Score: 8

"What the fuck?"

submission: Time Assault

date: November 29, 2007

What's up with ninjas these days? I thought the music was great, and the gameplay was masterful in its simplicity. Great difficulty progressions, too. The "Evaluation Version- Not for Redistribution" watermark kind of made me sad, though- it's not stolen, is it?

Score: 6

"Ok."

submission: UFO Racing

date: November 29, 2007

To tell you the truth, I didn't make it past the first race- I bailed after the third lap. Five laps is a pretty serious time commitment for a game like this. I like the graphics, but there were some issues there, too- I really thought that the lens flare was a waste. Sorry, but it didn't look mind-blowingly real, and I noticably affected performance every time it popped up. Seems like feature bloat to me. If there's an option to turn this off, then I'm just a lazy asshole for not finding it.
This game reminds me of F-Zero, but F-Zero was more fun. Why? Boosters on the course, jumps, and intentional crashing into other racers, I'd imagine. Great use of 3D, but as a game, it's kind of tedious.

Score: 2

"If you're really 13 years old..."

submission: Windows Viesta 2

date: November 14, 2007

Then this isn't bad. But it's not gonna get any good reviews. Stop submitting things to NG until you get some more experience under your belt, or you're gonna end up with horrible self-esteem issues.

Submission suggestions: don't make a version 3. We get it. The sound it kept making was pretty annoying, too. My copy of Windows doesn't sound THAT bad.

Score: 10

"I fuckin hate mouse mazes."

submission: Cursors & Co.

date: November 14, 2007

But you, sir, have created an amazing game. This is polished, professional, and really uses humor to keep the player motivated. The mazes are really difficult, and not just because they rely on annoying little 1 pixel paths. I'm impressed. I never thought I'd give a mouse maze a score higher than 2.

Great work!

Score: 7

"I like the game"

submission: Heist II - Greed is Hell

date: November 14, 2007

And I think that you did some new things that added some fun to the point and click genre, but I think this game suffers from the same problem that almost every other game in the genre suffers from- it assumes that the player knows more than he does. I had the walkthrough and it still took me a few minutes to realize that the main room at the top of the stairs was even there. Looking through the keyhole was a great element, but how would I know to do that if I wasn't just randomly pointing and clicking? I wish I had a solution, but that's a problem I see with the whole genre, not just your game. As it was, it was a well-made and interesting game, but I think the gameplay problems with that whole category of games should be worked out or the genre shelved forever.

Score: 9

"Good game"

submission: Ether Cannon

date: November 10, 2007

It reminds me of the newer vertical scrolling shoot-em-ups where there are just so many bullets on the screen, you feel like it's just blind luck that's keeping you from dying. But there's a very low-level instinctive skill involved in ultra-fast paced games like this, and it's difficult to master, from a game design perspective. I like what you've got here.

Score: 9

"All in less than 500k..."

submission: Gravitee

date: October 26, 2007

Congratulations- your optimization is not unappreciated. I think it may have benefited from a bit more sound, but the gameplay was great.

Score: 8

"Extensial's not a word."

submission: Dark Cut²

date: October 26, 2007

But I did like it. It was short, and that made me sad, but the atmosphere was absolutely incredible.

Score: 6

"Not bad."

submission: Halloween Game Collab 07

date: October 26, 2007

I'm sure building a game for a collab takes a lot of the glory out of it, so I've got a lot of respect for designers that can do that. It would have been nice to see some unifying element in there, though- something that brought all the games together, like a checklist of accomplishments that would have required playing all the games.

Score: 9

"Looks great, plays great."

submission: Dead Frontier: Night One

date: October 23, 2007

I prefer games that have more progression, but as an action-based shoot-em-up, this is great- the graphics in particular were incredible.
As for realism... video games don't need to be realistic. If you can suspend disbelief enough to accept that you're guiding a mushroom-eating plumber through monster infested magical green pipes, you can trust that any inaccuracies in reload times were done for the benefit of gameplay.