Gaiacarra's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Semantic Wars]

Potential, but not good enough.

Hangman is boring and castle defense games are over done, so I guess it's no surprise that when you put them together you just get something to amuse yourself with for 5 minutes.

It is at least trying to do something new, but there's more to being creative than just throwing two random concepts together. What you have done right is made a defense game that essentially plays itself, with the player only having to solve puzzles quickly enough to support their armies. The concept has potential for a frenzied and original puzzle game, but not with hang-man, and not without a lot more work in terms of gameplay mechanics.

I have to praise the amount of polish that went into this though, the interface is great and the gameplay has no real flaws in itself (other than having to wait in between spawning warriors), but ultimately, the game is just no fun. 4/10 | 2/5.

[Particles]

Quite fun, but obviously average.

There's something about it that's quite appealing. It may be the nice, clean graphics style, or maybe it's the crisp wooden sound of the balls bouncing off each other. Whatever it is, the game is oddly refreshing.

The music was cool in the beginning, but then it just turned into that god-damn fast-paced house music that every flash game ever uses - but the game is over two years old, so I'm not sure that's really a valid criticism.

The gameplay is really simple and generic, but like I said, still really enjoyable for some reason, but the problem is what happens when you get hit. Fuck this, man, I'm not playing through all that again, it's only a simple dodging game for god's sake. There should have been a survival mode, and then a free mode where you just hit the plus and minus buttons to add or remove balls, or something like that.

Transitions between menus take too long - sometimes function over fashion is the order of the day, like when I just want to navigate the interface for a tiny in-browser flash game.

Six out of ten... might have pushed it to seven were it not for those flaws I mentioned. Still a very nice edition of the "dodge stuff" flash game genre.

[Greg Can Jump]

Sort of alright.

This game has gotten itself just above the "fun" line, but decided that going any further was too much effort. Gameplay is overall very average, with a few rough edges. Those rough edges are the controls, which are pretty bad. They're a little bit twitchy (better than unresponsive, but still not perfect) and the wall jumping is god-awful.

The checkpoint system is a good idea, but the Z key is too inaccessible. The down/S key seems like the best option to me.

The graphics are a major issue. Why? Because the fact that they're a complete IWBTG rip-off was bugging me the entire time I was playing the game. It really was quite distracting. 8-bit retro graphics in general haven't been original since about 2005, either, so if possible try something totally different on your next project (hint: the minimalistic geometric style isn't original anymore either).

Sound is unremarkable, and the music is decent.

The game is pretty unpolished, except for the main menu, which shows effort.

So overall, this a mediocre to average game which held my attention for about 10 minutes and which I will now forget about and never think of playing again. 5/10 | 2/5.

[Bullet Chaos]

Boring.

Textbook boring. Everything is slow and it's all just uggghhhh. Saying that a point-and-click shooter defense game is unoriginal is pretty much redundant at this point, but I'll say it anyway because it's important. Everything about this is unoriginal, bland, and worst of all, it's not even fun.

[Public Viewing]

This is actually really cool!

The idea has been done before, but there's alot of charm and freshness to this game. The art style is great and quite original, the gameplay is oddly fun for some reason. I mean, I kept playing right up until my browser crashed, so that's a very good sign.

The best part is the presentation: seeing your guy on a TV screen. Little touches like that make your game stand above the crowd, show people that you're not just churning this out, that you have a sense of creativity. So good effort.

Biggest flaw? The lag. It hurts the game alot, and it's actually what crashed my browser.

[Little Wheel]

Polished.

The graphics are nice (very unoriginal, but nice), the music is a refreshing change (although it's also repetitive) and the story is cool. It's a really simple story, but it's cool, it's just got a nice sense of adventure and enough purpose to it to make me give a damn.

But the gameplay is shit. See, I'm not solving any problems here. How can I, when there are no clues or anything? The only way to get ahead in the game is to click on anything that has a circle around it. And the key thing is that I don't know WHY I'm clicking on them. I don't know where I'm meant to go, what I'm supposed to do, nothing. It's just mindless video-game pavlovian "if you can click it, do so" instincts.

The best adventure games are the ones where you look at your objectives (so you need to know what your objectives are, this is the important thing), you look at your recourses, and you work out a path to completing your goals. "I have to get on that ledge"; "There's a ladder back over there"; "I will use the ladder to reach the ledge".

Here it's more "Where the fuck am I going"; "This thing is clickable"; "Well, I guess I'll click it then".

[MagnetiBall]

Nice idea, crap game.

It's a good idea, if not very original, but the execution is absolutely terrible. Your biggest problem is that the level design is extremely uncreative, which pretty much drops your entire game in the toilet, since a puzzle game relies almost entirely on the level design.

But really, the game is overall just uninspired. Graphics, controls, everything. The problem is that you took your basic idea of a magnetism-based puzzle game and did nothing with it. You didn't build on it, didn't try to come up with more ideas to add to it, nothing. The game is an empty shell.

Final notes: it lags like hell, you should have let players hit the arrow keys as shortcuts to quickly activate the magnets, and the music was pretty good.

[Samurai Warrior Doll]

This is shit.

Ok, it's a dress up game. Do you realize there are already thousands of those? You're going to want to do a hell of a lot more if you want this to stand up above the crowd. And that's all there is to say about this. It drowns under everything else and anyone who thinks it is anything more than utter garbage has either been using the internet for about two weeks or is a moron.

Also, how the hell did you code this? A game this simple shouldn't experience such immense lag.

I realize this is probably just some little thing made to amuse the 6 year old girls who visit some site somewhere, but this is Newgrounds, a site for original, quality work, and the people who want to see it, so zeros everywhere is what you get.

[Treasure Caves 2]

Ugh.

First thing that hit me was the design, the style. Or rather the lack of style. The main character even looks like Kirby, and the whole thing is just utterly soulless and cold. If you wanted your visuals to look like they came out of some inhuman corporation, you sure got that down to pat.

The game itself is also just not fun. Its too simple, the controls are sticky (only a little), and I have no reason to want to collect all those gems. It's just bad. The level design is very poor, which is a shame because level design is pretty much the most important thing in a puzzle/action/whatever they call it game like this.

No creativity, and no sign of any talent. If you want to do something with Flash, I suggest web-site design, the title screen was very professional.

[Iron Maiden Flight 666]

Awful.

The gameplay is just plain boring, it's impossible to tell what's scenery and what's an obstacle, there are simple problems with the interface like having to switch between the mouse and the keyboard all the time to go to the next level, and did I mention it's... boring? There isn't even any Iron Maiden music in it.