Fro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ballin']

So this game was somewhat functional, just not very good. There were definitely too many errors and faults to be considered a good game. The most annoying thing about the game was that when you start a level you could be hit by one of the balls at the same exact time that the game starts. While this doesn't happen every time it does happen enough that you can run a streak and lose a game before you even got to start one. Then what happens when you lose a game? A black screen of death.. What happens when you get to the last level and win? A black screen of victory? No replay button, nothing to see that you ended the game or anything like that.

You can also simply glide through till the end by moving your mouse off of the screen. I discovered this while playing a few times, getting bored quite quickly, and setting my mouse off to the side so I could write this review up. That being said, when somebody doesn't take advantage of this "cheat" and they don't take in consideration the randomness of dying when you start the game immediately every now and then this is actually a challenging game of skill and reflex. (The reasoning behind my 1.5 points!)

The backgrounds were ok, but just weird and sometimes out of place. I don't really have much to say about any of the animation or graphics, they were basic, but got the job done for the type of game this was.

The audio was an alright choice for such a fast pace game, but it got really annoying really quick. I think that a longer loop would have been a better fit with this submission so it didn't get so repetitive.

[NG Ipod DEMO]

This really doesn't work at all. While some of the buttons do go to other sections, most of them lead to nothing at all. When I say they lead to nothing at all I mean when you click on them they literally do nothing. Other ones go to broken links that no longer exist. When clicking on the audio submissions in the playlist section they don't play any music. The whole flash is basically a few functional buttons that really lead to nothing at the end of the day.

The picture of the ipod, while I could tell was homemade, could have been much better done. It would have also been nice if the background around the ipod wasn't the same exact color as the ipod itself. I see that there is a small white outline, but maybe taking the extra time to even just change the color would have made this much easier to look at.

Sound effects were enough to get the job done, but it is a shame that basically all the other audio was non functional.

[Kriegs Craft]

This was actually a really interesting version of this type of game. I enjoyed playing it quite a bit. I think that the animation is a little choppy and that the graphics could be improved, but it kind of had a style within it's own. An improvement in quality of the graphics would make my score go up for sure.

The gameplay was ok, but there really wasn't much of a challenge in my opinion. This could have used a lot more upgrades and depth. It was very basic and didn't hold much replay value at all.

[Sim Taxi - Lotopolis City]

Kind of the same as the other taxi game. There isn't much reason to continue playing much longer than a couple of minutes. Again, good artwork and everything like that, but the lack of goals and gameplay just doesn't make that enjoyable.

I thought I was going to have an exciting cop car race, but within 3 seconds of "running" from the cops they stopped me. Maybe there should have been some direction in what to do because it seemed I was moving at about 1/100 of the speed that the cop was going and I can't see how that part would ever last more than a couple of seconds...

[Word Kingdom]

This was a pretty fun game, but there doesn't seem to me much of a challenge to it in my opinion. The artwork was nice, but with the lack of challenge I find that the player will probably lose interest rather quickly. (Kind of like I did)

The audio was absolutely the wrong choice in my opinion! It was kind of upbeat and better fitting for an action screen. This would have fit much better with a calm ambient background piece, especially since all we are doing is clicking on a few letters to make words.

[Sim Taxi 2]

I didn't enjoy the gameplay. While it's not a style of game that I would usually play in the first place I went into it with an open mind. The driving is very clunky and really takes away most of the fun of playing the game. It's not very responsive.

The artwork and style are pretty nice and you can tell that they had a lot of effort put into them. The conversation in the game itself was kind of lacking and sort of clunky.

[Portal defender]

This game was basically unplayable in almost every manner.

When the game did work it was extremely clunky. There were no clear directions so you kind of just have to start clicking away when the round starts to figure everything out. I wasn't sure if I need to click and drag a tower or what, but I did figure out halfway through that you have to click a tower then click the box in which you wanted to place it. Not a huge deal, but a nice tutorial at the beginning could prevent any confusion.

After that the next problem I had was with the towers themselves. I had no clue that the random half of a second message that popped up was trying to tell me something important when I clicked on a tower that hadn't been unlocked yet. After staring at it long enough I could figure out what it said. I suggest a couple of things here. Put a literal picture of a lock over the towers that aren't available or even don't add them to the selection until they've been purchased.

I thought maybe this was happening in the game because some of the towers were blacked out during game play, but they would randomly light up and go dark again for random amounts of time so it really made no sense.

Randomly the screen would change colors. That's not a huge deal, just weird... was that suppose to happen? I thought maybe it was suppose to make it appear like time was passing or something like that.

On to the big problem. The screen randomly zooms in and out and then just gets stuck there. I managed to play one level because luckily it zoomed in randomly to the entry and I could build my towers there, but the level after that it zoomed in so close that I couldn't even place a tower anywhere making it impossible to play, hence my review now.

[Wasting Bullets]

This game looked really great. Did KMiles do the art or did you? It's really awesome.

This game was really hard and frustrating to me. I wanted to rage quit at all times, but something made me want to keep coming back and trying again. I agree with other reviewers that once you get close to an enemy you can randomly die sometimes and it isn't quite polished up the way it should have been, but what can I expect from something that only took 48 hours to make?

Great job all around.

MonoFlauta responds:

Thanks Fro for the review!
The art was made by KMiles and yes, I really liked how it turned out!
About the randomly die thing, it was my bad, the position of the player is being updated but the graphic it isn't. So, it is not unfair, just not well informed to the player.
Thanks once again for the review! Hope you are doing well :)

[Endless Dungeon]

Not to sound like a broken records from the reviews you've already heard, but this would be much better if there was just a little bit more interactivity. I won't harp on that too much though because it's pretty obvious that it was meant to be a passive game. Still, only a very small percent of the game I'm finding a complete lack of motivation to try and continue playing this. Even in passive games usually the achievements/medals are enough to keep me going and you kind of get that sense of accomplishment when you finally do get all of the achievements, but I just don't get it with this game.

The 8-bit style of art is nice. Maybe a little bit of animation would be nice, but it's not really necessary with the style. Even though it's nice to look at, most of the time I end of going to a different tab or even end up writing a review of this game.

With almost every character I haven't really failed by spreading the points out equally between armor, health, and damage. Perhaps I just haven't tried the key characters that doesn't work with, but it's worked every time so far and every time I start to go away from this path I end up losing and having to use a life.

I find it really odd that the speed goes down when all of the other stats go up. At first I assumed it was an error, but maybe it represents a time in between attacks? I think it would have been better if you would have just gone with the flow and made it go up like the other stats.

Overall, a little boring even for a passive game. I'm not sure what you could do to make it a bit more exciting. A small bit of animation, a cut scene, boss battles every ten levels, some voices, etc... At the end of the day I'll probably try and unlock the next character I'm currently working on, but there really isn't anything making me want to come back to finish it.

Blobzone responds:

Thanks for the review. Speed is your attack speed in milliseconds. So 150= 1,5 seconds etc.

I am being honest. The game was supposed to be way bigger with a story mode, boss battles etc etc but i got really lazy and abandoned the project. Last week i thought: Why not just finish it somehow as it is and publish it? So yeah.... maybe when i am in the mood in the near future i will make the game as it was supposed to be :D

About the graphics. I am really not a good painter (and especially animator) as you can see. So you really could say thats one of my better "artworks" but i dont mind if people feel otherwise :)

Still thanks for playing so far.

Greetings!

[Hero Agency]

I thought this was a nice little game to play. I'm oddly addicted to passive games even though I never really see the point in them. :P I guess it's the medals/achievements that keep you coming back and wanting to play them.

My first run through I basically played with no strategy. I bought heroes as soon as they appeared, no matter how much they cost and I just purchased upgrades randomly. The second time through I played with some strategy and if anything there was maybe only a 5 minute difference between gameplays with barely any difficulty change. So the game is kind of not challenging no matter what you do. I never used the pause feature on either run through.

I wish the map would have been larger. It may have added an additional challenge if there were several more pages to the map with more adventures as people may have gotten distracted enough to forget to buy potions. I see that you say each character has different effects, but is that obvious anywhere on the screen? Is that information someone can even figure out and use as a strategy or is it just randomized?

The sound, music, and art work was all really fitting for the gameplay. Overall, I enjoyed it, but would have liked to see a little bit more of a challenge and a bit larger map/mission selection.