Score: 8

"Simple mindless wandering fun."

submission: Inquisitive Dave

date: August 22, 2008

Adventure Game purists won't like it because you don't have to think. But on the other hand, NG users will love it because you don't have to think!

Basically you just run around the maze-like 2D world, hitting the space bar whenever you're prompted to. Puzzles solve themselves if you have the right item -- they're really more like keys. So it's more of a content-revealing maze than a game. That's okay, though. The content is kinda funny and there's nothing wrong with the controls or anything, so it's a fun way to kill a few minutes. Once.

Eventually, I got stuck-- I'm sure I've missed some obscure tiny item somewhere or confused two prompts as one, I'll check an online strategy guide later if I have time for it.

"Thanks! Now I can dance all day!" :D

Score: 8

"I don't really understand what I'm looking at."

submission: DayTrader

date: August 22, 2008

It must be an authentic stock-market sim, because no matter what I do, I always come away from it with less money than when I started. Even if I buy low and sell high, I take a bath. Maybe the buttons mean the exact opposite of what I think they mean, or something. I don't know.

As a video game, it's boring because there's only one risk/reward schedule and the interface is ridiculously obfuscated (just like in real-life,) but who knows. Maybe a real day-trader could benefit from training in this way. It certainly sounds like the author did everything he could to create an authentic trading simulation. Though frankly, those trading websites that let you experiment with fake money before you take the plunge are probably better practice.

It's a novel idea and it seems well-implemented, I just don't think I'm the right target audience for it. Giving the author the benefit of the doubt since I'm far from an expert on day-trading, two points off for the boring (but functional) interface.

Score: 4

""Another game from YouGame.com!""

submission: Goblin Defence Deluxe

date: August 22, 2008

I was actually starting to enjoy this one. Sure, it's nothing original, but the graphics were nice (if derivative) and even though the gameplay was slightly awkward, I was prepared to see it through and discover if enough speed + damage upgrades would turn a clunky interface into a rewarding one.

But then I hit the bug where enemies refuse to die when they hit 0 hp, and that's when I realized that this is just another broken game from YouGame. At least they eased up on the marketing-to-game ratio this time around, but still, they need to get a little Quality Assurance up in there.

I can appreciate that it must be hard to launch your own flash portal, and you need to take advantage of whatever submissions you can get, but geez, have some standards.

Again the grim specter rises in the back of my mind, that YouGame might not even be a portal, but just one guy crapping out lousy Flash games as fast as he can make them. Somebody motivated only by money, without the desire or the ability to make a game that's actually fun to play.

If that's what's going on, and if he makes money at it, or god forbid, he makes MORE money from ad impressions this way than the people who actually make good games, then god help us all. It's only a matter of time before everyone launches their own shit portal and quality dies off entirely.

Score: 8

"Fun, original premise, but no long-term interest."

submission: Crazy CAT Scan

date: August 22, 2008

The problem lies with the way the game escalates the difficulty. Since the scan bar gets thinner and thinner each level, eventually it becomes impossible to see anything. In other words, it's only a matter of time before you lose.

I recommend a bigger, more elaborate campaign mode in the next game you make. Something with persistent stats you can level up, and unlockable levels. That might seem odd for a medical game like this one, but trust me, there's all kinds of ways you can add long-term interest to an otherwise simple game premise.

Score: 7

"Sluggish, awkward control impedes fun factor."

submission: Post War

date: August 21, 2008

I played as the robot and I felt a bit under-powered. Then I played as the gunner chick and felt invincible until I hit that damn whip boss who could actually hit me from a distance. Clearly speed is uber in this game. Unfortunately, once I had a character who wasn't a magnet for enemy punches, I didn't find the gameplay challenging. Just awkward.

Most of the difficulty came from the fact that your attacks come out ridiculously slow. Also, your attacks will often miss an enemy while theirs will always hit (when you're both apart from each other vertically by a slim margin.) In other words, it feels like most of the challenge is manufactured, a byproduct of poor control, sluggish response times, and not near enough food.

Most of my favorite beat 'em ups are all hybrids, so maybe I'm just not appreciating the classic Final Fight-y-ness of it. But I felt the gameplay was a little linear and repetitive. Circling the enemy is okay, but I would have liked to see some more advanced combat options that are really OPTIONS the player can use liberally at any time.

In my mind, the ultimate beat 'em up RPG would include the long-term character building of Legend of Mana, the sheer number of RPG items as Valkyrie Profile, the amazingly solid combat of Guardian Heroes, and probably a healthy dose the jump-kicking fun of TMNT and the other arcade brawlers that used that same engine.

This game just has you trying to put a little breathing room between your guy and the enemies by walking in circles, sneaking attacks in when you think you can get away with it. That's the only play mechanic, apart from the occasional special attack, and it's not really enough to carry the gameplay.

I did love the characters and backgrounds. They're all interesting and they fit into the setting perfectly. I especially liked the gunner chick's intro animation. The music was completely lifeless, but at least it wasn't loud and was easy to tune out after a while.

The RPG elements were welcome, but I felt like much more could have been done with them. But more to the point, it does no good to add strategic depth to a game if the basic interface is this clumsy. Faster player attacks, please. Maybe some sort of a saved game/continue system so we can keep our persistent character development.

Maybe I'm asking too much. Maybe this was just meant to be a simple Final Fight clone with a shop between the levels, and it's not fair for me to expect it to be more than that. But, heck, River City Ransom did a great job of marrying RPG stat-building with 2D brawler, and that was in the 80's. There's no reason why this game couldn't be at least that good. It just needs... I don't know, a little more finesse. A little more depth and a lot less cheese.

Score: 10

"Muahahahaha!"

submission: Whookos Short:What's That

date: August 21, 2008

Excellent. XD

Despite the length, you managed to both tell a story, and do so with flair.

Also, kudos for not putting some pointless 20-minute title screen with music before and after the 20-second movie. That alone spells class.

I look forward to seeing more from you. I can't wait until you get really ambitious and do one that's about 40 seconds long. :P

Score: 10

"Awesome game! :) Takes full advantage of flash!"

submission: Tombscape

date: August 20, 2008

It may just be a button-hunt with a few shooting gallery scenes added, but that doesn't stop it from being a fun romp. This game does just about everything you can do with a mouse, gameplay-wise, and it does it all quite well.

I only have a few nitpicks:

-In the math puzzle, the 8s and 9s look too much alike.

-The numbers are hard to see in the drawing-in-the-sand puzzle.

-I often missed a dot in the sand puzzle, even though it looked like I should have hit it. I suggest using Point.distance(p1,p2) to calculate how close the mouse cursor is to the next target, and if it's less than like 16 pixels or so, count it as a touch.

-Same thing with the torches you need to light in the hallway. I kept clicking on the torches but they wouldn't light. It was only by accident (and after trying all KINDS of other item combinations) that I discovered you need to click the space ABOVE the torch. Awkward. Maybe change it so that either way works?

(IM me if you need any more info on how to code it, but I have a feeling you're a great coder.)

These are extremely minor gameplay issues. Everything else about the game is great. Great graphics, great ambiance, great puzzles. The story is a little thin, but it works nicely in a "choose-your-own-adventure" kind of way. It certainly makes more sense than a millionaire shooting dinosaurs in a mayan temple and pushing giant stone cubes around with her chest. (Which is also made out of giant stone cubes.)

Excellent game, all around. :)

Score: 10

"Score: ZOMG!"

submission: Double Dragon 2 Zomg

date: August 20, 2008

I'm not sure why, but I found this extremely hilarious for some reason. I'm not even sure if it was an homage or a parody, or if it's a parody, whether it was making fun of DD2 directly or just mocking badly-done sprite movies on Newgrounds.

But whatever it was, it was freaking hilarious. XD

Do River City Ransom next!

Score: 10

"Please encrypt the high score table."

submission: Hex Mines 2

date: August 20, 2008

The top scores on the table all have times under five seconds. As far as I can tell, that can't be done unless you get REALLY lucky and all the mines are far enough apart that clicking the big blocks of non-mine territory reveals them all. So either people are hacking the highscore tables (pretty easy to do if you don't encrypt the transmission or filter IPs the highscore requests come from) or random (very rare) luck is the only way to get a top score.

Other than that, great game. If you like minesweeper.

Score: 6

"A simple Bust-A-Move clone. Nothing new here."

submission: Color Balls Solitaire

date: August 20, 2008

I liked the fact that the action advances gradually, one pixel at a time, yet the collision was perfect. Unfortunately, this game destroys Bust-A-Move's endgame curve by supplying you with balls of random colors, even after you have removed those colors from the board. This makes it ridiculously hard to match the final ball, and the more stages you progress, the more likely it is that you'll make a bigger mess than you can clean up.

If the pain stopped there, the game might squeek by with like a 3.0, but the sheer brazen corporatism of the game takes what was merely a mediocre knock-off and makes it a sterling example of how to annoy a Newgrounds user.

From the embarrassingly bad voice in the YouGame splash screen, to the ever-present Mochi Ads that display a fake loading bar well after the game has finished downloading, to the fact that the ads get REPEATED every time you clear a level, like a frigging commercial break in the middle of your gameplay, the way ads were deployed in this game only serve to worsen the quality of the gameplay experience.

Here's a reminder to all the corporate shills in the audience: if you game sucks and is dumb, it will get a bad score. If it gets a bad score, fewer people will play it. The fewer people who play it, the fewer people will see your ads.

Why not plug the ads into a power-up selection screen, or an end-of-level bonus-points counting screen, or something else that the player will actually care to spend time in? I know, I know, mochi ads probably need to be full-screen, or some other dumbass policy. Whatever. If you make more with these ads than the GemCraft guy did with his ads, I'd be very disappointed.

Oh, god. I just realized. Maybe it doesn't matter if the game sucks or not, as long as you can squeeze out another turd every 5 days or so, and plaster it with annoying ads and splash screens, you can make more money than by actually making a good game anyone would care about. I sure hope not. I sincerely hope that's not what's going on here. Because if it is, the portal's gonna be flooded with this garbage as soon as people figure out that quality games and advertising revenue are mutually exclusive.

Let's hope I'm reading this wrong, and this was just good intentions gone bad somehow. I realize it's hard to capture that fun-factor. Lord knows none of my games score much better than this. But it's just scary to watch how many bad games keep popping up with huge sponsorship deals. And the sponsors don't seem to mind; they keep funding them. So what's the deal?