Score: 10

"Blink and you'll miss it..."

submission: Scarlet Veronica Animated

date: August 28, 2008

Not bad. :D I gotta give you credit for compressing the entire premise into eight seconds. Can't blame you for foregoing the highlights and shadows, either. The only complaint I had was "why did it have to be xombies?" I'm sorry, I meant to say zombies.

Heckling aside, I wish I could draw this good with any consistency. What's your process? Do you build the characters directly in Flash? Or do you have a whole art asset pipeline?

Score: 8

"Incredible game, except there's no skill involved."

submission: Infection Game

date: August 27, 2008

Okay, this game had a lot going for it. Decent graphics & sound. An incredibly efficient (I'm guessing Bitmap-only) engine. Tons of stuff happening at once with no slowdown. Delightful emergant behaviors (try firing the laser after using the triple ship powerup for a poor-man's bomb!) and seemingly unlimited waves of gradually-increasing difficulty. Yet it never quite seems to become unbeatable.

So what's the problem? By level 50 or so the game has already accelerated to the point where seeing what's going on, thinking, planning, and reacting just isn't humanly possible. There's no gameplay, after that point, except holding down the rotate button, keeping three ships active at all times, and spamming the special attacks.

Soon after that, the various powerups are appearing and disappearing so rapidly that the only thing you can do is mash the 1-7 keys indefinitely.

I do like the fact that the game was able to keep going forever. I finally quit after level 700, and today's top score apparently played for 58 times longer than I did. Scary. Despite the fact that the game remains (technically) playable pretty much forever, it's only fun for about a minute or two, before rapidly accelerating past frantic and into button-mashing spamfest.

Usually when I see scores this high, I assume the highscore table's been hacked, but in this case it's pretty obvious that anyone can score that high if they sink enough time into it. If I had the right macros, I could beat the top score with duct tape. The only limit is Flash's max integer value.

All that said, I like how the game never beats you over the head with failure. Grainsalt came very close to an ideal game design, here. IMHO the only problem is that the gameplay is a bit TOO streamlined. I recommend breaking the gameplay up a little bit, next time. Do five waves, then display a shop menu where the player can buy powerups. Then the next five waves, maybe there's some different gameplay rule or foreign object in the arena that changes the gameplay a bit. Maybe every hundredth stage could be a boss, I dunno. My point is, the diversity available within the game was all packed into the first few minutes of gameplay. Ideally you'd want to spread that out over the course of the game.

If the game has infinite length, you need an infinite number of permutations, sprinkled liberally over the course of the game. I attempted this (clumsily) in one of my games, and I don't recommend it. Probably Diablo II came the closest out of any game I've played, but even then it didn't truly last forever.

I guess the moral is, spread your content a little thinner next time. Don't add a time limit or a surefire lose state, but do make it an ongoing campaign with breaks, a way to save your progress, and notably different gameplay over time.

Score: 7

"Way too much buildup, not enough punchline."

submission: The Lonely Castle Crasher

date: August 26, 2008

Telling a story is always worth extra points, but in this case there is no story. Just a gay joke with a narrator tacked on. Animation-wise, I'd say it's about on par with Homestar Runner. Interpret that how you like. There's nothing really bad about it, the story just lacks substance. I'm gonna have to dig through Lavagasm's flashes now and see what else he's capable of, but this shows promise.

Arms would be nice.

Score: 6

"Okay premise, good graphics, horrible gameplay."

submission: Clockstile Takeover

date: August 26, 2008

The gameplay kinda reminds me of that old Bijou Billy game for the NES. For those of you too young to remember it, that wasn't a compliment. Let's just say there's a reason Mario and Sonic are the classics and nobody's ever heard of Bijou Billy.

Unfortunately, the things that can kill you with one hit are only visible for like a split second, so the only way to beat the game is to memorize each obstacle ahead of time. That means contant pointless re-playing, dying over and over again, is the only way to advance. Reflexes and spur-of-the-moment decision-making don't factor into it.

The game could still be playable, maybe, if it was good. unfortunately, clicking on the intro movie doesn't let you skip it, which means unless you *really* like staring at text and a sloppy tomfulp sketch, you're doomed to waste 2 minutes of your life over and over again waiting for the next 30 seconds of gameplay.

Graphics during the game were good. It's just a shame about the gameplay. I never got past the first rocket guy, so who knows, maybe it's really great after that part. I'll never find out. The intro is just a deal-breaker for me.

I suggest Galathos use Math.rand() to supply the player with slower, easier challenges in less predictable places next time. True challenge comes from showing the player what obviously needs to be done, but introducing complications along the way. A game that kills you if you don't already magically know where all the trouble spots are isn't challenging, it's just a pain in the ass. Beat such a game once, and it will never challenge you again once you've cracked it.

Score: 10

"That was terrible. XD But SO FUNNEH."

submission: Iron Manhood

date: August 25, 2008

I think the defining moment was when he put on the gimp mask during the buzzsaw scene. It's just a (literally) lame cock joke, but you told it with panache, and you really went that extra mile in terms of parodying IM's construction scenes. You didn't just make her smile in the last scene, you had her shake her hair down. It's the little details like that which push this movie from "kinda funny but lame" to "awesome animation."

Your drawings are mostly crap, but I can't wait to see more of your stuff. You're all about breathing life into your animation, and it really pays off.

Score: 4

"Disappointing."

submission: Obama_Biden_2008

date: August 25, 2008

Haven't seen a new animutation in quite a while. Biden's mouth was surprisingly well-connected for an animutation. I was disappointed with the length, though, and the lack of content. You didn't really make a point, you just faked the candidate cussing. That's like Howard Stern-level comedy.

I look forward to your "much bigger" project. Hopefully you'll put some effort into it next time.

Score: 10

"Surprisingly deep. And yes, this was predictable."

submission: There She Is!! step4

date: August 24, 2008

This is where I thought the series was going, back when I first saw Step 1. SamBakZa denied it at the time, insisting it wasn't an allegorical story about interracial love between humans, but just a happy-go-lucky love story about two star-crossed lovers.

Well, time has passed, the series has grown, and even though the characters have grown closer together, the society they live in is still shocked at the pairing. There was only one way this could end, given what we know about the characters and their world. I'm glad he didn't dumb it down. He's exploring all of the implications of these rabbits and cats and their fictional society.

I'm not disappointed with this episode at all. Everyone else is bitching about it like the world's gonna come to an end because the frame rate went down, but there's actually much more emotional content packed into the story in Step 4. This is great storytelling.

I'm not depressed by the darker tone, either, because it could really go either way from this point. There could still be a happy ending! Only time will tell.

It makes me wonder if there's any country on Earth that has riots in the streets because a girl dated a guy and they were different. Is this the situation in amalloc's home? I hope not. :(

Amalloc should sell pro- bunny kitten heart shirts. :) I totally would buy one to support the cause! :) And I live in a country where bunnies and kittens have been living together for all of my adult life.

< (: (: 3

Score: 6

""You don't have the screwdriver.""

submission: Escape the Den

date: August 23, 2008

Escape-the-room. You know the drill by now. Perhaps you've even gotten burned enough times in the past that you automatically hunt for hidden buttons along the floor near chairs and bookshelves and such, just in case there's something hidden behind it and the game's standard interface doesn't include an obvious way of doing that. You write down every number you see, and you rub every two items in the known universe together every time you find one. It's force-of-habit by now, right?

Well, unfortunately, that won't help you here. You see, there's one particular item, the screwdriver, which is jammed behind the computer monitor. You might consider that a spoiler, but it's not really, since you can't see the friggin' thing even if you look right at it. It looks more like a black sharpie cap on a very dark grey background.

I could overlook (no pun intended) something like this in an Adventure Game like Sam & Max, where every wrong move equals another easter egg's worth of hilarious hidden content, or in a game like Submachine where the atmosphere keeps you constantly tense. But this is a sterile, lifeless escape-the-room, more like Boat House. Only, instead of being creepy and alien, it's just a regular room with some ridiculously advanced gadgets hidden in the desk and wall.

There's no real story, so bizarre objects like the vibrating orb, which should have been thought-provoking, just felt tacked-on. I think the choose-your-own-adventure-style story concept was to blame. If you'd left the protagonist completely silent, and maybe given us notes left behind by the last people who were in the room, then the control panel hidden in the desk would have been intriguing. As it is, the objects in the room serve no purpose at all, other than to be part of the escape-the-room puzzle.

And I guess it's not fair to criticize the game for that. There's nothing wrong with making liberal use of genre conventions. The problem comes when you build an entire game out of nothing BUT genre conventions, and the button-hunt becomes an end unto itself.

If the screwdriver and other clues were clearly visible before you clicked on them, the game would be a trivial but playable 5-minute Escape the Room. As it is, it's a frustrating button-hunt that serves no purpose other than to direct traffic to the walkthrough.

Better luck next time. Next time, give us some characters, at least in note/diary/email form. Give us a simple-looking room at first glance, and then gradually transform it into something greater and much more meaningful. Not by exposing hidden control panels and weird alien Magruffins, but by revealing the story, bit by bit, to the player. Gradually filling in the blanks and adding meaning and significance to the room and its contents.

Or I'd settle for a purely functional puzzle game where I can actually see all the stuff.

Score: 10

"The most elaborate Frogger sprite movie ever."

submission: mr.frog

date: August 23, 2008

Just kidding. (It did have a frog getting hit by a truck though!) This was great. It was well-animated and very stylish. There were plenty of visual jokes, and even though the ending was predictable, the middle was full of surprises.

I'm not sure how I feel about the fake grainy background. I guess anything that prevents it from looking like Flash is considered an improvement, to traditional animators? Personally, I think the best cartoons, Flash or otherwise, make the viewer think of physical objects... I don't understand what is gained by faking an older medium's artifacts, unless it's a retro or historical piece.

But the cartoon is so good, I wasn't thinking about the grain filter after a few seconds. So it's all good.

Make more, please! :D

Score: 7

"Decent cover of the Trogdor song, but..."

submission: The Burninator

date: August 23, 2008

We've all seen it before, but this is an okay animation. Not great. Not terrible. Better than the original sketch-tastic animation in the sbemail that introduced him. But not much better than your typical NG fare. It didn't do anything creative or original, though. It's just a carbon copy with little (fattened up) stickmen drawn in it.

I'm actually kinda confused as to why anyone would make a H*R cartoon here on NG in 2008. Didn't the Brothers Chaps like spaz out back in the early 2000's and start suing the pants off of everyone who did a parody of their work? Maybe it's not as much of an issue anymore, but back in the day, they were hardcore into hot legal action against H*R fans.

The only H*R parody I'm aware of that's even survived from that time was an episode of Robotbox and Cactus that had a Coach Z parody with like the colors reversed and a J instead of a Z.

Oh well. Decent work. I look forward to seeing what happens when Mark makes something original.