ThePhenomenon's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tough Love Machine]

Let me give you a hand: I'll review this by stating the most important points that stand out to me. I know it's an year old.

Bad things
– As others have hinted, it starts out dubious as it's not made very clear that there is no additional control or mechanic other than moving with the movement keys. Clarify it in the description? Saying that "They will step on you to get higher" didn't quite make it. Maybe "Think carefully: move and carry them whatever way you can" instead would be better. It's confusing (and a fail) to have hands in a game where you can't grab or hold. The identity that speaks along should joke about this.
– Without being too detailed, the order of the levels just seems screwed up. After the initial harder ones came some very easy levels that I beat right away. (It could have been due to learning how to play.) This is disappointing later on and discourages people from sticking to the game at the start.
– Pushing stuff isn't very consistent. You should have sorted out how pushing works under all scenarios as well as the overlapping bugs that there are. Removing a hand from under an object and sliding another object underneath it with the other hand right after is possible with some objects but not with others, which doesn't make sense. It also causes overlapping bugs that someone already mentioned. With a hard game that's supposed to have players looking for obscure ways to beat it, you should have sorted out all the possible interactions. Plus, it's a simple game so making sure that it's working consistently and without bugs isn't much work or asking much.
– I couldn't tell when the arms were stretched to their maximum and it harmed the gameplay.
– The level selection is interestingly nice but the navigation is broken. In a game I always want to be able to return to the main screen at all times. On the ending screen, there are no navigation arrows and it's impossible to exit. I have to restart the whole game to get out of the end screen. Terrible. The mouse cursor doesn't turn into a hand when hovering links, breaking a standard and creating a clickbait-like ending. I didn't mean to open your website, I just wanted to exit the end screen and check out some other levels again. Plus, the levels aren't numbered. I can't refer to them or know how many I beat or how many there were without counting – bad.
– Despite probable strong opposition to this view, the graphics choice is awful. Retro is cheap, overdone and looks horrible. This particular puzzle doesn't really justify it's use. It would look much better with a certain sleek modern artwork that I can only imagine myself. It's not the cartoon type.
– You should use the Newgrounds advertisements API in-game so you could profit from it. Also, developers can't excuse any poor quality in their games by saying that they aren't paid to make them when there's an API.
– A level creator (as in the game Tentacle Wars) would allow everyone to find more quality levels, as they would be up-voted. But I don't really mind too much that there isn't one. Although on the other hand, Sokoban games almost always have level creators.

Good things
– It's an epic premise playing with the two expandable arms.
– This original genre derived from Sokoban is awesome. Maybe it hasn't even been done. It's really great. It's a whole new game.
– The level design is good. So many games with bad level design, but not this time. Also, as someone else already said, it's challenging without having brute force difficulty like a pixel hunt, button smashing or a giant layout. This is further seen in how the arms' length was kept the same throughout the game. If it were someone else with the typical brute force difficulty, they would just make a big level with very long arms. But not this clever author. Good work. It felt so nice figuring out the first levels! The logic was just so sweet, really good.
– All games should have secrets and bonus things. There appears to be only a little one here that may have been unintentional, but that I still like very much. Throughout the game an identity antagonizes the player. In the final level, the walls resemble spelling out "FU," an initialism that ends up meaning "screw you." It's not explicit though. Subtility is very witty. It's boosted by the ending screen right after having "END" spelled out with the walls, establishing the context of writing with them.
– The game has several other nice touches in addition to that one. It turns black and white after loosing. It displays the word "reset" briefly when resetting. Far better than the popular hideous transitions that other games came to have. I wish, however, that the word "reset" would appear for as long as the R key was held. It's downloadable! Thank you very much for caring about that. Host the download at Dumping Grounds so that when your website dies it's still available on Newgrounds. It starts playing on the actual main screen! It has that nice take on the arms' movement sound. It has no introductions or fake preloaders starting right away. It has the improper entries, like Play and Forward, of the right click context menu removed, but leaving the useful ones, Quality and Zoom. Only the naive disable everything and put an advert in their place. Don't forget you can build Mute into it, the right click menu. These are all good things. We have a witty game designer here. The author of this game should definitely check out the game "You Have 8 Bricks" (ID 654221) to find similar creative and professional game design elements.

[The Blocks Cometh]

A fine game

I will try to provide constructive criticism. Let us see how it goes. Ignore the low rating, it means nothing.

I liked the game but I would not have played it if it had no medals. It did not catch my attention. You just jump around. There is nothing interesting to keep me playing. I do not care about scores because hackers and really good players ruin the fun. Scores are something from the past. Now people are into things like medals and achievements. So I suggest you to had more. Examples include reaching a certain height without double jumping or shooting every small block that appears until a certain height. Now those would be some good challenges/medals. Something to keep people interested. Not to mention the best thing would be actual levels and variation... You know, a full game? This is more of a mini game. (Nothing compared to the greatness of Tetris by the way.) My main suggestion is for you two to make a complete game with everything you can think of. Probably more important, it needs something to keep me playing. Whether it is levels, medals (you can still add them) or something else. I am not saying you did bad, the game is OK, in the end I liked it to the point of reviewing.

As for the artwork, I do not like "pixalated" graphics but this is different. I like this style. The colours fit well together. I have no major complains except for the font and the variety of blocks, backgrounds, and so on. I had trouble reading the text, it was too small. Newgrounds has an option (top right corner buttons) for the game resolution to be expanded. You could make use of that. But it is "grayed" out...

As for the coding I unfortunately can not help you, I can only point out bugs which is not so useful. I found several. If you are interested in knowing details just ask. There are problems entering the players' name, blocks smash me when they do not even touch me, later on the game the blocks stop being aligned and start being supported in the air, a tower is usually formed on the left and so on.

Since this is a simple game the game-play is also simple. I would like the game to start right away after I press the Space bar, I would like to be able to shoot while jumping. I would like customization of controls too, something that all games should have. Please consider learning how to do it so you can include it in all future games. Due to the variety of keyboards and styles of playing you must provide an option to change the controls. Other than that the game-play seems fine.

The music suited the game so well. You should have included it in the credits. Everything is to be credited. I would want a longer theme if the game had more to it. I suppose the sound effects were OK but the jump sound is annoying. All games should also have separated options to turn off sound effects and music instead of both together. At least you do have one option...

I enjoyed details such as rocks falling in the background with the screen shaking and dust when a block settles. The signs at the start are good, there should be more. I would want to go higher just to read them. Something bad is the pause system. You did not make it. I have seen the same pause system in other games. It has problems. The game unpauses automatically (causing me to lose) when I return to the window. It is annoying because it does not do what I want. It also looks too much "pixalated". P to pause is not in the instructions.

Well this is it. Focus on anything I said that does not apply to this game only so that maybe you could improve in the future. Sorry that I pay too much attention to details. I even tried not to mention them all.

Good work.

[Epic Coaster]

Here's my attempt at reviewing...

First of all, I don't want to rate this game, but since Newgrounds forces me to, I had to come up with something reasonably fair. Ignore the score.

I played this game and I kind of liked it. Fancy graphics with spicy music. The game relies on scores and achievements. It's good for those who like to compete for a high score and for those who rather try and get some achievements. But there is a problem with the latter. Many of this game's achievements aren't good. But I see you are accepting ideas and improving. An achievement is a challenge or an accomplishment, it was not a challenge for me to start the game. You created an achievement for that which I think it's lame. There are other achievements that I disagree with, such as the ones for winning other achievements. Those are pointless "fill up" achievements. Instead, you should have made real challenges that reward skill and cleverness. Even if that means having less. It's better to have only a few good ones than many bad. The Triple Tap or the Twinkle Toes, those are good achievements. Another good one would be one for jumping in the last moment (just before falling) or one for jumping over one track without landing on it. If you think hard you could come up with good ideas, not dumb things. Also, when I played the game for the first time I got so many achievements all at once and I barely did anything. This is so wrong. No effort is needed to win pointless achievements.

About the rest... There are common problems, nothing I haven't seen before. The game lacks more stuff, maybe diagonal and curved tracks among other things. This is not a real roller-coaster this way. :P The direction could also be from right to left instead of left to right like most games. You know, expand the game otherwise it's not really an "original spin on a classic concept" and not much of an epic coaster, not at all. You, just like many other, made the mistake of releasing the game before completing it. You are still improving the game. I understand you want feedback but now it's a mess with all the versions in different websites. Lets enter in details: there is no pause button. But I guess that is to keep things simple. Well, if it is a one button game than why can't it be any button? Although 3 options (what I found) is fair enough. The sound and music buttons aren't separated giving the players less options as well. (And the icon doesn't even change when clicked. Lazy.) In the Play Again screen, you could add the distance reached next to the score. I sometimes like to know but I can only see the longest one. There are also some unanswered questions... What causes the jump? Jet packs, springs, magic? The game goes on for days, how about some food dropping from the planes for the starving people? Silly stuff.

I found what could possibly be some bugs or just more things that don't make sense. In the instructions it says that if I land in the edge of a track I get a perfect jump bonus. I did land in the edge (the edge to the right, not the obvious one) and I got no bonus. There should be a perfect jump bonus for landing in any edge. Other bugs were fixed in other websites... Well done. Developers don't always care.

Now some good things. As I already said, the graphics. They are good and an important part of a game. Something you could be proud of maybe. The idea is also cool, epic coaster, not that epic but still nice. And you used day and night in your game. That is a great thing to include in a game, it's original and gives a good feeling. You managed to create this sparkling and blinking theme for the game, once more, giving it originality. Finally, the game starts in the menu itself. Usually the menu is in a different screen, separated from the screen where one actually plays. But not here, I like it.

Basically, I would expand the game, add proper achievements and pay some attention to details. Keep on it.

[Sokobanomania]

Sokoban!

I played the whole game and I will give you my thoughts on it as it seems like you are still testing it. Ignore my low rating please.

This is a nice game (I enjoy Sokoban myself), it has good music, good looking graphics and the left handed controls give it an excellent touch (it's something people tend to forget, but I would maybe mention what the controls are because one doesn't really guess them). There are too many Sokoban games out there so it is not really original but that's OK.
My main and biggest complain about your game is the difficulty. I was done with the game in one day! It is far too easy. Most people will disagree, but games nowadays are too easy and unchallenging. Here is a tip: the more boxes there are and the bigger the level is, the harder it is. I would try to find some harder levels, still including easy ones so that everyone could enjoy. There are so many levels available out there. Another mistake that made the game easier was to include similar levels, for example levels 8 and 9 and levels 22 and 23. The trick for those is the same, if you can beat one you can beat the other, there is no challenge. Work on making this game more difficult.

Asides from the difficulty, there are other little things that could be improved. Such as adding many more levels and showing how many moves you have made in each level instead of just the total. That would really help as it is the only thing that keeps me playing: improving my score. Talking about the score, how do I submit it after I have improved it? You need to work on that too. Give people a way of accessing and submitting the improved score, not just in the last level.
You could also give a creative turn to your game by adding levels with 2 characters that would work on separated parts but still in the same level. You probably lack the skills to make many good changes to your game, I can't help it but to give you my suggestions and opinions. With time, you can get there.

Sounds/music
I think the music needs to be louder.
The sound effects for when you mouse over the buttons are annoying as well as the repeated sound of hitting a wall. Once is enough. I still enjoyed it nevertheless.
Good music you picked, if you find more of the same kind you could add it to the game so it's not so repetitive. Loops tend to get annoying.

Graphics
I like your style and the colours too. I don't have much to say other than I didn't really like how the levels from 10 to 30 look. I find the first 10 levels really good looking but the rest, specially after level 20 with the bricks, are not so great.
I also think that an overhead perspective of the little man would be much better.
And since this is digital art, you could make the game resolution (size of the screen) much bigger.

Interface
I think it's a little weird.
The way "Sound" is a button and not an icon in the menu for example. (Not to mention you are missing separated icons for sound and music.)
I think "Play" should take you to where you stopped playing instead of level 1. It could also be merged with the "Select level" button.
A link to your e-mail or whatever you have there doesn't seem like a good idea, at least I don't see that kind of stuff in other games.
I noticed there was no custom right click menu, this would prevent players from cheating. You can look up on how to create one.

Finally I would just like to mention a little bug. You can keep on moving after you fall into the hole (if that's a hole) at the end of the levels. It's all right. I liked playing your game and it's understandable that you may still be learning. I hope you improve this game instead of leaving it behind. :) I hope I didn't fail at reviewing again too...

In-Finity responds:

Thanks for your feedback. I will use this for my future games.

[Last Breath : Overwhelmed]

Great work!

Everything in this game is really well done. I'm going to save a lot of typing by simply saying you have an awesome game here, so I can have room to tell you my complains/suggestions.

- I believe there's a bug with the options to begin the extra features super shield missiles and blaster. The last option you saw is the one you see in those three. If I click in view intro then in super shield, I will see watch movie instead of begin, if I click in erase progress then in super blaster I will see erase progress instead of begin too, for example. This bug confused me, maybe you can fix it.
- I don't like the way my spaceship and the bars around it look. (Between, the tutorials didn't told me what the bars were for.) Also, when I shoot an enemy I would like to know how much health/shield it has, maybe bars should show around them when they are being hit.
- The "movies" weren't very good, not even an animation. But I believe you had to keep in mind the file size of the game, maybe that was it. It's a shame.
- The musics were great but I think there should have been more, also you should have put the calm musics in the calm levels and the other ones in the other levels.
- I think the sound of the missiles was a bit too loud, it was even louder than the explosions.
- You should have let us chose all the controls, shift and space bar are not very good. Also, I think space bar should be used to stop shooting (auto shooter option).
- I know my spaceship has the latest Space Sounds Generator but other people don't. They may be wondering how come one can hear stuff in space.
- The second boss was a too difficult but I didn't even notice, I know the point was to use asteroids. Plus it had nothing special compared to the other bosses other than those asteroids. Talking about bosses, once their shields are out, I think but I'm not sure, it's a matter of damage they take and not a matter of time until the shield comes back. This is bad because there's no speed challenge.
- The difficulty, the upgrades, the time it takes to beat levels, all those things, they are hard and important to get right so it's worth spending some more time testing them. I'm not saying you did bad.
- More variety in the first 23 levels would have been good, in level 25 the game changed a bit to an avoider and I liked it. You should get some cool ideas, don't stick to shooting stuff only, unless that's really the kind of game you want.
- "You get extra money for killing enemies fast", but not for killing bosses fast, I didn't like that. I didn't feel like replaying the bosses because there was no point. I also didn't like how I didn't get any money for beating the last boss.
- I didn't realise how good the game was at first, maybe you should start with a "boom" next time.

I think I should mention something, after I passed level 29 I got enough money to buy the last upgrade. Coincidence? Probably not. It was well done.

I hope my review was helpful, I didn't feel like reviewing this one. Actually I didn't really review, just pointing out stuff.
Keep in mind that I liked this game and that I skipped the compliments. :) And don't mind the 9 rating... I hope there's a part 2.

[A Crow in Hell 3]

Good work!

After playing A Crow in Hell 1 and 2 I knew I had to review this one. Unlike many other games you didn't made the sequels improved versions of the original game, but in fact actual sequels. And of course each better than the last one. As for this one in particular there are bugs that bothered me, I'm not going to enter in detail. I think you should pay more attention to them. Taking in consideration the bad response people had to the game I don't think you should worry too much. Not even daily top!

The graphics/artwork, It couldn't be any better. Some can say silhouettes are easier to draw but that doesn't make it any less good. All the detail that you put into this is amazing. You even caught the Halloween spirit by using orange colors as the main colors, and at the same time the feeling of Hell. I think the game resembles how a escape from Hell would be, but not Hell itself. It's something to think about. There was one graphic that I though it didn't fit in, the white ellipse gradient that appeared in the weights puzzle. But oh well. I saw the animations and I thought they were great, I just don't like how the intro plays every time one goes to the main menu and I had trouble understanding some of the text due to the font. But overall it was more than OK. I should also mention the checkpoints graphic, it was smooth and fitted well. I really enjoyed all the ideas that you had here and the logo of the game too.

The music and sound effects you used suit the game well. It would be cool if there was a theme song for the game as there is a logo. There's not much else to say about this.

The game play was OK. I don't see why others complain, but that's just me. I dislike how there was no option to change the controls not even ASDW. Some shortcuts such as space bar to retry would have been good. The game was easy to understand and there's nothing to complain about that. I can only congratulate you. I like how you managed to transform a simple avoiding skill game into such an amusing challenge.

It's great when a game is not just a game but also a story and I get to watch little flash movies. The truck being able to jump through the hole, the crows coming right away to soon and the car crashing the way it did didn't made much sense.
I see you tried to give a reason for why the crow dies every time it touches something, and it's not a bad one at all. The story got me a bit confused. The last game said the story would continue, but I don't see that. I also didn't understand the ending. Those are my complains about the story.

I believe there was a bit too much of advertising, especially the bottom left corner. If the game is good, you should get recognized. You don't need all those ads, or maybe not...

This game was a great challenge, it even had some little puzzles and great details. The checkpoints were well placed but I wouldn't mind having less checkpoints. Most people seem to find this incredibly hard. I think the difficulty, just like in the previous games, was perfect. More hard and people would give up, easier and I would finish it quickly. Talking about speed, what happened to the speed runs? And as for missing things, I think a sound/music button and proper in game credits wouldn't hurt. Now, there is one thing I really really miss, the challenges. Were they replaced by the achievements? Achievements are OK but I don't think the they were very good. But no worries. I though it was strange that I couldn't play the game again after I finished it without having to click New Game thus losing all the achievements. The Fortunate Crow one is hard by the way. As for the keys I don't think they make much sense without the challenges. Right now I'm missing 1 key and I can't find it. This reminds me, when the game ends, you get to see how many keys you have and how many times you died, but not how long it you took you to beat the game. Just another thing that is missing.

I got to say, all the ideas you had for this game are really cool and I had lots of fun playing it. A Crow in Hell 4?

[Effing Hail]

Good, for a preview or a demo...

This is a fun game, but it's too small. It's incredibly short and that's why I gave it a 3. Not to mention this game sure is overrated. It doesn't even have an option to turn off the music without turning off the effects. You need to expand the game a lot! But there's a problem, not everything fits this "book game". Like the upgrades system that some players asked for. Actually, many things don't fit this book game, so it's hard to expand it. Maybe it wasn't the best option, but it sure is original and nice. Anyway, that doesn't mean you can't make it bigger, here's some stuff you could include:

- More lessons. You could make some chapters and we could select the lessons from there. And don't just stick to what you got, come up with new things, original things. Like a mountain protecting the buildings with diagonal hail, we would need to guide the hail around it. New places, there could be a place with a bridge to be destroyed for example. Different ways of blowing the wind depending on the chapters or lessons. Many new things and challenges.

- A free play option (or chapter), maybe in the end of the book where we could chose everything we want. And another option to create the biggest hail possible, with some records on the book.

- Add more musics to the game, only one, and a short one, gets annoying. There isn't even a theme for the title screen. And due to the players' request (the most important thing) you could include a download option as a prize for completing levels. And of course include credits!

- You could make the clouds on the game move, put an option to hide the sidebar to increase the space on the game, improve the sound option creating two options, one for the music and another for sound effects. You should add visual aids to the instructions too!

- Maybe you could try to make a rotate tool. To spin the game so that we could see it from the other side, because this side would be for example hidden by clouds. This isn't really the most challenging game ever you know.

- There's a bit of a luck involved in the game, I'm not sure if this is a skill game at all. But with some of my suggestions (like buildings protected by a mountain) you could make this more of a skill game.

- During the hole game I have to hold the mouse button, except for the few times I don't want wind, why not do the opposite? I only hold the mouse button if I want to stop the wind, I'm tired already of clicking and holding and pressing buttons in so many games.

The things that I didn't mention are OK I guess. Oh and... You don't answer to any reviews, makes me think you don't care. With so many players asking for the same thing over and over and over. At least you got the cover of the book right...

[Platform Racing 2]

Nice, but...

This is a nice game and it has lots of potential. But...

- Part of it is about luck. If you were trying to make a luck game where the lucky win, good job. If you were trying to make a game where the most skilled win not really... The players position in the beginning of the race is random, in levels like razor blade it makes a difference. The ? blocks are mostly random and that IS the game. Yes it takes skill to use the items, but you need luck to get them. Too much luck for me.

- As for levels... The campaign ones are always the same and they are not necessarily the best levels. It gets boring and it gives advantage to older players who already know all the level tricks. It's not enough that they have already a higher rank. One can make our own levels, that's good (although they will never be in the campaign), but you had to spoil everything with the painting option. Players rate levels for the paint job and not for the level itself. If you wanted to make an art contest, it would be OK...

- The game is field with hackers, glitches and bugs. That makes the game more unfair than what already is. And nothing seems to be done about it. The best players aren't the most skilled, but the best hackers and the ones with best luck.

- Someone with a better internet connection has more chances to win. Well, it's a multiplayer game. You should try to keep the graphics down, yet you didn't spare on graphics for that item that makes you run faster. All those green stars cause me a huge lag. "Turn the music and the backgrounds off." But those things give a better atmosphere to the game! I can't just turn them off. At least you have that option, that's good.

- The game is already very unfair, to make it even more unfair there are the Mod powers (in race) and the F@H players. Just because one has a computer powerful enough to handle a research program, and just because one is helping to find the cure for cancer or whatever doesn't mean it should have privileges in a multiplayer game. This isn't Charity Racing. Not to mention some players are ranked up randomly for their art work in random contests!

- The chat sometimes has the opposite of what is asked. "No flooding no swearing be nice." ...

- Now something good, the game idea is good and it's fun to play. It's a nice game. With the level maker and everything. The graphics aren't the best ever but that is actually good for a multiplayer game. The controls are perfect, but there should be an option for left handed... The music is overall nice, I just miss the quality option. Racing against other players is great. :)

I know I pointed out mostly the bad things, because I would like you to improve them. You came across a very good idea for multiplayer fun, you just ruined it with luck races, glitches, spam, bugs, art contests, some unfairness, etc... :(