Emrox's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Roguebot Rumble]

I like the game! This morning I asked Bill if he could sing a few lines on a song I'm producing and he said he'd do it in exchange for a review of his new game, so for the sweet sound of Bill's voice I'm going to write up some stuff I thought about while playing the game.

When I started the game for the first time I wasn't sure if I was playing user-generated levels right away or something curated to introduce the rules of the game. Actually, I'm still not sure. The rating thing after each screen suggests it was all user-created but I thought maybe it would start out with some basic introductory levels and then graduate to random user levels at some point. That seems like a very minor thing, but I think knowing whether or not these are "intro levels," or even just "game-designer-created levels" makes a difference with how I approach them - I sort of expect the author-created levels to be very deliberate and have their design ideas unobfuscated by randomly placed platforms or whatever, so if I don't know if the level is created by the game designer, I don't know how much I should be reading into level design to see if it's trying to show me something. As a quick fix I would have some kind of indication if they're player made, like a little thing that says the author of the level when you start, or even just a tutorial that is very overtly tutorial-y with the text in the background that tells you what to do n shit so that when it gets to the random user levels they are very obviously the user-made levels. Taking "we barely got this done in time" into account, I'm guessing that's the sort of concern that would be addressed with a little more time in the oven, so whatever!

I also thought it was weird that restarting doesn't take you back to the same level you were on. It would be nice to be able to use what you learned from that particular failure, instead of re-rolling until you get an easy enough level.

The big explodey death balls were cool but I almost feel like they would be cooler if they didn't speed up & home in on you when you get in range - like they're fun because they're a big looming threat that you have to learn to work around, but they would always blow up on me pretty shortly after appearing so I would never get to do anything cool to avoid them. I feel like it would be cool if they just slowly followed you around and didn't ever rush into to you, and they did a ton of damage or insta-killed so that they don't always get to you but just have a very threatening presence. I get why this sort of thing could be weird - if too many death balls spawn they would probably bunch up and just be a weird cluster of death balls following you around, but you could probably fix that by giving them an acceleration thing, kinda like the flying mask in mario 2, but slower.

Hm this "review" is getting into backseat-game designer territory, so I will cut it off there! I'm looking forward to seeing what this turns into with the future updates. Good work guys!

PsychoGoldfish responds:

Yeah but did you use Firefox?

[Blooming]

I'm posting this to say I beat it and I want to brag about it!

I sympathize with the people who say it's too punishing - there were a few times where I had an idea of how to solve a puzzle but to get to the puzzle I had to run past some jugs or cats or whatever and I would die like 50 times on the thing that I didn't care about just to get another try at the part I was trying to solve. I also didn't like having to wait around for the picking of the flowers, and even though there were a few puzzles that were dependent on that, it added an extra bit of annoyance to the retrying over and over thing.

I really liked the puzzles though! And I like the level of challenge, I think just minimizing those sorts of annoyances would make it more appreciable. Some other gripes - I didn't like that there were petals just for aesthetic particle stuff, like if it's a main game mechanic there shouldn't be other stuff that looks exactly the same with no real function. I don't know what the non-coin jugs were for. It was also weird not knowing where it was saving checkpoints (actually I thought the jugs were doing that for a little bit?) These are minor things but when the game is really hard and potentially frustrating, the little things can add up!

HealliesGames responds:

You have every right to brag about it. x)

The fact that puzzles actually leave you thinking is a great achievement for me, as I feared they might be too intuitive.

Currently static jugs were used only for aesthetics, only to make exclaim at the first enemy jug encountered: "What the..." ahah!
The fact that they were outlined by the black border, pretended to be some kind of interactable object.

I fully agree on the particles.
I chose to recycle the petal sprite to dampen the time and dedicate myself to other things to arrive in time for the jam.

In addition, a little extra speed on picking the flower may decrease the rigidity.

Thanks for the detailed review, in these days I will try to fix by following your valuable suggestions.

[Fling That Fulp!]

YES.

This game is best.

thinking-man responds:

Lies.

[My Favorite reviews (BB)]

HA HA HA!

IT'S SO FUNNY THAT SOMEONE SPELLED SOMETHING WRONG! THIS IS THE BEST REVIEW EVER!

Dude, don't make fun of the people who give you 10's. You can lose fans that way. Plus, submissions that are 100% reading text are bound to do poorly. Perhaps you could record yourself reading the reviews in a sarcastic manner aloud. That'd make it a bit more humorous.

BanglaBoy96 responds:

*Sigh

Ok, Alot of you aren't getting it. Most of these reviews ARE NOT my flashes.
They're simply reviews I came across and found to be somewhat entertaining.
learn the facts of the flash before you review

[Experimental Gameplay...]

Super fun

Really original too.

It's a bit too hard to beat the boss on 3-4, but it was fun nonetheless.

Keep it up!

raitendo responds:

Seriously these kind of comments aren't funny, they never are.

[Letz Maek A Flash Gaem]

Humorous, and addictive

It took some serious scribbling, and plugging in two external keyboards and mashing them all simultaneously, but I finally reached 40k.

Wooo. #2 on the scoreboards.

thinking-man responds:

Wow...That's a high score... 0.0

[On The Run From A Mugger]

Pretty good

When I was eleven, I couldn't do anything anywhere near as good as this is.

Keep it up, because you have potential, and I know you'll make great things some day.

Yusuf responds:

tanks

[Air Pressure]

Interesting idea.

@bentosmile:

It took me a while to figure out the message that was metaphorically portrayed here. The opening lines: 'I met her when I was a teenager', and 'she wrapped herself around my left arm' were the pieces of the story that finally got me to say 'ooohhh, now I get it.'

@raitendo:

The transitions were well done, and reminded me of old gameboy pokemon games. The pixel-art was good and aligned properly, which I happen to know is hard to do with italic text.

Great work, to the both of you.

raitendo responds:

I didn't do the graphics, I just converted the entire downloadable game to flash. /Raitendo

[Jeremy Bongstarr]

Fantastic!

Props to Jordan for doing all the amazing art and animation so fast! Something of that quality would take me weeks to finish.

The game was well programmed, entertaining, and was fun in general.

RiverJordan responds:

Thanks Elfman! Deff appreciated!

[Red Remover Player Pack]

Memories...

It's good to see that some of my old friends at TGH contributed to this game. It makes me wonder why I don't post in the forums very much anymore.

The Idea of having autos is brilliant in my opinion. Those things are under appreciated for the amount of work that goes into them.

TheGameHomepage responds:

Hi Elfman!

Good to see your still about.

I'm glad you like the autos idea. The best ones do take a lot of work and skill. It would be shame not to show them off!