Score: 4

"It's amazing..."

submission: Crush the Castle: PP

date: October 7, 2009

... that you managed to (brutally I imagine) extract a sequel from what was originally a weak game, both conceptually and in execution.

For a start, the physics are completely erratic. A guy wobbling slightly will be "killed" and yet one who is thrown up in the air will land on the ground without so much as a scratch on his pixely armour. And somehow, hitting the same spot will result in a different outcome each time.

The catapult is awkward to control and nigh-on impossible to judge. You can sometimes get a rough idea of where you are aiming, but for all practical purposes this game relies solely on chance.

Perhaps there would be an element of strategy to it if you didn't have to get nearly every single one in one shot to earn a gold medal.

It seems to me you've prioritised difficulty against entertainment here, I know that challenging games are generally more fun but this just takes the piss. If I wanted to be frustrated I would go to a fashion show and look at all the girls I'll never have sex with.

And what's with all the fucking noises when the level starts? They're just annoying...

Oh yeah, and if you're going to make a walkthrough video for a game, make sure that following your method will produce the same result for someone watching.

In short, to anyone reading this before playing - Don't bother, go play something fun instead.

Score: 1

"Unoriginal, unchallenging and unattractive."

submission: Imagedisorder Amber Heard

date: September 2, 2009

Conceptually you've got nothing here. It's an overused variation of the slider-puzzle, only without the actual difficulty of only being able to move one block at a time. The game presents no challenge to anyone with a handful of brain cells, and consequently no reward for completing this exercise in mediocrity.

The picture quality on the puzzles wasn't even good either. You've clearly scaled down the pictures from much larger ones, which leaves the lines looking choppy and jagged. It makes your game look rushed, and poorly implemented. This could be easily fixed using either a "soften" tool on any image-editor, or just by using appropriately-sized images to start with.

The music was ok, and the sound quality was decent. Congratulations, you earned one star for that.

This game wouldn't even challenge a 6 year old, and seeing as the main demographic of NG is male 13+ year olds, I don't really think this is the place for you or your games. Even the few girls that do come on here are probably a bit more mature than those you would expect this to appeal to. And seeing as your most popular game still only has 2000 views, I think my point has been proved.

And who the fuck is Amber Heard?!

Score: 6

"It's good"

submission: Lastman

date: July 4, 2009

Review title says it all. It's good, but nothing too special.

The graphics aren't great, but I don't want to mark you down for that as it fits the style of game perfectly; very reminiscent of the old SMB games... actually I think you've mentioned it as a reference in your description of the game.

The gameplay is fairly standard, fun but again nothing too revolutionary. The difficulty is at a perfect level to provide a decent challenge, but still proves to be fun. The frustration you feel at the countless deaths is actually quite... funny. I get the feeling that it was intentionally made this hard just to annoy people, and somehow that makes the whole thing like one big joke. Reminds me of The Unfair Patformer and I Wanna Be The Guy.

I think the game suffers from the lack of music, a nice wee 8-bit style track would certainly help to pass the time through the inevitable mountain of lives you will lose. What sounds were there, fitted in perfectly.

And then we come to the ads. I played this before you upped the ad count to 20 lives and thought it was extremely intrusivey. I'm all in favour of artists putting ads in their work, but when the gameplay suffers as a result, you start to lose sympathy for them. I think you've found a nice balance now though with 20 lives per ad.

I always find this kind of game hard to score, because you can't really mark people down on graphics or gameplay when they're effectively trying to emulate a past genre/style. Originality is really one of the few areas that this game is lacking hugely, and I feel I must mark you down heavily on this.