boticelly's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dangerous Adventure 2]

The main gameplay of this game is based on a simple "tree in a row" mechanic, but it is expanded greatly via the "matching color to damage" and mana collecting mechanics. These two in combination serve for achieving tactical and strategic goals: killing current enemy/enemies or collecting mana in order to cast powerful spell later in later battles respectively. With each new turn player has to decide whether he is to deal more direct damage now by popping stones corresponding to enemy's color, or to spend some turns on popping large chunks of stones that may not deal any damage now, but will provide lots of mana to use spells during future turns or battles.
It took me some time to grasp this game's genius, but when I finally did it, it amazed me with new possibilities, since each decision on the game board has a certain merit from tactical or strategic points of view. With that said, however, the game have taught me this lesson in a hard way: only after clearing all of the monsters on the first level, I have discovered that I can't beat three giant spiders without the "Holy Shield" spell (since their aggregated damage will kill me in less than one turn and I have no possibilities to postpone their turns). That meant backtracking to the beginning of the level and grinding through it once more, now with the upcoming challenge in mind. Surely, the chest that spiders are protecting is not unlockable on this stage anyway, but since I could not have known about it before engaging with spiders, this only makes the experience more frustrating (I will have to fight them again later).
Analyzing this experience discloses some of this game's problems:
1) poor class abilities balancing: some of the basic class cards are less useful than the others (healing herbs is much more effective in battle then magic mines), and some are downright invaluable if player is to complete level from the first time (like Holy Shield). This creates a persistent advantage for one decision over the others: if the player is in a combat where neither yellow (monk), nor blue (mage) stones are causing damage, or they are causing equal damage, he is more likely to pop large pile of yellow stones, then that of the blue. This, of course, only applies to the first level;
2) keeping player in the dark intentionally: there is no way payer can know whether he is to fight spiders now or later. Same applies to character selection before the mission: there's no way of knowing whether there are locks, secret paths or acrobatic obstacles on the level, so if player does not take either rogue, hunter or barbarian with him, he is to backtrack to the level later;
With that said, though, game’s other innovative mechanics (the exploration mechanic is really interesting and felt quite unique for me, the RPG part is enjoyable too) with very appropriate cutout-cardboard game style are quite enjoyable and provides for an engaging experience.

[about-face]

A fresh take on a standard platformer mechanic. Each platformer with jumping usually presents player with different variations of a single challenge: to trace a parabola-like curve with a jumping object in an environment with a simulated gravity. The player usually has to make an exact parabola that current level design requires in order to move forward. Since all the action occurs in a front view, the obstacles cannot be walked around, only jumped above or slide below.
In this game jumping, this almost intuitively graspable for any gamer action, is supplemented with the dimension switching mechanic. Thus making each jump player actually does two actions instead of one and has to account for the results of both of these actions simultaneously. This challenges familiar perception of game's most fundamental action and estranges the entire gameplay experience. Great level design also enhances this feeling: almost each new level presents new twist and forces player to adopt new skills to a set of rapidly complicating challenges. One of the most enjoyable moments was the one where I unlocked the double jump ability. I could not have thought that this game could have bring anything new to the table and was expecting more levels with variations of already uncovered mechanics, but suddenly almost heard author’s voice, saying: “And what if we go one step further and apply this new feature to a double jump mechanic? What kind of level design possibilities will it produce?”. It was a moment of a true in-game dialogue and self-discovery for me, since I felt as if author has accounted for some of my expectations, which I have not even known about yet, and has built his game around them.
After this moment though, challenges have grown in difficulty exponentially and I was completely stuck few levels later and forced to leave the game. As many other platformers, this game requires player to develop a semi-athletic skill in order to beat it, a task that I, unfortunately, have no time and desire to accomplish. Few times, though, I caught myself on a feeling that not all of the intricacies of game mechanics were explicitly shown or explained to the player; the reason of my failure was unclear to me: whether it was because I have not mastered enough some particular skill (i.e. jumping high, running fast, precise timing, etc.) or because I did not know about some of the actions that are currently available to me.
Unfortunately, since I was unable to complete the game, I have not uncovered its entire story. The entire audio-visual metaforical justification, so to speak, of reality-switching mechanic is fun and interesting, but not to the point where it actually fills all the formal aspects of the game with a new meaning.

[Dungeon Screener]

It's very impressive what this game achieves through simplifying and formalizing some of the archetypical RPG gameplay elements, like classes, exploration, monster encounters and looting. Four fundamental classes (knight, ranger, mage, priest) are reduced to several abilities (block damage, hit for additional damage, hit all enemies, heal/revive). Player's party has all of those abilities equally represented, while each enemy party can have a varying amount of creatures of each type with additional abilities. The tactical rules are simplified as well: the defensive unit gets all melee attacks, the ranged unit has limited amount of shots that can ignore defensive unit attacks, the magical unit can hit everyone several times, etc. The exploration is also reduced to choosing what party to attack in a highly densely populated room. Enemy encounters present player with a series of small tactical challenges that may not be even recognized as such from the first glance, until the game becomes more punishing (it certainly took a while for me to understand this). Approaching each of the enemy groups, neatly arranged along the ultra symmetric dungeon floor, player has to decide how he wants to spend his resources, who he wants to attack first, weather he wants to raise shield or not, etc. The fights themselves are just visualizations of the results of player-made decisions. Each challenge's goal is to reduce enemy number to zero by minimum attacks and with minimum damage. These miniature tactical challenges are the core of the gameplay. Simplified looting reinforces this idea: each successful fight grants player with a unit of resource, that he is encouraged to spend immediately in one of the following fights.
The game knows very well whit kind of experience it wants to present a player with, and thus strips away all other peripheral elements, such as space traversal, exploration, character placement and equipment, story, detailed setting etc. Due to this minimizations and formalizations game feels very focused and its core mechanics very polished. But also this makes game's reality feel somewhat counterintuitive and little hard to understand at first: dungeons look more like crowded disco-parties, fights animations look confusing, the interface feels overwhelming, and the tactical challenges goals and challenges are not entirely graspable either due to a poor explanation of each monster’s abilities. The achievement system intrigued me at first, but since I could not have found any in-game use for those cards, it has ultimately left me somewhat disappointed.

[Rullo]

This puzzle is about adjusting several sequences of circumstances in such a sequence that ultimately satisfies the requirement of bringing all the interdependent sequences to a closure. It's about finding a perfect compromise that will satisfy multiple interdependent requirements. It's actually a puzzle that consists of many sub-puzzles: each row or column is a minipuzzle in itself, but the player is required to not only find a solution to each of them, but also to find the only solution that will also enable solutions to all the other puzzles in the system. So, in order to solve one puzzle and overcome the uncertainty, player is required to solve, or at least make a hypothesis about some of interrelated puzzles in advance, until he a) finds a point of impossibility, i.e. such an inevitable consequence to the supposed action, that will prevent one or more minipuzzles (rows or columns) from solving in the future; b) find a puzzle that can be solved in one way only. Thus the player will achieve absolute certainty regarding one of the puzzles and a starting point to unravel the entire puzzle. For example, one of the rows can be solved in two possible ways. This creates an uncertainty, that a player has overcome by estimating if each of the columns, affected by the possible choice, will remain solvable. If both of them will, then uncertainty remains. Player has to attempt solving the columns and see if their solutions produce uncertainty. The longer is the sequence of the puzzles player has to solve in order to reduce the uncertainty, the higher is the difficulty.
With that said, game presents this kind of puzzle with maximum clarity and convenience, reducing all possible distraction to a minimum yet retaining a highly functional and visually cohesive design. The only option I thought to be lacking is the possibility to mark certain numbers that are estimated to stay "active" no matter what, i.e. the numbers of absolute positive certainty (for example, in the row of numbers "10, 1, 2, 3, 2", with required number "13", the number of an absolute positive certainty is "10"; on the other hand, in a row "9, 3, 2, 5, 3" number "9" is a number of an absolute negative certainty). Also the randomness of challenges’ difficulties in the endless mode seemed completely random.

[Dreams and Reality]

This game adds an interesting element to the basic mechanic, common to most of the platformers: instead of just trying to make perfect parabolas with their avatar’s jumps, player is also forced to draw dotter curves and then use the dots for further time-limited jumping. With that said, however, there is not much to do with this interesting new mechanic: the level design is poor and never really challenges player to take full advantage of his ability and draw, for example, a long zigzag curve with many platforms to reach new places and/or avoid obstacles. Instead he is forced to repeat one or two same actions over and over again: draw a 45/60/90 degree ladder, jump platforms as fast as possible, repeat. No new mechanics are thrown at him, and even this one is, in my opinion, greatly underused. This game's 'monochromatic' mechanics combine surprisingly well with its monochromatic visual design, but for the game focused on dreams you are assumed to expect something more. Hopefully, this mechanic will be explored more fully in your future games!
The one gameplay feature that has pleasantly surprised me was the "safe platform" mechanic: each time you fall from a high platform, small white cloud approaches to catch you and bring to the nearest platform. When I've first discovered this little detail, I felt that the designer of the game have actually foreseen some of my actions and incorporated an answer to them in the game. This was a little moment of an in-game dialogue between the designer and the player. With that said, however, the dialog seemed nonexistent when I was exploring the far edges of the level that turned out to be meaningless dead ends.
The music, graphics and animations in the game are very good, but in combination with the monotonous gameplay and level design they feel lulling, rather then reinforcing the feel of wonder. The way the game mechanics try to communicate the core idea about "dreaming small" is interesting: you can't "dream" your "ladder" too high, or else it will fall apart before you will be able to use it. But this message is not clear until the "moral" of the game is revealed at the end. The fact that at the end game have had to explain its message to the player is for me an indicator of the game's weakness: it fails to make its message clear through the gameplay itself, through the very way the player operates within the confines of the game. The dreaming mechanic itself does not resemble actual dreaming and after a while feels like a monotonous action, that you had to repeat over and over again in order to reach the goal. In this sense, the "reality" aspect of the game seems to be more valid than that of the "dreams".

AlceX responds:

Thanks for the review! You really seem to have understood what I was aiming for with the game, and that makes your feedback really useful.

[Playing With Letters]

This game is about solving puzzles by collecting and contextualizing visual clues and answering riddles. Both of this mechanical elements works well together: player is taught to notice both visual and textual clues and combine them in a proper way to get the answer. Sometimes text's meaning contains all the required information ("Math" and "Aibophobia" levels), sometimes only a visual clue (color) can give this meaning new direction ("Name Calling" level). This way the gameplay combines very well with the detective story against which it is set. Although operating only in the textual medium, player is forced to take notice on something unusual in the text itself, i.e., its visual properties, that serve as clues (not unlike a detective that looks for inconveniences in a convenient scene). This way the intensity and thrill of a detective story is masterfully achieved with what seems to be an absolute bare minimum means of procedural expressiveness, and are further enhanced with the story, the music and with the text animation and coloring (white against black background).
P.S.: I've played this game after I tried playing "A Sweet Typing Thrill" and got stuck on the "abjurer" level. Probably, the second game has put me in an appropriate mindset, and the puzzles here did not seem as difficult to me. Although the challenges in this game are objectively easier than in the second one, their subjective difficulty for me is larger due to the fact that English is not my native language. With every word-based puzzle I had to ask myself: "Do I even know the word that is hidden here?".

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Heh, thanks for leaving your thoughts, boticelly! Seems like you take the "review" format seriously ^ ^
Your analysis was entertaining to read! It's to a large part, pretty spot on :)
It seems like you enjoyed many of the different elements in the game too, which is awesome :D

I'd agree that the second instalment is more difficult, even though to a certain extent, these valuations are subjective :3
The games, although similar, differ from each other in theme. This one is more focused on wordplay, while the other one is more about outside of the box information gathering, and other types of puzzles.
I'm well aware that English is not everyone's first language; after all, it's my own third language. But seems like you did just fine either way, so great job!

Thanks again for playing, and for writing a review :D

[Colossal Cave (Unfinished)]

This game is about drawing lines in the restricted area and exploring new tiles for additional resources. The first part feels like it does not belong here: although pathfinding mechanism works relatively well (and is finely animated), it does not have any gameplay purpose, and therefore serves as a rather pointless gimmick. The second part feels enjoyable since each of the rock tiles present a potential surprise, but only for a short time, since the variety of surprises exhausts quickly and the risk is nonexistent.
Unfortunately, this only enjoyable part of the game is arbitrarily limited by the maximum number of pickaxes, which, gameplay wise does not serve any purpose too. It does not become obvious until you stop picking the right tiles (the ones that can lead you to treasure). After this, the only way to replenish the number of your pickaxes is through little magnifying glass-buddies, and they produce this recourse only after a very arbitrarily limited (again!) period of time. After this 80% of the game time becomes a tedious waiting, during which you have nothing to do. Fruit machine does not help either, since it operates on the other resource that you can only obtain through the use of pickaxes... In my opinion those arbitrary limitations break the only fun part of the game. Why not just let player explore the cave freely, or at least give him something to do while he waits for the next resource pack?

[Radium Lite]

As many of the puzzle platformer games based on physics, this game is mostly about the making of an object plot a perfect curve within the constrained space while considering such physical factors, as acceleration and friction. What is unique about this game, though, is that the object itself is not the source of a movement, but a fulcrum. Thus, it is controlled indirectly and this poses additional challenges to the player. This situation actually somewhat resembles the way a scientific experiment goes, in a sense that when dealing with micro particles, scientist can only control the environmental factors, affecting the object's behavior, rather than the object itself. Probably, hence the name.
The friction-based control mechanic possesses great potential, in my opinion, since even in the very few levels I've played the number of ways this simple mechanic can be used is very impressive. The most enjoyable moment was when I discovered that I can uplift an object by rapidly switching between the traction knobs. It was so enjoyable because I did not unlock some new mechanic that was unavailable to me before, but because I discovered a new way to use basic tools I had from the beginning and that motivated me to replay early levels with this new knowledge in mind.
The variety of new mechanics even for the first 10 levels was impressive too. Unfortunately, I was unable to unlock new levels due to the inability to finish any of the first ten with more than one star. This game requires serious dedication in order to master it mechanics flawlessly (even for the first level, the 12 seconds, required for the 3-star award, and even 15 seconds for 2 stars, seemed unattainable to me, even after several attempts). That seemed unfair to me, since I was interested in more content and was unable to get it. Until the 10th level the difficulty curve rises gradually, presenting player with new challenges, but also giving him space to figure out how to overcome them, but after 10th level it skyrockets abruptly, and in a bad way, since the player is not presented with new, harder levels with new challenges, but just forced to repeat same levels over and over again. This makes game feel more like a racing game, than a puzzle, since player is now racing against himself, instead of solving logical puzzles. It shifts its gameplay focus abruptly and with no obvious reason, and that feels like a a fly in the ointment.

[Fanboy]

As many platformers that involve jumping, this game in its core seems to be about making the parabolas while avoiding obstacles. The more difficulty of the levels rises, the more complex parabolas and curves you will have to make. The challenge of intuitively devising a perfect curvature of the character's flight is brought to a new level here with the use of the fan mechanic. Acquiring the skill required mastering this mechanic and then using it to traverse levels is fun and challenging in itself, but the game does not stop there. Battery charge limit imposes new tactical challenges that require player to think ahead and plan his movement very carefully. Level design is good at teaching player basic tactics without actually showing or explaining what to do. Everything you have to know is that S stands for jumping and D stands for fan, and everything else will come by itself.
With that said, however, the controls are not very intuitive (at least for the keyboard) because of the old convention SPACE = Jump. Also it's easy to press the wrong button in the heat of the moment and lose difficult jump because of it.
Other problem concerns the very fan-energy mechanic itself. It requires player to plan his movements carefully and creates an interesting interchange between waiting and flying, but the waiting part fails to be interesting gameplay-wise, and the fan refills solve enough to get boring.
Other problem I had with this game is the hub level where all the doors to the other levels are located. It's gameplay purpose is unclear, since levels are revealed in a linear order, and there is no reason to replay previous levels, so traversing it over and over again quickly becomes a tedious activity. Also I was misguided by the first level's goal: it was to collect the battery, and all the other levels required batteries, so naturally, since the energy indicator has a shape of a battery, I thought that collecting more batteries means expanding your energy storage and thus gaining access to more complex levels, that require longer flight sequences. Unfortunately, that was not the case, so the goal to collect batteries also was meaningless gameplay-wise.
Overall game has made me feel both relaxed and frustrated. The relaxing part comes from the calm music, slow movement pace (or maybe it was my browser?), and pleasing color palette. Frustration came from all the reasons mentioned above, and also from the lack of any meaningful story or context for the actions.

[Supermuzhik]

Very fun and engaging attraction. It's like a constructor backwards: your character can eventually turn everything (including enemies!) into weapon, and this is super fun. Also there’s a nice feeling of your superpowers progression, which eventually changes the gameplay few times from violently anarchic to just abusively super powerful.
Gameplay basically consists of three major elements: fighting enemies with telekinetic powers and different weapons, collecting coins and powerups during the fight, and spending those coins on your character abilities upgrades. Each of these elements is well integrated with the others: hitting enemies gives you powerups and coins that you have to collect, collecting powerups is essential to surviving and fighting enemies more effectively, and collecting coins gives access to new abilities, that eventually change the way you fight enemies and collect things. Also some of the abilities I felt were more effective than the others; for example, I didn't found much use for the teleport ability or bullet enhancement ability, but maybe that's just me. Ultimately, every aspect of the gameplay serves to create an energetic and excitable combat experience, which is at the core of the game itself. I liked that the difficulty level is enjoyably high, but not too high, and that in the progress of the game its rules and possibilities expand, allowing for even more fluent and lively experience. In fact, at some point it became so lively, that I had troubles finding my character on the screen because of all the visual mayhem he caused, and often missing the playable area of the screen with my cursor.
As to the game's theme, musical, visual and thematic, I think it could not be chosen better. Since characters figures are drawn very sketchy, the pixilated violence looks cartoony and funny. The joy of just throwing civilians or buildings in the air, where they explode upon colliding with enemy and looking on the resulting gory fireworks is as fun and ecstatic, as it would be horrifying and repulsive if something like this happens in the real life. Blocky appearance also enhances the feeling of a kind of anti-constructor game, where you have to create chaos from neatly ordered system of blocky elements. The superhero theme is perfectly fitting for such an environment, since the very concept of super heroism involves a sense of superiority to any human-created order, social, juridical and spatial. Here this idea is simply taken to the extreme, so that city space is rendered just as a sort of a mix between playground and battlefield for superhero and his foes. His motivation (revealed through rather poorly drawn exposition comics - why not to use pixel art here too?) is ultimately selfish too.
Overall, this game offers a very fun and violent experience. I've played through it in one breath, since it's gameplay composition creates a nice rhythm of excitement, stress, discharge and satisfaction.