JohnnySedona's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Kush:Revamped]

Fun little game

It gets kind of boring after two minutes, though. (It's more challenging, but by that time I was just kind of over it.)

[Quickling]

It's not just you.

I played Cave Story for the first time yesterday, so I'm sure my platform-game expectations are a little too high right now, but I didn't like a couple things about this game. First of all, though, the music and the effects were beautiful, and the world was very nicely rendered and had a very fanciful atmosphere.
The first problem I had was with the instructional text at the beginning- the philometer covered the upper left hand corner of the speech bubble and made it difficult to read. It wasn't too hard to figure out the directions anyway, but considering how easy it is to fix that issue, I think it's just a drag that the game starts off with that low-budget, amateur hour mistake.
The second problem isn't really a glitch, it's kind of a genre-wide mistake. Adventure games are about exploring, but there's a reason that any great adventure game you play starts off in a small little environment, and it's not just because you're learning how to play. For someone who's never played your game before, having that massive, endless looking level can be pretty overwhelming. I had no idea how far I was from the end of the level, or even if there was one. It's fun to go jumping from floating island to floating island, but as far as I knew, I'd be doing that for fifteen minutes before anything happened. You've got to constrain that kind of thing until the player becomes familiar with your level design habits and gets a feel for the levels. Just saying that there are sages out there is one thing. You should make the first mission to find the next sage, and point him in the right direction. Just saying "go look" and giving the player five different directions to explore is kind of like leaving a blind man in the middle of a baseball field, spinning him in circles, and then telling him to find the pitcher's mound. And at least he's got some idea of how a baseball field's supposed to look.
Don't get me wrong, the game looked good, the controls were very clean, and the hit detection and programming were clean as hell. But the level design needs some serious help if you want to keep people playing.

[Elementris]

I hated this game at first

Because I didn't understand what was supposed to be going on. After I realized that the atoms were supposed to be bonding with eachother, and not with the little green dots that kept changing color on me, it was a little more fun. I'm not sure if it's a puzzle game or a strategy game, but I like it.

[A Koopa's Revenge]

This game is great, but...

It could have been so much better. A little more attention to the physics and the animation, and it could have been one of the best games on NG.

[Sdioretsa]

Sorry, I thought it was kind of a mess.

It wasn't terrible, but I wouldn't call it good. The feedback was kind of weird- my shots went right through the enemy ships. Sometimes they blew up when the shots went through, sometimes they didn't. I don't know if they were wearing down the shields or what, but some sort of visual feedback would have been really nice. I even tried using the dick bullets to see if that would fuck shit up a little faster, but to no avail. Lastly, I don't think that customizing the bullets/asteroids/ship from the main menu was really necessary. Maybe making those unlockable, with different effects, would have been dope. As it stood, it was just silly.

Lambtaco responds:

They were wearing down the ships. The ships vibrate faster and faster depending on how much they've been damaged. Maybe I should have pointed that out. And whether or not the customization was neccessary, it was easy (for me to do). There are some skins than are unlocked when you complete story mode. And it's supposed to be silly.

Anyway, I didn't exactly pour my heart and soul into this, so I'm not gonna bitch about it.

[Beginners Tut: Design]

This tutorial's already been submitted...

The last time I saw this tutorial, it was by a different author, it had different graphics, but it covered the same basic flash stuff. I can appreciate that you want to share your knowledge with others, but it seems like there are already way too many basic tutorials out there for new flash designers, and this didn't add anything to the series. You should spend more time honing your own skills so you can write advanced-level tutorials. There aren't enough of those out there, that's for sure.

[Ramps]

Great game

Congratulations. It's fun, it's simple, and it's sure to be a hit.

[Divine Division]

Great concept!

The game's a lot of fun, not much more to be said. The graphics are plain as hell, but I can't blame you for that. Check out Speck Oppression. If you put some trippy little particle effects/lighting halos/glows in there, the souls will look more "soully", and this game could be a HUGE hit. It's part of the formula, though: the gameplay's fun, but it's not Bloons fun. So if you want a hit, you've got to upgrade from the Bloons graphics. If you're ever looking for a design partner, let me know.