CorpseGrinderClock's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Deeper Sleep]

Like many classic adventure games, this is vexed with the problem of one tiny pixelated item being very difficult to distinguish as important vs. all the tiny pixelated items that make up the background.

This game is excellent. It uses audio very well, it's lovely and atmospheric. I was particularly fond of the escape challenge, however (spoilers) I found the stereotypical yurei-type spider-crawling drowned girl attacker a little too trite to find scary, whereas the nightmare beings function very much better for me with the reliable grue-ish nyctophobic approach (perhaps just as trite, but helped by vagueness).

I was particularly fond of how the opening went, how it surprised you with familiarity and then switched to an unfamiliar layout. The practice of gradually unsettling the player and setting them on edge over a long period of time without having something jump out at them every few rooms showed a commitment to pacing that is often lacking in horror games.

I was also very fond of how it tied in subtle details of the previous game, and took aspects of the previous game which you wondered if they had any purpose at all and revealed their significance. Great internal consistency, which I am all about. Looking forward to future installments.

[The Last Door - Chapter 1]

What is this? A horror game that isn't "monster jumps out at you"?

I enjoyed this a lot, though I did have a bit of adventure game annoyance at things like a single use crowbar, knife, and hammer. The audio was very good. I would have liked more of a Monkey Island level of pixel detail personally (it ended up being really far too blocky in fullscreen) but it got the job done, and the use of color was quite good.

Wonderful minimalist controls. I would have preferred perhaps an option to walk a little faster (in a game that requires oh so much walking back and forth) but the ability to at least jump to a transition made it acceptable.

A lovely game with a lovely Hitchcock nod. I look forward to playing the next installment.

[Don't Escape]

An interesting game. I found it had a lot of the annoyances that plagued many classic adventure games, such as not knowing whether part of an object could be interacted with (how many times did I open and close that window trying to figure out how to lock it?) or something being either very small or completely invisible. I also did not realize initially that there were two pages to the journal, and that one of the "ingredients" was completely useless.

Some of the text had errors. A minor nitpick, but in future games it would be good to just have someone do a once-over of that. I would have liked to see a little more stuff you could explore and do outside the hut too.

The atmosphere of the game was great. The music could have looped a bit better, but it still did a good job building up the appropriate tension. Another interesting thing would have been to have a passage of time mechanic, in the sense that it gets a little closer to moonrise with each interaction.

Anyway good job, keep making fun and interesting stuff.

[Forbidden Arms]

I had a lot of fun with this game. It's very polished, the upgrading was fun and interesting, and the special moves were satisfying to use. It ended up a little grind-y, and I should have liked to see more variety of enemies than simply slightly recolored ninjas spamming ninja stars, but all in all they did their job and the game looked good and the controls were responsive.

I have a few criticisms:

1. it's Carpel Tunnel: The Game. I found that particularly when going for combo challenges it became a game of hand endurance (I had a combo randomly break at 2995...do you taste my pain?). I know that's always a hard part about design, particularly when you have a cool click-to-charge effect. I would often end up either pausing or spamming tempests just to give my hand a rest.

2. A lot was poorly explained. A lot of the stats referenced things without a lot of context, and it became a little difficult to determine the economy of certain upgrades. A glossary type thing would help. Also, I pulled off the himitsu gekkyu pretty much by accident and wish that unlocking that would show clearly how it's done.

3. The cutscenes just ached for some narration. They were painfully dull with just that background music, save in ones where that was appropriate (such as the appearances of various ninja levels). Voice acting for all characters would be nice, but I know how much of a pain that would be, particularly for such a long opening sequence. I thought the style was appropriate, though the blood animation still isn't quite there yet (it is admittedly rather hard to do right, and I still have trouble with it).

4. I've never had a relic break? Is that a bug?

vipervgames responds:

The lesser relics dont break. The game was way off behind schedule and since im doing 95% of the game, some things never got the chance to be improved fully. Also im nearing the 20mb limit and the game already had 6+ bgms. I apologize if the cutscenes feel a bit dull.
The combo ledger relic synths well with the combo upgrade as normal hits no longer break your combo.. Loled at carpal tnnel.

[Ragdoll Ninja]

"waggle your mouse to overly upbeat music: the game"

Well coded, but the mechanic needs more concept.

[no-one has to die.]

A truly interesting story-driven game.

[Tesla: War Of Currents]

Visually this was excellent. I really liked the design of most of your robot army. I particularly liked how the sharpshooter looked when upgraded.

I thought the Stalin and Molotov-tossing bear were a little...eh? I would much rather have seen a Westinghouse reference or a Mark Twain reference (or simply, more machines.) I would have liked to see other upgradeable units as well, and perhaps more in-depth upgrades.

The path system was interesting. It kind of picked a middle ground between a single linear path and greater overall control. I dunno why greater overall control wouldn't have been as good, aside from somewhat balancing out the tunguska towers and UFOs' longer range, but whatever, for this type of game it's quite enjoyable. I thought it strange that the boss at the end was a mobile enemy, and yet aside from the ones that wait along the path and latch onto you there aren't any others. Patrolling enemies might have added to this as well, particularly robots of a more Edison-esque design.

The final battle, well...it just wasn't challenging or interesting. I ended up with three bears in no time and killed Edison accidentally while trying for 100% completion, then it just kind of...ended? Coulda done with a cinematic or something to tie it up nicely.

All-in-all it was fun, and if you made another I'd definitely play it.

[Fire Catcher]

This is a phenomenal game. The concept is great, I'm frankly amazed at what you've done with the physics, the gameplay is polished and fun, the art, audio, and effects were exceptional.

There's only two things I would change:

1. have more than 1 basic enemy
2. the mystery meat navigation. I don't know why folks feel like things need to have some ambiguous symbol. Why not a button that says "menu" or, at least, when hovering over the buttons have it say what it does?

Mind you, that the biggest gripe is the menu buttons is high praise. This is one of the most visually stunning flash games I've seen. The destructible environments, the great fire effects, the wonderful background art. Pity my CPU wasn't able to keep up, even on the less graphics-intense mode, but that's always kind of the case with games that push the boundaries of what flash is meant to do.

[House of Wolves]

I thought this was great. But I'll be honest, once I beat the game I thought "oh, I thought that was just the tutorial level".

That said, it has pretty decent audio, a nice depth of field for what is in actuality a completely linear game, and the difficulty in obtaining the necessary resources was cleverly curved to culminate in the final battle.

I would have liked there to be more to it, though. I didn't feel like the story was immersive at all, or that the final (see: only) boss was particularly climactic or interesting. I basically just piled my max-sized army of mostly swordsmen upon him and it was over quickly. I feel like there could have been more bosses, more "levels", more environments, etc.

It kind of ends up feeling like a proof of concept for the gameplay mechanics and interface, which work splendidly I might add. One feature I would really have liked (a la Warcraft 3) is the ability to find workers who are idle. Another thing I would have liked is something to deal with things that are behind trees. I would be able to target a pig, shoot it, and then its corpse would be untargetable behind a tree, etc.

Basically, I think the mechanics work great, all it needs is more content.

[Valthirian Arc 2]

Let me begin first off by saying that this improved upon its prequel in practically every way. It has a great concept and is very entertaining and in-depth.

Style-wise it was good, though I found the same two anime faces staring unblinking at me with their candy colored hair and blood-red eyes unsettling. Again, I thought it improved on the prequel by having the change in class affect the wardrobe rather than just having a preset image for each class, but it managed to be a bit eerie nonetheless. The joke item inclusions were a little eh. I suppose I'd have been more bothered by them if they made any visible change in the character's appearance.

I thought it a little surprising that it was only Magi that had dual progression into Scholarsage and Medica. It seemed like Knight and Scout both had room for dual progression. I kind of found it a little disappointing to end up leaving the "scout" type character behind for arquebusier, for instance, instead of having some other sort of rogueish option available.

I rather liked the ability to keep graduated students as mentors, particularly in finding utility for mundane students or those with less desireable traits. Perhaps if you do another one, it would be possible to expand on the teaching aspect, invest and specialize in teachers.

The inability to control the group more effectively became very frustrating when softer classes would stay behind and get slaughtered, particularly on the Chancellor fight where it became essential to pull characters out of the way of his insta-kill AoE attack. It felt like the characters' combat was kind of a throw-them-at-stuff and occasionally press the ultmate button, and each level tended to end kind of anticlimactically. I get that it's definitely hard to manage more complex abilities in a real-time fashion, but it's something to think about.

It had several technical problems. One of the technical problems I found particularly frustrating at higher levels when trying to get the 'strategist' achievements is that it would frequently freeze the game up when increasing class. Fortunately, the autosave is very good and the inconvenience is relatively minor. Another one was that it would turn off music volume kind of randomly. I checked to make sure it wasn't just me pushing a button accidentally, and it would occasionally start like that when reloaded.

Another technical problem was that it was really screwy about resizing in the frame at either Newgrounds or Arcadebomb, and would not allow me to access it in its own window via the ungrounded link. It also had issue with demolishing buildings, though this was always rectified when the game refreshed.

The management of very large numbers of students later in the game became a bit cumbersome and tedious, in future versions I hope that more tools are employed to help manage this, but it was very rewarding to see one's academy grow and progress. I would have liked to see more personal touches to one's academy, such as color scheme, crest, and the attributes of the principal themselves.

All-in-all, the technical gripes are minor, the art style is cohesive, and it gives you hours of fun gameplay. Excellent work, I hope you all decide to keep going with this concept!