Score: 8

"I found no flaw in the controls."

submission: Scribbland

date: December 18, 2009

Yeah, I don't see the issue either. I found the controls very intuitive. I also love the music and the general aesthetic of the game. It's kinda... retro? But not in the usual ATARI or NES way, more in a 1990's Apple 7 or Windows 95 kids' game way, which is really appealing and original.

My biggest problem would be the lack of levels. Twenty is not alot - forty would have been more like it. The fact that the game kicks you back to the menu after beating each one (if you've beaten the next one) is annoying, particularly when you're playing through a second time on Hard. There should definitely be a button to lower quality (it worked just fine on my PC except for the fade-out effects). There are also a few points on Hard where it seems basically impossible to finish the level due to poor enemy placement. I'm thinking of Level 13 in particular - those two turtles are just placed in the right way to make the timing completely ridiculous for that one jump.

Score: 6

"Pretty fun."

submission: Infectonator!

date: December 13, 2009

Not very deep gameplay. Other people have already mentioned the time limit (which by the way came out of fucking nowhere - maybe I just didn't read the introductory tutorial attentively enough).

It took me a good minute to find the exit button for the upgrades screen, and the achievements window that pops up during gameplay was really annoying.

The fact that there isn't anything else to say about this is an example of why it's only getting a 6 out of 10. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Score: 7

"Very well made, and pretty fun."

submission: Copy Cat

date: November 29, 2009

Clever puzzle mechanics, and the right level of difficulty. The biggest problem is definitely that everything is way too slow - the speed at which paint washes over the canvas, the speed at which the help window drops down, everything goes about three times too slowly. Ever used a DVD where there are 20-second long transitions in between every menu and all you want to do is turn off the subtitles? It's like that.

The other problem with the game is that it ends the levels too hastily. Often it would go HEY WELL DONE YOU FINISHED and I'm like WHAT NO THIS PURPLE BIT HERE SHOULD BE GREEN and the game was all like TOUGH BREAK SHITFACE, MOVE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL. This is partly just annoying because sometimes I'd like the satisfaction of completing the painting properly before moving on, and that could be fixed easily by allowing the player to keep going after the game deems their painting sufficient to get to the next level. But other times it would end before I'd actually worked out the puzzle, which is kind of gamebreaking, but that would be much more difficult to fix and it's not really as big a deal.

Those are really the only "problems" in the game, other than that there're just a few features that would make it even better - oh except for the so-called "hint" on level 2. What the hell, thanks for telling me the whole solution, you jerk. Maybe next level you can just have the game play itself for me.

The big thing that needs to be added are checkpoints. Sometimes it takes you ages to get to a certain position in the painting, and then one false step and you'll have to restart everything. I'd like to be able to save so that doesn't happen. Less importantly, it would be nice to be able to fine-move pieces using the arrow keys. You don't actually need that level of precision to beat the game though, so that's not too big a deal. It'd just be cool to have.

Lastly: please tell people that clicking the "hint" button opens a new window. You get a seven out of ten not because of the problems I listed above, but simply because this kind of puzzle game only has so much lasting appeal. You'd have gotten the same score even if you fixed all of the aformentioned problems.

7/10 | 3/5

Score: 7

"Excellent."

submission: Ergon / Logos

date: October 29, 2009

Really cool, what I like best about it is it manages to maintain a "fun" attitude, rather than a supremely pretentious one like most games of this type do, its only problem (and it's a big problem) is that it's very difficult to choose the path you want. I can't see how you managed to mess that up to be honest, but you evidently did.

Also, I'm reading that there's a path that causes your computer to freeze up? Intentional or not, that's not ok.

Score: 4

"Much better - but still not good enough."

submission: Colour My World

date: October 22, 2009

You've improved in putting some actual substance in the game (still not very much, but the first game had none at all), for instance in terms of story. You explored the concept of a world where emotion is forbidden slightly more but still barely scratched the surface.

Because of this, your game still has the same problem as the first in that it is an extremely shallow and juvenile attempt at being a serious arty game. You're making a story about love, but you have a view of love that is frankly the most laughable, superficial type of view there is. You're not exploring the concept of love or affection at all, you're staying stuck at candy-hearts, Hallmark "I WUV YOO" love, which does NOT, I'm sorry to tell you, provide any kind of emotional impact. All it does is make people roll their eyes and cringe.

Stories about love do NOT have to stay at the Harlequin romance level. There are great works of literature written about it. But you know what? The people who created those had something to SAY about love. Those stories are incredibly deep and therefore beautiful and interesting. But you don't have anything to say. You may as well have just written "LOVE" in big letters on a piece of paper, maybe with a little pink heart, and called it a day.

The exact same thing can be said of the dystopian backstory you have going. It is incredibly cliche, juvenile, and uninteresting. And it's uninteresting because all you have is some sort of oppressive regime that forbids emotion and creativity - in the background, somewhere, unexplored. The worst part is that we don't have any motive from them. They're like the villains fro ma bad comic book, just out to be evil jerks for no other reason than to be evil jerks. Which means, again, that you have an extremely SHALLOW game, which does not try and make you think about the themes it's dealing with such as stoicism, rationality, versus wild creativity and emotion. So you have a game that's like a small child looking at a thief or something and saying YOU'RE A BAD MAN. A BAAAAD MAN. No kid, see, the world isn't that simple, this is a complex issue. Here, have a lollipop and leave us grown ups alone to have intelligent conversation over here, ok? And yes, that last sentence was very much addressed to the author of this game.

To talk about something a bit more specific: the signs. Now once again, they were saying something extremely silly and cliché, but I've said that enough already in this review. I'd just like to point out that getting your message across with something external to the game itself, ie to the story, is not art. It's cheating. It's WANNABE art. It comes across as tacky. If those signs were being put down by a government agent out to stop some sort of revolution, that would have been pretty cool. THAT would have been creative.

I'd like to end this review with a simple piece of advice. Next time you set out to make a game with some sort of depth, try and think about what the word "depth" means. It means you can't be content to sit on a nice comfy tower of stereotypes and my-mommy-said-so style thinking. You have to actually THINK.
Because this is about as deep as a puddle. It's just 2 out of 5: Nothing too new or interesting.

Score: 3

"Too hard."

submission: Word Search by gr8games

date: September 5, 2009

It seems to me like the letter ratio isn't balanced correctly, because way too often do you find yourself unable to find a really common letter.

It's also lacking in such features as difficulty settings, a pause button, a mute button (that's -1 star right there) and the ability to not have to use the high-score thing at the end (slows you down in between games - it's annoying and pointless).

I would have given a four had it had a mute button, a five had it had a few extra features, and maybe a six if the letters had been better balanced.

Score: 4

"Decent."

submission: To catch

date: September 5, 2009

You move too slowly, which makes the game feel unpleasant and sluggish. It also makes dodging the particles a little unfair. If you there was acceleration to your movement (but not decceleration - in a skill game, you should be able to stop instantaneously) then it could also have made the controls feel a bit lighter and nicer to use.

The music was good but could do with being even better, maybe less repetitive - in a simple game like this, a good soundtrack can really make it ten times better. The game could have used powerups or maybe different levels. I wouldn't reccomend an upgrade system, though. Just powerups. Upgrade systems are becoming way too trendy, in small little games like this they can weigh down the gameplay and over-complicate everything.

Score: 5

"Not great."

submission: -Brain Train-

date: August 27, 2009

Mostly I didn't feel like I was thinking. I like logic puzzles - Sudoku, Mastermind - but most of the puzzles here didn't require much thought or deduction, it was just either being able to think quickly, or having a good memory. Which is fine, but it's not very interesting, and it's not the best way to test intelligence.

The first puzzle was a bad idea. When you cover up one of the numbers, there were several times when there could have been more than one answer. Like "40 ? _ = 20"... could be minus twenty, or could be divided by two. Just as an example.

Overall though, the biggest problem is the lack of a high scores function (unless you have facebook). The game is totally worthless without a way to see where you rank compared to other people. It's like a scientific experiment without a control group. You have the results, but have no idea what they mean. You could have gone and gotten a bunch of people to play the game, and used their scores to calculate an average, at least.

Score: 1

"Terrible."

submission: Flying Monkey

date: August 24, 2009

Yeah, real amazing. The game is incredibly boring and has absolutely no creativity, no style, and not a drop of originality. The sound was bad, the graphics were bad, this is a very poor excuse for a game.

Score: 0

"Uh, it's Tetris."

submission: Gelly Tetris

date: August 23, 2009

It's Tetris. With the blocks rotating the wrong way. There's already a flash Tetris out there, with much nicer graphics. And the fact that you called it "Gelly Tetris" instead of just "Tetris" led people to believe there was some sort of twist on it. That's just rude.

I was going to give you a four for the effort, but then I noticed there was no mute button anywhere. I always dock points if developers forget to put in a mute button, but because this is such a simple game it'll earn you a zero.