Seawana's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gold well]

A nice remake.

Wow. I haven't played "Aardvark" for a loooooong time. You did a great job of duplicating the basic gameplay and I enjoyed the additional features like the time sto pand bombs. Nice work.

[Just Hangin' Around]

A good idea, but it needs some work.

This has been said in other reviews, but it bears repeating. The character's movement after releasing the rope is really wrong. It looks like you are multiplying the swing speed by the amount of vertical movement, which just doesn't work very well. This also doesn't make the game very playable.

The game itself has a lot of potential. I love the idea of swinging between things and I have played many many times, but since it's so danged hard to do it properly, I couldn't even complete level 1 on the easy skill level.

Also, why on earth can I fly so far up through the ceiling? Not only does thta not make sense, but it makes throwing the rope to catch yourself again nigh-impossible. If you want to keep the "through the roof" ability, add some kind of hud that tells the player how far off screen they have gone so they at least have a chance of living through the fall.

Also, I applaud your attepts to keep the filesize down, but don't compress the audio so much. It sounds terrible.

Kepe up the good work. I hope to see an updated version of "Just Hangin' Around" soon.

[The Halloween Hunt]

Pretty good, but not polished.

This game is complex enough to require some cognitive work, but it is still simple enough to be easy to play. I also like the battle graphics. They look pretty nice and the animation is smooth, even if the enemies are just still images that move around.

I do have several problems with this game and I don't mean these in a cynical way, so please bear with me.

It's dull. Seriously, the game is not very fun and lacks variety. For one thing there's only a handful of different enemies, and leveling up does not produce new ones to fight. The enemies all seem to be exactly the same in terms of their fighting ability, health, and treasure and basically just have different images and attack/death animations. I also have no idea what the enemy health is while battling, so I have no idea if I should escape from battle or not which makes that option near useless. It's easier to just fight on and potentially die and load a saved game.

Speaking of, I don't understand the requirement of being on a save point. I assume they exist to make your job as a programmer easier when loading a game. As a player, however, they really make no sense. Not only that, I can just stand on a save point and walk into a wall to produce the random encounters, so wandering around the maps is a waste of time once I've gotten all the loot.

The weapons seem broken. I can "equip" weapons but I have no way of telling if I actually equiped one. Neither my character's weapon graphic nor the damage I deal changes, so what's the point there? Is there a glitch or something?

Leveling up is more detrimental than helpful, since for some unexplained and confusing reason, all of the (same exact) creatures get tougher as well. Leveling up just makes it take longer to kill the same creatures so I can see no benefit there. Usually leveling up makes killing the same creatures easier. Yes, it can be cheaper to level up than buy more stats, but at the cost of taking far longer to tediously kill enemies enough enemies to get the costly upgrades is not worth it. The stats system seems unbalanced to me.

Being able to see skills in the "Learned Skills" section during a battle when I haven't yet bought them makes no sense. It would also be very handy to know how much energy they take before I bother to buy them i nthe first place so I'll know if I ned to up my mana skill or not just to use them.

Okay okay. I could go on with some other aspects that I think need improvement, but I do not want to turn this into a rant. I hope my observations help. I will likely continue to play until I beat the game., so you've at least hooked me to some extent. :-)

[Gateway]

A fantastic puzzle game!

Wow! This is a wonderful little game. It's simple, yet elegant, in workmanship. You have really built a beautiful, succinct puzzler that will be fun to play for minds that need a little challenging.

After completing it without any help (yes, it can be done), I really wished it had been longer. The puzzles are sometimes tricky, but there are no red herrings anywhere, so they are not overly difficult if you just observe everything and think a bit.

I really liked the artistic use of 3D for the characters and the sets. The art and camera angles were not overwhelming, yet really gave the player a sense of being part of the game world (e.g. the telescope view and reflection on the TV screen).

I especially liked the "peeper" bit. Nice.

Great work on this one. I hope to see a "Gateway 2" someday.

[Hyper Sphere]

A really nice, fun game!

I really enjoyed playing this game. It's difficult, without being annoyingly so. The graphics are great, the controls are easy and smooth. The music loop was subtle and went well with the futuristic theme.

A few things I'd like to see are "tracks" that show where the moving platforms will go, and a few more items displayed in the radar (dropout platforms, for instance)

All in all it's a fun game, that I will continue to play until I beat it. Oh, that reminds me, THANK YOU for saving the player progress. If I had to start from level 1 each time I played the game, I'd probably not bother playing a second time. Well done!

[Epics of Distant Realm]

A well made, though not very detailed, game.

I enjoyed playing this game for quite a while last night.

Yes, the game does get tedious after a while, but that is the price I expect to pay in almost all RPGs. Eventually any RPG turns into a hunt for level-up items such as creatures to defeat or gold to collect, etc.

I was *very* disappointed to discover the game save feature is not truly a full save. It only "saves" the game so long as I do not close the game window. Once I did that, I found I had to start over. Because of this fact (among others) I will probably not play again. If it had saved to disc, I would have happily continued my game because I put several hours into playing before I had to stop.

I like the potion mixing concept, and it was good to see there are several ways to gain the three elements needed for potions. Being able to buy them was a huge boon once I had bought all the best equipment.

The creatures are interesting, but they were of such limited type that the battles became tedious pretty quickly. Besides that, each creature had only one type of attack or it could heal itself. I would like to see more effort put into the creatures. More types of creatures, more attacks/abilities for each, and perhaps a battle system with more options.

The graphics were nicely done throughout the game. I especially liked the varied backgrounds within the caves and while roaming the island. I found the animation to be pretty wooden so it'd be nice to see better (and more varied) character animation in the next version.

All in all, this game is pretty well done. I didn't find any detrimental bugs while playing, and the game itself was reasonably fun. A *real* save feature is a must in any RPG, so I strongly suggest adding that along with more enemies and more varied battles where possible. Keep at this and you'll have a winner for sure.

Widi responds:

Thanks, and if you are interested, the Standalone EXE version lets you save to disk. Grab it from the links on this page: www.geocities.com/epicsofdr

[GGG Deluxe]

Just about perfect.

I really enjoyed playing this game. It is a lot of fun and makes you think ahead to try to plan your moves.

I only have one gripe. The game can suffer badly from the butterfly effect. That is to say, you really don't have much control over the outcome once you launch the "ball". After a small number of bounces you quickly lose the ability to control where it will go because even an incredibly slight change in the launch position/speed makes for a huge difference in the outcome. Thankfully there is a "fuel" powerup, so that problem is limited somewhat.

But don't feel bad about it, you've still got a very good game here. The graphics, style, coding, and all aspects of the game are top notch. Great work!

[Russisch Terrorist]

Not all that fun.

Boy is this not funny. I mean, as games go, it's alright I guess. I'd like to see something a little more interactive, but it's acceptable.

I see two problems with this game.

1. Why, in each level, am I the same character? Didn't I blow myself up in level one? Technically speaking, the game should end after level one because ... well ... you're dead.

2. It's just not that fun. It's kinda slow and it gets boring after a few plays. Replayability: not good.

Oh well. I know it's just a simple stupid little game. Good work overall.

[The NG Study Buddy]

Meh.

I applaud your work. This tool looks great, saves the questions and answers, and provides a reasonable testing feature.

But honestly, it's nearly pointless. I can recreate this entire thing with a few cut up pieces of paper and a pencil. Yes, I'm talking about flash cards. If this offered something that flash cards do not, I'd have a different opinion. (And don't use the example of, "This is available anywhere because it is on the net." Flash cards don't need a computer to work, so they are even more portable.)

Don't get me wrong. It's nice and all. But you're re-inventing the wheel unnesessarily.

Moosh responds:

Lol, well thanks for your comments anyways.

Originally I wanted to have a huge database of everything I will learn in an intire year of school. Sort of like a huge stack of flashcards :D

[Athalina RPG]

A great concept, but it needs some finishing work.

I really enjoy a good RPG. Athalina gets props for having a good start to what could be a great game. As it stands, however, I see a lot of room for improvement.

Gameplay is simple and straightforward. It is not, however, difficult nor even barely challenging. The hardest part would be the bosses whom take numerous hits to dispatch. However, by the time I got to them, I had literally hundreds of health potions at the ready, so defeating them was still quite easy. I didn't even bother learning any magic at all; save the first spell which I never even bothered using on an enemy.

I found the availability of weapons, armors, and money to be pretty unbalanced. For the first few battles it was a bit of a close win, but after I gained a piece of armor or two, it was really quite easy. By the end I had too much money to use. Not only that, but it felt as though you "gave up" in the end before the final boss by having the "uber" fights all in one place. Frankly, that was a real letdown.

The graphics are very simple and could use much improvement. The top-down view is good, but everything is very similar. More and varying scenery would be a huge improvement in the dungeons that were built from little more than differing arrangements of a few of the same dull graphics. Even in town, there is little of interest to see or look at. After only a couple of walks around town, it became boring. I'd love to see some movement in the backgrounds too. The people you meet in town, for instance, are completely still. A little subtle motion here and there would add a lot.

The music got repetative, but it wasn't annoying, so that's pretty good. Since there were no other sounds in the game, I played with the sound off after a while. (Am I forgetting sound effects? I don't think so.)

Some of the flow used was a little strange. I found it odd to be "teleported" off to an area to do battle rather than being required to walk around a big map. I guess this saves walking time and random monster attacks, but it felt out of place to me.

All in all, I really did enjoy this game and I played it all the way through over the course of about four sittings. Kudos on a good job. I hope that your next RPG will be bigger and better!