fepayton's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gobots]

A good game marred by pacing.

Overall this is good. Graphics are good the sound is good the design is good. I like the mix of resources and the learn as you play style as opposed to a tutorial. The biggest problem is that the game needs some sort of save.

This is a turn based game. Day phase is a mad dash to get optimal clicks and the night is a consequence of what you did in the day. Awesome idea! The resources are many and affected in different ways by different actions and each other. Super awesome idea! So why a 3?

Exploring this game is hard. Hard in the patience sense. As other people have commented - finding out how to charge is difficult, finding out how to mine can be frustrating and finding the best plan of action can be very frustrating. the biggest reason for this is the very slim margin of error that has been built in. Figuring out how to charge will cause a player to die (and game over) a good dozen times on night 2 or 3. This is a huge turn off because we will have played day one and two over and over and over and over... to then decide to spend resources differently on day three.

How to fix this?
1. Save + Load. - All is forgiven if we can choose to save. Felt we were doing well on day 5 and want to try a few things; save and load means we can skip days 1-4 which we are repeating.

2. Less pressure. - Start with one less zombot. Now there is less pressure when the charge disapears. We will figure out that we need to be building better, but it wont be insta-game-over on night 3. As a player I like to think I can recover from mistakes rather than being insta killed for them.

This game is like a maze with electrified walls being solved by a blind person. We like mazes because we can backtrack and try something else. In contrast, this game forces us to start over.

Good, and frustratingly close to great.

Keep it up!

[Nan Creatures]

Amazing Concept with poor tuning.

The good:
Graphics sound, animation are all great. The core mechanics are also sound. Each creature has a set of abilities that unlock giving them flexibility. The powers are like a deck of which only 4 at a time are shown. The AI works well (almost too well) and the game is generally playable.

The bad:
In short : This game is grind. Pure grind.
The deck sounds like a good idea, but money and experience come too slowly and the level restrictions and costs are too high.

The dificulty progression at first seems ok, as the first battly is agaings a trivial foe and the second against an equal force. The third seemed mostly unwinable (as we now face a superior force). This seems ok, but then I notice that I dont have enough money to do anything! This is a huge problem. The game literally stops me and says "repeat to win".

Grind needs to be a choice. If a level needs to be repeated it need to be because I either: need to master a skill to progress, or I am choosing to go back to save fore something big (i.e I choose not to upgrade something small).

How to fix this:
Option 1: make the minimum number of skills 6 (instead of 12), Now a master player couild build a pure healer and a pure damage dealer.
Option 2: Increase experience and gold earned by x5, Now I get something every fight. This makes each fight a reward. Presently, each fight is work.
Option 3: Give the AI fixed "boss" patterns. Random vs random is ok but some battle feel like protracted healing fests when the random generator dosn't through enough attacks your way, or the enemies just seem to be in heal-n-buff mode.

Overall:
In an MMO like World of Warcraft, grind is made enjoyable because of the other players and fights being always difficult enough for me to think that I need to get better (not just buy better). This game being single person casual needs more reward. Each battle is great the first two times, but the next 3 times where yop've won, know you will win again, and you are going through the motions so you can beat the next fight makes it feel like a bad slot machine.

Looking forward to an updated version!!

[RogueDungeons]

This is a game that needs balance.

The good: Though repetitive, the art is used well and it looks good (circa 1990). There is a functional progression of upgrades that makes you improve in a Diable-ish stats + loot way. The AI and maps may be simple, bit it allows for some (seemingly) tatical combat; choosing the right skills and balancing your mana use.

The bad: It is repetitive. Same thing happens over and over and the Balance forces grind.

This feels like a first submission. It feels that way because the math don't make sense.

Example: In the Second vampire dungeon I have encountered a caster with high attack and low defence. The tool tip displays 96% as the chance to hit. Attack -> miss, Attack -> miss, Attack -> miss, Hit!, Attack -> miss, Hit! Kill.

Missing 4 out of 6 is massivly unlucky. Its so unlucky that I could never nee anything like it again in the game, but three casters later; 3 out of 5 miss.

This game is entirely playable at the lower levels. The algorithims work the percents feel real, and clever equipment swapping and skill choice feels meaningful. Once you hit the end levels it all goes to pot. The above happens, and the only way out... grind untill you are god-like :(

How to fix this:
1) Fix the percentages. - As is there are a number of times that I wanted to call BS on the game (like getting lagged in a multiplayer). This math isn't easy so this might mean making your calculations simpler.

2) Fix the leveling. - When the skills level they fel meaningful in the early game, but in the late game they feel useless. (Warrior:defence is a great example: Hundreds of Points spent to get the same defence as an in store piece of armour). The stats and the skills feel less and less worth while. In the beginning a point here and there meant something, but when the enemies have 150 defence, spending over 1000 experience (50% of what you earned in a level) to get +1 agility (so now they only have 149 effective defence) feels like a total waste.

Overall:

This is a great start. Polish it and you have an easy 4+. Add some art, and animations (as listed below) and you have an easy 5. As it stands its only half done.

[Musaic Box]

Visually Sunning, great puzzles

The sound and visuals of this game are great.

The gameplay is a nice balance between finding clues and solving a shape/sound puzzles.

Why not a 10?: gameplay.
To be blunt the gameplay feels hashed together. Items that you are expected to find could be obvious to a couple pixles wide. It is also a success or failure mechanic with little in between. There are some good hints, but more often than not I found myself clicking madly or just waiting for the hints.

The Music puzzles are origional and absolutely excelent, are not without flaws. I remember a couple of puzzles where there were more than one answer. E.g. the melody hint was correct and lining up the other sections so that no two overlapped was also complete. Problem was that the game didn't accept that particular answer, so I had to use the hint to see what was wrong and then reconfigure.

I would compare this game to Myst. Myst polished everything to make the game great. This game is excelent, just falling short of great.

Keep it up.

[Chain Soldier]

Random in a bad way.

The good: The sound works, the upgrade system is clean, and the graphics are none too shabby.

The bad: There is too much random and only one level. Things don't get harder as much as they get bigger.

Why this is less than a 5: Soldiers tend to wander aimlessely. I rember one instance of 30 infected soldiers wandering over, past, through and away from the last remaning green soldier. This makes my choices as a player have no difference. i.e. this becomes gambling (insert coin, pull level, wait)

How to get this above a 5. Infected soldiers need to walk towards, or mostly towards their targets. When half the screen is red, but dancing in circles it is a WTF moment.

How to get this to a 10. Add more choices. With terrain the player would now have to choose the best place to infect (e.g. the open area or the small area with the strong soldier). Have the infected soldiers wander randomly with a favoritism towards the cursor (i.e. random 1 north, 2 east, 3 south, 4 west, 5 north/south closer to the cursor, 6 east/west closes to the cursor). This makes them still wander but now they will 1/3 of the time wander in a direction that can be controled. Have starting maps: The maps are only different because of he number of soldiers and total size. Put groups of soldiers in different areas (similar to the terrain idea above).

This could have been super awesome. Instead it played like a slot machine. Like the comments before me; we played until we were frustrated and quit.

Imrpove this and re-submit. It could be really good.

[Electrikill]

Random and ok

The good: Not a bad shooter, with some nice upgrades. Art is good. Music (though repetitive) works.

The bad: Gameplay rewards and difficulty feel unplaned. Like watching a brainstorm hit paper. A great example is Test 9. Shoot down enemies in a time limit, using only a shotgun, without hitting friendlies. How do you beat this mission: you wait until you are lucky enough.

How to make this better?
This game has three skills: accuratly timed clicks, and upgrade choices and choosing when to go back and redo a mission. This works really well. Some missions need a certian upgraded type of gun to get the star bonus on. That adds some great stratigic choice. What holds this game back is that there is a huge chunck of random.

Shotgun fires at random angles. Scatter gun may or may not destroy an enemy when it hits. Friendlies may or may not fly off the close edge of the screen at who knows what speed. The choices we can make (above) are often removed by the random.

For a first attempt: great. To make this better you need to think alot more about game play.

Overall: Good for a bit, but not worth finishing.

Keep it up.

VictorGrunn responds:

Thanks much for the feedback - it's appreciated, and you have a sharp eye for what's going on in the game itself. I'll be carrying this into the next game made, and tweaking Ekill a bit as time goes on based on feedback. Test 6 really was too unforgiving, for example.

[Age of Shurikens]

Has issues that made it unplayable

I dont want this be be a bug list, but hopefully this will help others / developer make this better.

The ADs will fail to load in Firefox and the game will stop ("game will continue in 5 seconds" forever).
The quality settings are a good Idea, but if you set to high you need to reload for low to see the performance inprovement.
The directions can sometime stick (i.e. tap left and you might keep going left).
Overall it looks like a huige ammount of effort, but after 10 min of trying to diagnose what was going on, I'm sorry but, I gave up.

Programming: Off hand I think the problem is code being inside enter frame that should be linked constantly loaded. Holding the directions works better (i.e. more than one frame), where tapping can often result in failure.

My computer isn't great (5.9 Windows Rating), but this game has too many issue to be enjoyable for me. Still, I think than many could fing it good, hence the 5/10.

Keep it up.

[The Legend of Pandora]

The bad kind of differences.

The good: The art is greatand the music is good too.

The bad: The differences are mostly variations in colour. Seldom objects and almost never story relivant objects. This is an ok game with great art.

How to make this a ten: The best that I have seen are difference games where the differences were things like the knights sword was cracked instead of new and in the next sceen we see the knight breaking his sword.

This game has the weakest form of difference: it is often small changes in colour and it deletes the change that you click on. It represents simple programming and a weakness in game design. The art is amazing an is worth a play through but not a repeat.

[Lair Y Defense]

Sudden death mode robs the game of fun

The good: The game is very good in general. A nice mix of wepons and upgrades with good sound and animation.

The bad: There is a lot of clicking (which is pretty minor. The big problem is that the game will end when you die.

How to make this a ten: Keep the cash you earn when you die, upgrade and start at the same level.

I found that there were many stratigies in what to buy and when. For example, having a second gun ment I could quickly switch to it instead of reloading. The trouble wit the 1-and-only-one-death is that, once I had gotten to a well invested point with one strategy I couldn't change. In short I would have to play this game for 100's of hours to beat it (if thats possible). When death wipe my progress for the second time, I wrote this review and walked away.

It seems petty to rate this a 6/10 for a simple thing, but the simple thing is driving me away from the game. It is a huge issue for the casual player.

[Submarine Tactics]

Beautiful remake

The good:
The graphics are great and the effects are rather stunning.
The sound gets a little repetitive but is clear and a good indicator of whats going on. Nothing to complain about here.

The gameplay is hard to review.
Origional battleship had only ships of length 2 or more. I really like the placement rules that mean that once sunk there is no possibility for a ship to be adjacent. In the end it is all about the mines. Being single square means there is no real "efficient" way to find them, and the endgame is a slow scan of the entire board.

Why 8/10: gameplay knocks off 2 for me. Logic goes less than half way and then luck (and patience) take over. Loose the mines for an easy 10 (imho)

keyreal responds:

Each game needs to have a luck element, in my opinion. Thank you for the review!