Celx-Requin's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fisher-Diver]

Astonishingly Beautiful.

Hello,

I was taken by surprise by how pretty everything in this game was, despite it's simplistic "abstract" art. The colours captured the feeling of the ocean perfectly, and offered incentive to continue playing if only to discover the other "marine life".

The gameplay is simple enough that anyone with some basic gaming knowledge can pick it up, but deep enough that one could spend a significant amount of time exploring for "the story recordings", and upgrading their tools.

The oxogen bar adds a certain risk/reward element, especially when venturing into the deeper levels of the ocean to hunt the larger and more dangerous game for more financial gain.

The sound designer, and music author also deserve some massive praise, they nailed the atmosphere of the game and complimented your submission wonderfully.

I guess if I had one complaint, it would be the menu screens could have been designed in a more aesthetically pleasing manner, and the diary entries would have benefitted from some illustrations. By the way should you ever decide to incorporate some illustrations on a similar forthcoming project; I'm ready and willing, wink wink nudge nudge.

Kidding aside I loved this game so much, it's classy, and a makes a good contribution to the independent gaming movement. It's enjoyable just to aimlessly explore, that's a unique trait in a game.

Sincerely,
- Celx

FreeAsANerd responds:

What a lovely review!

The oxygen bar was one of the things I added to the game after Edmund McMillen played it and noted that he "couldn't find the risk/reward," so good job catching that!

And you're right-the sound guys did a stellar job. If you like the music in the game and want to support them, you can buy an album of all the game's tunes here: http://dvgmusic.bandcamp.com/album/fi sher-diver-soundtrack

And yeah, the menus are kind of rough because I did them myself. I'm not particularly good with visual art, so usually I work with other people who can actually draw and stuff. This is also a big part of why the game's graphics are so simple-I'm not capable of much more than that at this point, or else things start looking sloppy and awkward.

Thanks a bunch!

[Gretel and Hansel Part 2]

Review #100

I wanted to save this review until I found something really worthwhile to use it on, and man was this worthwhile.

First off let me express how impressive the narrative was, your ability to tell a story using only mannerisms is incredible, and the aspects of symbolism at play here are magnificent.

Despite the lack of spoken dialect, the main characters are both affable, and interesting with their own quirky personas, it's amazing what you've managed to pull off without language.

The game is violent, and captures the true nature of what fairly tales were meant for, which was to serve as cautionary satirical stories about the capricious and dangerous nature of the world. That said none of the violence really seems out of place within the context of the narrative, and although at times the violence can be humorous, it never comes off as patronizing to your audience.

The wonderful art style, and animation makes this submission stand out, I love the simple yet beautiful "watercolor" backgrounds, and the character design is unique, I feel as though I'm playing through a Russian fable.

The audio and sound effects all compliment the submission perfectly, and the music composers, and sound designers all definitely deserve major kudos.

Speaking about the gameplay now, I must say I'm impressed by all the puzzles and side quests the designer managed to work into the game. None of them seemed half assed or unwarranted, and all of them seemed to play into the themes of the game or add to the overall mythology, sometimes doing both in tandem.

The controls themselves were so easy to pick up and play I feel even someone with no understanding of video games could dive right in.

The actionscripting was pretty flawless, and the games autosave feature is something so useful I don't understand why it hasn't become standard practice in the flash game development community, the programmer is certainly of a high ilk and should be commended for his work on this project.

All the additional content such as the bonus hats, and different medals and endings (especially that quixotic robot ending), add to the replay value, whilst also conveying the amount of time that went into this games development.

I've often contemplated what makes an "adult" game (that is a game that would appeal to adults, not speaking in terms of the "pornographic"), and I feel this would stand as an excellent example.

The three things that I feel would make a game appeal to adults are accessible controls, intelligent design, and a mature narrative.

Your game capturers all of this and makes it into something unique and rare, a professional product that manages to transcend the cliche conventions of the genre and stand on its own merit as an exemplification of "fine art" in the realm of flash game design.

I can see why you were nominated for the tank awards, and with upmost sincerity I hope you and you're staff wins, this anthology of games you building is amongst the most noble uses of flash I've ever seen.

I feel once complete your saga will serve to garner more respect for videogames as a whole, something that the industry in this era of hypocrisy and aggressive critical opinion hurled at the craft from opportunistic charlatans is in dire need of.

It was a privilege to play something so deep, well rounded, and rich in substance. I'm eagerly awaiting the finale of your trilogy so I can view your saga as a whole, if this submission and the one prior serve as a prognostication of things to come I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

Thank you,
- Celx Requin

makopudding responds:

We're speechless! Thank you for this wonderful and very thorough review... Its very motivating as we work on Part 3... We hope you'll feel as positive about it as we feel it will be the best of the series.

- Mako

[Dino Run:Marathon Of Doom]

I would like to buy this however...

I already beat the first one 100%, so will my file information be transfered over?

Also I dislike credit cards, however I can ask a friend if he'll use his to purchase the game, if done in this manner can I use the code given his computer once I get home on my computer?

Anyway this game is great, it's one insanely tough level, although for all the right reasons (fair, and balanced difficulty).

I love the simple graphics, wonderful concept, easy yet deep game mechanics, and tight controls.

Truly nostalgia at it's finest!
Sincerely,
- Celx

pixeljamgames responds:

Yeah, if someone else buys it, have them forward you the email with the links to the game. That will work. Thanks!

[Solo Pong]

Not gonna lie...

When you make a game be sure to have a decent looking menu page, because if it's not aesthetically pleasing to the eye people will take one look and say fuck this, and blam your submission.

And in many ways they have a right to do so, I mean if your running an ad for your game you're expecting an audience to use their free time to play your game.

If the layout is shitty, it leaves the impression you're just trying to profit by making shitty games, and think the player is brain dead enough to let you do so.

The thing is this isn't a good game with a shitty menu either, it terrible all round, the physics are poor, the controls aren't as tight as they should be (especially for such a simple game).

I wouldn't be as offended if you didn't run an ad, or at least tried to make the game look nicer, so a least I could see some effort.

Without those things, I feel I'm being used to garner you money for something that was slapped together in an hour.

Why would I do that when I could play someone else's game that was made with the actual desire and effort required to make something decent?

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

FireWOLF109 responds:

Well I'm still getting used to the whole thing... so atleast give me kudos for this being my first flash cause they usually are terrible

[Judas bread attack!]

Impossible to play...

Where do I start...
I like the concept blasphemy is always fun, but the game itself is... Atrocious

The graphics are really poorly done and out of place, the gameplay itself is damn infuriating (especially when your hits aren't registering).
The sound bytes that looped were annoying...

Like I said I like the concept, but the execution on this project was deeply flawed.

In the future should you create another game similar to this, please slow down the speed of the jesus, and make the sound effects only occur when the user hits a target, lastly perhaps you should include a skip tutorial button.

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

MonoFlauta responds:

Wiii i love blasphemy hahahha, yes its bad in art, programming, music a bit, but well, it was an small game we made with fro in 2 days,
anyway, thanks for the review :)

[Pyroscape]

One of the hardest reviews I've ever written...

Hello,

I've been contemplating as to what score would be appropriate for this submission.
I was originally going give it a six, then after much deliberation with myself decided a seven would be more appropriate.

You game is ambitious you have various mini games, sadly they all seem to work in either a mediocre, or poor fashion.

I've broken up my issues with these parts of your game separately:

Escape:
This portion of the game works well enough, but doesn't have some things I would have liked, perhaps using the flash password would have made the gameplay a little better. To be more specific having the user look for a password somewhere in the room to open a box that contains the solution to get out.

Because honestly going on a "click quest" for different items has been done to death.

Pac-man:
The pac-man portion of the game worked pretty good, but again could have used some extra touches to make it better. Such as using the hide mouse actionscript command to make the cursor a pac-man icon, or making the enemies more dynamic, instead of just movie clips following a path.

Lastly you want to make sure people can't use the right click menu, because it makes it really easy to cheat on levels like that.

Zombie shooting:
This was really really poorly done, since you can't lose, and the targets are extremely easy to hit. It was funny, but from a gameplay perspective is was terrible...

Car:
This one wasn't bad it could have used additional lanes though, because it was a little easy...

Airplane:
It was obscenely hard to hit any of the clouds, because they moved too fast, and the button "hit state" was too small.

The video segments were solid so no problem there, and the humor was lighthearted, the sound was pretty clear too.

Overall:
It was an extremely ambitious submission, not that great from a gameplay perspective.

However the reason I'm still gonna give you a seven instead of a six, is because you got a bunch of people to come together, and create something as a team.

This submission embodies the best aspects of the newgrounds community,
that's worth an extra mark in my book.

Thanks,
- Celx

Fro responds:

Sometimes people need to realize that some submissions are made not to be a good game, but instead just to make people laugh. Most of the people do understand that for this submission, but not all.

(Talking about the soon to be sequel below)

The room game is much better this time and I bet even some of the better escape gamers will have trouble with this one. I even forgot what to do and I helped make it.

I love how people complain about the airplane part because the guy who made the walkthrough for this game (it was inevitable since it's on over 160 sites now) click the clouds so fast that they barely appeared on the screen. It really only takes 1 click for each cloud and it's rather easy as long as you have any sort of timing consistency.

For the other parts, we realize they were too easy, but that goes along with the humor part. There are actually people that requested us to make it easy because it was about the jokes.

Thanks. :) I always enjoy the negative reviews as much as I do the positive.

[Hoshinofuru]

Extremely glitchy...

Hello,

While I like the "pokemon" style gameplay you have going on here.
The actual programming is really glitchy.

I played through the game and kept on attacking a monster, and no damage was being done to it. I restarted the game and tried again, & I did manage to play a bit longer before the glitch occurred again.

The drawings are decent, but still lacking quite a bit, you should have
hand drawn everything, instead of mixing those low quality images you have in there with your drawn stuff.

They way that those images are currently presented seems really sloppy, and out of place, and destroys the whole illusion of the universe you're trying to create.
There isn't too much animation either, aside from some basic tweens.

I also wasn't sure if there was a story or not, it always helps to have some kind of a narrative to motive people to play towards some sort of resolution.

I know programming can be hard, so I can sympathize, unfortunately the game
just felt way too glitchy, and rushed in comparison to other similar better games.

Sincerely,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

MonoFlauta responds:

oks thanks a lot for the review... we are making the second part!

[Avoidance 3]

Too basic...

Hello,

The programmer of this game made good use of his knowledge of actionscript...
Unfortunately the game is very basic in terms of the gameplay. I was kind of bored with the minimal variations on each level.

And the adventure mode didn't really have a great story to keep me going either, I feel you would have made this significantly more enjoyable if you added cut scenes, even if there were only basic comic panels...

Also when I move the helicopter up and down it would have been cool to have seen the animation of the helicopter move in those directions as well.

Also very small touches like animations on the solders (even if they were only movieclip loops) would have added an extra layer of realism to the game, right now with the solders not doing anything, it reeks of laziness...

Should you plan to make a part four my advice would be to innovate,
as it stand this is a solid, though generic addition to the "avoid" genre...

Thanks,
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

TheSongSalad responds:

Thanks for the review, I'll take your suggestions into account man.

[Eddie Vance Issue 1]

Missing aspects keep this from standing out...

Hello,

The art itself is very good, and the comic seems interesting enough.

However I would like the option to turn off the music, change the quality,
and maybe you could have animated some of the text, you really should have included a preloader as well...

Lastly it felt kind of short to me... Which isn't a good sign when my own web comics are criminally short.

Otherwise good job!
Thanks,
- Celx

ZhouRules responds:

6 pages a week is a lot really. A normal comic book is produced monthly and is 24 pages. thats 6 pages a week. I could update it monthly and have 24 pages a month. But I was really hoping to do a weekly deal. And as for the music and preloader and quality and all that I don't know flash very well, but I'll take note of all that and try to include all of that in the next one. Thanks!

[Bubble Blitz]

You don't get much love do you?

Well that's alright, I respect you.
I thought this game was pretty cool, the game had a nice aqua aesthetic,
that flowed well, with your gameplay.

The gameplay itself was solid, and somewhat unique.(I've seen this kind of game elsewhere, although not too often).

The multiple gameplay modes add additional replay value, and variety.
I know a little bit about programming, and I must say this was well done.
Unfortunately most people on the portal don't, which is sometimes why certain games get lost in the shuffle, or underrated.

My one critique would be to work on the sound, it's not that it was bad but it could use some additional "spice". And perhaps add a additional control scheme for those wishing to use a keyboard.

Anyway good job you should be proud!
- Celx
~Review Request Club~

MrRandomist responds:

Thanks!
no, it doesnt seem i do get much love, especially with this game.
I'll work on the music side of things next time