WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[DayTrader]

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

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.

AKGameworks responds:

There is a small commission per trade, and market orders are sold at the best bid price and sold at the best ask price. Ask-Bid should never be more than $0.10, but that's enough to lose money and probably what you experienced?

Other than that thank you for a insightful review. You may not have been the target audience, but there is quite a lot of work I need to do to make the game accessable to a wider audience.

[Tombscape]

Awesome game! :) Takes full advantage of flash!

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. :)

Psionic3D responds:

Very in-depth review and thanks for the nit-picks, they are appreciated and I'll definately keep your words in mind when I make the sequel ;-)

Thanks!!

[The quarry]

Nonstandard interface makes it pretty clumsy.

It's not very approachable because of the strange interface and layout. The dotted line triangles were strange, but at least they were consistent. The less consistent part of the interface just made the game confusing, though:

-Apparently you can't pick up a small rock. Because of this, I assumed I couldn't pick up anything else until I found a bag or something. Later, it turned out I was wrong.

-The scythe as seen from far away turns into a battleaxe when you get closer.

-I don't have a very good sense of how the cavern is laid out, because no matter what room I came from, I always appear in between the various dotted line triangles.

-"I could climb into this tube!" Okay. So do it. Click. Click. "I could climb into this tube!"

-And then you enter the maze carrying a torch AND a weapon, and you see something that looks kinda like a brazier where you could light it, but instead you die. You don't see what killed you, you just randomly die. I guess it was a monster or something. Whatever.

That's as far as I got before giving up on it. I'm not about to load it again because you have the most pretentiously long splash screen in the known universe. I realize it must have taken a long time to draw, but seriously, it's not worth 45 unskippable seconds of my life.

I didn't say anything about the graphics, because I think the gameplay is more important. It's an adventure game, after all, and those have never had good graphics.

Overall, it's a decent first effort, but I feel it would benefit greatly from a more unified interface, and generally just a little bit more detail about the world, so you know what you're looking at and what's going on. I definitely look forward to more games by euopun. The world always needs more adventure games. :)

euopun responds:

Thanks alot of those questions are good points... let me try and evaluate

1 this is an easter egg

2 there is a map somewhere in the cavern... you just have to find your way there first

3 uhhh... you should use spacebar for action.

4 yeah this maze is a bit tedious... the map might help you navigate.... and omg that was a spoiler!?!?!?!?!?111

Thanks alot for the response btw

[nice demon bad angel]

Playable, attractive, and perhaps even original.

After all the so-called adult so-called games I've seen on Newgrounds, i have to say, It's refreshing to see something that's worth more than a 2. Don't let the linear interface fool you, this is a surprisingly deep game. Each ball constitutes its own risk/reward schedule. I'm sure this has been done before, but this is the first time I've seen a game like this, so to me, it was new. It was easy to learn, and as the number of balls increase, the difficulty increases geometrically. In other words, it's everything good gameplay should be.

The graphics are indeed surprisingly clean. I don't recognize them, so I guess it's even possible they aren't stolen. I know, I know, it's unlikely that there's any kind of budget behind a game like this, but I'm willing to give Mastif the bennefit of the doubt until I see evidence to the contrary. In any case, they look good, and with both manga and photography packed into one screen, there's something for everyone.

So, it succeeds as a game, and as porn. So what keeps it from getting a ten? Well, I felt there was room for improvement. It doesn't really feel like a video game... more like some kinda carnival game with a sleazy strip club motif.

The time limit is annoying, and I question its relevance. Each time you let the wrong color ball through, or you deflect a ball that you should have let though, in theory you're accidently moving further away from your goal. Was it really necessary to add a lose state to a game like that?

When I got to the 4th stage or so, the women were as naked as they were ever gonna get, the gameplay was pretty much the same, and I had the general gameplay down pat. An important thing to remember in game design is that when the player stops learning, the game stops being fun and becomes work. Even so, this game was fun for a little while and about as erotic as could be expected from still images, which makes it a huge step forward for NG adult content in general and Mastif in particular.

Here's hoping future adult games on Newgrounds are not more boring than this.

mastifgames responds:

we are a manga/anime studio so we create our own artwork

[The Big Fat Musical Box]

Woot! It works now!

I don't have iTunes and I was viewing this from a Windoze PC, but this version seems to perform as-advertized as long as you have Flash Player installed. Awesome stuff. :)

For an encore, why not leverage this new technology into some sort of web-based media empire? :P

FatKidWitAJetPak responds:

Hmmm.... A web based media empire... interesting.

[Elite Forces:Conquest]

Arbitrary build paths muddle the gameplay a bit.

"Ambitious" is a good word to describe Elite Forces: Conquest. It's a hybrid of turret defense and tower defense, with a slight twist: your hero character aims and shoots on his own. This takes aiming out of the equation, but still allows you to target individual mobs who slipped past the towers.

There are several characters to choose from, an arsenal of man-portable weapons, and a nice skill tree for character advancement. Despite all those features, however, the main character doesn't have much impact on gameplay.

You'll mostly end up moving him to a good ambush spot and leaving him there as a turret. Every once in a while, you might suicide-bomb a cluster of enemies, but for the most part, there's very little your hero can do if you don't play the turret game well.

It takes longer than usual to figure out which turrets are useful in which situations, mostly because each upgrade of each tower has different, almost random stats. You'll put a long-range turret in between two paths and upgrade it, only to discover that the range shrinks and it's suddenly a point-defense turret. Rapid-fire turrets suddenly become one-hit wonders that take ages to reload. This robs the player of agency and makes tactical gameplay almost impossible.

A good game is easy to learn but challenging to master. This game is just difficult to understand. Badim, if you're reading this, the sheer amount of cool stuff you've packed into this game is awesome, but you need to arrange it more carefully to create a cohesive whole. The player needs to understand which upgrades are good and which upgrades are a waste of time BEFORE he buys them. Here are my suggestions on how to better balance the game:

- An upgrade should only ever INCREASE one or more of the attributes. (Range should NEVER shrink. An upgrade should NEVER be slower than the previous model.)

- Each gun should have a general theme, and stick with that theme across all the upgrades. (For example, one type of gun starts off long-range, and continually gets longer. One gun starts out short-range but with splash, and this keeps increasing.)

- If you want specialized guns for specific roles, that's fine, but make them OPTIONAL alternative build paths. (For example, the fire tower could be short range and splash, but with an alternate branch that increases range more than power.)

- When balancing the guns, consider dammage-per-second. Also consider how many enemies are likely to overlap at once, when deciding how important Splash is. (You could run some test cases in Flash. For instance, run 100 of each type of enemy past each turret and have an extra meter that totals up the dammage.)

- I like the fact that some turrets increase the hero's stats and other towers' stats, but I feel like this aspect is over-emphasized. (The only way I could succeed in the later levels was to build an obscene ammount of stat-boosting towers. The game slowed down because I had like 100 towers, but I was able to kill 100% of enemies with machinegun and frost aura.)

In general, you have a lot of great ideas here, but they don't combine well to make up a cohesive whole. You need to give the player a sense of "agency"-- a feeling that he is in control over his own fate. Part of that means making sure he can understand what he's doing before he does it. Otherwise it's just lots of failure and experimentation until he stumbles across the one uber tower combination.

Your game is difficult, but it is not challengeing. A challenging game gives the player just enough knowlege and resources that he knows what he has to do and a little bit of how to pull it off, and he will learn more as he practices. A difficult game just kicks you in the balls over and over again until you stumble across the most optimal playstyle. Challenging games are fun. Difficult games are just frustrating.

I do admire the ambition that went into this. It just needs balancing, and a little bit more structure.

Badim responds:

tnx man! hard to add more, but next games, i hope, will be without any of this mistakes above.
My most big mistake was messing with Upgrades and Specialties =( And in order to clean up that mess, i will do mass re-balancing of all towers, but that is only for enxt chapter, witch ones i hope will be in next month.
again, tnx for writing your feedback!

[Second Wave]

Not bad.

I liked the graphics, music, and style. The gameplay was also pretty cool, kinda novel and unique. The control started to wear thin after a while, though. It felt too floatly, like I didn't really have full control over my movements.

Is there any particular reason why you couldn't snap the player position directly TO the mouse position as long as the mouse position is inside the bubble? I think that would make the game more playable and give the player more agency over his movements. Just a thought.

jacksey3k2 responds:

I was wondering if they might be a bit weird. I was torn between floaty, and fixed movment. Ill have to have a fiddle and see how it feels.

[Goliath The Soothsayer]

"Based on" a "true" story...

Wow, there's nothing scarier than spectral effigies of The Buddy Jesus fleeing like cockroaches every time you turn on a light. No, seriously, I can think of about a dozen "true stories" about religion that are both scarier and more plausible than this load of bull. Oooh, the scary ghosts are going to kill everybody. Whatever.

Anyway, boo for invisible/obscure/tiny buttons! You could have easily put the metal hook laying against the wall in plain sight. Why hide it with some obscure tiny invisible "I can't see what's here" button on top of the drawer? The light switch on the floor was also obscure. Maybe add a softly strobing light there or something.

Anyway, once I realized the whole game was a button-hunt, and that my actions were in no way connected to what I thought they were, I started mousing everywhere randomly and that helped me discover other things like the mirror ghost and stuff. The clock and safe puzzles were very nicely done.

I just feel like it kinda insults the audience's intelligence by saying "based on a true story." I mean, I can do that, too. Here's a story based on "the true story" of me playing this game:

Once upon a time, WarpZone logged onto Newgrounds and played Goliath The Soothsayer. He found the gameplay amiable and the ambiance scary, but the fact that it was alledgedly based on a true story kind of pissed him off. Then, all of a sudden, spikes came out of his back and he started floating and glowing. His righteous indignation had transformed him into a minifestation of pure hatred! His soul now bound to goliaththesoothsayer.swf, his tortured soul spread across the internet like wildfire, virally occupying 70% of the world's computers before Norton and McAffee even knew what hit them. Not even macs were safe, since WarpZone was not actually a computer virus but could affect the souls of the living. He contacted the president and demanded better broadband penetration, by which he meant better internet access in the United States, but people thought he meant porn. Thus appeased, he basically sat around on his fat incoporeal ass for a few decades, haunting program after program as people deleted the old ones, until finally one day there was enough information floating around on the internet for him to develop technologies that solved all the world's problems. He commissioned a body to be built, and led humanity into a golden age of plenty. A bunch of dumbass ghosts from like ancient times took exception to this, but Humanity 2.0 kicked their asses using post-singularity technology. Then monkeys flew out of my ass. BASED ON A TRUE STORY!

ZOMG! See how plausible that sounds!? That's what your title screen sounded like.

But yeah, other than that, great game.

Oh and by the way, Leffler Web Design, nice swirly logo intro thingy.

LefflerWebDesign responds:

Believe it or not, the game is based on an interpretation of what is supposedly a true story... may I suggest you shift your gaze temporarily to an explanation of the original story of what the Mars Volta's latest album is about at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bedl am_in_Goliath ... and make it quick before said intelligence becomes so infused with insult that you go on a semi-coherant rant... oh wait... too late... ;)

No hard feelings buddy :)

[(outdated) Trevors Quest]

Uhhh! Uhhh! Uhhh! Uhhh!

I guess you ripped some great sprites and commadeered a great franchise, but the game quickly became too annoying to play. The control is stiff, which I suppose is typical for Castlevania games, but it could still use a little more freedom of movement.

It's the sound that kills this game and makes me not want to bother playing it ever again. I'm talking about the constant, rythmic, extremely loud Zombie groans. They compeltely ruin the ambiance and it makes no sense to have them in there.

The game seemed slow even after I set the quality to Low. If you're using Flash CS3, learn how to use AS3 and Bitmaps instead of Movieclips, it'll make your sprite-based game run MUCH faster. If you're using an older version of flash, you can at least force the quality to LOW in the code so the player doesn't have to do it.

There was some good here. I always did like SOTN. I think the spinning blades are a cool addition. I think the MP3 of the song Tragic Prince would have been more apropriate, though.

Spawn777 responds:

Thanks for the long review lol, I made Trevor move kinda slow, and jump not extremely high, if thats what you mean. I have removed the zombie sounds, since you and someone else have said to have it removed. And, im gonna see if I can fix that lag problem, and I dont know how to reduce quality automatically, thats why I informed people to lower it. And yeah, I love tragic prince. Im gonna check it out, and see how the song is with the game, and ill change it if I find tragic prince more fitting. And thanks for the review.

[Hero RPG]

Nice RPG, but please simplify the interface!

The game's not as approachable as it could be. I need to move my hands all over the place like an octopus just to engage in combat. It's like hit space, grab the mouse, attack, let go of the mouse. Move in, hit space, grab the mouse... it involves too much taking your focus off of the game and looking at your controls. It breaks immersion.

If you didn't need to aim (I.E. Attack button just attacks whatever's in front of you, like Zelda) )or if there was no need to hit space (I.E. if you were ALWAYS aiming and strafing at the same time while in the field, ) it would make simple combat much more immediate and intuitive. There's no need for a Shift key whatsoever, just make it so that walking over the loot collects it.

In town the shop menus are relatively well done, but dialogue feels a tad clunky. If a press space and a guy says "Hi there!" and that's it, I expect to be able to quickly tap space again to end the conversation. There should be no need for me to take my finger off the space bar and reach for the mouse. Again, if clicking was the ONLY way to talk to people, and the space bar never entered into it, then I could easily move around town with the arrow keys, click to start and end conversations, and go through the entire game with one hand on the arrows or WASD keys and the other hand on the mouse.

Basically the problem is, users have two hands, and your control scheme involves 4 different controls that are pretty far apart. You could easily simplify this to just arrow keys + mouse, and I think the game would get a lot more approachable and more fun to play. Less tedious. That's just my 2 cents.

Basically, the gameplay is simple action like Zelda, but you're trying to give it an elaborate interface like Ultima. It's really overkill. Please try to pare the controls down some to make the game faster and simpler to play. And don't say it would make the game too easy. I don't consider reaching all over the place for my controls to be a meaningful source of challenge. It's just noise that prevents me from telling the game to do what I want it to do.

LonLonRanch responds:

I think you have some silly probelms with the controls, first of all make sure you are using WASD instead of the arrow keys. It says so in the instructions. There is never a need to take your hand of the mouse. Hitting the spacebar is a very easy task, use your thumb. The controls will also come more comfortable with a little bit of time. Thanks for the review :)