Auz's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Abbabeb - The Game]

Nice riddle. I gotta admit that it took me quite a while before I got it, despite the fact that I solved hint 5 almost instantly. I kept thinking abbabeb would contain the answer and I didn't pay much attention to the actual flash animation. I should have, because 4 is actually pretty obvious when you look at the flash and when I got that I solved the riddle right away.

Anyway, It's nice how you made something so simple and fun. Only minor complaint I have is that the music got on my nerves. It's a song that gets stuck in your head for hours (thanks for that).

Overall 3.5 out of 5. Mostly giving this score just for the idea. I hope you can come up with something similar the next Clock Day.

~Auz

JeffersonTD responds:

Thanks for the comment and feedback!

You are right, the music can quite easily get on one's nerves, and forcing the "player" to mute the system sounds entirely isn't a good thing as people might want to listen to music of their own. As this was just a quick clockday submission I'll leave it as it is, but If I come up with something for the next clockday I'll make sure I'll put in the mute button! :)

[The Drawing Grounds]

This is a very nice idea in my opinion. I like how easily you can connect with other people on Newgrounds this way. I think it's also great that you can look up people who recently played the game as to prevent that you'll just find users who don't bother with this game anymore.

The interface is good in my opinion. The lay-out of everything is nice and simple and the tools are sufficient and easy to work with. Perhaps an eraser tool would be a nice addition though. I couldn't find one apart from the undo tool, but that isn't always that convenient to use. Also, a chat/message option might be nice (an in-game one), where you can send comments to someone like "hey nice drawing" or give a hint. I suppose you could also do that via the PM, but at times I might prefer to give an in-game comment. Lastly I suggest a speed up button for the guessing part. It took pretty long sometimes to fully watch someone's drawing process.

Overall 4.5 out of 5. A nice idea like I said and well executed. Keep up the good work.

~Auz

Mattster responds:

Great suggestions/feedback! Thanks for the review! :)

[Second Wind]

A good game overall I have to say. You really did succeed in making a fun RPG game with very simple mechanics and graphics. Yet, you still added some depth to the game by adding many different classes and many different enemies. I think the game is quite addicting too and I also like the humour you added.

The only big complaint I have is that there is a rather large luck factor involved. I actually never managed to get out of the cave level after like five tries and the main reason I died each time is because I met 3-4 enemies in a row and just couldn't deal with them. It's pretty lame if you've been playing for a while that you die like that. I don't know what the code behind the random exploring is, but perhaps it would be good if you had less chance of facing another enemy if you've just beaten one. At least you could do this in the first area.

Another small thing, I didn't like how every time I got a game over, I had to sit through the intro again. Can't you just let us go back to the menu screen? It would be quicker.

Lastly, I did face one bug during my first game. For some reason enemies didn't die anymore. Their Health dropped to 0, but they kept attacking and whatever I did I couldn't kill him and was forced to run. This then happened again at the next battle so I died eventually. I don't know what caused it, but perhaps you can figure out why this happened by looking at the code.

Overall 4.5 out of 5. Despite some minor complaints, I think you made a good game. Keep up the good work.

~Auz

squidly responds:

I'm fixing this stuff, I honestly thought the menu deal was done and over with, but apparently it's not.

With the dungeon, I'm going to just down-level everything, I think i left the balancing for that place as when it used to be the only place in the game.

It's an intro, it should be leveled as such.

Thanks for the review!

[Bounce Up Balls]

This is a pretty nice keepy-uppy type of game to waste some time with.

It is very, very difficult to get the 120 seconds medal I have to say. After I upgraded enough to get the 90 seconds medal without too much trouble, upgrading didn't actually seem to help that much anymore. There are just too many balls coming in eventually and as I try to move around I just end up smashing a lot of balls downwards rather than keeping them up. It would perhaps be nice if you allowed us to upgrade a little bit more (especially for the speed upgrade) or if you just let less balls come in after the 90 seconds mark. Then again, apparently people are able to obtain the medal, so perhaps it's just me being terrible at this game.

Anyway, as for some improvements, you could perhaps consider making the graphics more fancy. Add some effects or something, because right now it all looked a little simplistic to me. Also, the music got annoying after a while, but I guess you already anticipated on that since you added a mute button. Lastly, maybe you can add some collectable power ups or something, like bombs that clear the screen or blast the balls away from you. Just an idea.

Overall 3 out of 5. A nice little time waster. Keep up the good work.

~Auz

[When I Was Young]

This is a pretty nice game in my opinion. I kinda liked the colourful graphics, even though the drawings and animation are a little bit simplistic. The music is alright too. I think the tune is kinda catchy although I doubt I can bare listening to it for long.

What I didn't really like was the "screen to screen" exploring rather than having the camera scroll with you. Actually, that in itself isn't a problem, but on some screens you are suddenly right in front of a gap or have an enemy right in your face. I think that's a little annoying and it makes it quite hard to time your jumps. It would nice if you made the level lay-out so that you can at least see where you end up and be sure that you can safely walk into the next screen.

Lastly, personally I kinda like how it's a bit on the short side. There were a couple of screens where I died quite a lot of times and if the game had been much longer I think that would've only made it more and more frustrating. If you're ever going to make a sequel I think keeping it short and sweet is fine.

3.5 / 5

~Auz

jarofed responds:

Thank you for the great feedback. I will keep your ideas in account if decide to make the sequel.

[Cinema Quiz]

This quiz could certainly use a lot of improvements. I found the level of the questions alright and it was nice that you sometimes asked to connect and arrange things (that's not something you often see in quiz games). However, only seven questions in all is way too few in my opinion. It shouldn't take that much effort to add a lot more questions with a similar set-up. Basically all you have to do is rewrite the questions and answer and rearrange the code a little.

Furthermore, the connecting question was quite annoying since it was difficult to get the pieces in the right place. The screen would scroll up and down rather quickly so that I had to move my mouse the other way again to the answer I wanted to pick. Also, the pieces switched places when I didn't want them to. I would say, try to get rid of the scroll bar and get everything within one frame.

Lastly, you could work a bit on the lay-out. Right now I can't help but assume you used some pre-made sheet and just filled in the questions and answers.

Overall 2 out of 5. I think the questions you asked were nice and challenging, but it needs a lot of improvements in other areas.

~Auz

Danyel80 responds:

Thanks for the feedback. I'll upload another version with some improvements.

[Truck Race 3D]

This is a pretty decent 3D racer game. The graphics are actually a bit better than most 3D racer games I've seen. However, there is still plenty of room for improvements in my opinion.

First and foremost, you need to improve the steering. Right now it's way too sensitive; If I try to correct a little bit my truck just goes all over the place, often ending up on the other side of the road from which I'll have to correct again. It's pretty hard to keep your truck on track this way.

Secondly, some expanding would be nice. I'm missing music in the menu screen and during the race and there doesn't seem to be any goal in the game. You can just finish the race and no matter your position, you'll advance to the next race. You don't get any points, the game doesn't seem to record you times or anything... A track selection would be nice as well.

Third, I think the trucks look a little bit out of place. They're much brighter than the environment. Try to decrease their brightness a little to make them blend with the environment.

Overall 2.5 out of 5. A decent racer game overall, but still in need of some improvements.

~Auz

[Chuck the Sheep]

Nice

I can always enjoy these launching type of games where you have to bring your character to cover some distance by purchasing upgrades and everything. I liked the cute little background story with the sheep tryin to escape the farm. A nice twist from other launch games was the resources upgrade system. I haven't seen that in a launch game before (often is was simply money you had to collect) and I think it's a nice little addition. It makes room for some more depth.

I do think the resources system is a little bit out of balance though. Near the end of the game I found that the most common resources like wood, water and meat were actually far more valuable than electricity and oil have ever been. Since you could just trade everything by mixing 1 with 1 other it was very easy to obtain some electricity while the most electricity you ever had to spend was 40 or so on the final upgrades if I remember correctly. I think it might have been a little bit better if you needed to mix like 3 oil with 3 iron to make 1 electricity. Just to make the bottom resources a bit more scarce and valuable.

Overall 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5. Good game. Keep up the good work.

~Auz

[William and Sly 2]

Wonderful game

This is a wonderful game in my opinion. Nice and colourful graphics, lovely music (liked the animal sound) and I liked platforming around as a fox discovering and collecting things.

It seems easier and shorter than the first one though, but that's alright. I remember walking around for long times without being able to find anything. Here you at least made it somewhat easier with the vision and the fact that there was less to collect anyway.

I wouldn't have minded some more puzzling. I kinda liked the riddle with the orbs, but it was kind of easy to figure out. Perhaps next time you could add some more puzzles and make them increase in difficulty as you progress.

Overall 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5. Good work. I hope you'll make another one someday. It's also nice to see that you added medals again.

~Auz

PS: What is up with the *Squeek* in one of the holes I found? It looked suspicious but it didn't seem to be much of a secret.

[Castaway 2]

Good RPG

This is a very nice RPG game in my opinion. It started off kinda slow and I thought it was a bit confusing at first, but as you advance in the game it gets much more fun. The graphics looked very nice and colourful, the music was nice and what I especially liked was the crafting system. It was interesting that you could craft older equipment into something new and much better using certain materials.

The leveling and ability learning system was nice too. Kinda standard, but it's nice that it's in there at least and that you could grow your character in the way you wanted him. Only complaint I have is that the level curve became a little bit steep at some point. About right when you enter the swamp area. There were some monsters there that could stun you and stunning was really cheap in this game. Those flying monsters would just keep coming at you while you were stunned and you could do nothing but see your HP getting drained. They were level 16, but I found that even when you were level 20 or higher you still had great trouble with them. Freezing was another one of those effects that could really fuck you up.

Now at the same time, if you had that Vindictor club, you could completely rape every single boss in the game without having much trouble. Just drive him into a corner and whack him with the club and use Thunder for extra stunning when needed. The bosses could hardly do a thing.

I suggest that you make the stunning effect last a little bit shorter. Like I said, it is pretty cheap and basically became the ultimate strategy later on in the game. I don't know what is the standard level to beat the final boss, but I was level 23 and I had the feeling that was kinda low. Battle was a real walk in the park though.

Overall 10 out of 10, 5 out of 5. Despite that little stunning 'imbalance', I think it was a very good RPG game and I'm quite interested in the sequel. Keep up the good work.

~Auz