Monkius's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Block Mystery Crew: Dracula's Castle]

It's cool that you made something a little different from your usual games. To echo the other commentators: combining LEGO and point-and-click was a great idea.

However, you might want to make the scene transition arrows a little more noticeable; I had a hard time noticing the one that leads to the safe/cage with the red gem in it. It also feels a bit empty without "I would've gotten away with it too, if not for you meddling kids!" Heh. Jokes aside, the rest of the game flowed well and made sense.

[Supermarket Disturbance]

A bit unrealistic in that it's like:
"OMG, some mysterious stranger is wrecking up our store!"

*Man walks by with a blowtorch in hand and an acetylene tank strapped to his back*

"You think it was that guy?"
"Nah, he had a kind face..."

(What I am saying is that it would make it more of a challenge if you had to avoid contact with employees after whenever it is that they are first alerted by the customers.) It would also give it more of a difficulty curve if the rival store deployed steadily-heightening countermeasures. As it stands, I was able to wreck stuff up enough that I got the blowtorch on like level 6 or 7 and it was smooth sailing until like level 10 (and especially level 10, lol...) Then the balance sort of swung the other way for the last two levels and you had no more upgrades left and levels that are getting more difficult.

Now that all the criticism is out of the way, I must say that this is a hilarious concept and a whole lot of fun to play. It has the same appeal as the "Just Cause" series, and for the same reasons (the main one being that you get to cause a bunch of nonsensical mayhem.) I think it could be better if you fixed the balance issues and added a little more strategy, though (rival store hitting you back, upgrading your store's security or coming up with sneakier ways of sabotaging the rival store are just a few ideas.)

[Out Of Fuel]

I was very confused, until I read the word "prototype" in the author comments, lol... Maybe you could put that in the title, as well?

The "neon" colour scheme goes nicely with the simple controls and graphics and would likely gain popularity for the final version of the game--if you make such a thing--what with this rampant '80s nostalgia that seems to be going on right now.

The presence of what appears to be gravity would suggest that the ship is trying to make a crash landing on a planet; but perhaps I'm overthinking it, since there is also an ability to fire the ship's weapons. If it *is* about a ship crash-landing on a desert planet or something, I'm fairly interested in seeing where you take the game, from here...

plieguito responds:

Yes, I already put "prototype" in the title.
I also plan to give it an eighties style, so you guessed :)).
And coincidentally I also thought about the fact that there was gravity, and that implied that there was a force that attracted him, I am still thinking how to explain that in a narrative way XD.
And I hope you are attentive when I launch the full version (I hope to release it in 2 more months).
And thank you very much for taking the time to discuss details of the game, it is always interesting to read them.

[Zombie Defense Force]

The "turn circles" are nice, but it would be nicer to have more data; for example, range and damage of zombies when you hover the cursor over them. You could perhaps link this ability to a power-up of some sort, later in the game.

[Mine Jumper]

Hey, this isn't bad for what appears to be programming practice. Makes me want to sit down and fiddle with Unity, myself.

I think it would make more sense if the drill upgrades increased its diameter by the width of one mineral, exactly; the way you have it currently set up makes it such that the drill can plough through five rows of minerals with both the fifth and sixth upgrade, making the last one effectively useless. Making the drill snap to a grid might also solve this problem.

[Scrumpfy and the beans cookies galaxy]

No matter how gassy that dog gets, I just can't get him past Saturn.

[Chromatic]

Thank you so much for the music mute button. At first, it was lovely and reminded me of the "Blockhead" series; as the puzzle difficulty ramped up, though, it became like nails on a chalkboard. This was more due to my state of mind than anything related to the music, per se.

This game strikes me as a really good way to teach children--or even adults!--the basics of computer programming.

[Puzzle Brick]

I think that the tutorial text is not needed, for the most part; you could perhaps put an "E" by the first block and a "Q" by the first block-pressure-pad-thing (my vocabulary is failing me...) I find that the best puzzle games are the ones where the player can learn by intuition alone; that is definitely possible with this game and the way the progression of levels is set up.

In level 9, you can cheat a little by just stepping on the pressure pad intended for the block and beating the door. Is this intentional? I only did it because I bashed into a corner with the block in my haste and lost it. You may want to make the blocks a bit more "sticky." Oh and you can use the pressure pad trick on other levels, like another reviewer mentioned.

It would be nice if restarting the level were hot-keyed. I understand that hot-keying it to "R" is a bit close to the movement and pick-up/set-down keys, so maybe "L"?

Isaac-Newton responds:

I was also in favor of not having the instructions, but everyone who tested it said that they did not understand what the buttons did. For example, they would press a pressure pad and then ask, "when will it close?" I will find those areas where you can cheat and see if I can fix them.

[Water the Village Demo!]

- There should be a way to disable the text bubbles in the demo (it looks like you can do it in the full version, or they simply go away.)

- It would also be nice if there were a fast-forward button; the last level went like: "leak," "leak," "this is going way too slowly now that I have figured everything out."

PowerKnight responds:

Thank you so much for the review.. In the full version, if you tap the hint it will be removed.. and I'll add the button that speeds all water branches and remove all timers for fast level completion.

[Mine Rails Rush]

Oh, Jesus! It's a bit like Tetris mixed with juggling. Fun!