ForgottenDawn's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[They Took My Beloved]

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for properly crediting my music~ I'm not too big on visual novels, but I can tell the art must have taken a lot of effort to make. I encourage you to keep pursuing this line of work and aim for quality experiences.

Marckel responds:

Thanks for the compliments, and thank you as well for providing free-to-use music! Ever since I stumbled across your work I just really like your style! I'll probably be making use of some of your other tracks for future works still.

[GRAV]

To be fair, this isn't what I'd consider bad by a long shot. You already claimed it was a "cute and short" platformer, but apparently that doesn't stop people from disgraceful drama queens. Surely, the abrupt end was rather anticlimactic, and I think the game as it stands right now is more of a prototype than a finished product.

The gameplay seems to be slow. I'd suggest tweaking the movement speed and make sure the jumping feels more fluid and less "moon gravity". It's a start, I mean, you can definitely do more about it and it seems like it's in your bucket list. Just keep it up and turn this into a full, polished experience. I'd play it.

tinyworlds responds:

The "moon gravity" was embed in the story for the one part. Experimented a bit with it, but decided to make it quite a bit extreme to show the lack of gravity. But you're right, it might not be the best level of gravity for fast platforming. Thank you.

[It's Just TIC TAC TOE]

Clever, short and sweet. Just how I like it.

[Color Switch: Challenges]

I own the full version of Color Switch on my Android phone, which I play on a daily basis, so I'm more than familiar with the game. I decided to try out this port just to see if there were any differences. I frankly don't understand the inclusion of ads in a web port. Just why? The mobile version itself is already pretty aggressive on ads and you need to pay a small amount just to get rid of them. I think the web port itself is an effective advertisement for the full version given that it pretty much behaves like a demo. Why including ads in a web port demo of a full game available on a different platform? I think it discourages people from even trying out the game on mobile. For a demo, it's how you would expect to behave. Just a handful of levels with pretty much the same mechanics as the full version. Performance may dip sometimes depending on many factors i.e. the website's own ads, though I didn't find it to be a major issue.
Despite the fact that I really enjoy the full version on mobile, I feel forced to lower the score on this demo for the aforementioned reasons. It's an otherwise well made game.

[You Have 293 Keys]

2 tries, 23 total time. Well. That was something lol

[Causality]

The presentation is fantastic. Very clean and to the point.
Will definitely purchase the game upon release!

[We Become What We Behold]

This was... interesting. I should give a shout-out to LSD down below for sharing this experience with me. It pretty much went from 0 to 100 really quickly, just like sensationalist media-mongering bubbles. The black humor kinda helped processing the otherwise depressing analogy to what happens in real life. The fact that you, the player, are pretty much forced to press click on the camera on otherwise forgettable events, all while watching your initially silly news get gradually bloated into a doomsday scenario, makes you an inevitable instigator. I wonder if it's also an intended satire on how we are both watchers and watched, a society that thrives on anything as a form of entertainment to feed lobotomized masses. Aaand I'm rambling.
Good game.

[A Sweet Typing Thrill]

Played both games, I'm honestly impressed.

Where to even start. The wordplay is phenomenal on both games, especially in the first one *cough*Reverse*cough* and the amount of detail is crazy. In the first game it's actually kind of funny how that puzzle felt incredibly hard compared to the ones that followed and took me... quite some time to beat, lol

Fortunately, the somewhat uneven difficulty curve was addressed in this sequel. It's kinda tough to address the puzzles without spoiling anything to any potential player here, so I'm just gonna stick to the feedback and my overall experience with the game.

The only real criticism I can give is towards the typography. I think it's a bit of a pain at first, since I had to get used to a font that is all-caps and slanted, plus stylized in a way that makes reading more challenging at smaller sizes. I'd call it a typography crime, since while it might add to the game atmosphere (quite opinable at this point), it sacrifices some readability and honestly I don't feel like getting a new pair of glasses to read a few passages from a screen. A more readable font would have been nice, since some of the glyphs are fairly ambiguous too, as noted down below. I understand that I can't pretend everyone to have studied graphic design and therefore know the importance of visual communication, but I'm only pointing out a detail that could be useful for any future endeavor you'd want to embark on.

The audio is, that goes without saying, very fitting to the kind of setting you've established. There's the mystery, uneasiness, with a hint of tragedy too. I like puzzle games that include sound as a game mechanic, and I think that as "civilized" and "modern" as we are, we rely too much on our sight compared to our other senses. Well done on the secret ending, as well.

Honestly, if there's a word that can well sum up both games is "clever".
Very good puzzle design and flow, great audio and nice writing.

PS: Looking forward to talk about some other nitpicks in better detail on Skype. :)

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Hello, friend!

Thank you for playing both of the games, and on such a short notice too! Means a lot that you enjoyed both of them ^ ^

I think I just turned my habit of making really bad puns into these stories and puzzles haha :D I guess after all these years, it's good to get some substantial use out of them >:D

Jokes aside, I did indeed put a lot of detail into the writing. Because of the format, I had to think about pretty much every sentence, and how they all connect together.
As for the 'reverse' level in the first game, I kinda threw it in there to show that not all puzzles could be expecet to be entirely similar, or color out the hints :)
In the second game, I was less vague (to the most part), as the theme wasn't as revolved around wordgames per se.

Thank you for avoiding spoilers! At least I can be proud that the walthrough for this game, that someone recorded and uploaded, is that person's most viewed video for 4 weeks, by far >:)

Yah, I totally get what you're saying about the typography. I am honestly not happy about it, but for complicated reasons I was in a rush when making the game, and kinda had to settle for something which wasn't entirely finished. On the accidental plus side (based on studies I've read because of my studies [more horrible wordplay; a bonus just for you]), the extra concentration probably helps a few people solve some puzzles they might not otherwise, or at least do it quicker. Not intentional though, nor an excuse.
The font for the first game is something I spent slightly more time on, and also something which looks more like I intended it to (thought the Z and a few other letters probably should've been clearer). But that font wouldn't make much sense in this game, and I didn't want to use a standard one, and ended up with something in between, haha. Sorry about that!

As for the audio, I think both of use realize how important this aspect of games can be :)
What you said about our senses, is actually something I had in mind when making the level. I definitely wanted to make sure to break the user's habit of relying on the text alone :p
The secret ending is the first thing I came up with for the game. It's a shame that it too was included in the walkthrough, but I suppose that is just how things go!

Clever is a good a word as any compliment for the games, so thank you once more. For that, and for leaving a long and helpful review :3

P.S. I guess the Skype chat kinda happened already... But that's fine, innit? ;)

[klocki]

I think it's a nice little game, nothing too fancy or overbearing for what it's being designed for.
Aside from tracking down level completion, I don't think there's anything else I would like to see from the game. Nice ambient music, difficulty curve is generous, levels are varied enough to allow the occasional quirk that pretty much revolves around the same mechanic, that is rotation.
I'll totally buy the Steam release, I love minimal puzzle games like this. I remember reviewing Hook not too long ago.

[Submachine 10: the Exit]

Wow.

My mind is officially blown.

I admit I had to use a walkthrough to figure out certain areas, but it was worth it. All of it. This chapter is just HUGE and it makes sense being the grand finale of a series spanning 10 years. The circle closes, ready to resume anew in perhaps another cycle.

Submachine has been an incredible influence on my own work-in-progress concepts. Fantastic mind-bending series that has rewritten how a point and click game should play or rather, experienced in all its facets, down to the enigmatic lore, the exploration, the puzzles, and the desolate void within the infinite network.

Thank you for this adventure, it's been a blast ever since the Lighthouse.
So long, Explorer.