CheckeredZebra's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[RAPTUS]

Wall of text, sorry dude.

I'm majoring in music, I love artistic things, and sometimes I've had to accept works that I don't like at all as art. Your game is still artistic, but to be honest I have a hard time really...caring about this game. The use of the pixels is awesome, the lighting effects, etc. I also thought it was cool that you could push the man towards the woman.

I've read your responses (interactive flash game, what the clicking means, etc) but you really should have made the theme of how you are "Forcing him to do those things" more obvious. To players, they KNOW they are making him do things. That's how games work for the most part; you manipulate your environment.

Perhaps give people more obvious options on how to affect his life, because until I read your responses, this game was "Click to see a story about how this guy killed some woman." which I saw coming the moment he said the word "her." Perhaps have had him rebel against your actions. He seemed really passive, so the thoughts seemed to have come from his head.

You could have done a lot more, ESPECIALLY the in scene where you do nothing but click near the building. Perhaps have had him say "NO!" "I DON'T WANT TO!" "STOP MAKING ME!" etc. (I saw words, but they were from the woman's side, so if HE was saying that, you need to make it more clear as I thought the woman was saying that.)

Near the end, maybe make him say "I can't do it...these impulses are overwhelming" or something, or just show his thoughts in sentences that become less and less sane. This was a VERY underdone part of your game, for the point you wanted to get through. Horrifically under-explained even for the art game genre, and that's saying something.

It's not good if all your meanings are lost, especially if what people absorb in its place is some static series of events. (The story of the man killing the woman.) I encourage you to make more things, for sure, but...yeah. This one...it needs work.

[NTCreature2]

REALLY needs some undo/backspacing options.

Had some great fun until I made a few mistakes I couldn't undo, and got stuck losing to certain waves/bosses over and over. So a "redo previous wave" button, OR at least a "training wave" that a person could grind on, would really help.

I don't really mind starting new games to get new creatures, because most of your bonuses you get from killing bosses remains. However, if some other things could carry over as well, it would make restarted more worth it.

Finally, the evolutions of creatures are unbalanced. Everything should have a pro/con/separate playing style, yet should be similar in usefulness to all other evolution forms.

[Color Painter]

Welp...

Again with the "stolen idea bro!"
I have no idea whether you saw and polished the concept, but there was almost this exact idea somewhere here on newgrounds, except the paint was black and the screen white. Which, honestly I don't care about. the guy said "here's a concept I don't feel like finishing" and left it to rot.

But it affected me in the way that the novelty of it was gone. And once the "COOL! That's a neat idea!" effect ended, I was left with a semi-bland puzzle-ish platform game. There wasn't anything in the jumping/controls that interested me, and even though I'd sometimes think "wow, that was a cool level design/puzzle/powerup/etc!" there were too many other times I'd get tired of said level because the guy wouldn't jump when I told him to or there were too many frustratingly precise gaps to leap over.

Or maybe it was the music. It was extremely repetitive, just the same few measures over and over again. While at first nice and calming, it had...little to no content and would grate on the nerves quickly. It really needed to either be more ambient or have something, ANYTHING added to it to give it content. Even just ambient drums/synths would have done. The same 5 measures over and over again? Then ending it? The music sounds like it was added last minute.

Then again, I say all these negative things, but I only got to level 10 or so due to lost interest.

However, the paint's physics, the use of the color red for danger, and the power ups in general (Woo fireworks indeed =P) were really neat. I just feel that this game is missing something.
In which case, I suggest less frustrating platforming or making more complex jumping mechanics to give the platforming depth. (Perhaps wall jumping?)

[Pokemon Tower Defense]

Needs a mute button =P

Solid game, tons of fun to play.

But, gets a bit difficult for people who weren't here from the beginning, though. (especially if you choose Charmander) I understand that you wanted to make it to where it wouldn't be automatically easy for people who have grinded their pokemon to max level while waiting for updates, but difficult for others to catch up. They have to GRIND AND GRIND just to get the next level, and to do that...you have to replay levels over and over again. Which isn't too terrible if you can have it running on another tab. That is, if you don't mind the music.

All in all, only thing it needs is a mute button =P

[Battle for Wayland Keep]

Amazing work

Amazing work, the art is good (although the "GATE UNDER ATTACK. THE GATE IS BEING ATTACKED" dialog happening that often was unnecessary, lol.)

the only critisism I have is that lag. I'd understand if I were on an old computer, but this is a relatively new and powerful one, and I still had terrible, TERRIBLE LAG even with quality all the way down at low, allowing the game full access to memory, and all sounds off. I had to quit by week 5 due to it :(

Although...I'm no tech person, so I might be doing something stupid, but aside from that...amazing game. I'm looking forward to the next one :3

[DJManiax]

I'm sure this is amazing, but...

This game is lagging for me...and lag in a rhythm game is bad. I mean, I can't even pass the easiest mode due to this technical problem >_<; Also, could just be me but half the stuff doesn't seem like it's on the beat. So, giving it a 7/10 due to technical difficulties and the fact that the hits seemed off-rhythm...can't trust your musical gut on this game. D:

However, the backgrounds and art were very well done. :3 I applaud the person that did them.

TaroNuke responds:

Try setting quality to low in settings menu.
I made sure all the songs were synced as well as possible.

[Heaven or Hell RTS]

Oh...Oh gawd...

Yes, I'm not the first person to say this, but...No. Clicking = no.
This is horrible to even attempt on a laptop, and the whole clicking thing makes the angel...wizard...thing guy pretty much useless. He should have more power because it takes like 5 seconds on a laptop to even select a target, and when I do try and select a target sometimes the click doesn't register. This is, um...well, it's a mess without hotkeys. If you think the extra 2 seconds it takes to click on something makes the game more balanced, why didn't you just have the wait/recharge times be longer? This is just frustrating. >__<

[Chaos Faction 2]

Weeeellll.....

I can't really give a decent review seeing as how my person would always walk in one direction then kill himself no matter how hard I tried.

Kinda a game breaking bug, no?

And it seems I'm not the only one with this problem. People are going to rate this REALLY low because of this glitch, you might want to work on fixing it because it makes the game unplayable for a bunch of people. :(

[The Company of Myself]

Very cool and thought provoking!

It made me think. Even though I got stuck a couple of times, I kept going because of the narrative. Very cool, and the whole premise behind the idea was nice.

I really liked the last puzzle, too :3

[Level Up!]

Small fixes and glitches:

If you turn invisible, here's how to fix the it: die. While waiting for yourself to reappear at a postbox, press down several times (Successfully teleporting yourself to several different boxes) and you should reappear.

Also, don't use the computer until you have 100%, because otherwise you can't use the computer a 2nd time. The game will freeze.

DO NOT TALK to an NPC on the very second that you have to go to sleep. The game will freeze.

-Hope that helped some of you.