Kajenx's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Man Who Sold The World]

Aside from the poor level design, bad graphics, and frustrating controls, this was an interesting game.

[a game of grief]

Maybe I've missed the point, but holding down an an arrow key for 10 minutes watching buildings go by seems pretty pointless. I don't understand how this is supposed to help anyone or be fun or have any reason to exist.

My finger kind of hurts from holing down the key, so maybe that's supposed to mean something? As a movie it might have been better since I wouldn't have cramped my hand, but only slightly. I guess I'm just confused by it.

[Offspring Fling! [DEMO]]

Why did barney attack the picachu? :3

Was kinda fun for a few levels, but I don't think it's my kinda game. It seemed to glitch out a lot, but I suspect it has something to do with the shared objects as that's happened to me on my own projects. The art was okay. I think the style would have looked better with vectors, personally. Pixelart is cool when it has lots of fine details but with the thick outlines it just kinda looked like it was vectors on low quality.

Overall, I'd say pretty good polish, but it didn't hold me. I could see it being popular though. Good luck with sales!

[Coloropus]

THis game has a lot of polish and I like the concept. :) The controls are a little too slow/unresponsive for my tastes though. The jumping, particularly, isn't all that great. I might come back and play for a while again.

Btw, hell really is hellishly tedious. I regret picking all those plants now, lol.

[College-Ruled Universe]

I was enthralled by it until it turned into a shooter. I think you'd be much better off doing a platformer. The shooter part didn't hold me for very long. Since it's just a demo I don't really know what rating to give it, but if it was a full fledged game I probably would have just skipped commenting or rating since I closed it right after the gameplay started.

If you're going to stick with the shooter, it's generally a bad idea to limit the ammo the way you are. I tried that on my first shooter, too, and in testing no one understood why the gun suddenly didn't work. ("The gun is glitchy, it just stops working randomly...") You'd be better off doing limited ammo on a secondary weapon, or making the game more tactically oriented - rather than action oriented - and limiting the number of shots. Right now you're kind of in an awkward middle area.

Also in a shooter like this, you should focus on how you want the player to play the game. Are they supposed to hit every enemy, or is it just a clusterfuck that you have to dodge through and the weapon is more of a shield. Here, too, you're in an awkward middle area. If you're supposed to hit every enemy, you should have a money/score system that rewards you for each hit and links to upgrades that make it easier to kill more enemies. If it's a clusterfuck, then you need tons of enemies or bullets moving in predictable patterns so the game becomes about dodging and sniping whatever is in your way. Rewards should be given in this option for distance traveled, where hitting checkpoints is tied to an upgrade system that makes dodging easier. There could be other play-style options too, it's just important to think about what exactly you want the player to do.

Lastly, protip on using bitmaps in flash: Either turn on smoothing (Library Properties -> Allow Smoothing) or make sure your bitmap is always on a pixel and not halfway between. I just use Math.Round() to snap it to the nearest pixel. That'll get rid of all the funny jumping around and image tearing. Smoothing eats up CPU and snapping it to the nearest pixel won't move as smoothly when it's going slow, so you usually have to decide which tradeoff you want.

LordDF responds:

Awesome review! Thanks for the protips man.

[Memohuntress]

This was pretty fun. I haven't played anything QUITE like it before, though it's pretty much just a hidden object game. I liked the art; all the harlequins gave it a strange vibe, haha.

I have to say, though, I hated the underwater part. I was gonna close it but I wanted to see the ending. I just used hints to find everything in that level (it was still really difficult even with that) and then it called me a garbage man. :P That level kind of went out of the spirit of the game a bit, I think.

[Frizzle Fraz 2]

It's kinda cute. I like the graphics and the auto-jumping is a somewhat unique take. The camera is really bad, though. I couldn't play past level 1. If you use this engine again, please fix the camera!

[Awesome Face Escape]

Lol, this is pretty horrible and cheap, but it made me laugh. If you tell me how many screens I have to survive I might try for the end.

[Pixelhate]

Naw...

I played till level 12, and I had lives going all the way across the screen, lol. The very beginning is difficult, then it gets really easy with all the shields. I liked playing later on better, but I quit because the firing mechanic is horrifying. I had no idea how it worked, it just felt glitchy.

The game really isn't anything new or interesting, and it wasn't all that well made, so I think a 6 is fair.

[Bloom Defender]

Very Wii

This is so polished and sleek, and it's a lot of fun. It reminds me of a wii game. Very nice over all.