LordZeebmork's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Maverick Bus]

Oh man, Klik and Play.

Instant 10 for nostalgia right there.

There seem to be a lot of "you are a car and you dodge things" games made in KnP, Game Maker, etc., but this... well, it would be one of the better ones if not for the invincibility bug. And there's no music, which knocks it down a bit; if you want to keep people playing a very simple game that doesn't ever change, you'll almost certainly need good music. The bit about running over the little bastards in the middle of the road (er, well, "picking up passengers") is an interesting addition to an archetype (it's not big enough or varied enough to be called a genre) that normally revolves solely on dodging.

[Alphaland]

Interesting concept, mediocre execution.

Got linked here from a post elsewhere about game design that basically said that, in order to present the "literate player" (don't like the phrase, but can't think of anything better) with something genuinely new, game designers should make things that don't appear to have been designed. Minus worlds, basically. This game was given as an example.

Definitely an interesting concept, although I'm not sure how well it's implemented here, if that was the intent. The Life background, minimalistic graphics, and clearly nonrandom music and sound effects make the crafted nature of the game show through. But that might be a necessary tradeoff; I suspect most players wouldn't put up with realistically glitchy music and sound for even the ten or fifteen minutes that it takes to complete this game. (Glitchy graphics, on the other hand, have potential, and even playing them straight Minus World style would be preferable to the graphics here, which are so placeholderish that their non-placeholder nature is clear.)

It seems like the intent of this game was slightly different: yes, it's surprising the player by subverting the design/glitch dichotomy, but it's placed in the context of a world that is *incomplete*, not just imperfect. (A shame, really; if not for that, the message could have been an interesting response to certain aspects of the Christian worldview, albeit a response that, inexplicably, comes off to me as rather Christian itself. Hmm.) Alphas, not minus worlds. But the effect remains essentially the same, previously mentioned caveats excepted.

The message was built up in the game in an interesting way, but the ending ruined it. Instead of a mostly blank canvas about change, onto which the player can project his own contexts, it turned out to be a message about death so heavy-handed it'd rip its dick off it tried to masturbate. And I didn't even get the cheap swipe at played-out platformer franchises that I was hoping for. Oh well.

The game itself is a re-skin of the "throw you into a complex world with no instructions and leave you to gather objects and powerups" / "Metroid without enemies" archetype pioneered by Seiklus and popularized by Knytt. But unlike Seiklus, the environment here is complex and varied enough that it takes more than ten seconds to figure out what to do in a new environment, adding a slight puzzle aspect to the game; and unlike Knytt, the level design (this game's strongest point and Knytt's weakest) guides the player toward the objectives, instead of leaving him to wander around aimlessly for endless hours.

Overall, I'd say the concepts in this game are far more interesting than the game itself, which isn't much more than another art-game Knytt. 'Art games' (another phrase that I don't like) tend to be short and value message over gameplay, but the strengths of this game are all in the gameplay; between the Knyttish exploration, the Minus World aesthetic, and the environment-related puzzles, there's a good full game in there waiting to be developed. A platformer Nethack, maybe.

But even though the concepts don't work well as an art game, especially considering the poor execution of the message, this still merits a high rating for the level design. It's rare that this sort of balance is struck; most games of this sort collapse into either triviality or tedium.

JonasKyratzes responds:

I feel that I need to respond to one aspect of this review: the notion that this game is heavy-handedly and obviously about death. As far as the writer/designer (me) is concerned, death is not what this game is about. One might certainly find parallels to death, but I did not write or design this game to be about death. It's actually a lot more straightforward: it's about the thoughts/feelings of an unfinished game. That's it. The rest comes from the player.

[Space Tank]

Not really.

Good concept, but the things the tank shoots at should move slower and be larger, because there are too many of them falling too fast and they're too hard to hit. That really kills the game. Fix that and it would probably be awesome.

[Kickass Dragon!!]

Not enough shit to do.

Roll over the buildings with the cursor and set them on fire. Is that it? It needs more shit going on.

One star for the music though. (It's by The Bobs, by the way.)

Peacedood responds:

Probably should have clicked on the buildings.

[Crap Computer]

Ugh...

Going through the restart sequence every time I clicked on something got so annoying that I stopped after Internet Explorer. The graphics were crap, there was almost no humor, and it just looked like another crappy fake Windows simulator.

Maybe I should try to make one of these.

[Clock Crew Quiz!]

HAHAHA... OH WOW

You definitely need a scarier picture if you're trying to make a screamer.

By the way, I have that picture, so I wasn't freaked out at all. Hah.

[Bio Bouncer]

Not bad.

But do you really think people are going to want to play a game that involves a lot of clicking on Clock Day, which already involves a lot of clicking?

I doubt it.