grailas's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[College-Ruled Universe]

As a proof of concept, this shows promise. Granted, it was a bit "thin" in content, but it IS a demo.

The audio and music is well chosen. Could use a little more bass or something, if you asked me. A sound telling you that you've taken damage would be nice, too.

Graphically, this game is pretty neat. A quirky, hand-drawn universe. It looks as if some bored students' notebook, filled with doodles and drawings, has come to life.

How? Why? Don't know, could be that the book which contains all these drawings has a few notes that might shed some light on that part... Or maybe there simply is no explanation. In either way, I hope the full game will have at least a tiny story-line.

I like the thought of a customizable ship. Different weapons, shields, ect. Seeing some of the concept art at the end containing what looks like to be swords, I could imagine such an equipment being able to deflect incoming enemies (not bullets). The stronger the enemy, the more charge (like the shield in the demo) it would take to deflect and kill. All sorts of items, like passive force-fields, regenerators, large but slow cannons, quick but weak machine-guns, ray-guns, homing missiles and the likes spring to mind.

I'll look forward to the final results ;)

[SHMUP]

Classic, requires skill to play, needs something.

I agree, it's pretty solid and polished. The game might be somewhat punishing difficulty-wise for the unexperienced gamer, but since the levels are all pre-made, you can just continue to grind the same level a few times and slowly memorize when and where the enemies are going to arrive.

Not that much stat building, with a generic all-round boost instead of skill allocation, though very welcome.
The weapons were alright. Not many to chose from, but fairly effective. I'd wish the homing missiles had a better turn-rate, and didn't just disappear once they left the side of the screen. The rubber-cannon is VERY useful, especially when you have the option to !ROTATE! your weapons at the loadout. That was a really nice feature! I'd wish more weapons could utilize that efficiently, though.
(Sidenote, I was reminded of the game Enigmata while customizing.)

The ship speed seems mediocre compared the the enemies speed, especially in the last few missions. Enemies suddenly popping up at high speeds, with no time (or ability!) to act was frustrating.

It's been said before, but i'll say it again; dry. The game had a fine opening for a small storyline, but after that, nothing. Just raw gameplay. Some might like it that way, with not too much chit-chat holding up the game, but putting in just a bit of extra content, like some more background story, or maybe just a bit more description in-game would do good.

All in all, it's visually appealing. The audio and music works well. Gameplay works alright, but slightly steep in difficulty. Sadly, a few things just leaves this game with something missing, but other than that; high quality, nice work!

4/5, 7/10

[Tower Battle]

Quite alright

A game with a somewhat relaxing pace. Graphics are fairly standard. Not stunning, but not anything to complain about (though visible defenses instead of red dots would be nice).

As others have mentioned, there's really no sense in the odd pricing of weapon slots. They should be equally priced somehow. The slots higher up seem to have lower range as well, so at some point, they may be worth less, but that may just be a personal opinion. Having weapons with lower range to knock off enemies getting too close seems to be a good idea sometimes.

I'd wish if there were a way to decide how the defenses chose targets. Currently, it looks like they will target the toughest enemies in range first. A way to toggle between weakest, strongest, closest and farthest for each slot would be a nice addition. I sometimes found it frustrating when my weapons would target the strongest enemies that took longer time to kill, leaving the weaker ones with more time to attack (especially while having machine-guns against armored units - there seems to be some sort of armor-rule).

I think it would be VERY important to stress unlocking new weapons. Unlocking a new weapon and upgrading the power plant in order to cope with the demand is both more efficient AND cheaper than sticking with the basic guns and boosting them.
This is by far the key to overcome level 2. Buy the cannon as soon as possible, and set it together with a basic gun as secondary on the right side (the gun is a backup in the beginning, since the cannon is slow. Replace with triple gun later, if you see fit). Upgrade the slots' damage by one or two, and then just pump up its fire-rate. Once fast enough, nothing will get past the splash-damage.
Place guns/triple guns on the left side against infantry, and put two'ish upgrades at fire-rate and damage.

[Epos]

A good classical RPG

As you said yourself, it's an "old school RPG", with a classical turn-based system. It is very obvious that the game has been on its way for quite a while, judging on its overall polished feel and fairly balanced gameplay. I must note that i haven't finished the game yet, i'm currently grinding along the Barubic range. (hintusefirehint)

Using skillpoints instead of rage, adrenaline or whatever works pretty effectively. It is sometimes a bit annoying having a bunch of skillpoints at the end of a battle, and having them reset at the next, but then again, that might end being a bit of an exploit, just charging up on skillpoints before a tough battle.

As some have noted, not being able to know anything about an opponent during battle, having to guess your way through their strenghts and weaknesses might be a little minus (although some opponents were obvious). I'd like if there was a skill or signet that allowed a specific hero to give more intell on an opponent. I think that you don't hang around in one area enough to make it a good aspect; longer time in the different areas would work better with the experimentation IMO.

General nice-to-know info would be good too. It took me quite a while to figure out that name below my current AU meant which month you were in, while being on the main screen. The handling of the game was well explained, but i felt that you were just thrown a bit too quickly into the action, without enough info about the setting.

Nevertheless, the game is really enjoyable, and has a fairly unique feel to it, without looking too much like all the other RPGs out there. So i'm giving it a 5/5, and a 9/10 :)

Oh, and a minor thing i noticed: The Barubic wolves seem to have yellow eyes, but when they attack or get attacked, their eyes blinks blue. I wondered if that is on purpose, or a minor error?

And a general, well pliable info for almost all RPGs: if you can't beat something, then level up! There is no such thing as an impossible opponent in a well-made RPG!

MINTGames responds:

You bring up some excellent points and suggestions in this review. I'll do my best to address a few of them now.

The inability to carry over skill points was a bit of a must in terms of keeping things fair. When you have an easily replenished resource like that, you have to compensate by taking anything earned back from the players to keep them worth something. There are methods to start battles with multiple orbs -- through signets and talents -- but not without a good deal of effort to have that luxury.

The suggestion to delegate the access of enemy health and weakness information to a signet's attributes is probably the best resolution I've heard. There needs to be a trade-off for that sort of thing, and forcing players to make it one of their three signets is a fine trade-off. It's something we might consider moving forward.

There was a good deal of push and pull with how to handle immersion and covering explanation while keeping players from hitting the X in the corner and moving onto something else. Designing an RPG as a free-to-play game that anybody can open or close whenever they want was frankly daunting. It was a battle to be as concise as possible, all while being as deep as possible. Oftentimes, those two goals would butt heads and our final decision would naturally have its detraction. For every line of explanation or every new tutorial window, there was another opportunity for the impatient players out there to give up and move on. We don't have the investment factor that a purchased game has (there's no sense of making your experience worth the money you spent on it), and therefore our audience has nothing to lose by not playing any longer. Streamlining the game for the sake of retaining a larger portion of our audience obviously caused some drawbacks. The story wasn't nearly as deep and involving as I originally wrote it, certain gameplay mechanics were removed or simplified, and some details went generally unspoken for. I think that for the most part we accomplished our goals successfully, but there's always something we could have done better.

Anyway, thanks for playing the game and leaving us this review.

[Catnarok- Longcat Rampage]

Approved by Ceilingcat

For a game made as fast as possible, this is pretty epic, and it's odd nobody came up with an similar idea (as in, featuring longcat).

As a few have noted, the game is not glitch-free. The second time i played it, my laser froze after i by accident used Shoop-da-Woop and the laser at the same time. When the Shoop was done, my laser kept firing at the same spot i fired it last, unable to stop. Plus, i didn't die when my HP reached rock bottom during that.

As Dragonimy said below, having Tacgnol in the game would make it even more epic. I'd imagine him as a bossfight at the end of the game, and i was constantly hoping that he might show up :3
If you're planning a sequel, i'd suggest adding Ceilingcat and Basementcat as well. THEN the battle for our souls can begin!

[Zack's Hardware]

A new take

A slightly short, but well working TD-game. Unlike most others, you have to keep your mouse at the ready, unless you're willing to loose valuable parts.
The parts do seem to come at very random intervals. In one game, i had enough resources to build a rocket launcher after the very first wave, while in others, i'd have 'em too late in the game to have the tower do much of a difference.
The towers act fairly intelligently. However, upgrading their range is a waste, since they aren't compensating for the creeps movement, and you end up with a tower that's missing targets more than before you "upgraded" it (splash towers worked alright with range though). Upgrading the towers damage potential wasn't that effective either, since it only added a few extra points of damage. Made me stick to upgrading their reload/attack speed, especially because it often doubled or nearly doubled the attack speed, in contrast to damage-upgrades, which didn't double the attack-damage. (I must note that i haven't tested all towers at this time of writing, though).
Having to wait for ones towers to be build before placing (just like command and conquor-games, lol) added a fine little twist to the gameplay.

Generally a really good game, and it gets a 8/10 - 4/5 from me.

[the Kill Kar II: Revenge]

Destroying civilization - one highway at a time

Quick and dirty:
The controls are a bit too uncontrollable, but i got used to it.
It was annoying when people began spamming inside walls, obstacles ect.
Staying at the obstacles, i encountered more than once that i could pass through certain obstacles at certain levels. I'm sure it's a flaw in the level design.
At some point, the rate that you earned cash was too slow, but then again, it fit pretty well with when you REALLY needed a certain upgrade. I didn't manage to get all upgrades during normal gameplay, though.
The upgrades worked pretty well, and when you bought one, the effect of it was very noticeable, unlike many other games with upgrades.
The rockets might be a bit overpowered, but hey, it IS rockets :D
Some people talked about controls getting stuck. I never encountered that at any point.
I'd say it's a good game, though a bit easy for me.

TIP: When at the last boss (assuming you at least have machine-guns and rockets maxed out, and one or two armor-upgrades), just head directly towards it, keep shooting with everything you've got, and you'll win quickly.

[Buggle Connect]

Funny time-waster :)

I've played this at CC before, and thought it was good back then :)
However, at this moment of the NG-submission, the screen is kinda displaced towards the lower right corner. Fix it quick! ^^

CasualCollective responds:

thanks fixed it

[Ultimate Tactics]

Great game

Although i found a bug.
I killed an Anaconda by poisoning, as the last opponent in a battle. At first, the experience seemed to deposit right, to the mage. Although, before the next battle, noticed my mage had 300/300 exp (wich should have given him a new level). When i started the next battle, at the beginning, a random Anaconda got an green -5 marker above it (poison damage), and the exp-deposit marker showed up again above my mage. However, he didn't really get the exp, the Anaconda didn't even get any damage at all, and worst of all, i suddenly couldn't attack at all. Neither with magic or physical attacks. Nothing.
Hope you get this fixed :)

[Poclick]

Sorry but...

... The game ain't loading as it should. After some time with a black screen, some music starts to play, and nothing else happens.
Since i can't play the game, i have nothing to rate. And nothing is zero.

GDSurgeon responds:

Some trouble in submit flash. Now it's all right. Please rate my game again.