CorpseGrinderClock's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[DoctorWho: Brilliant Game]

Aptly named.

There is good pixel art and bad pixel art. This is the former category. It's very lovely, the environments in particular. The only spot where it was frustrating was when chronologically arranging the doctors by their pixel images, which was hard, but the inclusion of the different tardises was helpful.

The music was appropriate but I thought given the level of detail that it merited perhaps an extra layer, maybe less ATARI and more Lucasgames. There were a couple spots where it lacked ambient music that would have been served well by it, and the sounds didn't hold the same chiptone quality as the music.

I was fond of the inclusion of dialogue options. I think that changes it dramatically from simply watching a pixelated Day of the Doctor cinematic to an engaging experience. I hope that the completed version goes with a full array of options rather than simply a couple dialogue paths, however. I did like how it combined faithful representation of the source content with creative interaction.

This seems like something that could easily be a full-blown adventure game. As it is, it's kind of a collection of minigames.

Something aesthetically I might suggest, to take another page out of Monkey Island's adventure game Bible, is the inclusion of slightly more detailed pictures of their faces next to the dialogue boxes with appropriate expressions to go with what they are saying.

All-in-all quite excellent, beautifully and faithfully done, I hope that the full version gets the attention it deserves.

[The Shai Job]

Seems like something that could have been improved dramatically with a few easy things.

The rooms you're shooting these guys in could have been drawn instead of the same backgrounds.

The gun could have had a noise.

Could have left the furry bit out.

Could have given really any clue as to which direction to go in order not to not randomly die.

Could have made it longer and more in depth. Why not? It's not like art or animation went into it to make that difficult to accomplish. Speaking of which, considering how simple the art was I don't know why you didn't bother with animation.

The writing was the core of the whole game, and that wasn't terribly good or engaging. Sorry to be harsh, but that text with the same jazz loop just isn't a whole game, even with the "click the guy" minigame.

[Loot Hero]

Ehhh...

"Grind-fest" is accurate. Playing around with this gameplay is neat I suppose, but it seems like there could have been things to make it more interesting, such as consumables you can activate or abilities with cooldowns or limits, bosses that do something other than stand there (I mean, you already have the ability to run back and forth, why not at least have them do things like jump or summon obstacles?)

The art for the enemies was enjoyable. I particularly liked the ogre.

[Zos]

This is very much how retro games should be made. The storylines and mechanics are good, the puzzles interesting and challenging, the art, music, and sounds appropriate...

The only thing I didn't care for aesthetically was there were a few things that seemed randomly not pixelated. Minor beef, considering.

I found farming some materials to be unnecessarily tedious and disruptive to the pacing. That's more a striking the right balance thing. Trekking to the top of that bloody mountain (and back down) over and over got old quick.

The combination of settings and storylines was very good in a Chrono Trigger or Knights of the Old Republic way. An outstanding game for flash, I hope to see more in the future.

[The Everloom]

A very good-looking and interesting adventure game.

I noticed a couple Chrono Trigger references (floating island, "the black wind blows", the resurrection egg, etc.) but it was tasteful. I thought it had a nice balance of whimsy and eeriness.

I think a few things could have been better touched on story-wise, particularly what the cultists intended to accomplish. Kind of came off as "generic cultists seek generic doom". I found myself kind of envying the NPCs who got to do cool things like fly and do magic, while the main thing I ended up doing was running back and forth picking up stuff and giving it to people. Even the cool bits like having a floating eye minion follow you around just ended up being a one quest bit to find some rich guy's lost ring in the grass.

I get that this is expecting a lot from a flash game, and this is a really beautiful flash game that functions very well and involves a lot of creativity. The way this ended hinted at an intended sequel, however, and I hope these things are taken to account should that come to fruition.

[Mars Colonies Demo]

There's sure a lot of negative comments from people who don't have any clue how complex this game must have been to create.

This game is very enjoyable. I in particular thought it had some very lovely art and pixel animation, in very much the vein of the classic command and conquer games. The buildings upgraded in a visually pleasing way. I hope that there are plans for an expanded sequel with more features like that.

As others have certainly said, I think that a great deal of unnecessary frustration arises with many of the orders being more 'suggestions'. For instance, let's say there's a chunk of mineral in the way that you want colonists to focus on first (either to get out of the way or because it's not near a horde of space pirates). You can indicate that you'd like them to do that first, but they tend to just ignore that.

I'm resisting the urge to complain about there being less military emphasis, because it's not a war game it's a colonization game. That said, I hope in future expansions that there could be more in-depth mechanics (research trees, variety of perks and possibly ways to upgrade less-skilled employees and eliminate faults or earn/purchase perks, etc.)

I thought it struck an excellent balance as far as employee needs and available resources. It was a great deal of the tension and interest of the game to determine whether or not I was going to pay for less-skilled workers to amass them more quickly or save up for better ones, whether I was going to need to work on component sufficiency or food first, etc.

I thought that the tutorial mission could have been more illustrative of certain aspects, particularly addressing various needs, the functions of every building, the various perks and faults, and leveling.

I continue to find achievements where you have to guess what the game wants you to do to be frustrating, but that's a matter of taste I suppose.

All-in-all, excellent game, best of luck in your future submissions.

[Clock Fighter]

I usually don't like ultra-realistic games but this one appealed to me

MysteryG responds:

Thanks:)

[Hipster B]

Let's be honest I just came here to see B naked

cavifax responds:

Trust me it was really hard to dev this game with a boner

[Undead Throne]

Not bad

So I played this all the way through and it was a pretty well put-together game. The art was decent, the gameplay was fairly enjoyable, and it had some nice touches.

Here's my beefs to begin with:

- The cutscenes are a joke. Really, how long are you going to milk panning outward? The longer spent on that the sooner the initial appeal of the art fades and you start noticing the sloppiness. Add some animation there, or just make them shorter.

- The benefits of each base item seem somewhat arbitrary, and some things are unaccessible for enchantments. For instance, the number one thing that would kill me would be stunlocking, but you can't enchant for stun resistance.

- The story had no story whatsoever, really. It seems to me so much more could have been done with it.

- The difficulty curve is totally wonky. I died time and time again in fallmoor because of the axe elves combined with the ice-bolt weenies, but every dragon was cake once I was geared up enough, and there's nothing that I couldn't stomp into a pulp once I hired fire demon henchmen, and the damage of most "damage" spells was pathetic compared to the zombie wrath triple-crit.

Something I would have included would be add some sort of cutscene or significance when a particular race falls, like the orcs or the dwarves or the vampires. They should have their own boss battle, and the dragons needed to be WAY tougher because they were literally a nuissance you could easily farm once you got geared up, and it wasn't hard to farm my way to all godly gear fairly quickly.

[One of Us]

Lacking

The presentation obviously took time, effort, and attention to detail and for that I give you credit.

That said, the premise was vague psuedo-scary pretentious. Flashing words and blur filters and cryptic sayings while following a badly animated anime-haired character through an unexplained emo world.

The gameplay, moreover, was poorly balanced and unforgiving. The first real challenges come from dying and dying over and over again until you actually figure out the actual size of the hitbox you're trying to jump over and, if you get it wrong for any of these in the wrong amount of time, you go back to the beginning of the level.

It's a frustrating game without enough development to make one interested in the meaning behind the pretentious cryptic flimflam all over the place, so it provides little incentive to actually progress in it.

A couple things to consider that will help:
- Firstly, don't abuse the blur filter so much.

- Work on walk cycles. The one thing that you constantly see on the screen all the time (the main character's sprite) should at least be the thing that is done well. The running and jumping should work well and look good.

- Playtest more thoroughly. If the game is a pain in the ass and doesn't provide adequate reward or reason for playing, fix it.

- If you're going to plunge people into cryptic nonsense, at least make it interesting and intriguing cryptic nonsense so people will actually be curious about it rather than bored with it seeming like a contrived attempt at cryptic scariness.

Anyway I think you're close to the mark, I hope you take these criticisms into consideration and improve upon the original production.