CorpseGrinderClock's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Skullz]

So my experience can be summed up as "huh okay wait what shit oh alright oh damn well that happened alright I guess" the end.

And from the dialogue, I suppose that was exactly what was intended?

Pizzamakesgames responds:

Basically.

[rangerfall_canyon]

Well, thusfar the most complex and coherent use of Unity I've seen on the site, but still half of this I have no idea what's going on or what--if anything--I'm accomplishing other than boosting towards and firing mostly fruitlessly at ships that are randomly flying around.

garcia1968 responds:

Thanks for the playtest, rating and review. In the instructions that are first displayed when the game starts and on the game webpage is the below text describing the current gameplay goal. Let me know how you would better present the current below goal to the player or other gameplay goals that might be fun for the game. thanks, garcia1968

Green glowing boxes are 'cores' which ships will gather and exhaust, flashing red when close to exhausted.

Game goal is to defend these green cores from being taken and exhausted.

When all cores are gone, game restarts.

[The Awakening RPG]

Being a one-man team does make the progress slower. Why not recruit help? NG has forums dedicated to precisely that, as well as an alphas section. Finding the right people to work with can help keep the pace and divide up the work (the wrong people can have, frankly, the opposite effect).

I thought that the customization section was nice and varied, and liked the way unlocking features was tied to achievement (instead of promotion, as seems to be the obnoxious norm these days).

The combat surprised me in how it balanced the counter/attack/dodge system and made it interesting with ranged vs. melee strategy. I think it has potential in that respect.

Were you to continue with the game, here are my recommendations and criticisms:
- Your use of gradients leaves much to be desired. They tend to be just a single color and black, and instead of making it look like you have a reflective surface it makes the shape look very distorted. That's my number 1 flash art beef.
- The "references" to other things got a little obnoxious at points. Elder Scrolls, Tolkien, Azeroth, Tokien, Tolkien...some subtlety would greatly improve this.
- Choosing which quests have arrows appear would be nice. There were several times when a quest said "take [thing] back to [person]" and I'm like "Where the hell is [person]? Which one are they?" and the quest thing didn't see fit to give me directions.
- As nice and complex as your appearance could be, you had very little say in your personality and how you interacted with people, which is much more key to immersion.

RockLou responds:

I don't work well in teams.
I thought of being able to disable quest arrows. But I never got around to it, it never seemed necessary enough.
I tried to keep the conversations simple, so people who don't want to read so much could also keep up. And I wanted to keep the conversation options limited to 2 options, so that the Q/E keys were all you needed to use.

[the river runs red]

Less action, more romance please.

Melvinsgamefountain responds:

the bear roars that in mind

[no higher than 1]

0 because it isn't a dating sim

Melvinsgamefountain responds:

who plays dating sims?

[Cube and Me - KS Demo]

An addicting and fun game, if woefully baffling, unexplained, and incomplete. Every single aspect of the game could do with better explanation, and pictures with arrows are not necessarily better than a straight up explanation.

jegnan1 responds:

Could you elaborate on which specific part of the game you had difficulty understanding? We will try to look into it and fix this issue. Thanks!

[Planets Gone Rogue!]

Ignoring the HOLY PHYSICS BATMAN problems with the concept, which could be a doctoral thesis in and of itself...

The gameplay is fun! The timing and aiming mechanic rewards skill while necessitating economy, the stats are clearly and quantifiably explained (which seems like a no-brainer, but soooo many games just don't bother).

The selection of weapons and their different functions was cool. I would would have liked perhaps more player involvement in the recovery and implementation of weapons rather than a "it just happens!" kind of deal. Artifacts were a cool perk system, I'd have liked maybe a more visual component to go with it, at least an item name or what have you.

I found the military/scientist dynamic interesting, but it wasn't explored very much and they essentially provided the same gameplay function, i.e. side quests. The planet as a medium and your position as the commander seems to beg for a more political aspect of the game; an example might be the planet's response to devastation from an attack, or response to a discovery that increases their contentment. Perhaps things like a population mechanic, just spitballing here, but repeated devastating planetary attacks (as the opening indicated they were) would wreak havoc on infrastructure and population, and this might require some hard planetary survival choices, like forced repopulation programmes, totalitarianism vs. civil unrest, propaganda, etc.. Something with continuity. Maybe that's not this game, I dunno, but I think it could be an interesting facet of a sequel.

I think that some of the weapon sounds could be better. The machine gun, for instance, sounds pretty scrawny for a cannon that shoots shells the size of the Chicxulub asteroid. The music is nice and atmospheric, though I think the music could be more climactic for different encounters. It might also be interesting to add moons and planetoids as your smaller encounters, and have more salient artificial aspects of higher-level planets. Perhaps some story-based recognition of the fact that you've annihilated a whole planet might be good too, to remind us that we're not just playing "big gun balls gone rogue!".

Anyway, good stuff, look forward to seeing more.

OMBG responds:

Thanks for playing & the detailed review! I think you are the first person to object the game's ridiculous handling of physics...there are many, many logical flaws to be found here, but I think the game gets away with it since it never takes itself too seriously in that regard.

You named a lot of features, aspects and ideas where I agree with you that the game would benefit from them it they were in the game, for example a weapon research system, even if it is just a dialog option like "Which weapon should we research next?". Also I would have loved to make the perks / artifacts more interesting visually, so you can enjoy it more when they kick in in battle. Things like those did not make it into the game because development was already dragging on for a long time while I still had hundreds of ideas what you could add to the game, but I set myself a deadline because I feared I would never be able to finish it. If I do a sequel or a similar complex game, I should now be able to plan ahead better to decide beforehand that the features that will make it into the game will add up to a more balanced package.

I also agree with you on the sound effects and music, these both could be better. I have not learned / tried yet how to make my own sound effects so I tried to make my best use of the soundFX that are published in public domain on freesound.org. I learned the basics of music creation alongside while I developed the game, which might explain a bit, why the battle music tracks all sound like cheap dutch house music ;-) But I have just started here, and I hope I will be able to improve here as well for my future games.

Thanks again for putting so much thoughts into my game!

[Arrow is move my dear fri]

Well, on the bright side, it's one of the best dating sims I've ever seen.

Melvinsgamefountain responds:

yeah i thought that when i was making it

[Blazing haystacks]

So the first bug I encountered was when you've ressurrected someone and they have a chance of winning, the game will still fade out and say you've failed. It will also be somewhat overzealous with cutting off your ability to collect coins at the beginning of the fade, which is quite frustrating.

The achievements don't say anything when you click on them or hover over them. If you don't catch them with your eye immediately upon getting them (which if you're intent on playing, is not unlikely) you just don't see what they are.

When you go back to replay levels after winning, no matter which level you play, it gives you the "you win!" screen and forces you to exit, which then forces you to play the tutorial again if you want to play again.

The music is pretty bleh. It's like boring options menu music for every level. Seems like it should change depending on the level, or at least change to frantic music when the first fire is lit.

I think with some polishing of the art, fixing the bugs, and expanding the mechanics, you have the potential for an enjoyable game. As it is, this one feels unfinished.

slamirstudio responds:

hi, thanks for feedback. We fixed the bug with resurrection and add some new enemy types

[Funk Ar0und:Green Banana]

gettin' funky in here

AbsintheClock responds:

Roll down the windows and gimme some air.