Fooliolo's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[SeppuKuties]

New twist!

I like how dying actually changes the level xD Holds a great new meaning to platformer games.

There is one thing that I didn't quite like about gathering acorns though, since it was just another means of collecting high scores, and it entirely irrelevant to the overall gameplay. Also, heavily abusing the physics and coding in some levels didn't exactly seem the most desirable style of gameplay (similar to World of Goo's OCD challenges).

I believe the record is 4 deaths, because I have done it =P

[Hunted Forever]

Something commendable

My high score is 4136 or something like that on Normal mode. I also got +deliciousness xD (and Scaryhunter5525 just blew it's purpose out of the water >_>) I didn't like how it just stuck to your face forever afterward whenever you're in a safe house though.

Anyways, I like how you tuned the game's mechanics. You accelerate faster while on the ground than in the air, and you can pretty much fly through the levels with the ease of controls. I also liked how the longer you took to finish the game, the more dangerous it got.

One big issue I have is that if you're going fast enough, and you hit a corner of a wall or something, you can end up getting stuck inside the terrain, forcing you to either quit or hope to die by the mines/dropping bombs. I've had to restart at least 5 times because of this. Also, I managed to finish the game while the ship was firing its lasers. This caused it to get stuck in its state, and whenever I was inside its imaginary line, I would get hurt. This was true for both the ending animation (I liked the difference between partial and full scavenge btw) and when you start a new game.

[Karoshi:Suicide Salaryman]

Entertaining

I didn't like how everything you did was extremely fast though. Often times I would have to restart a level just to get the timing right, such as getting an explosive to land on a bullet. Painful.

It gets mildly boring until lvl 13, where you start changing things around a bit with what you said was "rule breaking". I didn't think the challenges were too difficult, but I did break a few of them. The switches for the electric tiles can be flipped and you can walk away from the same side you flipped the switch, avoiding having to use the safe or other means of getting to the other side. For that matter I didn't find the proper solution to the second electric puzzle until a while after I beat the game.

Hints for the "unusual" levels: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
13.) The buttons DO do something =P
11.) Try harder >_>
10.) y so serious!?
7.) Guess what the level layout's trying to tell you =P
6.) You're not suppose to do Karoshi here >_>
2.) Being more determined to beat this level is actually causing you to lose it =O

[< lightBot >]

Nice game

I enjoyed this game with the spare time I had.

This however isn't exactly the best teaching material as some people may believe it to be. For one thing, it's good practice not to execute "extra" commands and stuff if you really have to. This game may or may not encourage that, but it's just a personalized high score. And another thing, as a good programmer, you should know very well what to expect of the program if you've done it correctly (and if you didn't, well, you learn). Make incentives to try to get the puzzle done in the first go. I know the last few statements may be a bit contradicting when it comes to testing code bit by bit, but this is a puzzle with simple elements really.

One last thing: I cried when I realized I couldn't do crazier things like recursions or loops because there's no such thing as escape conditions =(

[Ultimate Defense 2]

Glitchy Defender is more like it

Your programming skills need serious work. Some of the bugs and glitches I'm going to outline may or may not be my fault, but there are a few that definitely calls for blueprint recalling. Anyways...
--I've ended up have 0 money by the time I reached the volcano levels (I wiped out the first wave with spells only lol).
--The money counter at Ultimate Slots doesn't support 5 digit numbers.
--I was able to dig in between waves. This might have something to do with me still having the shovel selected while completing a level.
--If you're in the process of digging, you can hit the pause button and finish digging. If you had the mind to, you could dig out entire maps by abusing this oversight.
--I ended up having 23 credits for Ultimate Slots in some levels. I'm very sure I didn't dig out this much treasure. And no, that wasn't from dig/pausing. I don't have THAT much patience.
--If you place units across from each other, both will get experience, resulting in double exp (from the monster, not for each defender) and absurdly rapid leveling. Especially true of Ninjas and Dragons. This doesn't make sense.

Glitches aside though, the graphics and sounds are very high quality. The concept isn't as great however, although having defenders at corners rotating once to finish off the boss-like monsters is interesting. And the game seemed a bit cheesy and pointless in terms of story, considering you threw a last bit after you finish the game.

You put a nice curveball in the game by introducing digging for treasure. Go for as many potions as you can, or should you worry about the monsters reaching the end? I find it a bit strange how treasure chests don't give you money, but meh. Oh, and some of the tiles are pretty hard to select, notably the ones behind raised terrain or other obstructions, such as Dragons.

The spell system is also interesting, in that you can assist your defenders. Unfortunately when you see the whole picture, it's basically more MP cost, more damage, better spells. I personally never resorted to more than poison and lightning.

Some finer points:
--Knights and Warriors are pretty useless. Their purpose is to slaughter units at the edge of the path. You can deal just as much damage or more by placing a cheaper ranged unit at the outside edge of a corner, since the monsters will traverse both squares of the Archer or Mage's range, three for the Ninja, and an awesome four for the Dragon.
--Oh, and Dragons make everything else obsolete, assuming you can afford them.
--Placing defenders further along the path allow you more digging time. More digging time = more mana potions = more spells you can chuck at them.
--Ultimate Slots can probably be viewed as mostly an annoyance since you're pretty much not going to win much, and if you do, the denominations are going to be 100, 250, 300, or 500. That's pretty weak, unless you win the 500 prize early and often. Also, clearing terrain just so you can dig is not worthwhile, unless you're desperate for mana potions for some reason.
--I like how the speed of the monster played a role into how much damage it would take from defenders.
--Level 2 defenders easily became level 3 defenders. The amount of exp needed to level again should change, not stay at the static 1500.

Personally I was able to get a score over 100,000, pool up $15,000 after the end game (which I beat with two Dragons) and stashed away 26 mana potions. Sure, the game it hard if you're just getting adjusted to it, but giving it some thought, you can definitely make this a joke. You can't really just expect to get away with afking (like in Defend Your Castle) most of the time and be flawless, but just a little nudge with a spell or two and you're pretty much good to go, assuming you didn't come off with a bad start in the earlier levels.

[GemCraft]

A lot of great things in GemCraft.

At first, this game will blow you away with the sfx and the graphics. Top notch, very well done! Then you'll realize that this game is sorta easy, save the first epic battle, and then it gets repetitive, then a little more interesting when the waves start numbering in the 40s, then even more repetitive. Although I suppose if you're looking for the ultimate challenge, try to defeat The Guardian (final lvl, final wave) before it reaches your tower! (best I could do was kill it on the 2nd lap)

Kkz down to the finer stuff...

--I liked how if you let a monster slip past, you're sorta "forgiven" at the cost of some mana, yet you'll still have to kill it. It brings a new meaning to the defense games.
--On the lvls where the red gem is available, if you managed to get a few sufficiently powerful red ones and lay a few trenches, you'd mind as well call out the rest of the waves and get it over with xD I even managed to do this for the secret red lvl. While it's fun to do mass killings, this really ruins the challenge of the later lvls when it's more likely to happen, and it also results in a ridiculously exaggerated score.
--It would be nice to know when the specials cap. For example, a lvl 4 cyan gem has 13% stun, lvl 5 14% stun, lvl 6 14% stun. And the lime gems never go above 40% chain hit rate (although I do realize a high rate would result in abuse).
--It would also be nice to know what the gems excel at. Cyan gems I've notice fire really fast, while the yellow gems have a long range. Generally not noticeable in the beginning lvls, but people will want to know later on.
--Is hue just a flavor? I couldn't find anything on this, other than my suspicion that matching gem and monster hues = harder to kill. (Epic bosses have no hue)
--Gem bombs could use a finer explanation. I dropped a lvl 8 gem on a hoard of 50+ monsters just for kicks, and for some reason over half of them didn't even get scratched.
--I liked how you could choose your style of play, whether it's pure gems, dual or even triple colored gems, or maybe you could chuck gem bombs. Make several small gems, or make a few powerhouse gems. Several ways to go about this game.
--Maybe you could make new gem images for the lvl 7 or higher gems. Or distinguish them somehow.
--I like how you could spam "create gem" in one spot to make multiple gems without ever moving your mouse. So if you had enough mana, you could spam and overload your inventory with lvl 4 gems for bombing xD
--I thought the amulets related to gem creation are a bit extreme. To hope to get the gold ones you'd have to practically spam gem creation and gem combination, which WILL result in loss of productivity. Heck I finished the game, including all lvls with glowing frames, without even getting a fifth of the bronze gem creation journey amulet quota (2500 gems).
--The story bit after the last lvl was sorta riveting, but foreknowledge would cause you to think "what was the point of all this?"

I do look forward to seeing GemCraft chapter 2. Keep up the good work.

[Arachnophilia]

ONE BIIIIG PROBLEM!!!

This glitch has by far been the most frustrating (other than the bees xD) in that your web will instantaneously collapse on itself. This usually happens when something flies through your web, breaks it, then the whole flash program freezes for a few milliseconds, then the next thing you know it's pretty much game over. And yes, I'm positively sure this was through my fortified parts. I even had at least 18 radial strands connecting to the branches to ensure that my web doesn't fall apart. The other very few times when the glitch happens is when I'm madly spamming webs, then the whole thing collapses, where the point of origin is where my spider was. Not cool. Please try to fix this problem, as it appears that other players have noted this in their reviews.

Mmkay that's out of my system now xD

The gaming concept is pretty original. The algorithm that's the heart of this game is really well made (other than the anomaly described above), and the graphics are adequate. The controls were also nice in that you could queue the actions for the spider, although I felt that you could have mentioned the spacebar function of dropping your actions queue a lot sooner.

However since there's little to no way to succeed without any foreknowledge of the variety of things you can catch, I'd have to deem this a sort of try, try again type of game, and repeatedly going through the same game over and over again without that having to be the obvious intent (like Impossible Quiz for example) really makes this a turnoff. The two examples that are really undeniable are the firefly and especially the queen bee. Having a fully functional web is just asking for death, since there really could be too many bees and not enough ladybugs to stop the flow of things flying through your space. At one point I even had an entire half of a web jammed full of moths xD

At this moment though, I would like to say a few other things...
--I thought the ladybugs and the queen bees pair are something to remember this game for. Saving up a dragonfly or a stag beetle is sorta... meh, but they do help.
--I don't think moths are really worth saving for webbing since you'll be busy enough eating up other stuff to try to keep your web clean. For that matter, eat the fireflies ASAP.
--The achievement system is pretty out of place. That's basically like saying "you're 10% through the game" since in order to complete the game's objective you would have all of the achievements anyways. And please don't tell me someone's gotten 10 fireflies before 25 flies o.O
--The facts are a nice touch to the game.
--The game is very challenging, and not for the slow people! Sometimes the RNG screws you over (like the bees destroying your strands that hold the web up, or you get 5 stag beetles at once), but other than that I think the game scales in difficulty nicely.

[Hedgehog Launch]

Something of an arcade game, almost.

This is a game that has a deceptive advertising feat on it, but in reality its got quite a bit of depth to it! Most of the graphics were beautiful overall, and the touch with the Videotron screen was also nice. A few suggestions though is that if you moused over a possible buying option, you'll be able to see what else you can afford assuming you bought the option you moused over, since most of the upgrades you can purchase have a somewhat random value to them, as opposed to say $10k or even $550. Also another complaint is that if you manage to get the hedgehog to stay sideways compared to its direction, the stretch you get at high speeds doesn't really match its direction. This stuff is mostly minor though.

About the mechanics of the game, it seems that in order to beat the game as fast as possible, you'll want to earn as much cash as possible. Here's where it gets interesting in that the base cash you earn in the level is pretty much based on luck and little skill/upgrades, the multiplier factors are based mostly on upgrades and little skill (the platforms). I like that touch for a game like this, since it blends in rewards for wise decisions while it's also casual and somewhat forgiving (or cruel) for the less intense players.

Comments and suggestions about the upgrades and features:
--Generally with all of the upgrades I find that it's stupid, imo, that you have to buy all-or-nothing per level, and not the difference between upgrades. It doesn't matter really what lvl band you have. But I suppose decisions due to this element adds luck and randomness to the game.
--The band and the launch platform go very well together, but alone they're actually pretty crappy. Actually I feel that the band gives you less benefit compared the platform when you compare the costs. I also thought that a higher platform sorta neglects to mention that you can stretch the band farther, but that's something you'll realize as you play the game. Stretching diagonally instead of straight down gives you more air (not higher) so you can collect more money. Btw, lvl 10 band and platform = autowin. Yay!
--The thrusters are interesting, but there's a lot of flaws with this. Fuel efficiency is only good for stalling for a higher time multiplier, and it really doesn't help you much in the air unless you've got other upgrades, namely the E-Rocket and the Parachute. Thruster power I find is pretty beneficial, but one thruster should hold the majority of the power while the other thruster should be significantly weaker, but not too weak, or your main thruster will really overpower the other one. Having equal power thrusters I find is a big mistake, as chances are a good score doesn't involve you trying to remain in place, and if you're going off in a direction, it should be consistent since it's a waste to go off left on one launch, then go off right for another launch. And really high stats in thrusters is just really absurd, as the controls become twitch and you lose precision, and there really isn't any reasonable way to make good use of fuel efficiency at such a high level unless you intend to drag out the timer while scraping along the ground. Granted if you're lucky you'll hit a few coins or a platform, but you really shouldn't rely on this, as it's not a good use of your money.
--The E-Rocket imo is one of the best upgrades you can get. It's a free 550-600 ft. per use (goal is 4500 ft.), and it really returns the money you invest pretty much guaranteed. It's also useful in so many other ways, such as if you want to reach a platform of some sort or get a hoard of coins as well as delay the timer. High multipliers all around!
--The Parachute is only great if you have thruster upgrades. Not worthwhile in that respect. However it's great for delaying for time multipliers if you use it that way. And it goes away if you hit a platform, which makes sense.
--Radar = not worth it. Too expensive. It's still mostly luck to find the good platforms. Also, regarding platforms close to the ground, on the radar they are below you?

jmtb02 responds:

Wow, awesome review. Thanks!

-j

[Pico Blast]

Great and fun!

This game has some replay value as it is fairly challenging and I like it xD

However after replaying the third boss form does nothing and just sits there. I think this needs to be looked into.