ChiralAnomaly's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sinjid: SotW]

I first played this game 10 years ago and I still enjoy beating the game with different characters.

My only complaint is that with the exception of "Shadow Strike", I found the level 10 and 15 skills unnecessary. One can easily beat the game with lower level skills, provided they are sufficiently upgraded. I usually finished the Final Portal as a level 17 character.

The last boss (Shadow Reaper) inflicts very limited damages at a time, but he also has a high defense and can heal pretty quickly too. It takes patience to beat him. I personally think the quickest way to finish him off is to use the "Speed Strike" if your character has very high speed.

There are only 5 bosses in the Final Portal and I would like to fight a few more monsters.

[Dash'n Knights]

i found the game quite addicting at the beginning and i have been playing this for a long time to earn more medal points, but to be frank, the game was poorly designed and i am under the impression that the in game challenges have not been tested throughoutly because the game interface is not very player friendly, and more importantly, some of the later levels are actually impossible.

take an example: battle 15, gold challenge.

i was not allowed to use any items to boost the stats during battle and the damage i deal is halved. this makes it impossible to beat that level because all the enemies have more than 50 health points and i can only inflict 1 HP damage at a time. the only way to pass that level is to perform 100 combos easily, which is clearly beyond anyones' ability.

being not able to completely all challenges is still not a big problem. the level upgrade system, which is not well desgined, matters a lot. the experience requirement increases exponentially with each level, and i have to spend an excessive amount of time to earn enough EXP to tackle stronger enemies. the character stat upgrade system should be more flexible. that is, players should be able to adjust the health points, attack points, etc..., so that we don't have to start over again in case i didn't upgrade the attributes smartly.

there should be hot keys. i sometimes press the wrong button in the attack menu because the screen moves. to make matter worse, occasionally i was not able to aim at the enemies with the right force when the enemies are at the bottom of the screen. we should have the option to zoom in or out.

the major portion is way too expensive and it is often more economical to buy the medium porton instead.

not every aspect about the game is covered in the tutorial. for example, it takes me a while to notice that the attack bar fills up slowly if you approach the enemy with less speed.

overall, there is nothing too interesting about the concept of the game, however, the game could be much more enjoyable if all these problems are fixed.

[Cave of No Return]

practically unplayable.

when i first played the game, the first 15 seconds posed little problem to me because of the relatively few obstacles. however, the difficulty increased sharply immediately after as i had to jump over more obstacles within a short distance along the way. at times, it is impossible not to slow down. being caught by the avalanche within seconds in inevitable at that point, no matter how precise i made the jumps. there seemed to be a limiting factor to how far you can travel in this case.

introducing upgrades is a good idea. one possible suggestion is to reward players when they make a series of perfect jumps. people should be able to pick up a few overrunitems (for example rockets to make you airborne, or device that can slow the avalanche). this makes it more plausible to overrun the avalanches and reach a certain destination.

graphics are alright for a mini game like this. the black and white colour helps create a eerie feeling. medals are either too easy or too hard to earn though. i unlocked the first few medals without even knowing what has to be done to unlock them. on the other hand, i never 'entered the lair bones', despite getting a score of 13,000 after a dozen of retries. perhaps you should reduce the distance required to earn that medal. same for the remaing ones.

[Inside An Infected Person]

nice effort, but mediocre.

music: background music was relaxing, and might be suitable in adventure games where you have the chance to take a break without pasuing, but did not fit the game very well. supposedly, there should be a lot action involved in this game, all condensed within a short time frame. you should aim to make the overall atmosphere more tense.

gameplay: one thing i liked was the fact that controls were simple, and instructions were clearly stated. players can get involved in the game firaly shrotly. it may be basic, but it is a must in mini-games like this.

some glitches were found in the game. to name one of them, you can actually proceed to the next level by going off-screen to avoid those bacteria. this matters a lot. you should add a barrier along the edges to prevent people from cheating their way through.

game mechaincs was unsatisfactory. there is an issue with the timer. you shouldn't force the players to wait for the timer to run out before allowing us to move on. suggested changes to the system depends on the games' objective. if the sole purpose is to kill all the enemies on screen, timer is redundant. the number of enemies remaining on screen would be irrelevant if players are simply asked to stay alive. you can keep both of them if players are penalised for not killing all enemies within a specified time period.

the game itself is monotonous partly due to the same level of difficulty in each round. levels should be increasingly difficult. i suggest you assign power to each individual enemy. introducing power ups and stronger enemies at the later levels would be nice. a scoring system based on the number of streaks and shorter levels will probably add more replay value to the game.

additional features that may be included: it is hard to associate the game with our body's natural defense mechanism. there is hardly any difference between any space shooter games and this game, which made it uninteresting. try to make it more special by referring to the characteristics of the immue response. introducing different types of antibodies that work only against a specific bacteria is one possible suggestion.

overall, i appreciate your effort in making this game. however, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Gimmick responds:

ok, thanks! I've stopped updating this game though, I thought of adding the barricade as others suggested, but I can't find the .FLA file :|

[Effective Attack]

unrealistic, but fun.

i liked the idea of guiding an object through different paths within a time limit. the game sorta gives you some sense of urgency and you can literally feel the adrealine rush during the flight. (although it only last for seconds). the game offers a great challenge to the hand-eye coordination. it may take you dozens of tries to get through a level, but the game certainly gives you lots of satisfaction upon completion of the level. the game was neither too short nor too long, and can be a good time waster.

missiles are capable of flying over mountains nowadays. you don't have to navigate through valleys in order to reach the target. also, whenever a missle encounters an obstacle on the way, it can't just slow down and stop in the midair to wait for opportunity to pass through obstacles. the physics behind the game is unrealistic. therefore, the background of the game has to be changed to make it resembles more to the real world. instead of asking the player to guide the missile through those valley, it would be more appropiate to replace the missile by torpedoes (just a suggestion), and the game should take place underneath the water. sometimes it is more desirable to launch the missile deep underneath the ocean to avoid detection, and it might be necessary to navigate along the seabed in order to reach the target. this might be able to make the game more realistic in terms of physics.

as mentioned by some other reviewers, the learning curve is quite steep at some point. the first level was almost too easy for me and i had little problem finishing the first 5 levels. at level 6, however, was much more challenging than the previous ones, and it took me quite a while to complete level 6, similar to the later ones where rotating obstacles were introduced. maybe you should reduce the difficulty of certain levels to make the learning curve smoother. this allows the player to master their skills more efficiently.

level bonuses should be given to players who managed to finish a stage within a given amount of time/numer of tries, including reduced fuel comsumption, smaller angle when changing direction, etc,. allowing the player to select difficulty would be nice because some people are more accurate than the others. introducing different difficulty settings addresses the need of most players.

[Bio Assault]

poor execution

new weapons and extra unpgrades were overpriced at the beginning.
even if you save up some money at the earlier levels, you barely have enough money to purchase one of the basic upgrades/weapons. your spaceship soon gets overwhelmed by the sheer amount of missiles/lasers aiming towards you after level 4. (those yellow spaceships shooting in all directions are just too much to handle, especially when you only have one or two upgrades). this can be very discouraging for new players, as the firepower between you and your opponents are not well balanced at that point.

although you can actually earn some points even if you get defeated in a battle, it can be very tedious to slowly build up the power of your spaceship as you have to basically replay the same level over. instead, you should either reduce the cost of upgrades/equipments, or insert more levels while allowing us to select current levels and include bounses to make items more accessible to you.

to maximize the chances of winning, you have to use different stragegies based on types of enemies your engaging (especially for bosses). it would be helpful to players if you describe the characertics of enemies you would see and tips on surviving waves of assault should the player lose the level.

and as with other shooter and similar games, there's an element of luck to the game. firstly, it is difficult to predict the effect/power each piece of equipment /power of upgrades if you haven't purchase one yet. sure, you might spend precious bytes on upgrades/items that offer relatively little advantage on enemies over other upgrades. i think it is worth considering to include a 'trial' option where you can experiment with different upgrades and equipments to help you decide which aspect you need to spend points on. secondly, the chance of winning a level depends quite heavily on the number of times you receive powerups on the way. the position where those powerups appear should be fixed so that player of roughly the same chance of winning each time he replays a level.

[infect. evolve. repeat. 2]

nice concept, but still needs improvement

the game was fun to play for a while. but it gets repetitve soon afterwards because basically you keep repeating the same process (infecting and killing other cells) over and over until it becomes a chore. the game certainly lacks variety. you should include missions, such as finding the right organ to incubate, etc. to keep the game more interesting to play. also upon finishing the campaign mode, you should include more detailed cutscene showing what happened exactly to mankind. this will not only make finishing the campaign mode more rewarding, this will also avoid leaving questions about the ending unanswered.

the difficulty has to be adjusted because in my opinion, the learning curve is not smooth enough. i understand that players need to play through easier levels at the beginning of the game to get used to the gameplay. however, the first few levels were far too easy. there are little whiteblood cells and lots of red blood cells for you to infect and reproduce. the whiteblood cell to red blood cell ratio is too low, and most of the time these eariler levels can be completed in seconds. thoses levels should be more difficult to complete. the game was far too easy for me until i reached a certain level in the campagin mode. it suddenly becomes much harder than before while i had only just enough EPs to buy a few upgrades. (don't know if it was because the viruses kept flying off the screen).
maybe you should work on that by adding a barrier that keeps the germs on the screen and reduce the power of the enemies.

and in the endless mode, you aren't given enough opportunity to reproduce. it is very difficult to maintain a population size >5 after stage 20 because 99% of the time the germs end up being consumed by whiteblood cells or destoryed by antibotics. as a result, instead of infecting every single red blood cell you see across the screen, it is more tempting to stay out of the way by not infecting any red blood cells at all, which is certainly against the objective of the game. you should reduce the number of whiteblood cells produced at the begining of each stage to give player time to build up their population.

overall, i liked the concept of the game. it has potential to be developed into some of the best games on newgrounds.

[Escaping the Prison]

entertaining

everything was well animated. there was plenty of items which could potentially lead to a successuful escape from the prision. (although just a few of them could help you escape). it is enjoyable to watch all the endings because the outcomes of selecting different items vary greatly from one another, and it never gets repititve to find a way to escape from the prision, and i felt surprised each time i see a new ending (no matter whether it is good or not).

this game was not very interactive though. it only requires players to select the most appropiate options to take and click the left mouse button at the right moment. not much skills are needed. maybe you should try to include some mini games in some of the scenes (for example, simple mini games that require players make a controlled descent down the building using plungers alone). you should get the players more involved in the game.
also, instead of counting the total number of "fails' you had, the number of 'fails' you have unlocked should be shown instead. since you don't get any achievement by failing multiple times.

overall, the game is still very entertaing to play because of the varitey of choices avaliable and the unprediable outcome of each selected option. i couldn't stop playing until i gained all the achievemts. keep up the great work.

ps. to get the secret medal, you have to esacpe the prison by plunger. when you see the ending (sneaky ending), wait until the sun appears at the top left corner of the screen. click on it to obtain the medal.

PuffballsUnited responds:

This is an awesome review!
I would make it more interactable (if that's a word) but I lack the programming skill to do so. I'm trying to make the sequel a little bit harder/more interactive so we'll see.
Thanks again for taking the time to leave such a full review! I love reading reviews like that.

[Burrito Bison]

this type of game keeps getting better

the motion of character is smooth and the game has great physics. graphics were attractive and well drawn. just like the other launcher games, the controls are very simple and i liked how you explain the function of each powerup as you encouter new items along the way, which makes the learning curve suitable for beginner.

it never gets repitious because upgrades are not too expensive. the difficuty is just right. it never takes more than a dozen of retries purchase new upgrades, regradless of your progress, and the varitey of powerups gives you just enough opportunity to gain extra speed without getting overpowered.
however, some explanations of speical features in the game is still lacking. you should mention that pressing spacebar also works for rockets as well as other powerups in the instructions, and that the indicator at the bottom left concer displays your current speed.

additional features like showing how far you are from the door, or speical powerups (after getting certain acivements) that gives you immuity to police officers can be included as well.
overall, this is unquestionably the best launcher game i've played so far. keep up the great work.

[Dot Dot Dot - Soundboard]

amusing

this is one of the few soundboards whic offers enough pharses which allows us to form a range of different sentences. it is interesting to see that one can construct a varierty of statements withn differnet meaning from less than 25 buttons. although sentence structure may not be complete, those statements are definetly understable, and more importantly, totally random. some of the combinations i've tried were simply hilarious.
i've spent quite a lot of time trying out new combinations cos it's funny. well done.
here's one of the combinations i've tried.
, r . / j u s p