SquizofrenicCat's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Geometrica]

Really well done, tricky game! This managed to grasp me for a solid amount of hours.

The mechanics feel very unique for a puzzle game, the jumping/click added an extra layer of complexity to it. I've honestly never seen anything like it before and it absolutely destroyed me (as any great puzzle should). There are some kinks to be worked out here and there, like lines not placing if you are crossing them for even 1 frame mid jump, or untraversable/obtuse angle lines being hard to make out, but it's nothing too serious.

The audio design is very sweet, maybe needs some extra musical tracks for variation. The sound effects were really satisfying - great ear for picking those.

The graphical presentation is very nice for the most part. It's easy to forget how pretty geometry can be when you aren't usually drawing it out yourself. The assets are very nice and detailed. Sadly, I can't say the same for the main "character". The white rectangle fellow against the detailed background gives BIG "placeholder" vibes, it simply does not feel like it belongs there. I still haven't beaten the game 100% so I don't know if there's a plot you made for it, but I highly recommend next time putting more energy/love into a mascot, at least give the poor guy some outlines. The player will be looking at that thing the entire time, so if it looks boring/unappealing it might hurt your game's retention and might make it hard to remember to most.

TL;DR: Awesome game mechanic, decent audio, ok presentation. I spent most of this review's time phrasing how much I did not like a solid rectangle as a protagonist. Great job overall!

[DED GUY]

I liked the art and the theme for what it was, bouncing was hit and miss at times. Too bad my mouse cursor went off screen while I was trying to play and I hit the 1 star button; So that's the score I suppose.

[I Can't Let You Go]

I see what you were going for with the setting and the faux cryptic theme but this game largely overstayed its welcome on my screen.

The art style is ok, but the filter you added makes it really hard to discern the dark blue symbols in the dark background so the player is gambling every time they walk into one. I also had a hard time making out the character from the background, and taken how big the character sprite is that was very unpleasant to deal with. I know you added a white trail to the character for contrast, yes, but this game largely punishes you for running and gunning by taking away the shooting when you move so I barely got to see that when jumping up and down; it's nigh impossible to make out the surroundings if you are trying to shoot down things. How dying and progressing have the same effect is also disorienting at times and doesn't give any sense of accomplishment.

Besides that, the segments somehow got more unfun rather than challenging the longer it went, some levels being totally random in difficulty as the enemy spawners do not have a defined pattern; either flooding the screen in instants or not spawning anything. You seem to have carefully timed some starting traps and obstacles to force players to stop again and wait on almost every level start and I can't say I'm a big fan of that design since it is just boring.

To top it all off, after I saw a later level had become impossible I pressed "R" thinking it was going to reset the level; but it ended up resetting the whole thing. That was absolute gold to me how you have such a long, boring game and still thought it to be a good idea to add one button right next to the movement keys that easily leads you to undo all the progress because you just had to make a Main Menu cryptically worded with the stages of grief in order to seem deep. That was pretty fitting, actually, as I did go through all the stages of grief playing this crap hoping it would have a saving grace, just to end up having to accept it's plain garbage.

[Heli-Rescue]

Very cool game, I like how it feels though controls are a bit cramped as people have pointed out.

It felt really solid at the foundation, the concept, the mechanics, and the implementation are all very good. Though could have used some twists maybe to make the game more engaging; I found no reason to ever let go of shooting as there is a crapton of ammo, no reason to optimize rescue routes (there's no time limit), no reason to avoid flying into uncharted territory and eat bullets since helis are all tanky and the enemies are weak. There's also no soundtrack to speak of so it gets kind of eerie at times.

Granted that feeling of overpower feels hilarious but there is very little challenge. Tweaks in strafing controls, Different difficulty settings, some new enemy types for advanced levels and maybe different hostage sprites (the jumping jack guy doesn't give me the impression of someone who needs help for instance) could make this game very VERY cool.

Still, had plenty of fun with it.

[Undertale fan game]

Doesn't work for me.

[Graphing Tool]

I like the initiative, with some more refinements this could be really cool, in particular it is lacking a good interface for the user input. Unless I have the Math Object docs on me it's not very useful, these could be provided in the Gadget. It's also missing labels and units for the Axes in the data plot.

There could be some buttons for functions that return valid point data to the plotter, at least. This would have the user just press buttons and combine them for different results. The way it is now it's easy to misuse it to just parse JavaScript as opposed to plotting Math stuff (which is the purpose of this Gadget). Typing ;alert(''penis") was like the first thing I did.

mabell responds:

Yah, it just evals javascript and graphs.

[Interstate Drifter 1998]

Interesting concept and art design to go along. Particle and drift effects are really nice too.

Though, I gotta say I don't dig the camera always being centered on the vehicle with almost analog precision while controlling direction is digital, I found it easy to get uncomfortable specially when picking up speed since it felt unresponsive regarding where I wanted to go vs where the car was going (which yeah, is the game, but I don't feel the camera should assist in disorienting me). I feel if the camera just stayed still and making sections of the level change it could work better, at least for me.

Sound effects are very good, the music you picked really sets the mood.

Sadly I came across a bug in the 3rd section of the LVL2 Highway (I think) where my car just kept going Out of Bounds from level start until the camera reached the end, where then I just kept going Out of Bounds until my run ended.

UltimoGames responds:

the car switches direction, and the car physics follow along. It may take awhile to get the hang of it, and some people just don't feel it. I will fix the bugs, I am glad you like some parts of the game! thanks for the review SquizofrenicCat!

[Pause Ahead]

An absolute masterpiece in design, this game had me replaying it days after I beat it simply for the sake that it is amazingly good.

The fact that the game will usually take more than an agonizing hour worth of deaths to be beaten on the first try but can legitimately be beaten in literal 5 minutes with no set backs if you have the skill and knowledge is a sign that it is surgically designed just as well as full AAA games like Demon's Souls/Dark Souls. The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, the humor is most excellent, the writing is intriguing and the gameplay is nothing short of challenging and addictive.

I would honestly pay money to have this as a Full game on my (virtual) shelf. It's just that memorably fantastic.

[Road of the Dead 2]

First of all I'd like to say that Road of the Dead is one of my all time favorite games, not in "flash games" but in a general fashion. The way it is set up is really appealing to me and I find it outstanding in numerous amount of aspects, from immersion to gameplay elements, to how it handles game overs. Your "x of The Dead" series is very interesting and has deviated my attention from "full games" on my afternoons and has gotten me playing for the sheer will of beating them, something that some titles nowadays can get from me.

RotD 2 is very less different than RotD when it comes to getting a hold of my attention, as it is a gigantic game compared to ordinary flash games, with depth and immersion very few other flash titles can provide. It really seems to push Flash to its limits, and while that is a milestone of its own it is also an issue.

While it really got me going in a good way (as far as a video game can take mind you) with the extensive amount of multi-tasking the game demands from you, the framerate issues detracted greatly from it specially at latter levels where you need to be absurdly precise at all the three to five things you should be doing - driving, shooting, dodging, stopping and decision making. The freezing really boggled the whole thing down (I initially played the game with high settings with no issues but it got really bad midway so I turned everything upside down to get the most optimized framerate, to no avail). I beat the game and it apparently couldn't take it anymore as I watched the final cut scene at a literal 15 frames per /minute/ and understood nothing of it other than I had beaten it. PERHAPS this all had to do with the fact that I was utilizing Google Chrome the time I played it, which is a very memory intensive browser that may have taken part in slowing everything down despite my computer being a fairly decent set up.

That said, I've always had this feeling that sticking to Flash is really holding these games down, as they seem like they could be much bigger in general fashion had they been made on a more embracing engine. The freezing issues this colossus presented only solidifies that thought in my head, but since I have near to absolute zero experience with making games and working with flash I can't really opine on it.

Despite all, the performance is really my only complaint towards this. I'll most definitely play this again in the future, in the expectation that the performance won't be as much of an issue as it was the first time around. You've all done a fantastic work and I congratulate you for making such a great piece.

[The Drawing Grounds]

This is a pretty cool App, I love all the options you put in to the canvas for painting; though a way to control the alpha colors would be nice. A tool for zooming in would be pretty helpful as well.

Despite its features, user interactivity is not really the strong point in this app, as it takes too long for people to interact with one another and when they do it is very momentary and limited. This would be an interesting tool for when you're out of ideas and decide to go out scribbling something worthwhile, and maybe get at least one person to look at it. Using predefined words and such also cuts down the game by a little bit.

I suggest you look into other similar applications like "Doodle Or Die", which is entirely moved by user interaction and has little restrictions when it comes to what you can do with it. Otherwise, great work on this flash app.