Lazarou's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Loondon]

Nice Game

More of an interactive story than a game, but still nicely done all the same.

Don't know if anyone else mentioned it, but you have a few jagged images in there, this is caused by rotating or resizing images in flash. If you have flash CS3 or above, you can fix this by ticking the "allow smoothing" box in the image properties.

Good luck on the next game.

[Blast Master]

great game

awesomly addictive game, but where is the mute button? trying to play the game whilst chatting to someone on skype isn't possible :( The music and explosions are just too loud to be able to talk to someone at the same time.

Add a mute button and it would have got my 10

GameBalance responds:

wow. or u never used any music players or u just got silly. Mute music by set music volume to 0%. Options in the gameplay

[the Hermit]

Looks great, but I think I broke it...

First I have to say, I really like your game's style and theme. It actually reminds me a lot of my own games, both in theme and content (I'm the creator of the core series of escape/adventure games).

-I like that all your puzzles are logic based. That definitely gets a big thumbs up from me. I really like puzzles that don't need any explanation other than just a bit of trial and error until you figure them out.

-Music and art are all really nice. Your character design and backdrops all add to the whole thing.

-Your music choice is also great.

Now for the bad:

-Whilst your puzzles are all logic based, some of them need a "little" more user feedback - ie it helps the player to see when they are heading in the right direction when working the puzzle out, rather than being left in the dark until they finally solve it.
Your generator puzzle was probably the best, because the player could see exactly what each push of the button did, and after a bit of trial and error, they could finally get a solution.
Wiring puzzle at the end had to be the worst, but I will come back to that later.

-Towards the end of the game, it felt a little rushed. Bits of text being cut off on the edge of the screen, graphics a little less tidy etc.

-The wiring puzzle... ok, I'm really not sure what that one is all about. So first you have to figure out that clicking on a wire, then clicking on a socket will connect the two. Then after about 10 minutes of head scratching, by accident I find that I can connect multiple wires to 1 socket by clicking on each colour, then on the socket they are meant to go into. The problem is that there is no indication of which wires you have currently selected.
It each wire that you had selected would glow, that would at least be an indication that something was happening.
However I couldn't work out the solution to the puzzle. Everything goes well until you realise you only have 1 red wire, but 2 sockets seem to want red.
Well, after randomly clicking, suddenly it appeared that I had solved the puzzle (no idea what I did, it didn't look very solved to me).
On pressing the red button, I got a very buggy looking end sequence, where words were half masked rendering them unreadable, the animation kept flicking back to the button inside the train, whilst a missile hovered in mid air.
It didn't feel like a proper end to me, and I am guessing that what I saw was unintentional.

Anyway, giving you 6/10 and 3/5. I enjoyed the game, but it feels a bit untested and buggy, you should really at least get a few friends to playtest it for you through to the end, to iron out these few glitches. Still, looking forwards to seeing more from you, keep up the good work.

tap5y responds:

Thank you very much for taking the time and writing such a detailed review. I'll look into the bugs once I have some spare time.

Thanks anyway!!!

[Maximum ToyBoy]

Are you meant to be a chick or a guy?

This left me confused about my own sexuality...

Standubonnet responds:

Mainly for female audience, but we get a 25% male audience. They are probably there to learn something about the game -- and when I say 'the game' I don't mean Maximum ToyBoy.

[Periodic Table Shells]

Not the most exciting periodic table...

I studied biochemistry at university, and even I find thing boring. Or should that be "bohr-ing"? ;)

The problem is that your diagrams dont actually show anything. The atoms all look exactly the same, except for the number of electrons they have whizzing around them (and for some reason instead of just animating an electron by itself, you animated the electron AND the ring it is drawn on, meaning that when you have multiple electrons in one orbit, there are about 20 lines all drawn on top of each other, looking like they have been produced by the scribble monster).

You should definately try to show the nucleus in more detail, show how many protons and electrons there are.

In addtion to all this, show the element in the real world. Find a photo of the element, list what state it exists in naturally, what are the uses of that element? You could make this a lot more interesting by actually giving infomation about each one that isnt available on just any periodic table.

[Virtual Computer]

I dont understand...

The point of making this sort of thing normally is to make it a parody, like simulating how unstable windows is, or making fun of it's little qwerks.

You seem to have made just a windows simulator, it isnt a parody, there is nothing funny (or fun) about it. Its just boring. And you can't read half the text (it is too small).

As an exorcise in teaching yourself actionscript, this isn't a bad thing to do. But it is not the sort of thing that a lot of people will enjoy, so if you want to keep making games, you really need to come up with some new ideas and ditch the whole "operating system simulator" concept - People already are using computers, they dont want to play a game that purely involves using a "virtual" one.

[Get Off My Planet]

As other have said, difficulty needs some tuning

I love tower defence games, so I came into this all fire up. However I quickly found like others that once it got to around level 20, I would get insta-gibbed.

In the end I found that the best way to go for me was the following:

Start with a Triple lazer, build 2 power stations, and then spam mines till you have about 6 of them. Then start terraforming to a mining planet. Improve your terraforming a couple of times when u get enough gold so that it goes faster.
Build another triple lazer on the other side of your base, and some more powerstations.

By the time you get to level 18 or 19, try to have 5000 saved up to buy the most expensive turret, and place it in your most undefended position.

Once the terraforming is complete, you should find that money is no longer an issue, and can afford to start researching.

I got to around level 50 something before some random ship came along and blew up half my base in 1 hit (bringing with it a shed load of lag and slowdown).

[Rift War]

misses the mark

Damn this game is a shame, it has so much potential, but is let down by some clunky mechanics which make it more irritating than enjoyable.

It requires an awful lot of micromanagement, but the interface used to select units is not particularly helpful.
For example, I create a group of samurai, geisha, and priests, and move them infront of the wall I created so that they can defend it, whilst the archers cover them from above. However the geishas and priests just seem to randomly walk in front of the soldiers, and get slaughtered by oncoming enemies. In order to select just the priest and geishas I have to drag a box selecting them all, then click a button to isolate just the geishas, then click to move them, then repeat again for the priests, it just takes too long and by the time I have done it, they have died.

Soldier creating is a pain as well. You first have to create a load of peasents, then convert them to soldiers. However when any new unit appears they are behind the fortress, only visible by a non-descript blue outline. You cannot distinguish one type of unit from another until you select them, move them outside the fortress, and then try to sort them from there. It is a pain, especially when the enemy break through your wall and are slaughtering your peasents before you can send new reinforcements.

I can tell a lot of work has gone into this game, but I just find it annoying to play, gave up on the second level after all my peasents were slaughtered whilst I was trying to work out where my priests and samurai had gone.

I would also have liked to see a "restart level" or "return to main menu" option whilst in the game. Sometimes you can screw up the economy at the start and have to wait for the enemies to kill you, or press F5 to restart the game from the beginning.

[Find Franky]

Reminds me a bit of click the button

Its a nice game, altho there are a few problems.

First, it is pretty easy. Just moving your mouse around the screen until it changes to a hand will allow you to find him very easily. Other than that, clicking anything round or blue tends to find him pretty fast too.

Not to mention that you havent disabled tab, so players can just use the tab key to highlight where he is immediately (for future reference, on your "franky" objects, use the code "this.tabEnabled = false;")

It is a good start, and with some practice you could probably refine this sort of game to be really challenging, as well as fun :)

[The Cell 2]

Dissapointing

I remembered playing your first game, and whilst it was short, it was at least fairly intuitive and logical. I was hoping that this would build on the strengths of the first game, adding more complex and involved puzzles.

Sorry to say I was really dissapointed.

The first MAJOR issue I had with the game was the pixel clicking. Seriously, there were not one, not two, but THREE items that required near pixel perfect clicks in order to pick up (the apple, the bottle and the knife), not to mention that the graphics for the items were so small that you wouldnt even notice them.

The game logic was also way off. You confuse the player by putting in this massive hole with something shiney at the bottom of it, yet this is not even a part of the game, it is just a distraction. When the items you expect us to pick up that actually start the escape process are so small, confusing the player with the big hole is just stupid. Dont even think that you are "increasing the difficulty", there is a massive difference between something being a n enjoyable challenge, and something being so frustrating that you give up after 5 minutes of random clicking.

I personally have an issue with the control system. Only being able to interract with items you are near to is fine, but the whole "Use/Look" system is poorly implemented because it is lacking the mouseover tooltips that are commonly associated with it (ie Just hovering your mouse over items in the room will bring up the text to let you know it is an item you can intereact with). The system in your previous game was probably much better, as it highlighted the areas in the room that you could interract with (altho the "Would you like to X in the X? Yes / No" option was a little pointless).

Also the button that is meant to take u back to the menu from the game is broken, clicking on it just leaves you on a blank screen. After giving up in frustration, I had to restart the game again in order to check the walkthrough to see if it was even possible.

Sorry if I am sounding overly critical, however I would like to think that as a fellow "point and click adventure" game developer, I am in a position to offer you some constructive advice. Keep up the work, I would like to see a "the Cell 3", just put some more work into keeping it user friendly.

Chaz responds:

Thanks, I have taken your points and will make sure that number 3 improves on all of these.