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!

[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.

[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

[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!

[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.

[Super Stacker 2]

Very nice game

This sure is a very fun and addicting game. First off, the sounds and music of this game were very good. I especially liked that catchy jazz tune you added at the beginning. I just had to replay it over and over again, I loved it. I liked the "boom" sounds the shapes make as well, it sounds kinda funny. Beside the sounds and music, the graphics were also pretty good. Everything looked very nice and colorful, yet very simple.

I thought this game had a very realistic physics engine as well. Except for when the really large shapes came in. For some reason all the shapes below the big shape start to shake out of control while the big shape would normally compress them, increasing the friction making it harder for them to move. So that could've been done better perhaps. But other than that, it was very good and felt very realistic in most levels.

Furthermore I thought the level designs were great. They got very challenging in the end and you really had to think and try a couple of times before you knew how to stack them up right. Then when you completed the game, the extra mode gave an even bigger challenge. I thought that was a very nice idea since it adds some replay value to the game.

Overall 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5. A very nice game like I said. Looking forward to a third version of this game. Keep up the excellent work.

~Auz

TheGameHomepage responds:

Thanks for the great review :)

[Epic Battle Fantasy 2]

Nice work again

Very nice work again Matt. You added some interesting new things to the series.

I thought the ability choosing system was pretty good and interesting. Although I didn´t quite like how it seemed to be based on luck what abilities you could choose. Or at least, there were certain abilities that I liked to have early on in the game. But sometimes they appeared very late for some reason (randomness I assume). And sometimes you could only choose between a bunch of very crappy abilities while sometimes you got some really good ones while you only get to pick one of them.

Perhaps it would be nice if there was always a standard set of abilities for every level. Or maybe you could make it so that you could choose some sort of classpath for your character. Like you could perhaps turn the fighter guy into a paladin type warrior and turn the girl into a battle mage in the end if you only choose certain abilities. With that they could get new attacks and stuff. Like the Seiken ability the fighter already has.

I also didn´t like the new summons as much. Scanbot and Slimebunny were good additions for their abilities, but why remove Registeel and Catastrophe? I thought those were the coolest ones of the first game. And it´s kinda lame that the two best summons in this one could also do major damage to your own party. Because of that I didn´t use the summons for attacking at all because it was too dangerous or useless anyway.

Overall 9 out of 10, 5 out of 5. Like I said, good work again Matt. Except for a few small things it´s deffinatly an improvement of the first one. Looking forward to the third. Keep up the excellent work.

~Auz

matt-likes-swords responds:

Thank ye.
Ion's more useful than ye give it credit for though!
And the skills aren't random, they're based on what actions you take.