind of buttons. I still see flash submissions where the buttons don't really work or where only the text of a button is clickable (which can be annoying if the font is too thin), so I think it's a good thing that button tutorials are submitted somewhat regulrarly by different users. This might encourage some upcoming flash artists to watch at some tutorials every now and then.

Last thing: The links on the start screen didn't work for me. The mouse pointer changed appearance, but when I clicked the links nothing happened.

{ Review Request Club }

Phantox responds:

I tried black but I don't think it went as good as white. I'll keep that in mind for next time, though.

I just noticed that the screen doesn't work either. I can't change it though since I lost the .fla file.

Thanks for your review

[NG Audio Elevator]

Basic player

There are a few "Jukeboxes" in the flash portal already, so the idea is not too new, but I still like messing around with those jukeboxes.

Yours doesn't have a lot of interactivity, only the basic functions of playing a song, playing a random song and playing "next" previous" songs. But really, what else could you do with a program like this. Maybe searching for song titles, but such a feature would be very hard to implement. As far as I know not even Newgrounds offers such a feature.
Another idea would be: only browsing songs of a specific genre. But this could be very hard to implement as well.

Anyway, I like the "get it" button a lot. It brings me straight to the submission I'm listening to right now, so that's a pretty cool thing.
I also like that the "previous" and "next" buttons skip those song-ids that don't exist (ie where the song has been deleted).

Overall, it's a very basic music player and a very basic submission. But it's fun to play around with it.

{ Review Request Club }

Surn responds:

"There are a few "Jukeboxes" in the flash portal already"
I've been having trouble finding them. I know there's NG radio and NG desktop radio. Could you possibly send me a PM telling me where to find them?

"Song Titles ... Genre"
That would be very hard indeed. It would require the player to actually read the website.

Glad you enjoyed the device, Thanks for reviewing.

[Madotsuki's Dream Dock]

Hmmm

I really don't know what this is all about. So if your goal was to confuse the viewers, then you have accomplished it.

Anyway, the graphics are pretty good. Even though this is mostly in dark colours it looks very good overall. I also like the animations on the girl, like the hair blowing in the wind and the clothes as well. I also liked how the scenery changed from time to time.
But after clicking for about 2 or 3 minutes and not getting anywhere I quit the flash. Was there supposed to happen something else? If so, I must have missed it. :(

{ Review Request Club }

Pienkaito responds:

There are exactly two things that are interactive.
The girl and something else.

Thanks for the feedback. =)