Grognor's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Impasse]

Very nice puzzle game

I do not normally like puzzle games. But this one was just about perfect, so I've just got to review it.

Now, what normally makes me hate a puzzle game is that I will stroll along through the levels, feeling clever and getting through them with little difficulty and then I get slammed with some stupid level that either takes me hours to beat and then is not satisfactory or I give up and look up how to do it and it was either an incredibly unintuitive solution that I would have never thought up or just a stupid thing that I feel stupid for missing.

This game is different.

Impasse has basically the best difficulty curve I've ever seen in a puzzle game. It introduces concepts, sends the player through interesting uses of these concepts, and when the player has proven that he mastered them it introduces a new one. The game gets increasingly complex but never too much, and it never suddenly jumps up in difficulty, nor are the puzzle solutions that unintuitive. In fact, I'd say this is a perfect game for humans, rather than robots, to play. It frickin' preys on human intuition.

Another thing I like is how it "teaches" the player how to play, not with a tutorial, but by presenting situations in which the player simply learns by a simple form of the scientific method ("what happens when I... ohhh"). This is the best kind of tutorial: the kind you don't even know is there.

Best of all is the primary mechanic. The arena's actors move when you do. It's not some arbitrary gimmick, no, like all good puzzle games it is a totally interesting and fluid mechanic. I don't know if you could expand upon it, but I think this game was just about the right length.

Oh and as far as constructive criticism goes? Um, I guess you could say it was bland. I sure didn't expect much out of a 125kb game. Maybe spruce it up? I don't know if that's your style then stick with it I guess.

So anyway, good job.

[You Only Live Once]

Great and all.

It's so awe-inspiring that you created an entire game just to show the ridiculousness of the idea of continuing after death. Bringing realism into games is a fantastic way of deconstructing the genre, and this is pulled off very nicely. I would have liked to see more of the game you made, but hey. You only live once. Way to prove your point! I'm quite a fan of these games that subvert the idea of what a game is supposed to be. I subtract a point from the maximum due to the sense of frustration I got by the end. While that is the point of the game, I still found it annoying. I'm one of those people who never gives up. EVER. That's why I don't like it when something tells me I can't keep trying. Anyway, great idea.

[Epic Battle Fantasy]

Epic!

This is a textbook example of how to create a perfect turn-based RPG. It is very difficult to find any flaws or annoyances not already covered in the news post. However, there is one issue I'd like to bring up: sound effects. It seems like nearly all the sound effects were taken from Little Fighter 2, which absolutely kills the willing suspension of disbelief for those of us who play and enjoy that game. It also grows tiring with the already tedious nature of the game hearing the same sound effects over and over for different moves. It would probably be spamming to list where to get lots of other sound effects, but if you contact me I could show you where to get a bunch of new ones. Or not. Probably not. Eh.

But the SHEER EPIC PERFECTION THIS AWESOME GAME EXUDES MAKES UP FOR IT ANYWAY, so 10/10 NOW AND FOREVER. God I loved just BARELY winning to Goku on normal mode (one more turn and I'd have been finished). Great job on making this great game.