Markface's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Portal: The Flash Version]

My kind of game

A fine mix of problem solving and point and click made this game such a joy to play. It was quite challenging, even though I'm still going through it I'm really enjoying it.

The only real problem I can see is the lack of quality in the animation/visuals, it may be a bit pixel filled, but that style really suits this game.

Good work.

[LeekClock VS ClockCrew]

Decent defense game

Well, they're all the same. The fact that you threw in some clock crew nostalgia made some difference. I enjoyed the cartoony visuals and the sound effects played out well. The powerups and level enhancements were nice but I feel like the game needs a better goal. Maybe you can spend your points?

Decent work.

[[AG] Dodge Ballin']

Decent.

The game was nice. A fun idea and multiple teams to chose from it's obvious you put some effort into this.

What really pissed me off was the losing screen. It was poorly visulised in comparison to the rest of your game. Other than that, it was good.

Nice job.

[Santa Golf]

Fun stuff... messy controls.

Well, it was certainly a leap from the general minigolf game as you added height. But the controls for this were far too dificult. The ball path was way too awkward to predict and the movement around the track was slow and tedious.

Decent attempt, but could be more user friendly.

[NG Sketchbook Tour 07]

Amazing work guys!

I've always loved this project. I'm still kinda bummed I couldn't be a part of it. Should of applied earlier.

Anyway, amazing work. A fine collaberation of wonderful popular, and not so popular artists, all combined.

Loved the voice over by the way Swain.

[RPG super battle]

Could do with a bit of work.

Well... the game play was slightly enjoyable. You asked for a review on the coding/game play instead of visuals, so here goes.

The game play was under par. These styles of games are only good if there is some coherent award at the end or to continue from it. In this case, there is no story, and you just jump into killing something for no reason. People need excitement, so try and think of a reason.

I suggest the leveling up aspect of the game. A walking environment would also benefit the game. This would give it more interactivity and better game play, it would also allow you to work on that storyline.

I do enjoy the last second attacks by clicking on the yellow dots. This could be increased if they moved about randomly, to give it more skill requirement. This would let the user incorporate their skill and not just the that of the coding.

Overall the game could use some work, if you make a story line, walk able environment and extra attacks... you could really make a good game!

Good luck!

flashmac responds:

Thank you. I will try to add all these in later instalments.
I'm trying do do some more advanced coding so it will take a while to finish, but anyway thanks for your support!

[The Road to King]

Interactive.

This game had some nice potential. You really coded it well, there were many features that made the game enjoyable.

The reason I feel the score is at a low is because of the visuals. While they were slightly above par they could do with a lot of work. The environments are plain and repetitive as well, try and spice it up a bit.

Also, the speed of the animation was boringly slow. It really got me off the game.

If you can make it a little faster, and fix the visuals all around... then you will be looking possibly at a score of 3.8+

Good luck!

Abs55 responds:

Thanks for the review and kind comments. I thought the visuals were quite good but I guess I need to change them a bit and make them less repetitive. I understand the animation was a bit slow so I will make my next game faster. Thanks again!

[Play Safe : Use Condom]

Rofl... well, it's a change.

Nice 'Sex Ed' themed game. Was a bit easy, but still fun. I enjoyed the many 'Use a condom' puns too.

Decent visuals, easy to control game... good work!

[Skears DX]

Addictive...

First off... MY HAND HURTS!!!

This game was great. The originality was something that appealed to me. Nine times out of Ten you see remakes of classic retro styled games such as Tetris, Pong etc. But you took that unique and addictive style and made it your own, that's the main reason the game appealed to me. You took the generic, cursor controlled creativity, and made it something so much more unique.

The visuals throughout the game were bittersweet to me. The good part being you continued with that retro gaming style I mentioned before. The bad part being there was so much more room to improve on the Skears. It would of been quite easy to visually advance the transparent little red and purple squares to something more compelling. This could of helped with distracting the player, or just made the Skears more distinguishing.

The file size was nice, this insured quick and fluent animation, allowing me to play the game with ease. Which is something you would despretely need for this style of game, the last thing you want is to be getting angry at the uploaders.

Ok, now into the game:

Another main aspect that got me hooked was the uniquness of the levels. At first, obviously, they displayed simplistic and symetrical counterparts to allow the user to get use to the game. They then evolved into more enjoyable and challenging enviorments, that allow you to be enticed by them and at the same time, hate them :)

My favourite level would have to be the last one. While I spent more time on this level than all the other ones COMBINED, the challenge created and sense of rhythm I had to use to destroy the purple Skears was fun. The way you changed each part of the level from Random to Symetrical to Timed, was quite an enjoyable mix.

You clearly have a good knack for making levels, which had me quite dissapointed to find out there were only 10. I'm quite sure you could of made many more to mess with my head.

The obvious room for improvement here would be sound, which I feel is essential to a game of this theme. The use of a hard techno/electronica song in the background would do wonders for this game, perhaps even a mix to from song to song. With this, you could easily create more levels solely on the rhythm aspect of the music, this would be far more interesting and would allow the user to connect to the game more, as they are using more than 1 sense to control the game.

As mentioned before, further level development would of been nice to see. This would allow you time to introduce additional items that could of been added, such as powerups (avoid all red skears etc), a scoring system, perhaps even a high score table. These things would allow the player to have a sense of self gratification, and above all... being able to gloat to other people.

Upon opening the link I was somewhat shocked to find the score at 4.03. After mere minutes of the game the reason for that score was answered. The people of newgrounds have voted well on such an original and addictive game. With the use of music and visual fix-ups I'm sure that this game would score higher.

I'm glad to say this was my 1000th review. GREAT GAME!

AcidDimensions responds:

Thanks a lot! I didn't actually realise at the time how many avoidance-based games there were. It was all originally an attempt to make a fast-paced shooting gamje and I realised asking folk to roll-over rather than click on targets meant I could up the tempo. I like to think that having approached it from a different angle shows in the level design.

At the time, I used Squares (hence 'Skeh-ars') to ensure the collision detection is exactly what you see. Also, it meant that I could concentrate on making levels rather than graphics, which I prefer. Although my visual creativity is a bit better these days, I'll be keeping all objects fairly simple, both because I like abstraction and also to let me have 50+ skears on-screen without slowdown, although I'll certainly be attempting to prettify it a tad.

I think all the levels have a great amount of symmetry other than levels 3,9 and 10. And 8 maybe. So maybe you're using the word to mean different things than I do? I'll have to ask about that.

In any case, I'm really glad you like the level design. The fact that it was a remake of a short game with 1 year of additional hindsight and experience helped me a lot!

This is essentially a remake of rolovir2 - the original 'skears' - and in trying to keep the filesize as low as I could, avoiding any music was an obvious choice. I did actually put music into 'Mini Skears' 3 and 4, but the general consensus was that it got irritating if you were playing badly. At this time, I still had no idea how to 'properly' use music with stop buttons and streaming-enforced timing.

Scoring was also something I introduced in the Mini Skears series but abandoned here as it is a remake.

Although I don't think powerups are necessary, Skears 2 will contain everything else you've asked for, as well as many things you haven't. Scoring and sound will return.

Thanks a lot for the review. It's great to have an occasional fresh perspective of how the last installment holds up today.

You covered pretty much everything and apart from the categorisation of levels a 'random', 'symmetrical' and 'timed', which I wasn't entirely clear on, I was never in doubt of your meaning.

An awesome review and I give you're review 9/10.

Congratulations on reaching the 4-digit milestone and greater congrats for writing reviews of such a quality.

Stay funky.

[Superstick the game]

Alright...

The cutscene animation lacked, and the game could do with some more fighting options.