Monkius's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Summon the Hero]

I found a glitch that let me get full upgrades on level two...

- Buy level one upgrade, keep level two upgrade selected
- Click "undo"
- Now you can buy 4 gold worth of upgrades for 3 gold, and you get 4 gold back again when you hit "undo". You can do this all the way until you are fully upgraded (buy level 3, select level 4, sell, buy 13 gold's worth for 6 gold, sell again for 13). Basically an accidental "infinite money cheat".

(only works in "Forge" and "Tower of Magic")

Oh, and it would be nice to have tooltips for the spells during a battle. I had no idea what the hell they did and just clicked them randomly and hoped for the best.

[Ucogi - Solitaire Quest]

@ captain let's-spam-japanese-emoticons: Nope, it was pretty much just tough from the beginning for me, and I play a fair bit of Solitaire...

I've done the first level three or four times now and haven't passed it; perhaps I'm just tired.

It would also be great if the cards were spaced further apart vertically... I found it tough to tell which one was on top sometimes and had to move the entire stack to view the top card. NBD, but just saying.

Veinom responds:

Solitaire is what is it.... I hope the tutorial helps. This game was ment for noobs ^^

[The deal of the gods]

The music starts and stops randomly sometimes...

The cursor also disappears occasionally. (It happened to me in the main room that you start in.)

I wanted to complete the tablet, and so opened his cell and found the ankh on his gravestone. I put it into a recess and it did nothing but make it glow, and I couldn't take it out, and couldn't find another ankh or ANYTHING gold. I consulted the walkthrough and found out that I had to re-jail the now-dead hero, and then send a whole army off to their deaths to get the second ankh. There is no logic in this place...

I also have no idea where I was supposed to get the solution to the Mount Athens puzzle (with the 9 stone columns), but that could very well be me having a brain fart.

I liked the maze that you could only view one-screen-at-a-time, but I would have preferred navigating it with the arrow keys, since whenever I hit a wall/moved the mouse outside of the "tunnels" part of the maze, the controls froze. This was bothersome.

The minotaur puzzle clue was confusing, since it started at the bottom and worked its way to the top; the opposite of what I'd think would be obvious for most people. Also, one time I tried it, and the directions through the maze listed on the clue just weren't possible.

Don't even get me started on the coloured gems...

This game has the potential to be great; the graphics/visuals were beautiful, the audio was fairly good at immersing you in the game world (when it was working properly) and the 3D option was a nice step away from the status quo (I didn't end up playing with it on, though). However, it was dragged down by the nonsensical gameplay and occasional glitchiness.

[Tainted Olive - Chapter 1]

This is a definite change of atmosphere from your last game. I've gone from loling at the "wizzard" to having chills shoot down my spine after reading the Rat-man's eerie rhymes, or witnessing the scene where I find the hammer...

I love the hand-drawn style, as with The Grey Rainbow.

I also really enjoyed the depth of the characters, but the downside to this is that I felt a bit cheated when the game finished after only about 25 mins of play. Lol.

It's great how everything is so well-laid-out and intuitive, but I found the puzzles a little sparse, and on the easy side (maybe I am just a genius, :P).

All my 5 are belong to this; I look forward to future chapters!

BlackOlive responds:

Well yeah, 25 mins after the hour and a half of Grey Rainbow seems like cheating, no? But remember this is just an introduction - all the following chapters will be longer, not sure how long though. Several times.

And there's only so many puzzles one can cram into a story-line before it feels padded ;)

[Inner Vision]

Fuck that skeleton and his incorrect grammar. Especially since I can relate to a lot of the feelings shown in this.

This "game" (it seems a little too serious to be called a game...) reminds me of an article I read recently called "5 shitty pieces of advice that everyone gives". One of them involved the word "just". Seemingly innocent, this one word can portray something that someone has struggled with their whole life as a triviality.

I never picked any answers with the word "just" in them. I still got one "miss" with the Japanese dude though. For some reason.

[Escape: The Pirate Ship]

Okay, so I had a board, placed it over a crack in the boat. Then I got a hammer and the game made it hammer on the board, missing both nails, and the hole is magically sealed. At this time, a key falls from the ceiling for some reason.

Since this game is actually a somewhat fresh take on the beaten-to-death "escape" game genre, I'll suspend my disbelief just this once...

[Mond Cards]

Hmmmmm, there is something to be read between the lines here... I'm not entirely sure what, but I think it has something to do with capitalists and how one should treat others as equals.

Anyway! I really enjoyed this, in spite of that swine in the monkey-suit always insulting me. Lol. I can't wait to see more.

[Cardinal]

Damn it... Got up to about 60, then I blinked.

In the beginning, the "arrow key" control scheme was a bit hard to master for me. It might be more intuitive to use the "8462" keys on the number pad, like DDR.

HybridMind responds:

Never blink, man. Never. Blink.

[Valentines Love Room Esca]

How come I can brute-force the 4-digit code when I only have 3 digits, but I have to actually PICK UP the clue for the coloured hearts puzzle and actually have it in my inventory for the thing to actually unlock??? The time puzzle made no sense, with the clock showing 5:54 or 5:55, and that was nowhere near the answer... At least you have a walkthrough to explain the bat-shit insane logic, though.

Some more detailed drawings would be nice, since I have no idea what the hell some of these items are that I pick up (a black stick, great...), or what to use them on. It would also be nice if the combo-lock for the door actually showed on the room-view...