GregMustache's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Evil Asylum]

Movement is awkward and nonsensical, the background music is loud, choppy, repetitive, and kills the atmosphere, the artwork (if you can call it that) manages to look lazy even when it's good, the display clashes with everything and collecting orbs is silly.

selfdefiant responds:

And I would have thought you could find one good thing about the game. Wow! It's ok, I'm not offended. Not this time.

[The Cloud]

Small suggestion: don't center your game about the tragedy of clinical depression if your main character's only dialogue is interchangeable with Linkin Park lyrics, and the gameplay involves deliberately avoiding happiness.

As depictions of depression go, this is... pretty gross, actually. It's presenting a depressed person, acknowledging that they're depressed, but then everything they say and do is based around these overwrought metaphors about clouds and darkness and monsters and other stuff you find in a moody teenager's poetry blog, and actually making an effort to reject positive thoughts and happiness just so they can stay depressed. Given how a lot of people treat mental illness as just being "a matter of staying positive", this presents a horrible image of people with clinical depression as just being sadsacks who are only miserable because they want to be.

Botched message aside, the game itself is not great. Finding the Tuesday door took forever, the BGM loop is shrill and annoying, and I never had to use the Dash function in the minigames because I could pretty much just stand to the far side of the screen and occasionally move, and the eye animation was so much more detailed than the rest of the game that it came off kinda uncanny-valley levels of creepy.

JackAstral responds:

I appreciate what you're saying, but this is just this one character. It's about a teenager who feels depressed and has comfort in feeling that way. He rejects help, and instead slides deeper into the feeling until he decides to end it all. He lets negative emotions control him, while rejecting anything positive. It's not suppose to represent every possible type or form of depression or anything- though I've done more vague projects that do. This is just one individual story and experience, obviously something like this is different for different people

And that linkin park dig was brutal, ha ha. I don't mean to come off as emo and whiny :b

[Famine]

Couldn't play, got a failure to load error.

deadnation responds:

Yes I'm aware. I'm doing an update right now fixing a few of the glitches.

[Escape THE GAME]

I'm sorry, I couldn't get through the first ten minutes before I got bored. The writing isn't interesting or funny enough to carry an intro that long, it's basically just telling the same "Hey, we totally know we're in a point and click game! lol fourth wall, isn't it how hilarious that the artwork is terrible instead of just being terrible artwork?" joke over and over..and over.... and over... and over. The tutorial is unnecessary (it's a point and click game, if we didn't know how to click on things we wouldn't be playing it) beyond the "click something twice for a description" function, which is at least different enough that it warrants a note, but a note would have done the job. Two stars for the obvious hard work that went into it, but reviews are supposed to give a quick rundown of how good or bad something is, and I couldn't stand this for more than a few minutes.

I'll probably come back to this at some point because the other reviews suggest some interesting puzzles, but I hit bad joke saturation in record time with this one. It felt like taking a bite out of an apple and getting a mouthful of salt.

Muja responds:

Man, what a harsh review.. But at leats it gives some constructive criticism, which is always welcomed.
Let me clarify a few things:

- Yes, I guess I could have abused those kind of jokes. The thing is, the whole story and most of the puzzles revolves around this concept. The protagonist doesn't just "know" he's inside a videogame: he's a human player trapped inside the videogame you're playing. The jokes aren't breaking the fourth wall, the whole game is.

- Tutorials are ALWAYS needed. That's the first thing you learn as a game designer (and as a gamer, you learn to never skip those). Most point and click games share the same instructions, true, but each one has its own interface with its own quirks. Magnifying lens that highlight interactive items is a rare function that most player might not know about, for example.

Thanks for acknowledging the hard work I put into this, and for your review - I'll try to do better next time.
If you come back to finish the game, please let me know your opinion about it once again - send me a PM!

[Proxy]

I like the concept, but there are some problems: It's too easy. It's obvious who the killer is the minute they start talking, and there's too much useless dialogue. It takes forever to get to the actual gameplay and most of what the characters say is just natter that doesn't help character development or plot, not to mention the eardrum-shattering noise of the fast-forward function.

There's also a problem with the game itself: you have no choice but to wait until only two people are left in the elevator before you can do anything, which is frustrating because by then, most people would know who the killer is. You have to sit and wait for the dialogue to ramble on, and it's boring as hell.

Also: where did the main character's arm go? Most people who have a limb ripped off and don't do anything to stop the bleeding... they usually die. In fact, the first time I played it, I tried to commit suicide because only a supernatural entity wouldn't care about losing its host's limb and would know how to disintegrate or eat it or something.

So, all in all, good idea, poor execution.

Sonoshee responds:

Yea well thanks for playing but 25 minutes until the gameplay does not equal forever, and you need to replay the game because *SPOILER* the last person standing does not necessary mean that he's Proxy *SPOILER*

[#Escape: The Waiting Room]

Good game, simple enough to follow, but the interface is annoying. The "inventory" tab was useless because it would open whenever I moused over the bottom of the screen. I was constantly looking at my items when all I wanted was to move to another area! It might be a little cliche to have arrows or bars or some other navigation tool in Escape games, but they're better than clicking aimlessly trying to look at something and ending up on another screen, or ending up on another screen instead of looking at the thing you click on. Other than that, quite enjoyable. (But really, who puts a space in their own username? That's not even allowed most of the time!)

Aprime responds:

Most of the time, correct. Sometimes it is allowed.
I allowed a space to make it easier for users to get the user name.

As for what you wrote prior to that, I agree!

[Wordz]

Do not play this game if you do not have a mouse. I use a laptop with a trackpad, and it is impossible. One missed click, and you're boned.

HardGrafter responds:

Thank you for your comment, this was one of the first games I have made and to be honest I did not consider people using a laptop with out a mouse.