sharpnova's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Voidgale : Arena]

some minor problems

the viewable area was way too small.

being forced to stick with that 3-way gun kind fo sucked. would have been nice to be able to upgrade it to a 5-way (where the extra 2 shots were in between the original center and outer shot streams.. to give better coverage in the same angle space)

other than those issues, this was a very fun game.

[DropSum Colours]

buggy

a lot of the times when i play this, the field is unplayable. i can disable sound and stuff so the applet isn't frozen. i just can't click any tiles. nothing happens. i don't know what kind of bug this is but i know my flash player is fine..

[Puzzle Freak 2]

awesome concept

pros: really awesome idea. nice graphics. nice sound. bug-free as far as i can tell.

cons: some major problems with the implementation and some illogical puzzles that have no solution. i'll list below.

the lily jumping puzzle involves some paths that are hamiltonian paths (visit every node at most once) but not eulerian paths (traverse every connection once).

(graph has eulerian route) <-> (graph has at most two nodes connected to an odd amount of nodes)

a quick glance can show that most of the harder puzzles did not have eulerian routes.

it's clear that you generated these mostly randomly with no checking since the larger the graph the more likely it won't have a eulerian route if you don't check for this condition. nice concept and a good way to test intelligence if it was implemented correctly.

here in my opinion is the main problem with the game:
it doesn't have a clear goal. is your goal to roll the highest with the die and reach the end first? or to do better than everyone on the puzzles and have the highest IQ at the end? if it's not a race then why not just have a set amount of puzzles and toss the board out altogether. (or simply make the board such that everyone advances one square per turn)

you could also solve the problem by having the player move X amount of squares forward after their puzzle depending on how well they did.

the IQ thing could just be a value given at the end of the game. there's no point in having it update during the game.

i'm assuming you didn't do this either but if you had the game connect to a central server that had all results of all games played tallied, it could generate a nice normal distribution of scores and results and actually give a real "IQ score."

you have a game here that probably hundreds of thousands of people will play. if everyone's scores were normed against everyone elses.. you'd be able to actually generate a very valid iq score that might even have validity higher than 2 or 3 standard deviations. this would be very interesting.

that last part was just a suggestion and not something i consider a problem.

overall i have to count off because of unsolvable puzzles but this is a very good game that once fixed will be what i consider a "perfect 10."

[PongOut: AE]

mathematical variance equivelant

if you keep track of the mathematical variance equivelant between horizontal and vertical movements you'll notice it follows a deterministic pattern.

basically the first derivative of activity here is not random.

change that and the game could have more depth.

Ab9003 responds:

First of all, you give no reason why you gave this game such a poor rating.
Second of all, your suggesting I make the physics of my game random? Trying to sound smart doesn't make you right.

[War Droids]

freeze ray

whatever you do, do NOT buy the freeze ray.

it does terrible damage.. and you can't turn it off. if you buy it you are guaranteed to lose in the later levels.

also.. the gun builds up heat when u try to shoot.. EVEN if your heat is too high to fire a bullet.. this is utterly retarded.

[Tree Troopers]

i'm confused

wait a sec.. when you're going through the tutorial.. there's no back button? i'm confused.. seriously? you didn't put one? or am i not seeing it.

like.. say you have that problem where your mouse double clicks when you single click occasionally.. (very annoying and very common problem)

or say you just accidentally clicked too fast or wanted to go back to read something again w/e

i mean seriouslY? no back button? like.. am i misinterpreting the interface? no back button at all? seriously? none?

i'm forced to refresh the entire applet.. cuz of one click? seriously?

[VDay Blast]

illogical controls

The controls were illogical.

Should have been left/right/up arrows for movement and jumping and C or Z to switch characters.

There was no need for a "follow" button.

Having Z and C be controls made it so you often hit the wrong key.

DAIRYDOG responds:

3 keys

3 fucking keys

+ up arrow key being jump is irreversibly gay

[Stoneage Assassin:Revenge]

rife with problems

1. you force quality to low each level.

2. on the first couple levels it was obvious what to do. nail the guy with the red ribbon.

3. on the 3rd level i kept killing the three red ribboned guys and then i'd fail the mission for some reason. no one wants to read the long story/narration you've got going on so if the mission isn't obvious, please put some simple instructions.

4. kind of lame how it cuts to the same scene each time when you kill someone. why not let them actually die on the battlefield. i'd like to see the results of my work. not just some cheap repeated cutscene.

1/10 for almost decent graphics

[CrackShot!]

reached 13,000

i reached 13,086.

13k should be the victory condition. 11k can be reached without even trying.

[Type It II]

uhm no

my browser crashes when i click "words" in the game-modes selection screen.

i use firefox and have no malware of any kind.

my computer is more than capable of running this. i assure you i have a far better and more powerful system than the author of this flash and i would assume it ran fine on his computer.