Seawana's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Xmas Lander]

Meh

Hey look! It's Moonlander II with different graphics and Christmas music. Whoopie.

Sorry, man. I'm just not impressed. Moonlander II was pretty good, but to repurpose it with different graphics and sound does nothing for me. Nothing at all.

[Noughts and Crosses]

Meh.

It's nothing to write home about, but it's not bad I guess.

I also noticed a bug where the computer cheats. Twice when I had placed a 3-in-a-row move, the computer placed OVER my piece instead of blocking the fourth space. Somehow that doesn't seem fair. :-/

Oh well. I never cared much for tic-tac-toe anyhow. That brings up another thing.

[Invasion 3]

Much better, but still rather disappointing.

There's a lot to be said for persistance! Frankly, version 1.0 of this game stunk. Version 2 was an improvement. This version is much better. The visuals and sound effects are far superior to the previous versions. The bulk buy and easier troop deployment are also welcome additions.

That said, there are a few things I would definitely change if this were my project.

1. It's way too easy. If you just buy all archers all the time, you pretty much can't lose. It's basically the same thing for the infantry or any other weapon (once you can afford them).

2. The different weapons aren't really all that different. The infantry, cavalry, saboteurs, and cannon may fight differently, but one arrow kills any of them. The advantages of the $1000 cannon over the $50 infantry is slight when they die so easily. By the time you can afford an amount of cannon to be worth much, the arrows take out so many they are a huge waste of money.

3. The upgrades to the barracks, etc are nice, but how am I supposed to know what I have upgraded and by how much? Some kind of display of how much upgrading I have done and what that does for me would be a good addition. After a while I just upgrade by ridiculous amounts to make sure I am "on track" with the castle defenses (which I always far outpower anyhow. See #1 above.)

4. The quality button is good to have handy since you have hidden the right click menu options. However, forcing the user to re-click it every time a new battle begins gets old. Why not save that quality setting for the battle sequences and do it automatically?

5. What's the point of surrendering? If you got to regroup and buy more troops to attack again it might make more sense.

6. I really liked the intel on the castle in the last version. I wish you had expanded on that in this version rather than dropping it completely. Imagine if each castle had different weak points for which a paticular type of troop would be best. That would be sweet.

I know this all might sound rather harsh, but these are honestly my gripes with the game. It's a big improvement from the last version, but the gameplay just is not balanced enough, IMHO. I hope you will spend some more time making this good game into a great one.

VENGEANCE-GGG responds:

1.) Ever tried balancing out an RTS? It takes several minutes just to export the game, and it can take about seven tries just to get something right.

2.) The problem is, it's almost impossible to think of a new type of unit that's different in more than one way.

3.) Why would anybody care how many times they have upgraded? I could add it in a couple of seconds if it was really that important, but how would you know how much any number of improvements would modify your damage?

4.) I do save the quality setting. Ever tried going into options instead?

5.) Well, I had to have some way of leaving the fight.

6.) If I kept the intel, then there'd be no room in the interface for an upgrades bulk buy. It never seved much use, since it's very easy to figure out what changes occur on each new level.

[3DTris]

WOW!

This is a very cool version of Tetris! It's really hard, but then how could 3D Tetris NOT be hard? I could only get a few hundred points.

The graphics and style are superb. The animation is smooth and the movement is easy to understand and use. Of course, some sound would be good, but I am not holding that against your score.

I assume you actually scripted a 3D engine for the game, and I am amazed byt it. I'm also amazed it fits into 19Kb. Sweet.

There does appear to be a bug at the end of the game. Once you finally lose, the game proceeds to the main menu screen where you can choose a level to start at. However your score is not saved to the high score list and the the control instructions are not shown.

Still, it's cool. I hope you submit more work in the future.

[Cliff Racer]

Not much to it, but what there is is good.

I like.

This is a fun game. It's exceedingly simple, but that can be a good thing. I love the random levels, the background music, the controls, and the gameplay overall.

The game is very easy, but I think that is a good thing. Obviously there is lots of room for additional features and such (more obstacles, enemies, different vehicles or upgrades, point or damage systems, a terrain map or radar, etc). However, that doesn't necessarily mean this game should have those things. It's darn fun just the way it is too.

Great work.

[Splooge Invaders]

Well done and very replayable.

Cool game. It's simple, fun and I love the intro/outtros. I was able to stop 2249 sperm.

Of course since the average man offers more like 50-100 million sperm per .... uh ... dose, a few thousand is child's play. Pun intended.

Good work on this game.

[Mediocre Modeller]

Neat. Useless but neat.

Newgrounds probably isn't a good place to submit something like this. I am very surprised (and glad) it wasn't blammed outright by younger folks who don't understand the point of this submission.

Personally, I think this is a great piece. It doesn't really seem to serve a useful purpose other than a nice piece for your Flash portfolio. That said, I really like what you have here. It's functional (if a little clunky), and offers several nice features. A serious 3d Modeler certainly would not include music, but it appears that's a necessity of 13 year old Newground users. Go figure.

One thing I think would make this extra cool is if there was at least one preset model that you could use, or a save feature. Overall, this is very good work.

[Naked Melee]

Interesting idea.

How very odd. I have never seen a game quite like this. It is very simple and yet somehow I felt the need to replay about 10 times. I wasn't even able to beat it on hard, but I have a cut on my left mouse button finger. Yeah that's it.

Anyhow, I like the idea for the game. I suppose it could use some other options of some kind to make it a litle more complex than just "hit the button more than X times to win", but overall it's pretty fun. Good work.

By the way, I love the title screen.

[Super Path game v1]

Well made, but rather dull.

I've seen a lot of follow the paths games. You have done a great job making a simple and yet fairly addictive version that is still pretty fun.

Now, I only got to world 3-1 so I may not have made it to the "cool" stuff. I would liked to have seen something more than just a linear path that you must follow. A path with alternate routs for instance, or moving portions of the path, or enemies, or bonuses to pick up, or something a little more exciting than just ... a plain path.

I do really like the concept of having worlds that you must complete to have a "save location". Also, I like knowing when I need to clean my mouse ... like right now.

Overall, a pretty good game.

VivaKraken responds:

yes the levels get more interesting once you got to level 5

[Mile High Club]

Pretty good, but very difficult.

Wow is this hard! I played many times before I was able to beat the second level. Then when I saw the third level with it's tiny little floor bits, I knew I was doomed.

It'd be great to be able to see a little more of the play field by being able to zoom around or with a map or something. I assume the plan was to force peope to replay a lot because there is a good chunk of trial and error on the levels. For me, however, I could only take so much of the repetition of replaying levels one and two just to find out what the heck is on the upper levels.

Oh, and I think the ball tends to roll a long way. It rolled off the edges many times when I though maybe, just maybe I was finally going to make a darned putt.

Overall, this is a well done game, mind you. It's just really tough.