Simius's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Super Bounce Ball]

There are absolutely some weaker levels in here. The absolute worst, in my opinion, is level 37. I literally do not know how that ended up in the game as there seems to be no thought at all behind that particular level design.

But the vast majority of these levels are brilliant. Level 33 and 44 are some of my favorites, but easily level 49 is the best. I was really confused for a long time and then my mind exploded when I found the solution to this level. I can never describe the immense feeling of joy I got when completing level 49. I think this level in particular is so brilliant that one can only think of you as a proper genius. Even in spite of the unexplainable existence of level 37.

Disregarding the unfortunate bug that everyone ran into, only 1 extremely minor things did annoy me and that is the shadows. They are all wrong. Look at the shadow of one of those shooty things. The triangle and the rectangle that the thing consists of, each cast their own individual shadow, which obviously should not be the case. For an otherwise polished game, it's really weird to see you go wrong on the shadows.

Obviously, I would still consider Planet Lander to be your best work, but this one comes actually very close to beating it. Thank you letting us experience this glorious game!

[Real Car Parking Drive]

This has the beginnings of a great game.

Firstly, there are two mistakes that I am happy to see that you don't make.
1. You don't start off with a couple of ridiculously easy levels. You seem to realize that most people are aware how car parking games work. So you don't start off too easy. Good.
2. You don't try to attempt to incorporate an awkward star or medal system like so many of these games do. You seem to realize that most players of these types of games would not move on until they got three stars or gold (or whatever the system's highest score is). Instead you make everything be an insta-kill. This is really, really good. I feel like this is a game that takes the player seriously. No gold medal means you haven't completed the level properly, so you might just as well kill us when we fail. Very well done.

But there are also two major problems:
1. There seems to be currency involved in this game. I have completed the game three times, but I have not found a way to get more than 0 of this currency. This seems to merely be an unfinished feature you forgot to remove from the final game.
2. The game over screen is bad. Really bad. You have to realize that this is the type of game where you are going to die very, very often. The game over screen should not be 2 seconds long. That is way too long to be comfortable. Ideally, you should be able to skip the game over screen immediately and reset the level. Seriously, I am not kidding. When you play an adrenaline inducing game like this, 2 seconds feels like an eternity and you feel really powerless while waiting. Please do not do this in any future games.

Also, when you complete the game, your car just spawns in limbo. Did you not expect anyone to make it through that final level or what? You just literally didn't make an ending to the game!

[So Much Money]

There are absolutely things that I like about this game. An example of something I like is the colorful squares that appear when collecting money. The music is also good and the graphics are pretty good, even though the different resolutions do irk me a bit.

But the thing with this game is that it doesn't feel much rewarding. If you collect money, it is not an accomplishment. A lot of times the randomly generated level just so decides that you should just get a lot of money now (or not). Sometimes you encounter a level that feels like it is some sort of bonus level (a level with a lot of money) to reward you for some previous risk you took. But these levels are not actually there as a reward, because this game does not work this way; the levels that feel like bonus levels just appear randomly. And the worst thing about this is that when you get a high score, it feels undeserved because the game just decided that you could get a lot of money this time.

It would be a lot better when a more risky section of the level would give you more money. That would make the game feel a lot more fulfilling.

The fact that the randomly generated levels are random is interesting, but does not really do much in practice. Because this is not the type of game where you have to go out and explore stuff. On the contrary: there is really nothing in a level that needs to be figured out. Every direction you go in is pretty much the right direction. So (besides the technical achievement) what is really the point of the levels being random? Wouldn't the game feel exactly the same (except probably more well-balanced) if it actually had levels that were designed?

It's also not a good thing that spikes do damage from the side. They should not.

When a game has a double jump feature, in my opinion you should also be able to to make a jump in mid air after dropping yourself instead of jumping. It makes no sense that the way you became airborne determines if you can jump in mid air.

But this game is a perfect metaphor for capitalism.
Accumulation of wealth is ultimately meaningless when that and dying is all you do.
It's very good that you raise awareness for this.

[Planet Lander]

Extremely addictive. The controls are literally perfect. The way the ship has a lot of momentum forces you to think strategically, making it very different from a lot of similar looking games.

The graphics are not really as good in my personal opinion. I feel like there are too many conflicting styles; some things look really simplistic, while on the other hand stones and fuel tanks are little 3D renders for some reason. It's also really strange to see how the ship has wings, but they don't actually seem to have any part in steering the ship. There are also several planet surfaces that look kinda ugly. But in the end, we don't play for the graphics, so it doesn't matter as much.

Another minor nitpick is that there is no easy mode. I think it would really help if there was a game mode where the game was just a little more forgiving, because this game (mostly because the controls are so unique) is very hard to get in to. I am afraid some people have given up on this game simply because of the fact that there was no easy mode. And that can only be described as a tragedy.

The level design is sometimes questionable. There are some enemies that are pretty much unable to harm you due to the way they are positioned. While at other times stones in particular can really gang up on you, making some parts of a level disproportionately difficult. So sometimes the levels feel a little bit random, as though not too much care is put into it.

Though sometimes the contrary is true. There are some little bits of level design that are simply great. Usually, when it's a level with a lot of blue-laser-shooting enemies, you can see that you really put some thought into it how big the distances between each enemy needs to be. Very good work. But the red-laser-shooting enemies are just kinda there most of the times.

But all-in-all, it's one of the best games ever.

[Duke Dashington]

I personally don't like two things about this game:

1. When pausing the game there is only an option to retry that particular room. I'd would be neat if there was also an option to retry the entire level, so you don't need to go trough all those menu's.
2. It doesn't have a little bar, like most games have, that tells you what level you're playing. This would be useful, because you can more easily remember when a difficult level is coming up.

The "story" doesn't affect the gameplay much, but it is weird. It makes very little sense. The bird stealing the treasures feels a bit pointless. I was expecting there to be a boss-level where you had to steal the treasures back, but there wasn't. I'm basically clueless as to why this stuff with the bird is in the game. The fact that Duke can instantly leave after finishing a building is also just stupid, as some levels wouldn't even be possible in reverse. It would have been more logical if Duke was somehow trapped in the building by some sadistic wizard creature. That way the story would have made more sense. But the story as it is now is not really annoying, it's only just weird; it doesn't stop the game from being fabulous.

I'm also a little disappointed that there wasn't a boss battle. But that's just my own fault I guess, because I shouldn't really be expecting there to be a boss if there aren't even any living enemies in this game. But I would have liked seeing a boss with these gameplay mechanics. I imagine some beast -that bird for example- chasing you trough different rooms or something like that.

What I like about this game is that it's quite unique even though it's a platformer. It also has quite a lot of levels. Similar games like this that are posted on Newgrounds only ever have 20 levels or so, but this one has 120, which I find impressive.

AdventureIslands responds:

The game was originally created for a game jam in 48 hours with only handful of levels, so the story took a backseat. I focused on adding more levels and traps rather than work on a story because the game worked fine how it was.

If I ever make a proper sequel for the game, I want it to have actual story, perhaps even boss battles or escape sequence "boss" levels.

[Beat the Level]

This game is quite perfect, and definitely not bad for a first game. It's quite challenging.
I only didn't really like level 6. This is because of the power ups.
The blue one that seems to make you go faster sometimes suddenly wears off, for some reason. And without it, it's impossible to jump on the very last moving platform.
The green one is not very intuitive, because it doesn't always give you enough force to make it all the way up, and there is only little you can actually do about it, which can be frustrating. It would be slightly less frustrating if there wasn't a hole directly before the green piece.
Also I want to note that I think I encountered a bug which makes the game forget the checkpoint, so when dying you suddenly go back to the start. Happened to me twice.

[Puppet Soccer 2014]

Genious! But I got one question: Why is Plago from the Netherlands?

NOXGAMES responds:

The company is from Netherlands