Krail's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[ImmorTall]

A Great Start

This is cool. The general idea is solid, and I love the simplistic art style and the music.

The main part of the game, protecting the family etc. is really well done.
My main criticism is that it's a little too much to the point. I feel like, to really make your point, you need to spend a little more time before the war segment establishing a connection between the alien and the family. On top of that, I think it would help a lot if there were some context for the war, or for why the family is off running around through the battle zone (as it is, they're in danger simply because they're following you, which I don't think is the message you want to get across).
How you do that without changing the gameplay a lot, or without adding dialog, is definitely a challenge. I think it would work well to have some extra element of gameplay as part of the establishing connection part.

[Free Will - The Game]

I didn't free him

I fail to see how I freed Will. I mean, he wasn't in a cage or anything. He was just standing there.

Nice game. A lot of effort for a cheap joke. I like the big creepy bounce-head guys.
Don't quite get the point of the try again replay thing.

raitendo responds:

Then you didn't get it

[Super Mario 63]

Holy crap, impressive

I have to say, this is one impressive undertaking, and a nice evolution from your previous games. There's just so much to do.

I have some major issues with this game, though. I'd like to see it at a higher resolution for one, though I can imagine it's already pretty hard to get it to run at a decent framerate as-is. My main issue is with the controls. I can definitely understand why the controls are hard to do. Mario games are deceptive. There's a lot going on under the hood to make them very precise and get it to feel just right.
That said, the controls in this game are just so loose. It's way too easy to miss a jump, and the way you bounce off of walls makes it that much harder to land where you want. The Fludd and the midair spin do a bit to make up for this, but it's still really hard to aim your landing. The levels feel like they're designed for a much more precise controls than what you have here.

That said, no matter how frustrated I get, I seem to keep coming back to this game, so you're certainly doing something right.

[Gray]

Pretty Cool

This is a really interesting project here.

Personally, my interpretation is that the guy is really "gray" to start with in that he has a broader view of the world than the mob around him. When he sees the mob he easily sees the fallacy of their point of view and so tries to change their minds. When this results in a mob that swings the other direction, he easily sees the fallacy in their point of view and so tries to change their minds. After doing this a couple of times, he realizes that they're just going back and forth from one pointless aggression to the other, so he takes a different tack at it, trying to calm people down, but he can't fight the extremism of mob mentality.
I think that speech bubble mechanic is really interesting. I also think that the fact that you sometimes lose yourself in the crowd works really well.

Personally, at the end my feeling was, that's not how things work in my experience. But then, I've never been in that sort of mob situation, so I don't know...

Umm.... Okay... I'm gonna try to critique you on some broader criteria here. I don't quite know how to do it, and I'm kinda trying to channel one of my art professors. I apologize if anything I say seems a bit harsh or insulting. I like this game, I understand the experimental nature of it, and I mean no offense.
In terms of "games as art", I think this is pretty good. You've definitely got something interesting going here. But in general terms, as an artistic endeavor, this is kind of clumsy and amateurish. Umm... I can't quite articulate what the issue I have with this is... I suppose I might say that it feels a little blunt, and maybe the relationship between certain elements aren't thoroughly thought out.

So, I guess what I'm saying is... I think this is a great start, but I think with a lot of work you can make something even better. If you're making a work of art you have to be pretty meticulous, nitpicking yourself, looking at all the details of the various elements the piece and what they mean (and if you've already been doing this, I apologize for talking your ear off). Why did you choose Atari style graphics? How does that interact with the overall message of the piece, or how might it affect interpretations? Why is there this very brief repeating sound loop? Does the repetition have to do with the meaning? Why is it that every time the crowd switches, every person requires the exact same number of... "arguments?" (2 more than before) to convince? Shouldn't some people be easier to convince than others? What message is conveyed by this measured difficultly curve? Maybe early on there should be some people who's minds you can't change.

If you guys continue to do stuff like this (and I hope you do), then when it comes time for play testing, I encourage you to find artists to give critiques. Perhaps an art professor at your school who's used to time-based work (video art, preformance art), or a writer, or a theater professor, etc. (extra bonus if you can find a teacher who's game-literate, as they're less likely to just be taken by the novelty and to give you an honest critique).

So... yeah. I hope you guys continue with stuff like this.

(and incidentally, you didn't communicate anything "solely through gameplay. You also used symbols; people, word bubbles, a burning city, weapons, etc. to communicate your idea. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, just pointing it out. It's just kinda how things work. I'm not sure if one can really communicate something "solely through gameplay", as people will always read something into the shapes, colors, etc. I suppose you might say you've done it if you completely change all the graphics and the meaning still comes across)

[Tankmen: Incursion]

Vertigo

I hate to give such a low rating to something that you obviously put so much effort into, but this game has serious problems.

Yes, the music is good. The graphics are gorgeous (I kinda like the weird almost bobblehead look on the characters) and you obviously spent a lot of time polishing them to a silvery sheen. However, you need to think more about how certain graphical choices affect gameplay.

Now, the most obvious problem is the spastic camera. It's constantly bobbing and diving and zooming in and out, and it makes it extremely difficult to keep track of where you're moving and where the shots are flying.
I think the next biggest problem is that the lasers are the same color as the background. You never want something like this unless you're trying to get across some point about obscurity or whatever. This isn't a huge problem when the camera's staying still, but when you need your lasers the camera is never staying still, and thus it's almost impossible to keep track of where your shots are going and actually aim. The enemy lasers are better, but still blend into the background a little. I might suggest making tank commander's lasers green or something. Also, maybe darken the background a bit.

On that note, aiming in general is difficult. considering most of the time you can only really aim straight or up, your enemies rarely actually fly into your limited range. And they move so much that if you try to hit them, they usually just get out of the way before you can react. (the camera, of course, makes all this more difficult). I might suggest making the enemies move slower and spend less time hovering completely out of your firing range, and/or maybe incorporating mouse aiming.

Umm... the controls feel very loose. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's cripplingly bad when paired with the camera issues. Enemy shots and your own recoil feel like they hit a little bit too hard. Oh, and with that ledge there, it's way too easy to die immediately when the game starts. One thing that I really wanted was the ability to run.

Oh, also, powerups, way too hard to see. I picked up a few powerups and I never actually saw them beforehand. Also, powerups aren't necessarily useful. The first? gun powerup, the 30 degree angle split gun? Yeah, it makes hitting the robots easier, considering they tend to hover at an odd angle from you, but it makes the first boss almost impossible to hit, whereas your normal gun can just pin him against the wall.

So, yeah... There aren't any bad bugs or anything, it's all nice and polished and such, there are just a lot of design flaws that you need to iron out.

[Red Moon]

Pretty Good

This was a pretty good game. Nice style and all, but I think it's got some problems that are holding it back.

You need to spend more time ironing out the controls. They're a little too clunky. The lack of momentum in a jump annoyed me, and wall-jumping was kinda frustrating, which is a major problem in later levels when you have wall-jump or die challenges.

[Don't Look Back]

Very Good, and yet...

I'm gonna talk pretty bluntly about SPOILERS here, so if you don't want serious SPOILERS, then PLAY THE GAME BEFORE READING THIS.

First of all, I wanna say, for your very first flash game, this is very well done. I've seen a lot of stuff from long-time flash developers that wasn't this good. Have you done games on other platforms before?

That said, I'm not really sure what to think of this. Of course, I can clearly see what you're going for, and it works pretty well in some areas. The part where you first discover the meaning of the title is especially powerful, but I think the overall presentation doesn't quite work. I think more than anything, the extremely repetitive old-school frustration is totally at odds with the dramatic feeling you're trying to evoke. It makes it feel like the consequences don't really matter (which you definitely don't want here) and the constant quick succession of failure and repetition to the tune of this beautiful mournful music really just confused the mood for me.

Also, maybe this is just me, but I totally did not pick up on the fact that that was the underworld until you find the spirit. (Was that dog boss supposed to be Cerberus? Was the giant supposed to be Hades?) Personally at the beginning I felt like I was in Injun Joe's cave rather than hades, which left me very confused when fireball spewing monsters showed up. I think you should try and do something to make the associations with Greek myth more obvious from the start ('cause a gun, snakes, bats, and spiders don't quite do it)

I think it would work well if you change up the color palette a little. Like, maybe the forest should be a dark green or brown, and you don't hit the full red color until you get to the screen after beating Cerberus.

The ending was confusing.
Was the point that he was actually just standing at the grave the whole time daydreaming?

[Music Catch 2]

Awesome

This is an amazing example of a really simple, addictive game. The simple variety you've added with more songs and different shape and motion choices, and the whole unlockable thing, really multiplies the addictiveness of the original. (The fixed position patterns are HARD because you can't see the red shapes coming!)

I have a few minor suggestions. Personally, I think the game feels just a little stark. Maybe some very subtle background elements, or borders on the menu and score screens might help. Also, I feel like there really needs to be some graphical element that follows the melody. I mean, I know the shapes respond to the noise level and complexity of the song, but they seem to just sorta sporadically come out. I think it would look really nice if there were a distinct graphical feature that specifically follows every note of the melody.

[Super Stacker 2]

Nicely Done

This was pretty good. I'm still working on it, actually. The perfect balance stages where you have to set bricks on balls are PURE EVIL!

I think the biggest suggestion I can give would be to allow the player access to two or three new levels at a time, or even to allow them to keep going while leaving one or two finished, if only within one difficulty class. That way when someone gets really, really frustrated with one puzzle, they can go work on something else for a whlie, and it'll keep them playing even when they can't figure one out.

[DUCK SIM 2008]

Amusing

Ouch, man. That's kinda harsh.

Nice job. Oddly enough, I actually found it kind of amusing in a.... boring meditative sort of way.

For the next two in the series, might I suggest perhaps Goose Sim and Flamingo Sim?