NekoMika's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[HTD: Anthro Ponies]

This tutorial is just another half way done tutorial as usual. Why only half done? Sure you showed me how to draw the Pinkie Pie anthro, but you in no way ever seem to make an attempt at showing one how to color these things so people grasp an idea of how to color something such as those shown in the first couple of slides here.

The tutorial itself is bland at best since you just use one stock pose. You did show a couple of tails and faces on the first two or three frames but did not show how to draw those either, nor did you try to do a second tutorial that makes use of the one tail you used making it more of a toss in thing. Pinkie Pie didn't look bad for an anthro but she didn't seem to be showing any kind of emotion.

Another thing you could have done here is having a My Little Pony related background rather than a dull looking black background. That or give the option of that and the black background.

As for the music it seemed alright but not really fitting for this tutorial. Also funny how the song of choice for this tutorial is "maybe shut up".

The medal works as usual but once again is entirely unneeded for a tutorial this small. Should possibly consider putting 10 or more tutorials together and allowing a person to gain one medal for looking through each one rather than uploading one by one.

Overall, rather boring tutorial that could have been a whole lot more and shown how to color in the character.

[Falling Balls V2.0]

The simplistic game play makes this an enjoyable game to play.

The graphics were simple and I like the look as if some of the background flooring had been worked at a bit to give it a more rocky look. I imagine unlocking options for new backgrounds would have been nice too.

The game play itself was very nice and I enjoyed how the further you get along it picks up in difficulty a bit with more and more balls of varying sizes falling at you. Kind of sad though however that the blood only ends up on the ball a bit instead of all over the place.

Overall, game is great, good music as well.

Review Request Club

[Treasure Sweeper]

The game seemed to be pretty enjoyable. Only thing that bothered me was less time and more treasure to dig as I progressed into the game. At least you can find clocks that help boost the time limit giving a little extra time to finding all the treasure.

As far as graphics go I like the old video game style look given to it. The only time it didn't look that way was when the statistics screen came up at the end of the level showing how much profit you had made from treasure found, lives remaining, and time remaining. The biggest money giver was usually the time left over which made finding clocks a lot funner to do.

One thing that I didn't like about the game play was when I had a numbered tile a "?" right next to it. Mostly since from time to time I would begin to dig it and it would show red on where I was digging meaning there was no treasure. I think it would have been nice to be able to cancel a dig meaning you don't have to dig up whatever may be there, whether it be a broken vase, Minecraft block, or some sock looking items. It would help save a bit of time during game play.

The background things such as the whales, octopus, and fish made the game seem relaxing.

The music was actually pretty nice and looped perfectly since you never notice when it restarts. Sounds a bit like a polka loop of sorts. Care to tell me what the name of the song is being used?

Overall, aside from wishing I could stop digging as soon as I see red in the little bar, the game is great.

Review Request Club

funstorm responds:

Thanks for the detailed review!

If you could stop digging right away, there would be no consequence to digging in the wrong spot. But you're not the only one who has mentioned it, so I still think you're on to something. Perhaps there is a less annoying way I could have penalized players for digging in the wrong spot. Hmm...

The ingame music is: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?keywords=itty+bitty
Our audio superstar turned it into a looping segment.

[Kingdom Hearts Tidbits]

To be honest this doesn't seem to be really one of your best things you have made. It just seems to be something you did for fun in the free time.

The tips page was useful at least and the Oogie Manor part is true in that if you don't get the trinity Mark before the battle it is lost forever. In Final Mix (only released in Japan sadly) they fixed this so it would appear on the ground near the manor after the battle if you had missed it earlier.

As for the Shadow Sora and Anti Sora those are true but the Anti Sora bit could have been updated to show a little bit about Kingdom Hearts II since in that game he can randomly become that after using the Form menu a few times. Then Ansem we find out later was the heartless of Xehanort.

As for the music it sounds lovely but becomes sad when going back to the main menu the original song overlaps the song you may have chose to play. The soundboard bits were nice to listen to. "You give up yet?" could have been a little better had you found a version that had no background music to it.

The screenshot gallery however seems to be the only thing here that seems completely pointless.

Overall, seems decent but the music clashing was a bit sad and the screenshot gallery seemed entirely pointless.

Review Request Club

[Fern: The Finale]

The game was seemingly good and the plot was interesting as usual. However there was one problem with the final boss. Seeing as the Elements of Harmony were reversed, shouldn't Slapp-Me-Do have ended with the true final boos being Discord himself? It just seems to me like that would make much more sense than easily beating Slapp-Me-Do himself.

The game play was simple and all the bosses were easy except Multisubdition unless you beat Tetra-Nes first who explains how to do it easy. The problem being they say to press "`" or """ with the second one being unpressable unless you hold down the Shift key. That and during the battle it points at the bar to press it, the battle would go much much better if the player was unable to battle Multisubdition until all the other bosses were beaten first, then Gullyen's lair and Slapp-Me-Do.

The only other problem I really encountered with the battles was Surf-Wang-Chong moving a little too quickly to the point where even if I had the crosshair on him and fired there was a chance the shots wouldn't hit him strangely.

Then come the loading screens, I notice with a couple that the screen doesn't fade out until a couple of seconds after the music stopped playing. Not sure why this was either. Then came Gullyen's lair. The loading was a tad ridiculous, instead of showing the castle then a white screen then the buttons, you should have simply left the buttons on to begin with so when the music ends the sound showing the path to the next boss will play saving the player a few moments.

The music that played went over quite well for all the battles. However, for the very last battle after beating the first two parts to Slapp-Me-Do, a silly tune could have played instead since he goes down in a couple of shots.

Overall, aside from some loading screen making me wait a bit longer than they should this game wasn't too bad at all. Nice way to finish out the series.

Review Request Club

VioletVulpine responds:

There are no loading screens. It's all preloaded. I'll take the other advice into consideration.

[New Super Mario Bros Demo]

This has some slight potential but as it is right now you have a lot of stuff needing to be fixed and done before moving on to a full game if you ever do so.

One of the first problems is borders. The preloader looks just fine but the menu, start screen, and then the single screen itself all either have white space on the sides. This could be remedied by testing the flash itself by going to options and then clicking on whatever allows you to test the flash game itself in the flash program. If there is white space then fix up the proportions of the screen to either be smaller or have everything in the game be slightly bigger to fit the borders.

The second problem that is encountered is... well the demo itself. It feels nothing like a demo in the slightest. Demos of these kinds of games tend to have a level or so for the player to test out and see what the game is like. This however, only has a single screen and what would seem to be endless sides. There is nothing else there and it seems Mario's position is wrong, he needs to be lowered by a bit or so so that he is walking on the ground.

Third problem is... death... is... impossible! While Mario needs to be lowered a bit to walk on ground, he seemingly walks on air too thus the game can never end, there is no need to jump if he can't die by walking off of a platform. Need to script it so that walking off the green grass will result in his instant death!

The only true redeeming thing about this little "demo" (more of a test piece to see if Mario can walk and jump correctly) is the music itself. The music seems rather fine, although maybe adding a jumping sound for when Mario jumps would make this test piece a little less stale.

Overall, this is more of a test piece, there is a lot of work to be done. There is some slight potential for this but you need to add a whole lot more before it could be at least considered a demo piece. Aside from that, just seems to be a little bit of a time killer.

[Mouse Maze: No Mouse 4]

The game itself is not bad and could present a true challenge if not for one thing making it incredibly easy to cheat... the fact that you can right click and then go straight to the finish. Disable the right click menu and the game shall be much harder or try to make the game be able to detect when you right click that it forces the player to restart the level.

The graphics were rather funny as usual and some of the level designs seemed at random or based on a design such as the one level near the end of the game where you have to go in a circle on the peace symbol. Then the mouse pointers looked somewhat like they were syringes which makes it funny in a way in making it feel like you are at a doctor's office or something and that all of this is in your head.

The game play aside from the fact that one can easily cheat seeing that right menu is not disabled during the levels... seems rather easy to difficult depending on the level. Some levels like the first two are easy since they are more straightforward with how to reach the end of the level and the pointers help. Getting later in though it gradually rises in difficulty and with pointers feeling like a little bit less of a help since while they do pinpoint where you are it seems as if you cannot tell where you are.

Strangely a funny idea I had that I don't think would work is having in the fifth game maybe lasers pointing from each pointer to exactly where you are, then I remember the mouse is to be invisible and not pointed out directly at all aside from the pointers on the sides.

Lastly, the music seemed to fit for the whole game although an ambient piece would have also worked to keep the player calm and take their time to finish the game.

Overall, excellent game, just disable the right click menu or force the player to restart the level if they decide to "cheat" using the right click menu.

Kolumbo responds:

I love you.

[Fern - Splapp no Owari V2]

Game seemed to have a good amount of quality but some parts I felt were lacking and I even encountered a glitch later into the game that kind of just annoyed me all the way into finishing up the game.

Graphics seemed to be well done for the time you had done this game. However, I felt as if you could have maybe spent more time practicing drawing to get the backgrounds for Bright Heart castle, Tails place, and other various things to make them look better. Then for the connecting lines at the castle, could have used Photoshop, GIMP, or even MS paint and created a white line with black lines in between to give it more of a MegaMan line look since you had the MegaMan sound going on for when the lines appeared.

The storyline seemed rather bizarre in that Splapp and BanglaBoy96 had no idea who took the file and before doing battle with Bright Heart you find out it was Splapp the whole time and then you do battle with Bizarro and Safer Splapp (drawn parodies of Sephiroth's final forms). Could have humored the player a bit by going a little further and having it go the full way for the final battles and made one more battle similar to the original FF7 version where the final form of Sephiroth (normal looking) went down in one hit. Nice to see Bright Heart could rest in peace though after defeating Splapp who was nutty.

The game play seemed rather good and I found a decent order for the first four battles was to save Tails for last since he was the only one who while moving could not be damaged. I suppose it is because he was spinning fast enough that the bullets don't ever effect him and just bounce off or fall to the ground. Then the only concern I had with any of the battles was during the final battles. During the first battle I got glitched and died since he turned green right after he had no hit points left the first time. Then it would have been nice if instead of saying "when beaten, get away" you could have said, when he is glowing, don't shoot or you will take damage which would have been more helpful in my opinion.

The music used seem to be rather big in variety which keeps it from getting boring thankfully. The medals were easy to earn and none of them required having to do anything crazy. Seemed to really only notice one grammar error stand out and it was during the credit sequence where it said "crator" instead of "creator".

The glitch I encountered that annoyed me slightly for the rest of the game was after defeating Plucky, an icon of Fern appeared in the upper left corner and stayed the whole time which was slightly annoying since you didn't know if you took any damage or not unless you had less than half of your health.

Overall, there were some errors and the graphics could be a bit better, aside from that, not bad for a story.

VioletVulpine responds:

Thanks. Your reviews are great to read. That glitch is quite recent, so I apologize. Thanks for pointing out this stuff. Teh next game is in full development and I will make sure to test it to hell. Thanks for the review.

[Chili Chomping Contest]

While there seemed to be a good starting concept to this game it kind of falls flat with just pressing a button to make your soup character eat. I noticed when pressing the button it would speed them up to a certain pace and no matter how fast I pressed the orange button they didn't get incredibly fast. Their plate just emptied a little quicker.

The graphics were nice for this one although no backgrounds makes it boring. There were two tables, plates, and characters but no background to show where they were eating at. Putting in some of the other soups in the background cheering for how fast you made the one soup eat could have been nice too for graphics.

Game play was simple yet felt like it takes awhile since you still have to sit there and press the button so much to keep ahead of the other soup.

The music used seem rather fitting although for eating I think a slower tune could have maybe been used to set with the mood and atmosphere of the game which is eating chilies which I would imagine could take awhile if one is not used to eating hot food or really enjoys chilies.

The medals were fun and easy to get. Very nice how you even hint how to get the first secret medal by using the tab button.

Overall, good concept but sadly falls to just being boring with pressing a button and in need of a better background. Have fun with future games.

[Fracuum]

This happened to be an excellent game and the challenge is there. Possibly the most challenging part of the game are those long bars. Found it kind of weird how instead of a rectangle explosion it shows a double square explosion, I guess there was not enough time to try making it rectangle instead and just went with two squares instead.

The graphics are very much retro and actually pretty nice. Also enjoyable how it does not seem to have much of a story to it. Simple and with it zooming in and out for each segment it does wonders since it makes navigating the maze pretty fun.

The audio was really nice. Sounds for when you shot something, explosions and the music was also nice. I find it kind of funny how once you get to hard mode I would not consider the music reversed. Saying this because paying attention you can hear one sound that should clearly be going in reverse but still going forward instead.

Hard mode is fun yet hard at the same time. Ironically I think the only part that got harder was those bars shooting out a little faster while the squares shoot out double the ammo yet everything has the same health amount which helps make it a bit easier since dodging all the ammo for those bars is hard enough.

Dodging the bullets for the squares is easy along with beating them. Instead of sitting to a side of the ammo you can stand between the bullets and fire at the squares making it easier to beat them. Takes a little practice for a moment though to get between them so you take no damage.

Medals are fun to earn too. The only hard ones to gain though are of course the hard mode medals. As for the secret medals, they can either be easy or hard.

Overall, incredibly fun game and finding and completing Hard Mode makes this more of a challenge. Would be nice to see more games like this one.