Auz's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pokemon Tower Defense]

Interesting idea

Good points:
I think the general idea behind this game is very good. I've played many tower defense games before, but this one does feel different from most others. The level up and evolution system of the Pokemon games is integrated very well into this tower defense game. Also, I was expecting that the game would be very glitch-y and needed lots of improvements, but during play I found out that it actually works very well. There are probably some bugs still left somewhere, but so far I haven't noticed anything noteworthy, so good job on the programming.

Finally, I thought your first version was kinda short with only four levels or so (up to the Pewter Gym), but I see you already improved on that and updated the game. I thought you were gonna release a new submission that would somehow take the save file from this game and use it there (via cookies or something), but you simply updated this one. I think that's the best way to do it, and you got plenty of filesize left to make the game bigger.

Bad points:
The lay-out isn't that pretty. In some screens it's really a bit simplistic with a pure black background and a standard text font. It would be good if you could improve a bit on that. Especially the text font shouldn't be too hard to improve on (just find something prettier). Secondly, I don't think the story was all that interesting, so I skipped through it most of the time. Not a big deal though, the gameplay makes up for it in my opinion.

Lastly, and this is actually more of a tip, I don't think it's necessary to include every single Pokemon from the first generation and synchronize their movesets and all. Of course it's great if you can do that, but I got a feeling that it's a shitload of work for you while the game could be just as awesome without including the uninteresting Pokemon. I don't know what your future plans are with the game, but I doubt anybody would be interested in having a fucking Bellsprout on his team for example.

Overall 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5. The prime reason I didn't gave it a 10 out of 10 is due to the simplistic graphics and lay-out. I think there's plenty of room for improvement there still. For the rest it's an interesting game in my opinion and I hope you will continue this project and finish it someday. Good job.

~Auz

[Pyroscape 3]

Fun

Another fun installment to the series. It is clear that you guys are having fun making these games and that enthusiasm really helps to make the game more enjoyable.

I have to agree with Haggard that the games could've been longer and more difficult. Though that last game with the nukes is kinda difficult since you don't know what to do or expect at first and then BAM you're hit by a nuke already. I was then missing a replay button at the end. Not a huge deal since I can just reload the page to start over again, but still... it'd be more convenient if there was a replay button.

I think the drawings could improve as well at some points. Like those zombies didn't look too good in all honesty, but that FPS part was still nicely done in my opinion.

Overall 8 out of 10, 4 out of 5. I think the first Pyroscape game was still the best in the series, but this one is pretty nice too. While you said it was the series finale, I hope there will still be another sequel. Congrats on the Underdog of the Week award by the way.

~Auz

MonoFlauta responds:

Hi Auz, first of all, it will not be the last of the series, but something strange will happen, will be surprise :P also, yes, the idea of the zombies was just hilarious, as everything lol, didnt want to make a nice art but well, is acceptable that some people consider it bad, i guess it can be just good or bad. About the end, yes, you are right, sorry for that weak point in the game :(
Other thn that, glad you liked the game and yes, as in movies, there isnt nothing like the first one, but we always try to make it better :)
Best regards;
MonoFlauta

[Elephant Quest]

Great game!

I thought this was a very nice platforming / RPG game. I liked how you could level up your elephant, although the credit point spending map could've done with a more clear overview. Not a huge deal though since it doesn't really matter that much how you spend your credits. You could easily get through the game by just blindingly spending your credits in one direction.

I also liked the music and art style a lot and the background story was pretty cute.

I just found one little annoying bug though that I ran into from time to time. Sometimes when you had narrow areas with platforms, I got my elephant stuck underneath a platform and I couldn't move anymore. I could still fire laser and stuff, but I could not move or jump. This happened to me a couple of times in area 8, and I had to refresh the page to reset the game in order to proceed playing. Luckily the game auto-saves, but it would be nice if you could find a fix for that.

Overall 10 out of 10, 5 out of 5. Despite the annoying little bug, it's a very good game. Probably one of the best elephant games I've seen from you thus far.

~Auz

[Crossroads:2D]

Showed potential

I have to agree that the game showed a lot of potential in the beginning, but did not really live up to my expectations in the end. I liked the retro-Pokemon style graphics and the music was kinda catchy, but the game was a bit on the short side. It's fairly easy to think of what you have to do to get which ending / medal and since the game only has four small areas, you can get through it rather quickly.

On one hand I do like the fact that the game has different endings depending on your actions in the game. On the other hand it only came down to fetching the same stuff over and over again but using it on different people. This fetching is a bit annoying when the character walks slowly. I wish you would've added a 'run' button or something.

As for the achievements, perhaps you could add a few more (secret) medals as well for things that you don't really need to do to get to a certain ending, like murdering pretty much everyone or wasting your money or being merciful to whomever.

Overall 7 out of 10, 3 out of 5. Like I already said, the game showed lots of potential. I think you merely need to expand it and work a bit more on the different endings idea.

~Auz

kcnh responds:

Thank you very much for your review!

[CatGame]

Still difficult

Despite the tips you gave, the game is still very difficult. I had upgraded my slingshot twice and tried to click as fast as I could, but after wave 10 or so the game still became insanely hard. The thing is, the slingshot really started to lag while I was bashing the mouse button and the ASD and QWE keys to load it with better ammo. More and more cats kept coming and it was impossible to keep track of what I was doing after a while, so it simply became a button mashing game and the slingshot apparently can't handle that.

Another thing is that the cat ammo is positioned on the screen in such a way that if you try to shoot at low angles, you will click the cats instead of firing a rock. This became very annoying after a while and I simply had to use the slingshot the old fashioned way by pulling the string back. That method is too slow for the later levels though. I suggest that you just make them unclickable because you're gonna need to use the key shortcuts anyway, otherwise you won't survive in this game.

I think the concept was funny though and the graphics were pretty good. I especially liked the clown animations. Just try to tone down the difficulty of the game a little bit.

Overall 7 out of 10, 3 out of 5.

~Auz

[Rune Hunt]

Nice atmosphere

I thought this was a fairly well made submission. I think you managed to create a very good, eerie, dark, mysterious atmosphere in this game. The music you choose helped to establish that, but the best thing was the lighting in my opinion. I really liked the dynamics shadows and the role light played in advancing through the game.

I do wish the character would move a little bit faster through the dungeons though, because you had to do a lot of backtracking and finding your way through mazes. That can become a pain in the ass if your character moves so slow. I understand you want to slow down the gameplay, but a bit more speed would be nice nonetheless.

Furthermore I agree that it was difficult to steer the butterflies in the right direction, but once you figure out what to do it works alright. I thought the butterflies were an interesting puzzle element.

Overall 8 out of 10, 4 out of 5. I think you have managed to implement your ideas into this game pretty well. There's still some room for improvement, but all in all I think this was well made.

~Auz

[Paper Warfare]

Lags too much at level 4

Well it's a fun game for the first couple of levels. I liked paper-style artwork and all the upgrades and different suits you added.

However, I got the same complaint as so many other people have had before me: At level 4 the game becomes unplayable. It starts to lag really badly due to the thousands of bullets the enemies are firing at you. Seriously, near the beginning of the level about 80% of the screen's height became just a big bar of bullets fired by the enemy ships. Even if it wouldn't lag, that's still ridiculous for a level so early on in the game.

I already felt that in the third level too many enemy ships were coming at you. You got all these level 1 ships that float across the screen very slowly. They're not hard to take down, but their numbers increase pretty rapidly until they are eventually blocking off a huge part of the screen. If you fly into that zone, you're gonna take some serious damage. I find it quite annoying, and I could understand such situations happening at later levels, but it shouldn't become that hard to keep the screen clear so early in the game.

I suggest that you make the first levels easier by adding less enemies. And to prevent enemies from blocking off a whole part of the screen, maybe you should make the spread of the third weapon a bit wider. It seemed to only spread downwards so that you would eventually get in trouble with enemies moving over you.

Overall 6 out of 10, 3 out of 5. It has potential, but it needs some serious improvements.

~Auz

[Ether Of Magic Cards]

Nice card game

A very nice card game in my opinion. I really like these kind of games. This had pretty good graphics in my opinion and alright sound effects. I was missing some music during the battles though, it would be nice if you added some. At least add something in the final battle to make it more epic. Also I think there could be a few minor adjustments in the cards themselves to make the game slightly better:

-Like some guy below me said: Out-damaging is almost always just no good. There are loads of healing cards in this game that could get him straight back up his feet when he was down to below 10 HP. They all use health generation +4 cards right at the beginning so that they heal loads of HP back automatically anyway. I suggest you make it health generation +3 at max and make it a rarer card. Also, leave it at heal +10, rather than 15 and just make them have fewer healing cards in their possession. The battles shouldn't entirely be about who has the highest amount of buffs in my opinion.

-I think the God's Wrath card was a little overpowered. I mean 20 damage AND paralysis? I happened to get two of these cards before the final battle and was lucky enough to have them in my hand from the start. The battle was over within four turns. I think it might be more balanced if you either let it do 15 damage and paralysis, or just 20 damage.

-Why were there different types of elemental cards? Well I suppose it just looks better than a general attack card, but I think you could use them to add a bit more depth. Why not make some enemies weak against a certain element and strong against another? Like it adds or reduces damage by 20% or something.

-What's the point of burning a card? It just makes you lose a turn, it really makes no sense. If you could let us burn two cards at once, then it could possible have an advantage. But just one card doesn't help you in any way.

That's about it. I also wished the game would've been longer. I mean there are only about 15 battles in the game in total. Even though the battles are long sometimes, you're done with this within 45 minutes or so. I wouldn't mind if you made it a bit longer.

Overall 8 out of 10, 4 out of 5. A good card game still. Keep up the good work!

~Auz

[Pyroscape]

A bit silly, but nice

Thought I'd check this out, seeing as you're getting so many views with it in such a short time. It's amazing that you've earned $26 with this already, and only 11,000 of those views came from NG? Wow :o Underdog of the Week is also a surprise for a submission with such a score. You would expect that some spamgroup flash would be able to steal it from this, but apparently not.

As for the game itself, I thought it was very funny. I didn't read the comments at first so I didn't expect it to be so random. I thought it would just be a room-escape game, but with real videos as a twist. Which would've already been a nice idea in my opinion. The comments the guy gave when you clicked on stuff were pretty funny as well. "This bed smells like sex" XD I also laughed at how he threw all the stuff you first collected away after he had the fire extinguisher.

The only complaint I have about this game would be that it is kinda short. I was expecting it to be longer to be honest. I guess it would be hard to make it any longer than this though, considering the filesize is already 14.1 MB.

Overall 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5. A nice game you made here. I can see where the popularity comes from. Congrats with the awards and keep it up :)

~Auz

Fro responds:

The next one will be longer, I think it was because the room wasn't long enough.

The views are coming from Chinese website, but they called us terrorists.

[Fig. 8]

Not bad, but not too good either

I liked the idea and the setting of the game. I also liked the music you added, it was very relaxing. There were a few things however that sorta ruined this game for me.

One thing that I found rather annoying was the fact that you had to circle around a checkpoint, causing your multiplier to drop back to zero. It sorta felt like the game punished you for using checkpoints, especially if you had just build up a high multiplier. Another annoying thing about the checkpoints was that it seemed to put you back in the position at which you had completed the circle. I remember near the end I died once and the checkpoint put me back in such an awkward way that I died half a dozen times more. On top of that, I believe the game had sort of a bug at that checkpoint. The screen just sped up for a second so that I had even less time to get my bicycle straight.

Another complaint I have is that the game is incredibly long and repetitive. I never had any idea if I was near the end or not and only after about half an hour I finally got to the finish. Half an hour of gameplay is normally alright, but there was nothing more to this game than simply dodging lines and trying to build up your multiplier. The ending was also a bit of a disappointment since it just starts over again.

Overall 7 out of 10, 3 out of 5. A good idea, but worked out poorly. I hope you'll try to come up with an improvement someday.

~Auz