pearljam23's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Word Find]

I found the music to be a great mood setter, and the games look and feel are good. The space bar function was an excellent idea.

The biggest gripe I had was that it does not recognize words when the caps lock is on.

[Snazzle]

A very fun game!

I really enjoyed the complexity of some of the levels, I definitely thought 12 was the hardest. One thing that you might consider, would be a scoring system based on how many arrows are used in each level, for example I used 21 arrows on lvl 13, I would receive more points if I completed the level using less arrows.

The music was a great mood setter, and the mute button was definitely appreciated when i was stuck on lvl 12.

[Boring Blocks]

Basic concept is interesting but for this to be a successful game alot needs to happen.

Presentation. This is very important, a really boring game about a block dodging other blocks can actually be interesting and fun if it has more layers to it. One fun thing is a ticker in a corner that shows your score in real time.

Also, maybe have there be different levels, or have the blocks you stand on change, after about a minute it gets old.

Try messing with the speed of the falling blocks, possibly make it them appear faster/more of them the longer the player survives.

good luck!

[Destroy The Evil Squares]

Good

Five years ago, heck even 3 years ago, this would have been amazing. However, this isn't 2008.

I thought that your money earned/upgrade cost ratios were good, if not a little too good. I won the first time I played, and only was challenged when I accidentally figured out how to release more waves.

Are you color blind? It says (im paraphrasing) to place a turret on the green platform to begin. The platform was red. I will now profusely apologize if you are indeed color blind, or if I have somehow become color blind in the last 5 minutes.

Towers were nothing special, pretty much the same standard lineup for any TD game.

Badguys, well, the title pretty much sums it up... evil blocks. Im assuming that they are evil because they are attempting to make it though the gate... which is placed conveniently right next to their spawn point.... too bad they are to stupid to just pull a u turn and end it quick.

All in all there is nothing "wrong" with this game, and I found it enjoyable for the first 8 waves. Also its your second flash game.... so then I must say WOW!!! I cant make games for crap (just good at telling people how.... and that's debatable) so if this is truly your second game ever, then keep it up, and I will be sure to check for your future posts.

But that doesn't make this a better game.

It in no way what so ever stands out from the rest of the tower defense games.

Try making a unique tower. Maybe a back story, as to why these blocks are evil, and why I should care about them making it to the exit portal. Should I care because of something that's beyond that portal, like the city with my wife and unborn child that will be ravaged and killed if I let 20 blocks through?

SOUND!!!
The silence was deafening! you had animations for the "bullets" but no sounds! even a kepiew kepiew would suffice, and explosion or crumbling noise when a block is destroyed. Oh and while your at it a soundtrack too! (dont forget mute buttons!!! a pet peeve of mine)

A nice feature in many games that I did not notice was the ability to see what kind of enemy is in the next wave or two. It seemed like they were all the same, but i could have been wrong... also all your turrets are classified as "ground".... was there a plan for flying blocks? if so, and it was scrapped then remove the aforementioned classification, if not, then why was it there?

Ummm I feel like there was more, but I really wanna go watch some more Castle, so sorry if this seemed a little rushed, usually I try to catagorize everything so its not so disorganized.

Good game, good luck, I will be looking for further submissions!!!
pj

soulreaper134 responds:

lol thanks for the review . reason i sayed green is because my beta version was green but i didnt like it so i changed it but i forgot to change the description as for sound i tried but failed so bad at it you could call me charlie sheen lol. jk, but i am trying to fiqure out sound. as for realesing waves that was for people who wanted more action as for graphics im geting better and as for codeing i have already known a little c++ and lua stuff like that and story line i like the idea ps you said the monsters look the same each wave look at there eyes and mouths there diffrent colors. and last thanks for your review alsoim working on a stick figure rpg fighting game with aliens :o lol but im also working on simple stuff like pong and ping pong and adding originalality to it :p my first flash game was snake and old retro game but anyways expect cooler things from me its hard tho because all my projects are solo.... no testers no team just me thats wht its buggy and mistakes like the green background lol.. bye

[SpotZim]

Good

Well this game has a fun concept but it could use a few things.

First, the glaring issue of having more then one possible solution, but only one of those being "correct". Once I noticed that, and then soon after had to find solutions for 3 shapes, I knew it would be too frustrating to find a solution and not get the right one.

Second, sounds. The soundfx were great, but you could do more... I have always found that, even though its superficial, having a little background music looped/selectable tracks, and separate mutes for sfx and music, to help set a game apart from the others.

[Seek N Destroy-2]

Needs more....

Theres a few things I think could be added to this game.

Sound-

The soundtrack was a very short repeating loop, it sounds nice, but gets old after about 45 seconds.

SFX - the tank moving, the jets engine as it passes by

Gameplay-

Not being able to move diagonally is frustrating.

It is hard to tell when your moving, you can see the treads move, but the background stays roughly the same, if it were not for the mini map, it would be impossible to tell. Add some texture to the enviroment, it seems like you have a desert/wasteland setting, how bout adding a road through it, or some rocks, cacti or something!

Ok so the premise is to wipe out the militants, ok, but how you go about doing it is just lame. You shoot at a camp, and get surrounded by badguys, always 6 and always in just about the same spots. Repetition is what kills a game, I had to force myself to finish this, after the first 2 camps youve seen it all.

The bombers was a nice twist, but not enough. there is no real "action" so to speak of, whenever you battle a camp, your frozen in place.

It was easy to kill them all still had at least a quarter of my hp bar left. Try making it harder, but add some repair kits or something.

Good luck in the future
pj

[Mini Car Racer]

Fun.... but

A little bit wider track.

If you go off the track right at the start line, it doesnt count your lap

mulitplayer

Sorter race, but add levels

[Asteroid Field.]

Fun

Well, I did enjoy the game, for a number of runs, but I would have kept playing longer if I hadnt always died in the same way.

I always found myself trapped by three asteroids (in the middle) or two (on the sides) boxing me in, after going up to grab some coins, but because you cannot move backwards fast enough, once those asteroids are coming at you its too late, even though theres tons of room behind you.

I would suggest being able to go backwards a little bit faster.

[Lavatory Escape]

Fun, but....

My half a blue key is taking up the same inventory slot as my green half keys. Whenever I try to combine stuff, it just gets up over the other item, blocking it. If the items cannot be combined, when someone tries to do combine them have the dragged item snap back to its inventory slot or something like that, so this doesnt happen. This led to me not being able to complete the game, and not wishing to do it all over again just to see how it ends.

I liked having the notepad, very helpful.

Try expanding the view a little bit, I found it very disjointing. for example, when your in the stall, the side with the door is clearly only a few feet wide, where at the back by the toilet, there was no wall on the left, leading me to wonder what was over there.

Also the same sort of issues when I was out of the stall, when you zoom onto the radiator, you can see a door to the left, but you have to go back, and then hit the left key to see the door, but im not sure if its the same door, because im too close to it, and cannot see if theres a radiator down and to the left. also the radiator is in a corner, but this door has no corners visible around it, so.... very confusing.

Basically the same issue for almost every camera angle is that its too tight in, and does not give me an idea of how big the space I am in is, and therefore I cannot clearly tell if I have been everywhere in my environment. the angles and the perspective were done well, just zoom them out a little more.

I did like the pulsing/heartbeat esque sound track, it was repetitive, but helped with the creepy factor.

Also the movement buttons, this sorta ties in with the camera issues, I found I was always wanting to look in a direction, but was unable to. I guess a good example is when you turn around in the stall, the rear view is only looking at the toilet(downwards), maybe you could have the rear view looking at the wall, and you can see the top of the toilet, and the corner of the ceiling, and then you click down to view the toilet.

I think that sort of change, would make gameplay feel much smoother, and make for an overall more enjoyable experience.

I look forward to future submissions.

HDMK responds:

Thank you for taking the time and suggesting those improvements - I guess the main problem is that this game is based on an actual bathroom, so we had an image of the room in our head the entire time while programing it, which explains the lack of some angles and pictures, that were not neccessary for the gameplay but would have made it smoother.

The problem with the menu is that some tiems can be draged over one another, yet this is always reversable and shouldn't effect the gameplay.
Once two combinable items are over one another they should be combined with a click.

In our future games we will try to improve those issues, thank you for pointing them out.

[Robo Run]

Fun!

I did enjoy this game, but there was one thing that really nagged at me the whole time.

Its the way the players character interacts with the spikes. It was ok to run up against some vertical spikes, if you were walking along the ground/ceiling and just bump into the sides, thats ok and makes sense. But it seemed that if you were up against the sides of some upwards pointing spikes, and you jumped, up and over the spikes, you would die if on the way up.

I feel that if its ok to go up to the sides, then you should be able to treat the whole side of the spike as a wall, not a spike, it seems like you had the upper part of the side of the spike as a kill zone.

Great game though, well done.