Farmin's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fear Less!]

Great game!
The aesthetics are excellent with some brilliant pixel art and catchy music.
Easy to grasp, an interesting mix of game mechanics and overall great fun to play.
Perhaps my only complaint is a slight lack in variation when reaching the greater distances.
Saw it right through to the end which was largely satisfying.
Looking forward to more great games from you.

[The Guardian]

Good but flawed.
The atmosphere in this game is excellent and combines a brilliant use of music and art.
The plot is good though there are a few spelling errors which would be nice to see rectified.
The game's main fault is that it's repetitive and boring, in some respect there would be moments that would work better as cutscenes than as gameplay.
It would've been nice to have the environment change every time you retrace it, instead of the minor tweaks that were present perhaps implement some seasonal changes to show the passing of time. A change of season would also allow the environment to become more interesting upon re-traversal using things like snow or dried leaves to change the terrain.
*MINOR SPOILER WARNING*
When you gain control of the giant it's also really really painfully slow to move, perhaps this was intentional to give a some weight to the situation and to give a sense of size to the guardian but it was really much too slow.
*END MINOR SPOILER*
On the positive side of things I really enjoyed the way the controls were given to the player, the two Japanese symbols displayed at the start were brilliant. They instantly conveyed 'use the arrow keys to move' in a simple and elegant manner. As mentioned the music was excellent and really suited the visuals and story. The pixel art was great particularly on the guardian which came off as looking very ancient and covered in years of plant growth.
Overall the game is enjoyable and the story is worth experiencing but It's a little on the dull side and makes you repeat the same sections several times.

[Sanguine]

'sallright.
You've got a cool concept here and i really dig the dynamic of enemy blood acting as your health meter but there's a lot of depth missing from your game and the gameplay comes off as clunky and awkward.

I spent most of the game waiting for a run button to be introduced as the walk and jump speed is incredibly slow and the game is rather hard to follow because of it. There were many moments while playing when an enemy would turn their back to me and i would try and seize the moment to sneak up on them only to have the speed of the movement throw me off and result in death. Everything about the visual language of the game and the way in which the movement concepts are introduced suggest that the character should be moving faster and the game should have a lot more flow to it but the game never quite reaches this ideal movement speed.
The main problem is that it's a little contradicting to introduce movement concepts like sliding up walls, grabbing ledges, wall jumping and swinging on chains and then restrict these movements so drastically with such slow movement speed.

There is also a rather large difference between the vertical (jump) speed and the horizontal (run) speed which is rather jarring when going from a wall jumping section to a horizontal running section. The momentum physics are also a little contradictory especially when running with falling very short distances downwards resulting in a complete loss of all speed gathered from previously running. The same thing happens when jumping while running and it sort of defeats the purpose of having momentum physics at all.

The first boss truly showcases this lack of freedom in movement as the boss is exceptionally difficult to outmaneuver due to it's ability to move an asston faster than you. The only really effective dodging tactic is to jump as it's your fastest form of movement and has no sense of momentum to it. This could all be avoided by again simply increasing the movement speed of the character or slowing down the movement speed of the boss.

I also found some general design aspects to be lacking. There isn't really much variation in gameplay after the tutorial section and the game mostly boils down to: advance slowly, spot an enemy, wait for them to turn their back, sneak up and drain their blood, repeat. This is unfortunate as for a game with such a wide variety of movement options there was never really a point that took full advantage of them. Most sections involve simple platforming, some ducking, some wall scaling with not a lot of timing, skill or patience involved. Enemy AI is fairly basic and that's fine but enemies aren't really placed in interesting or challenging places and most can be easily taken advantage of. There also seemed to be some lightly suggested stealth elements with aspects like ducking behind boxes and climbing in trees. It would've been nice to perhaps play with these aspects some more and include aspects like hiding in shadows, attacking from trees and perhaps even some sort of temporary invisibility power-up. Bonus blood could be given for not being detected or some sort of ranking system depending on how many times you performed a stealth kill.

Aside from these issues the game is quite well put together with some great visuals and music that suits the setting. I didn't run into any issues with lag and there wasn't a bug to be found so
it's unfortunate that this nifty idea missed the mark with the clunky controls and some odd design choices. Hope to see some improvement in your next game as the central concepts are all here and there's definitely some fun to be had.

[Maximum Frustration 2]

More of an exercise in poor game design than frustration.
You lost me at level 2 when you changed the game rules for no real reason other than to force a death upon the player. This happens where the second chunk of yellow blocks are actually solid platforms, something that is impossible to know without previously playing the game.

The concept on it's own is fine, impossible death can be fun and interesting in games as it can surprise the player and encourage them to take more care when playing.
The problem with your game however is that the entire game is built around this concept and it comes off as shallow and simple. The game boils down to basic pattern memorization which in turn defeats the purpose of the whole game existing as a platformer.
A platformer implies factors like good reaction time, awareness of surroundings and understanding of established rules, none of which exist in your game.
Your game could just as easily have involved clicking randomly on the screen to uncover bombs and memorizing where they are (also known as minesweeper).

The tutorial stage also serves no purpose whatsoever as there are only three constants in your game:
1. There are invisible blocks.
2. Some blocks will kill you if you touch them.
3. Get to the green block to finish a level.
The colour attributes introduced in the tutorial level mean nothing and serve no purpose other than to confuse the player...so don't include them in the tutorial.
A tutorial should introduce essential game rules and nothing else, for example: instead of introducing the yellow blocks as 'blocks that disappear when you touch them' let the player figure this out in the first two or three levels. Include them in several spots so that the player can draw this conclusion for themselves, then when you switch up the mechanic in a later level by having the yellow blocks remain after being touched it will have a greater effect and confuse the player much more.

I understand that your intention was to frustrate players but i really think you could've done this is a much more interesting and purposeful way. The poorly responsive controls take almost all skill out of the game and don't really encourage the player to continue.
The patterns aren't really that hard to memorize either which doesn't really create a unique reason to play the game. Take 'I wanna be the guy' as an example, it employs numerous impossible death scenarios which are cheap and unfair. The difference between your game and IWBTG however is a tight control scheme, the large degree of skill involved and an insane difficulty level that has made the game notoriously hard to beat, thus encouraging players to continue playing.

Your game lacks depth, it serves no purpose as a platformer and is poorly executed.
I appreciate the effort and some of your game concepts are interesting, take this as constructive criticism as i can see that time and thought has been put into the game and i would love to see something great come of it.

[Legend of Pandora]

There's nothing inherently wrong with this but it's not really 'Zelda-like' when 90% of your sprites are almost directly taken from Zelda games.
Sure the gameplay has some RPG tweaks but this really would've served better if you just ditched the original premise and just made a Zelda tribute game.
The sword-play is rather flawed in that it is not possible to swing the sword in a south-easterly direction, severely limiting the direction at which enemies can be fought off at.
The leveling up is also flawed with skills like dexterity serving almost no purpose when luck performs a similar function.
It's a nice game and it's fun but some subtle tweaks and a conceptual change would make this game really stand out.

[Slender 2D]

Pretty poor.
Sorry but it was all pretty basic stuff, art was pretty poor and the core concept doesn't really translate to 2D very well, especially considering i got stuck between Slender Man and a corner in the first 30 seconds. One of the main reasons the original Slender works is because you never get trapped by Slender Man. If you see him you can look away from him and go round him giving you the only teeny tiny piece of choice/power the game ever gives you. It's enough to make you feel like you have a chance of escape but still manages to keep you on the edge of your seat and quite terrified.
Your game is severely lacking in this department and because of that is essentially broken.
It's just a stick figure walking around an ugly backdrop.....then getting stuck in a corner.
A for effort though, keep trying!

[bit Dungeon]

Missed Potential.
I loved it aside from the mouse control scheme which felt truly out of place and pointless.
You've made a really nice little action adventure game here but you haven't designed your game around your control scheme and it comes across as lazy and imprecise.
There's no action in this game that actually requires the mouse to perform, everything can be replaced by the arrow keys and two function keys.
Have one key for attack/pick up/open door and the other for the defend/charge attack function and the game would play much smoother. If you're going to go for a mouse control scheme think about the way the mouse is different from the keyboard and why it would be better suited for your game.
I loved the graphics and general concept but the mouse controls really ruined it for me.
It'd make a great mobile or tablet game though!

[Explode]

I didn't find anything wrong with level 8, in fact i got it on my 3rd try.
Level 9 was the killer for me, i feel the placement of the two disks are off.
The angles look like they are perfectly set-up and the game gives you a 2 bounce par which even further suggests the obvious angle strategy but no matter how many different spots i place the bomb i can't get the par.
Other than that it's a neat game, not sure what people are complaining about when it comes to the physics being off.

amidos2006 responds:

sorry I am correcting all levels :)

[Get Closer]

It was pretty good, well put together and a neat little time waster.
My only real complain was that the stage about 4 levels from the end was stupidly difficult, every other level took me about 10 to 20 secods while this one stage took me about 5 to 6 minutes.
The levels after that were really easy so it was quite out of the blue and jarring to the whole experience.
Other than that, great game!

[Achievement Unlocked 3]

Great game, had a lot of fun figuring out some of the achievements.
I ran into an error though i think, when i clicked 'save and quit' in the pause menu it didn't do anything.
Might've been something on my end but i tried it several times at different qualities and in two different browsers (Firefox and Chrome) and it still didn't work.
Awesome stuff though!