Boss's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Flanet]

This game is really awesome and addictive. I skipped the tutorial at first (lol) and wasnt sure how to buy the towers because im on mobile. I thought i was selecting different kinds of seeds and the flowers themselves were temporary towers or something? This is why we should just play the tutorial lol. I found the game really interesting and fun and the graphics were really cool and interesting too. As i got closer to level 100 i found it really rewarding to realize you could jump to stack towers by dropping them . I sort of wanted to be able to make a 2nd layer of the shield tower by bouncing above it and then using the buy tower command and have another layer of the shield appear like layers of a stratosphere. i think that could be amazing if it was easiee to bounce and get air off enemies so its like a platform climb game that leads to you flying around orbit or even going to other planets. That might just be really chaotic and ridiculous though. When i hit level 100 i dont know if i overclocked the game or if my build made this happen but i had tons of gun towers out and they all died at once. Then the enemies came in and i couldnt jump into them all. I went back and did a mostly health build and that basically gives you a god mode where eventually you can tap to plant seeds endlessly and you wont die, maybe a hidden metaphor about what towers are the best for our own planet? Lol. I think if you ran this on a Computer and do a heavy health tower build you could let it idle forever. I hit level 145 and was like ok this is going too far. It got a little more fun to hit jumps into orbit at that point because the game was starting to lag/overclock so my air direction inputs were more precise. All in all i think its an amazing game and you could turn it into a really engaging story oriented tower defense game or really do anything with the mechanics here. In a way it was like a puzzle and like an action game too already. This can definitely give you carpet tunnel if youre playing on mobile. I think it could be sick if somehow the game doesnt overclock when a million objects are on the screen and you instruct the player to do a god mode style build and then crazy bosses came in that you had to fight that did enough damage to make the health build fail. I think all the action on the screen makes you want it to be a japanese shootemup in a way, this mechanism or gameplay dynamic is the perfect blend of tower defense and attacking things to defend but the style doesnt feel jaded or industrial at all, it still feels really artistic. Maybe some of that is because pico 8 is just a great platform too, idk. I also felt that at a certain point this game became like a meditation and was relaxing and made me re-realize the purpose of video games. So theres that i guess. I better stop typing i hope this review doesnt break the web page for being too long

Elastiskalinjen responds:

Thanks! Impressive review and for hitting such highscores :O

[Miskatonic Brain Drain]

You the man now dawg! I liked the theme and story and art it all went together really well and made the confusion of the gameplay seem to make sense and match especially tied together by the BSOD screen which is a great way to trick the player into fucking up which key they want to press. at first hitting q and a for slide and the answers to questions was really fucking me up and the BSOD fucks you up more but its good to have someting like that really confuse you. I have to say I understand why people are confused as fuck but I found it fun even though I did have to play a long ass time to beat it the first time, I wish the timer was on in retrospect because I feel like it took me thirty minutes as not knowing what hitting what things / getting hit does to the meter means, going down to 20% and then almost all the way back up which is emphasized by some instances of double spawn death, glitch into the side of a platform while sliding and one or two times i even slide moved and got stuck outside of the screen on the left side probably bolstered out by a paltform or something? the weird thing is the necronomicon theme made me feel like the more glitches there were the better, the BSOD being slightly meta atleast to the extent of the players computer made me feel like the confusion was supposed to be there.

I think the confusion definitely got fucking aggravating when I started wanting to hit the 3 minute medal and was confused what did what. I eventually had to focus and realize I couldnt punch the heart bubbles and for awhile I thought I had to run into the skull bubbles and the heart bubbles. I think the first thing after realizing how to beat the game that sped my play up a lot was using the slide like a tech maneuver by jumping and sliding over onto the long platform constantly where I knew I had space and using that to speed up as far as I could but I still couldnt hit even 5 minutes so I kept playing and playing. getting like 3 and a half minutes and then getting an 8 or 9 minute run after that is so fucking annoying!! lmfao. eventually I could do them all under 5 minutes and I found out the jump slide tech where you jump and slide at the same time so that you get thrown in the air at around a 45 degree angle diagonally, perfect for some tight spots you encounter in the platform pattern and this was necessary to learn and something i didnt figure out for awhile.

I got a 3 minute run but because I had selected one of the girls specifically I think it didn't give me the medal at first. I could have actually just fucked up and not turned speed mode on for all I know but I think the timer was there so this might be a real thing, hard to say when you played it like 50 fuckin times. Eventually getting down to 2 minute area times was exciting but i realized i had something wrong and i found out you have to punch the skull word bubbles, touch the heart ones, and i also realized i had to stop spammin the diagonal slide invincible tech because it was slower than just going straight up, even though thats riskier. this was a pretty cool game and the mixture of the questions and platforming hectic chaos was really really cerebral and hooked me in and got me to passionately play it for a while. Would love to see something like this expanded and be made even more confusing and have more questions that you have to really focus more on to answer or something like that, like maybe a math question or history mode or some ridiculous and evilly insanely punishing shit like that.

Anyways all that being said, its too confusing to be developed into something that you would sell like on the steam marketplace as is but I think it would be easy to add some things to the tutorial that outline the details of what is happening during the gameplay,and you would probably have to make the controlsand movement feel prettier and smoother so any random person would immediately feel like oh this is fun i get it even though i like the way this all chaotically matches the theme. also kinda curious what the original form of this was before people started reviewing and some changes were made. sick game, probably a really good team because there seemed to be a lot of chemistry with the final product

Maprower responds:

You are absolutely the man now, dawg.
Probably know more about the intricacies of the controls than I do.

As for what the original game looked like, it wasn't that different - most post-launch support was just around trying to make thing a little less obtuse. For example, if I was going back to Brain Drain at this stage I'd have added some telegraphing to the skull/heart bubbles to indicate that you're meant to punch one of them and pick up the other, like so many unattended pieces of gum stuck to the back of people's heads. All mine now. My empire.

Character controller could have used a bunch more work too, honestly, that's been a thorn in my side since day one. But have to move on at some stage, onto my ever-increasingly pile of failed prototypes.

You earned those medals of triumph, though, dawg. Absolute boss.

[BLUE BOY (ブルーボーイ)]

died 106 times. didnt realize those things i was grabbing were the coins, i was almost expecting the impossible mode to end and have a super impossible mode with coins or something that would bring me to like a crazy unbeatable level so i was like ohman this game is pretty tough idk if ill make it to the end. maybe im getting better at platformers as i age. i feel like it just took a while to get every stage. really fun game. this deserves to be ported to consoles and expanded for a full release but idk how you would balance the potential desire for more animation with the way that might compromise the 8 bit charm. really beautiful gameand the background music reminded me kind of of the ominous background music in the boo level in mario 64, this is my way of trying to compliment how ominous and maybe early 3d era the music reminded me of... anyways great game

plufmot responds:

Fun fact: I used the music from the boo level in Mario 64 as placeholder audio. Also thanks for the feedback!

[What to do?]

This was a really cool idea for a game but I feel like if someone came into this half asleep expecting a real game they might barely read the intro text mash the wait button then get bored and ignore that this game ever existed in their life... I think its very interesting to think about how it falls flat because it literally forces the player to "wait" and be able to do nothing but that, and in that essence you have put out an expression that creates a simulation of waiting and non-interaction when the point of the game and the theme is that the waiting is going to be our death, that we need to act and interact.I guess it's a little ironic because it doesn't necessarily drill interaction into the players head, or seduce them into wanting to act instead of wait, and kind of assumes that the player cares about what you care about before you show them a window into the dire real situation. in a way this leaves the game extremely unassuming and uncompromising, never going back and forth euphemistically with what the player might think about the points being made at certain progressions of information coming out to convince them to care and potentiating a wrestling match with either people who really probably will never care or who are legitimate sociopaths who play games online in their free time, so I think in and of itself this game is like an art piece and it's really good that this exists all on its own in the way it does, and this makes me want to give it a 5 simply for that, but I think even that uncompromising status doesn't want me to think that the game is good just for that, because in that sense the interaction and significance of the game is supposed to go beyond the game, where you have no choices, into reality, where actions actually matter.

I think ultimately while its really cool, and it stands for something good, people can miss it, and the art of controlling others minds into learning new functions and paths of thought by creating a sweet and enjoyable product that they dont think twice about consuming while injecting them with something like an actual purpose, instead of being a drone, is our ultimate purpose as content creators... this points to that purpose, but it doesnt make huge strides towards it on the side that pulls and ropes in unsuspecting kids and adults who wont know what hit them...
in this way it really has served its purpose as an art piece to make me realize even in my own personality the way i present my ideas and hold myself are inefficient, and I think most people simply don't have the drive to be some sort of eternal deep soul show tune that sickly draws in a lot of people easily the way some ad nauseum admixture of sports candy and motor oil so easily can in our world where lack of culture and being controlled by an other is the primary culture... in that way this brings me back to the thought that the game serves its purpose for those who understand it-- but I still do believe that the merit of creations, of games, is to offer a direct utility that teaches us and gives us value right here in the real world as we play, whether its a not so noticeable acuity to some sort of new nuance in pattern recognition, symbolic story, rhythm of movement, language, path of thought-- this game just doesnt cover much ground even though I admit the way it does cover the ground that it does is stark.

Ok so ways that this could be better but not compromise how blunt and bright it is would be creating a small series of game elements, maybe like playing through a prologue chapter and then bam youre waiting and thats the whole game. have some characters and some little story that will pull the viewer in, give them options, make their character feel real, use this in a way that makes them see the condition of the stories environment, even if it wont make them care you can atleast mirror the themes you want to display while they start to have a little fun moving around, doing and choosing something, then lock them into the wait ending to show the point. I just think therevery well could be people who play this under any condition that makes them distracted or apt to focus somewhere not on the game, and the few seconds they care about the game is going to dwindle fast instead of expand, and as far a concepts behind a game goes, this would be a really deep and powerful concept, so it deserves to be expanded upon if thats something you really want to do

, hahaha and btw I typed this all out and didnt notice the link at the bottom of your description until now. Dude, trick me into reading and clicking that by putting it in the game instead of in a spot that while yes, is a description and explanation of the game, is secondary in comparison to part of the actual game! hahah I feel stupid but this is my point, you WANT to trick stupid people into looking at this stuff

janosbiroleite responds:

Yes. Thank you. You are not stupid. The game is just a little remark, yes, a provocation, a poem, if I may say so.

[The Lost Strawberry X-mas edition]

time 20:44

SIXTYSEVEN deaths

19 berries

I love the difficult jumps, the art style is amazing great color scheme and it reminds me of old gameboy games. the jump mechanics were difficult as FUCK to get down at first and i totally left tthe game and came back. it was a super fun game and you should totally do more like this. more screens like this would be awesome, more console oriented style even, i think this game format is worthy although there might be some tweaking to do at that stage

egordorichev responds:

Nice, GG! Thanks for playing!

[Empire Strikes Back: A Fanmade Game]

This game and concept is dope. but when you run away from the walkers their lasers fly up in the air lol. its virtually impossible to lose if you dont want to. you also dont get hurt from touching the walkers. also i couldnt play the game inside the window on NG, it took me to a new tab and at first i went straight to the leaderboard screen (mightve been my mouse double clicking really fast or something) i think this game could be really cool but it needs some finishing touches

ravenns responds:

Hey dude, thanks for the response. Yeah, I was rushing the release, but I've polished it up a bit. I've updated the game and removed some of the more obvious glitches. Thanks for the feedback! Check out the newer version and tell me what you think :D

[Hangman]

when you get it right it tells you game over still bro keep working on it

HaakonKj responds:

Fixed

[APOKALYX]

I like the style

The style of everything is real nice, it reminds me of fallout and runescape, I love it. The gameplay gets monotonous though, and it eventually seems like too much work to get your character and your allies good enough to beat whoever the fuck you're fighting. It seems too hard to hit without them blocking you or dodging you or you missing, and it can get old fast. I love this style, just work on the gameplay please.

Xplored responds:

We'll do it.

[Pixel Prophet]

Seemed good at first

Then I realized the jumping was terrible and that there are screens where you have to have perfect jumping to get through, which completely ruins it. The fact that you cant jump and shoot simultaneously also bugs me a bit.

Genocide responds:

if you could jump and shoot the "puzzles" would be useless, it's an invalid complaint. The jumping has been fixed in what has been done thus far with the sequel.

[Da Pink Knight]

i can't complain that it's hard.

I was warned that it would be hard but, the one problem i really wish wasn't there is the weak jumps. if I jump over that saw blade I want to move in the air damnit! but then I land right on top of it and cut the shit out of this pink castle crashers ass. Other than that and the very sketchy animation cut scenes, this game is very good although frustrating.

MindChamber responds:

you have a double jump, you know that right? READ THE CONTROLS