WarpZone's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Deeper Sleep]

I feel bad for not rating this game higher. You can tell there's an incredible amount of work that went into crafting not only the art assets, but the tone and the mood of the game as a whole. Unfortunately, Deeper Sleep suffers from the worst Adventure Game disease: Pixel Hunting. Twice, I got stuck, wandering around the area I've already explored for twenty minutes, hopelessly clicking on random background objects, getting bored, giving up, and consulting the walkthrough. Both times, it turned out there was some damned door hidden behind the sepia tone. I'd sure like to see what monitor this game was tested on, because even with brightness turned all the way up and my laptop's screen tilted at a weird angle, these fuckers were just BARELY visible.

Once you account for that, the game is only like 7 minutes long. This despite lots of long pointless hallways that don't contain any items or locks. You just click, click, click your way through the forest and then click, click, click your way back. It's filler. Filler that, ironically, seems like it would have taken a lot longer to produce than, say, adding one more key/item combination.

As with the sepia tone, the pixel noise "static" effect is also way too pronounced. Isn't a pixel hunt bad enough without further obscuring the pixels? A note to scriptwelder: These things should be SUBTLE! They should add atmosphere to the game without completely obscuring it. Take a look at the Submachine series for a good example of sepia tone done right. As for the static, you want it about 25% as harsh as it is right now. Maybe make it "flare up" in times of great panic or something.

There were a few great setpieces here, like when the library room dissolved or the lone encounter with the "monster" where you fumble the key. That was clever. I also liked how the "notes" were just a single page of backstory with pieces missing, rather than page after page of rambling lore.

All of this said, and technical issues aside, I feel like more could have been done with the premise. I'm playing a guy who has "always wanted" to experience the unrestricted freedom of a lucid dream, right? And one of the VERY first things that happens is a whole wall of the library dissolves into sand. So why the hell isn't he flying around the library shooting rainbows out of his ass at the monsters? That's what I would do in a lucid dream. I once threw a BOOK at a T-REX in a dream! But using a battery to power the elevator is somehow "too crazy" after I just saw the wall melt and the traffic outside disappear?

I realize that maybe he just isn't "deep" enough yet to be lucid dreaming, but that implies he's completely safe from the monsters we're seeing throughout the game. People in horror movies faced with a monster often start desperately trying to convince themselves it's all a dream, even when it isn't! I'm just saying, past a certian point (literally the first area,) the PLAYER assumes he's lucid dreaming. That's what makes it SCARY. So I was half-expecting dream-like solutions to puzzles, and was disappointed when everything ended up being so "grounded" in the real world.

I know that's a weird thing to ask for, crazy nonsense puzzles. It's one of the most common complaints about the Adventure Game genre. But if any game could justify such puzzles, it's a game about dreams, right? Maybe I'm just bitter because I couldn't find the flashlight for a long time, thanks to that first invisible door.

Overall this is a mostly-competent game that trips over its own feet. If possible, I recommend reducing the Sepia Tone by 50% and reducing the pixel noise to 1/4 IMMEDIATELY. Like, make the changes right now and re-reupload the game. It'll give you less crap from guys like me. And for the third game, hopefully try to do something with the theme of Lucid Dreaming that sets this series apart from all the other horror games where "OMG that poster's face is DIFFERENT now!" Not that scriptwelder hasn't done a good job with the tropes and atmosphere, but it's good where it could be great. It needs a little more pacing and timing to really build up that slow-burn psychological tension.

And above all it needs to not yank you out of the experience by forcing you to consult the walkthrough just to progress. A game where a person tells you exactly where to go and what to do IN THE GAME would literally be scarier than a game where you have to stop and look up the answer outside of the game. But I don't think that level of hand-holding is necessary here. Just make the obvious exits obvious, and you should be good.

I look forward to the next game in this series, because subtlety is King in good horror, I know that subtlety is the kind of thing that only comes with time and experience. Maybe next dream.

scriptwelder responds:

Wow, thanks for this incredibly throughout review/feedback!
I will take under consideration some of your points as I find them really interesting.

I hate to admit it but I've probably failed as a designer if people say there is pixel-hunting present in my game. After what I've learnt from previous games, I decided this one will only have pixel-hunting as something completely optional and not required to complete the main plot. So I've made those scraps of papers that were meant to be really small and difficult to get, while other things are big and clear - I've spent few hours just making that damn needle shine in the flashlight beam :D But now I see I might have missed the obvious while paying attention to details: Yes, light in some areas is definitely too dim. I know exactly where you couldn't find the doorway. It won't be hard to adjust the light there, so I think I'll just do it in next update :)
As for pixel noise - originally it was going be be fluctuating up and down, depending on what happens on the screen. For various reasons I abandoned this idea and left the noise on a fixed level. Because of blending method, the noise is more visible when it's dark... so I think it connects with the previous problem you've mentioned.
As for empty spaces, corridor and forest - well first of all forest isn't really that empty, you know :D and dark corridor is a very special place from part one - its sole purpose here is to bring back memories.
I completely understand what do you have in mind while saying there is no lucid dreaming in this game. Remember this is a _failed_ lucid dreaming attempt. I guess the fact that player's character has no control over the dream, will be further explained in the next installment of the game.
I'm going to write a blog post about making of Deeper Sleep, something like 'post mortem' post soon, trying to pinpoint where did I failed and where did I succeed, so keep your eye on my blog.
Cheers!

[Zombo Buster]

You'd think Plants vs Zombies meets Resident Evil would be more exciting than this. It's a nice concept and the lane-based TD gameplay is really solid. The elevator is an interesting twist, albeit one that you will go out of your way to avoid once you figure out how to populate all the floors at once. The characters have a lot of VISUAL personality, but as characters they have zero personality or motivation, and lack even proper names. I will admit that they put an introduction and a proper ending into the game, it just didn't feel meaningful.

Mechanically, the gameplay is interesting, with a wide variety of enemy types added throughout the course of the game. The bosses each introduce new mechanics (including one that will get your guys killed if you don't react to it fast enough-- try reducing Quality to Low so flash will register all of your mouse clicks!) Once you figure out who the most powerful unit is, you won't want to build anything else, but even then the game becomes a nonstop race to upgrade your units while also clicking the "Next Wave" button as fast as possible.

I'm giving this 4 stars because, even after I figured out how to break the game by building all of one particular unit, I kept wanting to play. Technically I probably should have lost interest, but the pacing and reward schedules kept me going even though I had basically "solved" the game. The developers deserve some credit for that, and this is probably a textbook example of how to leverage RPG elements to make a boring game somewhat interesting.

Here's hoping they make an even better game in the future that uses these systems!

[D2C 200 subscriber thanks]

Having developed with Unity before, I feel like its security sandbox is no more or less prone to developer abuse than Flash has been throughout the years. Details here: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/SecuritySandbox.html

Unfortunately, some antivirus manufacturers currently report a false positive when the Unity Web Player tries to load, and browser penetration is currently much lower than Flash.

Having said that, how did you even get Newgrounds to host a .unity file? Some sort of flash frontend around an HTML wrapper around the Unity Webplayer? While I feel that Unity is a superior plugin for web-based 3D games, circumventing Tom's decision not to host Unity files here feels vaguely subversive. Whatever Tom's reasoning, he's chosen not to host unity files while a bunch of other web game portals choose to allow them. Circumventing that policy feels like a dick move.

In any case, I couldn't get the Unity webplayer to load in Firefox with NoScript, because I don't know what domain name is hosting the Unity webplayer file. It's not exposed in the HTML, so NoScript doesn't offer me the option to whitelist it.

Bottom line: Content did not load. Zero stars.

[Self-Aware]

[Game] / [Art]
[0] / [5]
[Confusion] / [Simplicity]
[Honest] / [Purpose]
[Nostalgia] / [Troll]
[Random] / [Random]
[Meaningless] / [Empty]
[Repeat] / [Distraction]
[Feedback] / [Motivation]
[Goal] / [Motivation]
[Quit] / [Time]
[Feedback] / [Reenforcement]
[Feedback] / [Analytics]
[Feedback] / [Secret]
[Gameplay] / [Asleep]
[Pretentiousness] / [Minimal]
[Expectations] / [Tedium]
[Reality] / [Pointless]
[Five] / [Fiven]
[Purpose] / [Why]
[Statement] / [Obscure]
[Statement] / [None]
[Audience] / [Confused]
[Confusion] / [Indifference]
[Art Game] / [Meaningless]
[Brevity] / [Complete]
[Art Game] / [Harmless]
[Review] / [Rebuttal]
[Newgrounds] / [Just make a regular game goddammit well at least you had the common decency to label it an Art Game so we more or less knew what we were getting ourselves into so thanks for that but jesus christ the longer you play the stupider you feel for ever thinking there was a point to it in the first place. See how I'm just spelling out what all that previous nonsense in this review meant? Instead of making you guess? That's actually pretty generous of me, when you think about it. I mean, sure, there's a CHANCE you were randomly guessing what I meant by all those word pairs but this way you actually have some fucking idea what I thought of your game. Chances are you were way off-track. You can't just throw random shit at a human brain and expect the subject to make their own fun. There has to actually BE something of meaning or value underneath all the smoke and mirrors for the person to catch glimpses of. Otherwise the whole experience is pointless, and it quickly becomes obvious just how pointless it is. Sad thing is, add a little number that goes up every time you choose one of two things, and a bar that slowly fills until you beat a level, and you could leverage Skinner Box bullshit to keep players doing this for hours. Assuming you actually have something to say at the end or throughout the experience as a whole, this would make more people stick with it long enough to have a chance at discovering it. But, no. If the actual message was "OMG IS THERE A MESSAGE OR ISN'T THERE," then I'm bored even interpreting the art to look for a question. From what I can tell this Art Game has exactly the same message as most other Art Games, and that message is "ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS!" Fuck art games. This is bullshit. But you got us in and out quickly, my friend, and were up front about how hollow and pointless the experience was going to be. You labeled this an Art Game, and thus I don't feel like I wasted any more of my time than I chose to. For that simple act of human decency to your players, you get 5 stars. I don't care if I didn't get it. I'm an audience, you didn't reach me, that's your fault, not mine. Oh and if you were going to claim this was some sort of parody of Art Games, meh. It's not funny at all. Hardly seems self-aware at all. Whatever. I think I covered all the bases, I'm done thinking about this. Friggin' Art Games. *rolls eyes, shakes head*]

PoshRaven responds:

It looks like you've already decided your opinion on art games before you clicked on my game.

and i get it. you don't trust that there is a meaning to the game (and why would you), so you shut down and play it with a mindset geared towards how objectively fun it is and then disappointed with what you get (or at least that is what most people do) and really i don't blame you. if you did that with most things on the internet then you just end up with a whole lot of noise.

But the thing is that honestly, it is really hard to convince people on newgrounds that my games has meaning, and i have worked on projects that try to do that as well. But with this game i just said "fuck it, i don't care anymore, i'm going to put no effort into getting trust from the player because it doesn't seem to matter to most people anyway, wasted energy on my part and takes away from what i like to do"

Anyway there was a point / message to the game. i'm not going to throw you bone though, because what's the fun in that.

[Captain Robert]

Captain Robert, come in! This is Central Command. Over.

Central command, this is Captain Robert, over.

We read you loud and clear, Captain, can you state your position? Over.

Command, I appear to be outside the ship, standing on empty space beneath the vessel. Please advise.

...

Come in, Command.

Command here. Please clarify... did you just say you put on your space suit, went through an airlock, and went outside the ship?

Negative, command. Negative. I just jumped up through one of those black tiles in the ceiling that look like part of the background, but aren't actually solid. I appear to be accessing a part of physical space that shouldn't actually exist in this universe. Also, all of the clues are pointing at me with all the subtlety of Uncle Sam, lord Lord Kitchener and Babe Ruth riding an English Short-Haired Pointer while programming in COBOL. Tentatively suggest you scrub the mission and arrest me for murder, until we know more. Over.

This is Command. Negative, Captain. You have your orders. Wander around in space clicking on white blobs until the game lets you know what the fuck is going on. Over

Come back, Command. Are you serious? I just told you I'm obviously the murderer. I don't think I'm even in the ship at all, I think maybe I'm stuck inside this escape-pod looking room I saw along the way? It's like a metaphor for how I escaped into my own mind or some bullshit? OH, COME ON! Now I just saw a giant sign that says "Hi!" Command, get me down from here. This is stupid. Over.

... We are not reading a giant "HI," Captain. Over.

I am sending you readings of the HI right now, gentlemen. It is composed of pure Blue Pixel Alloy. It is locked in parallel orbit with the ship. It does not move when I push off from it. I am scared. Over.

Your fear is duly noted Capitan, but I'm afraid we need you to examine your own preconceptions about the media of 2D platformers and arrive at the epiphany that the people who made this game are the greatest fucking geniuses of all time. Over.

I'm sorry, Command. We must have been getting a burst of electromagnetic radiation because it sounds like you said this was a good game. It's not even *A* game. As far as I can tell it's like Super Metroid but minus all the stuff that made Super Metroid fun.

ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS

Command? You're breaking up.

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTT!

Yup. Gonna just quit now, Command. Don't care how it ends. I was the killer. Whatever. Gonna shoot myself, then I'm gonna go play Super Metroid again.

*static*

*END OF TRANSMISSION*

[Carrot Fantasy]

Game doesn't load. It just slowly creeps up from 0 to 85 and says "FOG Carrot freeonlinegames.com Fantasy" at you. Stars when the game actually works. Bonus points if you can get the title and the loading screen to both be readable at the same time. By, you know, slightly moving one of them.

[The Peacekeeper]

The Peacekeepr may look like an AXEion game, but it AXE more like a rhythm game. You'll need careful positioning and timing to avoid enemy attAXE, while taking care to prioritize enemies who can lock down one of your lanes. The mandatory upgrade system which all flash and mobile games are now required to include by law is AXEually surprisingly well-implemented. Just when you think you've mAXEd out everything useful, the game ups the level caps, and you never feel like a new weapon makes your previous upgrades worthless.

Aesthetically, the game is typical Newgrounds fare, with more blood than a mAXEie pad, but it makes me wonder if this will hurt the game on mobile. I never felt pressured or threatened into buying additional gold, thanks to upgraded backPAX, though I always felt like my damage output was a little lAXE. It's possible that the backpack upgrades are priced such that mAXEing them out first is a tAXEtixal mistake. Okay I admit that one was pretty bad.

The saved game system is pretty seamless in the way it silently bAXE up your progress, and slowdown due to garbage collection (which is something of a problem on this computer) was minimal enough that I didn't mind it. The timing-based nature of gameplay may have AXEually made a little slowdown welcome.

Final Verdict: The Peacekeeper is a game you've all played before, but with such a polished AXEecution, you won't mind playing it again. If it had AXEtra levels or a more punishing difficulty curve, and way less gory graphics, I could see it working on mobile. But AXE it stands, I have to AXE myself who this game is AXEually for. The gameplay won't tAXE your mousing skills, but would play worse without a mouse. So if the PC version is just an advertisement for the mobile version, and the mobile version lAXE soft paywalls the way the PC version does, I find myself wondering where the huge sAXE of money are supposed to be coming from.

What's that? Maybe they decided that, after making a bunch of painfully money-hungry games like Battle Cry, they decided to just make a fun game for once? Maybe it's only on mobile as a nod to the community there, not as a blatant cash-grab? Maybe extra gold from the moneyshop really is just there as an optional convenience this time, not an implied requirement to actually finish the so-called free game?

Man, if I believed that were even possible for even one second, maybe I could just relAXE.

[Don't Escape]

How to beat the game:

METHOD 1:
- Tie rope to cellar door.
- Climb into cellar.
- Chain leg to Boulder.
- Pull rope to pull cellar door shut.
- Untie rope.
>> The werewolf clawed at the cellar walls for 8 hours (0% stamina)

METHOD 2:
- Travel to Witch's hut.
- Chain self to Witch.
- Demand multiple wolfsbane potions.
- Wait for nightfall.
>> You felt yourself starting to transform. (1%)
>> You drank a potion. (0%)
>> You felt yourself starting to transform. (1%)
>> You drank a potion. (0%)
>> You felt yourself starting to transform. (1%)
>> You drank a potion. (0%)
>> You felt yourself starting to transform. (1%)
>> You drank a potion. (0%)
>> The witch said "This is stupid," and just cast a spell to kill you already.

METHOD 5:
- Click around the cottage until you find the load-bearing support beam.
- Use chain on beam.
- Use chain on self.
>> The building immediately collapsed on the werewolf. The werewolf struggled against the weight of the rubble for 8 hours. Afterward, I wriggled out through a gap too small for the wolf to fit through.

METHOD 6:
- Remove cauldron of water from fireplace.
- Place "it's empty" pot on head.
- Get into fireplace and stand upright.
- Use rope on self.
- Use chain on self.
>> The transformation took place, but the werewolf was trapped on all sides by stone masonry.
>> The wereworlf was unable to move, see, or move against the chains. After 5 minutes of impotent rage, it spend the whole night whimpering and pissing itself.

METHOD 7:
- Use rope on meat.
- Look up.
- Use rope-and-meat on ceiling.
>> The werewolf spend the night lunching at the ceiling, snapping its jaws, trying to get that bloody piece of meat that was just hanging there... dripping...

METHOD 8:
- Realize the game is a pixel hunt with a random noise filter over the pixels.
- Read how to beat the game on Gamefaqz.
- Post a lengthy diatribe on Reddit about how and why the Adventure Game genre killed itself.
- Get hired by Kotaku for hating on western games sufficiently.

METHOD 9:
- Play Maniac Mansion.
- Play Submachine Series.
- Play Monkey Island.
- Close web browser. Game = beat.

METHOD 10:
- Use axe on chest.
- Continue carrying axe rather than discarding it randomly after one use.
- Win at life.

METHOD 11:
- Use axe on self.
>> The world is now safe from the werewolf.

[Giggi's Quest (Prototype)]

Basically a top-down shooter with a painfully obtuse attack mechanic. Imagine if you had to go pick up all your arrows in Gauntlet before you could attack again and you've got the general idea. It's not just that the game is slow (you could fix this by using CopyPixels to draw your 2 freaking frames of animation to the screen instead of using movieclips. This isn't hard,) but that the rhythm of combat itself is slow. Your bullets travel slowly, collecting them is slow, retreat is slow, everything is slow. Why do I have to run up to them and collect them AFTER I click R? They retreat so slowly, I might as well just let them die and then go pick them up-- I have to kite the enemy out of the way for 2 minutes either way to go collect them! Nothing happens in a snappy or responsive fashion. WORST OF ALL, the stun mechanic is complete bullshit. You attack once and then Retreat and the stun lasts for EXACTLY how long it takes you to click retreat. There's no timing or tactics to it, no way you can swoop in and hit R and escape while the enemy's still stunned. It's NOTHING LIKE when someone gets knocked out in real life, is what I'm saying, so it FEELS like bullshit even if it's mechanically balanced.

The "take over the world" story is meaningless because the gameplay is very obviously not about taking over the world, it's just a parenthood story. Bad guys kidnapped your kids. Go save them. There's your fucking story. You know, a story that actually MOTIVATES the player to go DO what the game is FORCING you to do ANYWAY? That's how you marry mechanics to gameplay. Sheesh. This isn't hard stuff, guys. This is like game design 101.

Perhaps worst of all, I can't figure out who this game is FOR. The aesthetics scream iphone, but there's no way these controls are going to map gracefully to a touchscreen. There's just too much going on. You want to make these controls work on mobile devices? Touch an enemy or object ONCE to send ALL your kids after it. Touch again to retreat ALL your kids-- they always arrive back at you in 2 seconds at the most-- dampen their position, not an actual linear movement. Also that would, you know, just in general make the game PLAYABLE, instead of this circle-strafing and sitting around waiting for the enemy to get off your damned kids already so you can circle around and pick them up. It's just BORING. You've made a game about WAITING. FIX IT!

To fix:
- Make the plot of the game about saving your damn kids. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.

- Simplify the core combat mechanics. This stun nonsense is stupid. Simpler gameplay is NECCESSARY on iphone, but even on PC this is a lot of controls-wrangling for very little gameplay. You want it to be the other way around, with simple controls giving the player lots of experiencially different outcomes.

- Attack and retreat should both be VERY fast. Challenge should come from prioritizing enemies and maybe hitting some sort of powerup that changes what your kids do before and after attacking.

- Your kids should never get stuck, or if they do, collecting them should feel different than collecting them when you hit R. As it is now, both R and kids dead feel like exactly the same type and duration of time penalty. I feel like the game is wasting my time whether my kids die or not! This leads to BOREDOM!

- Enemies who are stunned should get stunned for an amount of TIME. If your kids MUST get stunned for attacking, their stun should ALSO be based on time. NOT ON WHETHER OR NOT YOU'VE RETREATED! Right now the whole stun mechanic feels like a solution in search of a problem. In fact, most of the play mechanics feel this way.

- If the theme of the game is, in fact, supposed to be parenthood, then make the kids look and feel different. Give me a fast one and a slow one, a fat one and a smart one and one that doesn't pay any intention to instructions. Give me the tools to make this motley collection attack and retreat as a group, and send me running around to collect them when one or two of them get seperated. Don't waste my time with the basic gameplay. When a kid gets knocked down, they should scream and cry. When I collect them, they should do something cute to where I feel like I made it all better for them. Make me FEEL something.

- If the theme of the game is NOT meant to be parenthood, but in fact world domination, then actually give me some sort of evil plan to work towards. I should be collecting parts to build a Death Ray, and if I happen to encounter my minions along the way, good, they can be useful. But make up your mind. The tonal whiplash as the game can't make up its mind what it is about is KILLING engagement right now. It's as bad as Uncharted or Prototype, where you're all "boo hoo I'm a tragic heroic character in the cutscenes, whelp, time to go commit mass murder over treasures." GAMEPLAY AND STORY SHOULD SUPPORT EACH OTHER, NOT CONTRADICT EACH OTHER!

- Graphics are okay. No one cares. Fix the broken gameplay and broken story and maybe we can get something out of this.

OmarShehata responds:

Wow, first of all, thank you so much for the huge and in-depth review!

I'm aware of all the issues you presented. The "story" for example, was made in 5 minutes before submitting it, so it's obviously just thrown in there for the sake of being in there.

And since the whole game itself was made under a pretty strict deadline, we focused more on experimenting with different ideas and prototyping than polishing.

While I appreciate your feedback, I would like to offer some of mine own: being condescending really doesn't make people want to take your advice.