Knuckstrike's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Blind Man's Simon]

I love the concept of a blind man's simon. I have never seen a game for blind people before on Newgrounds. This is probably because blind people would never visit a games site, but I won't subtract points because the game is kind of useless :P. After all, it's still entertaining for me.

Why I didn't give you a 5/5 is because the main point of the game, the sound, doesn't feel finished. It's not bad, but you could've included much higher quality sound.
It's most noticable in the tutorial, where the girl's voice changes halfway through the tutorial. The man's voice and the automated voice are way softer there as well. It'd be nice if the voice was the same volume throughout the entire game.

What does seem finished is the highscore. It's nice that you included a "ten" for every ten buttons you pressed correctly.
There is a bug there though. The highscore will always sound in the sound you got it in. It could work as a way to have different high scores for different people, but then you should have a different high score for every voice.

I am not at all disappointed by the fact that this game is completely black, but for an all-sound game the sound should be of higher quality. Everything works though, and for the original idea I give you bonus points.

Review request club

Kwing responds:

You've definitely got a point with the voice volume. Can't tell if that's your only complaint, or what you mean by the voices needing 'higher' quality.

I see you've also noticed the highscore glitch. I only discovered that after uploading the patch with the female voice. Oh well...

[super race]

It's a good start, but still a pretty bad game.
It's always good if you don't have any glitches/bugs. You have got the basic code right, which is of course a good thing.
It's really a challenge to win, but not impossible. That's good too.

There are a few things that cause this game to look amateurish:

- No instructions. Although it's pretty easy to understand that you have to press the up arrow to drive forward and the right and left arrow keys to drive left/right, it would be nice if it had been said. Also, say that I'm the blue car.
- You can press the bottom arrow key at the start to drive backwards to the finish and win.
- The graphics are too simple. Although the lines in the corners are a nice addition, the green and white parts are too flat.
- You can drive through the other car.
I also didn't like that the other car is faster than you and starts off much faster.

games007 responds:

thanks by help.

I'm new in codes flash.

[Lost Catacombs]

Very nice

This was also one of the hardest of the requests to review for me.

I liked how the first levels were with scientists and other researchers, and the later levels were with no people. It gives more of a feeling that you're going through a cript on your own.

I did find the puzzles a bit boring at the start. I'm not very good at these puzzle games, but I could just walk through the first seven levels without thinking. After that it got really hard though. So maybe you could make the difficulty curve a bit less steep?

The only real negative point I can think of with this game is the control scheme. Although it's an angle in which you can see everything, I'd rather have a map which let you walk down if you press down, and not that you walk to the bottom-left. Most of the time where failed was because I pressed a wrong button.

It's still a really nice game though, and the majority of the things are just fine. The addition of a level editor is great, and I love the large amount of puzzles there are. I didn't get very far in the game either, but certainly liked the puzzles I did complete.

Review request club

SantoNinoDeCebu responds:

Yeah, I chose the 'isometric' view because it looks pretty and and stuff but in the end it turns out to be fairly impractical as I ruled out using the mouse to click to positions because it wouldn't work on later puzzles (all the ice and sand tiles). It should have just been kept straight on instead of rotated.. but ach well!

Because of this controls issue though we made the first few levels simple so try allow players enough time to get the hang of the controls so it was difficult to balance stupidly simple but still kind of fun at the beginning.

It is a shame I feel that it is the later levels are where the puzzles begin to shine because the more complex elements just can't be introduced in earlier levels or it becomes too hard to fast (which is apparently still present!)

Cheers!

[Symbiosis Snake]

I think it deserves more recognicion.

I haven't seen this twist of the classic snake before. It's addicting, and while it gives the same addictiveness as the old snake, it still gives a new kind of twist which prevents me from getting bored.

The graphics are neon-ish, and it really fits into a game like this. The character choice is a bit limited though. Maybe you could just give a small 8x8 or 4x4 character editor. It would give an even more complete feeling, and solve the problem of the limited characters.

A bit more variation would be nice too. A hurdle to jump over sometimes, enemies that you had to dodge, a wall you can't go through or something like that would give less of a feeling you're constantly doing the same thing.

After practicing a bit it starts off a bit slow. Maybe you could implement a feature that allows everything to go 2x as fast, for 2x points.

Those features aren't neccesairy though, since the game is already quite hard. Perhaps something for a next game?

Also, sorry for not writing a review before. I kind of forgot :(

tenentenen responds:

I wish people knew of this game!
Also you can change the speed, and you get more points for higher speed.
The score is calculated per movement, and is based on how fast, and how short the snake is.

Thanks for the review!

[Ballz! Bounce]

Some major flaws

The largest that you really need to fix is that you gain money for clicking the ball, and not for the length or time it flies. This is especially irritating on the later levels, where you get for a ball 23500 above the clickable screen only about 40 money. If I spam click the ball for a few seconds I get more money.

Another is that it takes really long for a ball to reach the ground. Having to wait a minute for a ball to land isn't an exception. With a very boring background, I'd rather play another game while waiting.

It's just too plain and boring to be really enjoyable. If you could cut off the current "throw" it wouldn't be so boring. A button to the main menu would be nice too.

I think it's better to NOT buy some of the upgrades, since it makes the game a lot slower and more boring if you do.
And the tries taken and ball clicks are indeed broken.

Another nice addition would be to be able to edit the background and ball, maybe even with your own .gifs.

Review request club

Gimmick responds:

I like the suggestion ("edit background and ball"). I'll incorporate it into the next release.

I understand that you gain money only for clicking the ball and not for making it go high, whoa, major mistake on my part. I should've known better >.<

I was going to add a go to main menu button, but ah, my memory serves me badly...it's not the first time. Anyways, I will refer back to these helpful reviews to see what I've forgotten, completely justifies the low score, since I didn't plan anything and just created something spontaneously :P

The tries taken and ball bounced...funny, it worked in the internal flash environment...

Anyhow, thanks for the review, it was really helpful!

[Madotsuki's Dream Dock]

Good

I understand now that it's not a point 'n click game, but it would be nice to know that it's just the girl changing form before you start.

Now that's clear, the rest is just fine. The sound is relaxing, and the small "ting" when the girl changes her appearance fits perfectly.

The next step would be that everything moves to the side slowly, and that you would shift between several surroundings, each with different things you can click on.

For three days you did great though, and as a small interactive loop it's just fine.

Pienkaito responds:

The thing is that I can't find an appropriate genre for this. It's literally a point 'n click game, but for the general audience it isn't.

It's funny, that you mention that idea of yours, because that was exactly what I've planned to do. It just didn't make the cut, because of the short amount of time.

Anyway, thanks for your comment on my animation.

[Roboblox]

Very hard

This is one of the hardest puzzle games I've played on this site. At the start it's quite easy, since you will need to get used to the controls and the way of playing, but later on it gets really hard.

But it's not just the puzzling element that makes it hard, also a small frustrating way of programming. What I mean, is that you can't choose which way the roboblox link. Especially on the later levels, like level 19, very often I place them in a way that the roboblox could clear half of the field, but instead one or two blox link to a blox outside of the area I want to clear. If you could choose which blox you would like to link to, it would make the game a lot less frustrating, and a bit more fair.

Some levels require way too long IMO. It might just be me having a bad strategy, but I spent half an hour on level 18 gaining and destroying loads of blox with three links, until I finally got enough blox with 1 and 2 links to close off all the links.

Other than those things, it's a great game. It's extremely challenging, which is fun sometimes. The graphics are fine, and there are enough levels. I really wish you'd change the first thing I mentioned though. Maybe you can let us select which way to link with the arrow keys?

StrykeForce responds:

Thanks for your feedback :)

I have thought about this but in the end decided not to implement something like you suggested since the game was hard to understand for many from the beginning. In the end it was decided that the player would have to play by the rule set of connection priority (left, top, right, bottom), this also comes from the filosofy that the game can be played by just using the mouse.

Thanks again for the review!, I will have a look at my metrics when I received enough gameplay and if needed change ballance it out.

[Pilo]

Not too good

It wasn't bad at all, but everything was just too normal.

The awesome face was kind of lame. It would be nice if you could change your face after you complete the game. Maybe even create your own player?

Speaking of that, it would be nice if we unlocked something after you beat the game. Maybe some of the harder levels you mention in the author comments?

I also noticed a few flaws:

- The most imporant one, you often can't know how far you can get into a wall. In some levels it's nessecairy to go through the wall for a small part (for example, 9).
- In level two, you can just go through the wall
- Due to the random coin placement, coins often spawn in spikes, for example in level eight.
- If you mute the music and then return to the main menu, it starts again.
- Due to the backgrounds being the same, you often can't know how fast you go. Small variations in the background would solve that problem.

And of course the things like painful fingers due to the lack of a pause button/checkpoints that the other reviewers already said.

Although in general, it's a pretty solid "platformer", and the flaws aren't so bad that they ruin the fun. It's not too hard in my opinion, but certainly a challenge. There were a lot of levels, more than what you would see in normal games of these sorts.
The level design wasn't great though, that is my only real complain. Especially the mazes, they were more like incredibly long roads.

norfor22 responds:

Thanks, i will work on it! :D

[Shrimpy's Adventure 2!]

Not too great.

It seems like just about the average platformer. It's not horrible or annything, but not anything spectacular either.

What I liked is that you gave him a gun. It made you less defenseless against enemies than other platforming games. The tutorial was nice too. Not too long, not too short.

What I didn't like was what happened after you die. After losing a life, you get respawned a while back. Being invulnearable for a small time and then continuing at the same spot would be better, I think. You wouldn't have to do certain parts of levels over again, making the game less frustrating.
Also, if you lose all your lives, you will have to do the tutorial over again. You should make a button to skip the tutorial.
It also isn't really fair that, while your bullets get stopped by platforms, the enemies' bullets can go through them. You might want to change that too.

shrimpchris responds:

About that last thing, I kept trying to fix that, but it wouldn't work for whatever reason, so I kinda gave up. I'll be sure to fix it later on though!

[Plough The Skies]

I thought it was really good.

Though the graphics are not superb, everything feels and plays nice, and I like it that you kept playing the same level, only with extra enemies. Naturally, the medals like rambo are getting easier the further you get into the game.

I would like to see more upgrades for the armour of the plane, because now it changes between 1-hit KO and invincible. If you kill enough boats (800 points!!!) in the first level, you can get it immediately, making you extremely overpowered. Thus making the survival achievements a breeze. If you play it well, you will be fully upgraded after the third level.

The only medal I believe is broken is the ''Lawn mower man!'' medal, although you could clarify better that you have to do the ''Wings of ...'' medals from the start, not just any 2/4/6/8 levels.

SteveHarris responds:

Glad you enjoyed it :)

Steve