GrapheneKid's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Clickery Hexagon]

This game reinvents the way we click on hexagons to make numbers go up

[Fnuzzlee's CHEESE & HAM]

Not bad for your first game! The art style was cute. It was cool how you made the CPU's face and dialogue get angrier or happier depending on how you did. You could probably even add more of it or additional "stages" of reactions and it would go a long way.

The game was lacking a bit in difficulty though. One of the reasons, I feel, is the fact that Player 1 makes the first move each time, and another is that the grid is only 3x3. I suppose letting the CPU cheat is a nice way to spice things up. If you wanted to add more challenge to the game, you could consider randomizing who goes first each round, or adding an option to play on a bigger grid. This would also help avoid too many games ending in a Draw.

With games as universal and basic as Tic Tac Toe, it's important to have something that makes yours stand out from the rest, and the addition of unlockable bonus artwork for beating the CPU based on certain conditions was a good decision. It definitely kept me playing this for longer than I would have otherwise. The sound effects fit well, but some basic looped music would have been nice to round out the entire package.

Keep up the good work! You chose a great game for your very first project, and hopefully it helped you learn a lot about coding and game making. Don't be afraid to try something a little more complex for your next project, but don't bite off more than you can chew!

LiquidFreakStudios responds:

Thanks for the honest review!

You're right, the game is a bit too easy, even at level 10 selected on the difficulty slider. I think this problem comes with Tic-Tac-Toe inherently being a very simple and easy game (also not too difficult for beginners to program), but like you say, I could have included some additions such as larger grid options or even allowing the CPU to play first sometimes. The cheating was an attempt to add a bit of difficulty, but I could have found fairer ways to do so.

And yeah, I could have found some fitting stock music to loop over the game while it is playing to make it more engaging. Given that I found some appropriate sound effects, I'm not sure why I didn't consider music...

Even though it was far from perfect, I'm glad it did some things right, like the cute art style, unlockables and dynamic dialogue. Hopefully my next games will be more ambitious, and more fun to play!

(also, I'll avoid using emojis in my game menus again, since Newgrounds doesn't seem to display them)

[Smash Ringtail Cat 2: Dr. Glitcher's Revenge]

I can't get the game to advance past the title screen. The music keeps cutting out and sometimes I get randomly taken to a Game Over screen or the credits screen, depending on which button I press.

GlassSeastar responds:

I will fix the issue as soon as I can! Thanks for the feedback.
Edit: It's now fixed!

[Loveblade]

This is cool! Kinda makes me wonder what a full game of this would look like, where you spar with dudes in a top-down perspective and you get a shield or something. I'm not really used to games where the mouse pointer is an active entity in the game so this took a little getting used to, but it feels really satisfying to smack a cluster of targets away with your blade.

[Beachcomber]

Pretty fun game! I couldn't really beat the third level though, I kept dying whenever I tried to jump over the guy.

The graphics and sound definitely feel faithful to an Atari 2600. I'm getting some Pitfall vibes from the visual style and setting. I'd be curious to see if some kind of ancient coding sage could get this up and running on real hardware.

ThrillerStudio responds:

First thanks for playing, I was very inspired by pitfall and jungle hunt. It would be really cool if it ran on an atari 2600, who knows in the near future :)

[PICO ZERO ☀️]

Not bad for a prototype! Smooth controls, pretty visuals, nice choice of music. I love the squash and stretch on the player. The levels are pretty creative throughout, too, with nice little gimmicks that are easy to pick up on and fairly engaging.

I thought the horror turn was a little too early and too much though; the game had some nice eerie moments early on, when you visit the other locations and pick up some documents, but as soon as the environment changed and jumpscares started up, it dissolved a lot of that tension for me. Some of the horror stuff was a little cliche, like faces with bleeding eyes or jumbly text, but I actually don't mind that too much. The jumpscares were a little hair-raising, even. The problem I see is that once you've crossed that tonal threshold, it's hard to become immersed enough for the horror elements to continue to be effective. It's kind of like getting into a pool of really cold water. If you jump in headfirst or whatever, a lot of the discomfort and surprise gets burnt up in an instant. On the other hand, slowly wading in and immersing yourself in the water, having that bubble of comfort that gets smaller and smaller in increments that are not consistent, as you tread deeper and deeper in, now THAT makes for a much more memorable horror experience in my book. I honestly didn't read the description before I started playing, so the horror aspect kinda snuck up on me, and I liked it a lot better that way. I think advertising it up front as a horror game kinda does it a disservice, although ever since Doki Doki Literature Club it's become a lot harder to sneak horror past people.

With games like these it's hard to say if I've really "beaten" it or whether there's some weird meta aspect or secret stuff to dig up. Ever since Five Nights at Freddy's, it feels like the Internet has become obsessed with games where there are tons of secrets about the lore and stuff strewn in random places. The coins seem mandatory to progress, which is a bit disappointing considering they are elements commonly associated with being optional or secret. The main story with Kaypo was interesting and dealt with some pretty heavy themes, but I felt like the game didn't spend enough time on his life to justify how much emotional weight is placed on him in the end. Pico doesn't really seem to have a character either, and yet he is somehow crucial in easing Kaypo's regrets. None of it really felt "earned" to me. Again, maybe there's some meta or secret or whatever that goes into that aspect. I kind of hate that about these games, how it feels like you might be missing something because you didn't thoroughly explore a game that likes to spin you in circles and play mind tricks on you.

The other thing about this game that kinda bugged me was how the platforming gameplay completely falls off once the horror starts. I assume the intention was that the platforming and all that was merely set dressing meant to immerse the player before you pull the rug out from under them, but once the horror starts and that gameplay is stripped out, there isn't really anything fun or engaging to do. You mostly just walk from place to place, read text, and occasionally fall down a pit to do something more fun. Those pit parts were nice because you never know what you're gonna get. The game for me was at its worst when I was just holding the right arrow key down to progress, occasionally jumping to climb a simple ledge. It felt like a 2D walking simulator. The environments suddenly felt a lot more sluggish to move through, which made me not want to explore for secrets or anything (outside of the absolutely adorable bit with the boom box).

"Prototype" is a good word for this game. It has lots of cool ideas and it's well-polished, but once the game crossed that line, it became difficult for me to be invested, and the payoff felt a little disappointing. I liked it way more than I expected to. I think if you were to adapt this into a full game, it might be good to try a slower burn on the horror and the story so that both can really flourish, and to make the gameplay consistent throughout the story in order to avoid any kind of burnout or impatience. Still, very nice work overall. I wouldn't write all this about a random web game if I didn't think that the creator cared about what they were making. It's clear you cared a lot about about this project and that you worked pretty damn hard on it. I think you should be proud.

[Star N Heart]

This was great! I adore the art style, it reminds me of crayons. Despite not having a word of text the main gimmick was super easy to understand and solving levels was a lot of fun. Great choice of music too.

Only thing I didn't like was the collision detection. It is very easy to get stuck on a corner because the player sprite is non-rectangular. I'm not sure if Scratch supports collision masks, but I think it would definitely help with getting stuck. Another thing I noticed is that sometimes the player will just teleport or shift around when colliding with a solid object. It is a little too inconsistent to say for sure what's causing this, but the game is short enough that it didn't get in the way too much. Also, it's easy to get stuck inside those "timer" platforms. I feel like it would look better if they pushed the player out instead, but that's just me.

Overall very cute game! I had fun with this one and it's impressive what you managed to do in Scratch.

BluecoreYT responds:

Well now v2.0.0. came out right now and fixed alot of those problems! :D

[Tic_Tac_Toe]

I mean it's not bad. You can tic, tac, and even toe, and it all works. Doesn't do anything special though. I can go to Google and type "tic tac toe" and get a game that does all of this and more. This works, but it's so basic.