Score: 10

"Very nice."

submission: Strawberry's Gym

date: August 15, 2005

I really liked the humor in this. Strawberry was so contrary and forgetful and pompous and childish, it was great, and several of the jokes were completely unexpected.

Happy Clockday!

Score: 9

"Awesome idea."

submission: Jig

date: August 9, 2005

Very well thought out idea, although I kept getting mixed up which button turned which direction (this resulted in a lot of mistakes near the end, but I get this way with all dual rotation games, usually. Except the original tetris for some reason (all remakes however...), and I got pretty bored after awhile (I would have preferred the tetris mechanic where a full line clears and the blocks drop faster and faster over time. Filling the board one block at a time was less than compelling), and I just kinda gave up near the top where you really don't have much of a chance to change the piece how you want and it'd already been perfect until then anyway. I'm not sure if those are design flaws per se, but for me at least, a few changes might have made this more compelling.

Still the most interesting and innovative idea I've seen in flash games in quite some time, regardless. I love napkin ideas :P. It's how I came up with Proximity. I'll have to check your site out sometime.

Score: 8

"Pretty clever."

submission: lunch_Box

date: August 8, 2005

I liked it.

Score: 7

"Boring."

submission: Zombie Horde!!

date: August 6, 2005

One zombie every 20 seconds that can be killed in two seconds does not a good game make. I realize you need a learning curve for people but geez, I played four levels and this did not change. Four levels lasted five minutes and I killed about 15 guys total, waiting and waiting and waiting and... blech.

It's actually not too bad of a game other than this. The bricks need to travel all the way to where your cursor is (considering it can hit zombies that far) instead of 1 inch outside the base, and the sound when it hits needs to be changed desperately, but otherwise, not bad.

Score: 9

"Confusing in later levels..."

submission: Battle for Gondor

date: July 29, 2005

In the later levels I couldn't really figure out how to keep from being overrun considering I was replenishing the battlefield with the leading units as fast as they died, but then eventually ran out of money to even summon the smaller guys because once I summoned these people they didn't kill enough orcs (or anyone, sometimes) before dying again.

I don't know if the fighting is random or deterministic, but if it is completely random, it needs to be a little less random. Being able to summon more people hinges totally on your comp a.i. guys being able to kill sufficient enemies. You can't control them, so they've got to be able to do it on their own. And I don't think they do.

Other than that, pretty fun after the first couple levels and I realized there actually is a small amount of strategy in it (picking who to summon on limited resources). It'd be nice if you could do something as a hero to push back the enemies you can't control though, periodically, like spells or something, and maybe more variety of bad guys for you to fight (that actually fight back, maybe?)

Score: 7

"I really hate to go against the grain here, BUT..."

submission: Dad 'n Me

date: July 28, 2005

... look, I love Tom, Dan, and the Dustball. They're all very talented people and I look to their success as proof that I can be successful in this business as well, in the future, and a lot of hard work went into this game, but it has some pretty major design flaws which most people will overlook or forgive simply because it's the first game released by Tom on Newgrounds in almost a year.

1. There's no real point to this game.

90% of the people you (have to) fight don't fight back, and just annoyingly run away (if that). This may not be true for the entire level, but it's true for 15 minutes of it at least. The only health I lost was due to the one bully who actually did fight back at the beginning and rebounding fuel tanks bouncing back and killing me. All other games like this all have people who are constantly fighting you, you're fighting for your life, that's what makes the game fun. Instead this is just masochistic and boring.

2. You only get one life, the levels are 15+ mins long, you can't gain health, and when you die you start over at the beginning.

Combined, that just makes it really frustrating. Enclave did this too, but you could drink health potions and you were actually fighting for your life, instead of accidentally doing something stupid (rebounding fuel tanks) and getting yourself killed for it.

....eh, those are my main gripes. Besides it running at about 10 fps average on my 1Gig Athlon machine (I know it's old, but I haven't felt the need to have to upgrade...until now >:(). With such complicated vector graphics, why aren't you converting to bitmaps? It'd make this run on slower machines easily if you did.

The rest of the game is amazing, including the coding. It's just the design issues that pissed me off and gives me no desire to ever play this game again.

Score: 8

"Pretty cool."

submission: Lunatic

date: July 25, 2005

I liked it.

Score: 4

"Interesting..."

submission: the NG Calculator

date: July 25, 2005

...interesting idea, although I'm kind of curious what how you determined to weigh these things. You'd think having a decent amount number of flash submissions plus a high batting average would weigh more than BBS posts or Blam points, yet somehow I'm only worth 49 bucks while other people here are (well, at least claiming) to have double or triple that without having hardly any submissions at all.

You should also include front page flashes in your count. I've had 2 myself :P

Score: 10

"Cute!"

submission: bottle toss

date: July 25, 2005

Very clever, cute, and simple game. I'm jealous.

Score: 7

"Not bad."

submission: Collection 1

date: July 17, 2005

Seen this type of game before, but it has some clever question blocks and power ups (loved the one that switched all the enemies into crystals temporarily so you could clear part of the level up).

However, the main character moves incredibly slow and that by itself made the whole game feel kinda dull and sluggish. Play my Save The Ring! game for an idea of how quickly he should move and how it affects the gameplay.