StretchJohnson's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Poker: Panther Chameleon (Uni Project)]

I love how the shading and gradients from this type of pixel art are handled, and how strong the blacks in the background were. Both details are indicative of a particular system I don't know the name of, so there's natural synergy there. I also liked the color pallet for this reason.

Jekdersnek responds:

Thanks so much! I spent a lot of time on the game's assets. ^^

[Blue]

Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience, being faced with a brand new scenario and learning how everything works from the ground up through experimentation. The only issue I see with it is that some of the puzzles don't provide any feedback about the effects of what you're doing, making it near impossible to understand what is happening. This was only so bad I had to use the hints twice for me; first with the key pad puzzle, and second with the last pipes puzzle.
With the keypad, I thought the symbols were some kind of binary counting system, and that I had to simply press them in numeric order; of course this was way off, but I had no way of knowing except through the hints system.
With the pipes, I understood immediately what I was supposed to do. but, when I entered it wrong the first couple tries (due to lack of coordination), I started to second guess myself, because there was no indication my idea was making positive progress, i.e. there was no feedback.
Since both situations had to do with puzzles based around entering a very specific set of inputs, I don't see an immediately obvious way to provide feedback. Just think, how would you do it other than signalling that each individual input was correct? The puzzle's premise would have had to of been dependent on a less stringent end condition, otherwise feedback would have made it immediately clear you were doing the right thing, ruining the puzzle.

[MazeWard]

I like this game a lot. The premise is very smart, and the puzzle designs smarter.
With that said, I really wish it wasn't based on perfect execution; I don't like that I have to do everything I already did over again because of something I did after, such as dying or making an irreversible move. It's a puzzle, followed by a combat section where you only have one hit point, where if you die you're sent back to the beginning of the puzzle; It lets you get a taste, only to take it away at the last second.
Frustration is the feeling of being blamed for things that aren't your fault. It makes you feel powerless, like there is nothing you can do to get what you've invested energy into wanting, such as a good social standing or winning a web game. This is the antithesis of what games are supposed to do for you (unless you're some kind of masochistic bottom gimp or something).
The game punishes you for failures that definitely aren't your fault:
You are bad at the game, because the last enemy dropped a patch of grass you had no idea was poisonous, forcing you to start all over? doesn't sound fair to me; The game clearly failed to telegraph what happens after they die, since walking over previous enemies you've killed is perfectly acceptable.
Got the puzzle a solid 95.8% correct, but at the end found out you failed to do one tiny thing you weren't aware of till the end, and now you need to redo everything you already got right? Again, nope; the game should have better telegraphed all the elements that make up the puzzle, rather than putting them on opposite sides of the screen to help you forget about them (ask any user interface designer). On top of that, a puzzle with consequences is generally pretty conceptually bankrupt. Puzzles are supposed to be calm environments focused on discovery and learning from your mistakes; bullying someone does not make them learn, it just demoralizes them, makes them hate you, makes the frustrated.

The worst part was that the frustration never went away; it was consistent throughout the entire game, always coming up with new ways to torture me for trying to have fun, like the game was specifically engineered to create this feeling. Not a good time. The two stars are strictly for the Graphics and Music, which were both great.

["...Abide With Me"]

I love these kinds of games, where you can effortlessly project yourself into the presented scenario and experience it viscerally, immersively. Projection potential really is the game's greatest strength, and is very well executed, overall. I feel like, as far as true artistic expression goes, these types of games are at the forefront of what we as game designers are capable of.
I measure something's artistic value by how well you can relate to it; with music, do I understand what they're singing about? With movies, is there something there I can connect my personal experience to? Even if I don't know what it is about it that makes me feel the way I did, I understand there is something there. I can go looking for and try to figure out what did it, and by looking for it understand myself better. Even if it's not a game in the traditional sense, with goals and game play systems, it takes full advantage of the interactive medium to deliver an experience not possible with other art forms. Besides, I can't really relate to Mario now, can I?
This power comes from how limiting the text options are; they force you to think in ways which are uncomfortable, not like yourself, literally putting you in another person's shoes. Or maybe they don't force to think in ways unlike yourself? Maybe they simply provide an arena where you can express what you already think? The ladder applied to me, so I can't comment on how well the game might force you into someone else's shoes. If you've played 'Coming out simulator', it works the same way, but didn't do a lot to put me in the guy's shoes, so maybe some potential work to be done in that regard.

I don't want to make out like it's a perfect game, though. Where the purpose is to see the difference between the situation from two different perspectives, the second time felt too similar to the first to me. I felt it lost some potentially interesting moments from not exploring how the situations themselves, not just the character's thoughts, might have played out differently. More cutting himself off, changing the topic, more self doubt coming through basically. Maybe he would have stood up for himself for a few moments, before trying to repair it to prevent an argument from breaking out? By the end of the scenario, the writing felt redundant, since what we were picking wasn't making a difference in the events of the story. Since the entire game takes place on so few frames of art, introducing a new one at the end of the conversation would be like tonal change, signalling that you've entered new territory, paralleling the words left unspoken between the father and son. The scenario playing out twice provides time for reflection on the choices you've made, and feels completely vital to the experience in this regard, but without sufficient variation turns out to be a bit of a slog to get through despite it's positives.
One possible problem I imagine might be worse for others is if they can't relate to the story at all, then it would seem very boring. With a movie, you get some drama and intrigue weather or not you resonate with the film, but there is no such cushion to rely on here.
The quotes between scenes also fell a little flat, and didn't add a whole lot for me. I'd argue they conflicted with the game's purity, an ideal version focusing on the pacing provided by the scenes themselves.

Overall, an amazing experience. I think this game, or a game like it, should be required material at game design schools in the future. Potentially part of the beginnings of some greater movement in the game's industry as a whole, perhaps. A well polished lens to focus on and explore the events of our past traumas, certainly.

[Project Rakshitha -- Earth Protection]

The game doesn't provide very much choice in the game play. It's like connect the dots; there's only one way to do it, no strategy involved, just systematically reacting as the game prompts you with things to do. This comes from the mechanic of pointing and shooting; you either hit them or don't, there's no middle ground where you can improve as a player.
One solution a lot of people use for this problem is to introduce an extra complication to the game the player has to consider as well; maybe it controls in a weird and interesting way (angry birds is shooting, except with gravity), or you need to consider some kind of resource (like how Dark Soul has a stamina bar which limits your actions, forcing you to think strategically). The game then becomes the interplay between what the player wants to do while taking into account, and eventually mastering, whatever it is that's preventing them from doing it. Much more interesting than a systematic or reflexes based challenge, because it forces you to develop compensating, multi faceted strategies in your head.
Other than that, the graphics were pretty good, I thought. Maybe the weird shape shifting asteroids didn't make sense, but they looked kind of cool. The music doesn't loop quite right, like a needle skip on a record (too old reference?). The user interface was pretty basic, but served it's purpose well. Overall, the production was pretty good.

[missed messages.]

The experience is very visceral, the feeling of blaming yourself and wondering if there was anything you could have done. Put me in a bad place there, for 3.8 seconds. This experiential part of the game was so good, the rest of it kind of gets out shined; the writing and the art is good on it's own, but when compared to the experience of being put in a highly immersive situation, less so. That's really the only big flaw with this game, I think.

[Straight Outta Pixels]

It's really annoying when you die and then have to start all over. Calling the legitimacy of past achievements into question when you fail at future ones doesn't even make sense! I earned those wins, and now you are taking them away from me, that is not fair.
Some might argue that it's the premise of the game, so it's sacred. I'd say, if the premise, the very foundational concepts the game is built upon, are annoying by their very nature, then make a different game. That is, of course, assuming your goal as a designer is to make fun games. This technically fits the description of a story driven game, one where the player's goal is to follow along with a linear series of events, so you can see how this is conflicting with the desire to make fun games.

[Joint'd]

The main problem I see is how unpredictably the mechanics operate depending on the level's layout; it's a balancing act of multiple complex causes and effects all playing off of one another, such that every move will have dozens of small ramifications for the rest of the level. For example; moving a star can effect which paths will be open, which stars you can move next, which nodes are available to move to in future moves, every move is in fact a dozen little decisions. In an attempt at simplicity and elegance, the game actually ends up being incredibly complex to figure out. This is good and bad; it makes it hard to learn the dynamics of individual mechanics, as well as making cheesing it an option; since the focus is on a small number of complex moves rather than a large number of simple ones, it's very easy to simply enter every possible combination until you get through.
Some of the level design seemed to be inspired by Jonathan Blow methodologies, which I honestly liked. Early on especially there were a few situations where I felt a particular puzzle was leading me to a lesson about how it works. The problem here is that the puzzles were all so different from one another, due to the complexity of the interacting systems, none of those lessons really translated from one puzzle to another (other than those which had to do with the basic mechanics). every puzzle feels like a completely unique scenario, where nothing you have previously learned is applicable, making the puzzles feel futile, which again encourages the player to cheese their way through.
What I'm trying to say is, I cheesed through the game. Sorry, but I'm definitely not smart enough to look at one of these things and come up with a solution, for the above stated reasons.

[Marble Trap]

The ball build up too much momentum, making it feel slidy. There could be a game made around this idea (see marble blast), but not one with these kinds of precise levels, where you must follow a very specific route and the margins for error are very small. This division, between how it controls and how the levels are laid out, turns every level into a gauntlet where you are praying you don't fall off or get hit by a trap, instead of an interesting challenge the player looks forward to getting through.

[Incremental Memory]

The upgrading interface is a little unclear. I think it should be more clear about what you currently have, and what upgrading will give you.