zortharg's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Easy Joe 2]

Well there's certainly nothing I've ever seen before that was like it. But on many occasions I was wondering how much longer I would have to suffer through it and when would it be over and maybe I should just quit now, when it told me there was a new level every day, it made me wonder if the game was revised every day which could mean there would be hundreds or thousands of levels. But whew. Got the trophy and that was the end.

[Ending]

Very original indeed. I feel like I'm trapped inside a movie much like Cube. All that done with such simple symbols. It might have been a video game from the late 1970s. Like Adventure for that matter. I'm controlling a giant "at" symbol for crying out loud. Seriously, send this game back to the 1970s and you would make millions of dollars on it. And in them 1970s dollars to boot, a hundred of which would buy you an ounce of gold.

[Push Me]

I saw the 5 x 5 array on the level select. And I was closing in on #25 when THEN I saw the "1/4". That's right, there aren't 25 levels. There are 100. Oh HELL no am I playing this thing all the way through. Way, WAY too long. A good puzzle game premise, but one can only take so much of more of the same.

[Windows Vista Errors]

Huh. Some letters in "Microsoft word 2007" and "notepad" can't be capitalized. For instance h and d. But others can. Like V and S.

Really though, if I wanted an accurate representation of windows vista, I would grab my shotgun out of my closet right now and shoot my hard drive with it. Windows XP is, was, and always be the one true windows. Seriously. I went back and installed it on the computer I bought in 2007 and the one from 2011 because I can't STAND not just vista but 7 either. Microsoft outdid themselves with that one. They broke with their previous M.O. which is to put in horrible problems to be fixed in the next one. The only way they could get people to buy their later revisions was coaxing developers to use new crap which wasn't backwards compatible, not by making anything that was actually better in any way. But back to the point, what was the point of this?

TheMadWasp responds:

The letters in Word don't work, I don't know why, and I don't think there is anything I can do to improve it.

I'm not going to talk about your rant about Vista - although I do agree with what you said - I'm just going to answer your question. The point of these little parody "games" is to take the mick out of the ridiculous problems that Windows has. I do these entirely to be funny, I am not good at comedy in other areas, making fun of Microsoft is the only real thing I'm good at when it comes to flash.
So yeah.
However, after a 2 years of making these games I've come to the conclusion that it is not entirely the operating system's fault (although it can contribute to that), it is the fault of the computer itself. This does not mean that Microsoft is innocent, but if someone doesn't have a good computer, it ain't gonna work, either update the hardware/software or buy a new computer.

[Easter Egg Hop]

Oh, it's the carnivorous rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, going around eating poor defenseless chicks.

Wow, 14 pages of comments and the last one before me is from more than 3 years ago. I guess once a game gets to a certain age, I'm the only one who ever finds them again, ha ha. But Ericho, if you're still alive, and you come back and read this for some reason, it's just your own personal high scores stored in a cookie in your computer, it's not a global leaderboard, tee hee. Of course you're going to be #1. If you're not, you should be getting worried. Ghosts in your computer. Booga booga booga.

Anyway I don't get this game. Did I lose? How? I didn't get pecked by any chickens, I just ate a bunch of chicks and eggs and then it announced I made it through level 1 and then back to the title screen. What, is level 1 all there is? Or did I not do well enough in it to play level 2? Oh well, I don't care, it wasn't a very exciting game, I wouldn't want to play 20 levels of it, how horrible would that be.

[I'm the god damn SUN.]

BEST TITLE EVER! F#ck life, I'm the god damn SUN. Damn right.

It really needs to allow you to see the tutorial even after you've played. I couldn't figure out how to shoot lasers and had to refresh the game to see the tutorial - and then it was something I never expected. I didn't even know that was an option, to make it react to a right click. More flash game authors should do that! The right button is almost never involved, the only time until now I have seen it involved was where I right click and then choose something that's there sneakily in a dropdown menu. And when there are multiple inputs, it's invariably some intolerable thing like the x key and the z key and the shift key and it's only worse if I'm also constrained to using the asdw keys for direction instead of the frigging arrow keys, but not THIS game. This game is just left click, right click, accelerate in this direction, shoot in this direction, move the cursor by moving the mouse. Ah, this game would be REALLY fun if I was not stuck using a touchpad. I also feel it needs to be possible to extend the game a little more easily. Destroying planets should restore your health a little more than it does maybe. Or perhaps they restore your health more at the beginning of the game, but the longer you play, the less the amount of restoration they give you, so that how long you last really strongly correlates with how good you are at it.

[You Have One Box]

Incredibly obnoxious music, and level 9 is frigging impossible with a touchpad instead of a proper mouse because when my finger gets to the right side of it I have to lift it up and put it down somewhere on the left side and by then he's jumped off to his doom, it's not a test of problem solving or even reaction time and coordination.

[Puzzle Freak]

Geez I HATE the "what's different about these 2 pictures". A LARGE portion of the left side of the image is CUT OUT of the right image! I kept clicking on stuff that wasn't there. You've got to show pictures that are at least the same size and are over the same area.

Why does my IQ keep LOWERING when I solve puzzles correctly? It did it 6 times in a row just now! It was up to 172 and then I got another of the spaceship puzzles like in the game orbox and I solved that very fast yet it lowered to 166. The dice game and the 4x3 memory test later, both of which I won, and it was down to 155. Then I won the tower of hanoi, and it lowered to 148, and then I won a maze level, and it was 146! Does the game maker actually know that higher is smarter? Or is it so stupidly designed that if I get an easy puzzle, it lowers the IQ even if I get it right. Would it raise my IQ if I got a "hard" puzzle and failed at it?

And a SWITCH? That's a WALL OUTLET. Geez, you need a better description than that anyway, a switch could be a pushbutton switch or a toggle switch or a slide switch or a dip switch or two dangling pieces of wire for crying out loud.

Of the puzzle games that aren't just NP complete crud:

How to win the tower of hanoi (the one with the donuts):

Label the pegs A B C. You want to move them from A to C. Start by moving the top donut from A to X. If there are an odd number of donuts, X=C. If even, X=B. Let Y=C if X=B, and Y=B if X=C. You put the next larger donut on Y. Then move the small donut on X to Y. Now there is a stack of 2 on Y and X is empty. Then you move the third largest donut from A to X. Then Y to A, then Y to X, then A to X. Now there is a stack of 3 on X and Y is empty. Then continue this; move A to Y, X to Y, X to A, Y to A, X to Y, A to X, A to Y, X to Y, which leaves 4 on Y and none on X. Every time you end up with a stack of size n on X with nothing on Y, or a stack of size n on Y with nothing on X, you move the next bigger donut from A to the empty peg, and then just perform the same series of actions to move the stack of size n on top of it to produce a stack of size n+1 that you used to produce the stack of size n. Naturally this is an exponential process, since it takes 2A+1 moves where A moves were needed to produce the stack of size n. Basically, whenever you want to move a stack from one peg to another, you look to see whether you want to move an odd number or an even number. If odd, you move the top one to the destination, if even, you start by moving it to the other one.

The stupid dogs (aka lights out. But with dogs):

Oh, you silly, silly game author. You made a lights out game on a n by n square where n is an even number. That's just sad. All you need to do is, start from row 2. Click the dogs which cause all the dogs on row 1 to be standing. In other words, just click the ones on row 2 which are adjacent to the ones which are sitting on row 1. Then go to row 3. Click on the ones adjacent to the ones which are sitting on row 2. Then click on the ones adjacent to the ones sitting on row 3. Done.

The water glasses:

The solution to this is to the Euclidean algorithm, what repeated subtraction to find a quotient is to long division:

Solution #1:

Step 1: Fill the middle glass with the big one.

Step 2: Pour the middle glass into the little one.

Step 3: If the the little glass is full, empty it into the big one and goto Step 2.

Step 4: If the big glass doesn't contain the desired partitioned amount of water, goto step 1.

Step 5: Pour the little glass if any into the middle one.

Solution #2 (the inverse of solution #1):

Perform solution 1, just switch every occurrence of "little" with "middle".

You eventually win. If the size of the middle and small glasses are relatively prime. If they aren't, there's no solution unless the small or medium glasses' capacities are equal to the volume of water you want (in which case it's a really easy problem).

It's Die Hard.... without a vengeance.

All these games, they either have design problems or they're classic problems that everyone already knows about or should know.

[Earth Prime]

A unique game. But it needs to have some black space ABOVE AND BELOW the Earth! Because plenty of times there would be an approaching UFO or asteroid and I never even had a chance to click on it until the last second since it wouldn't even be on the screen and of COURSE the impact point of the asteroid will just happen to be right as soon as it is on the bottom of the planet, a quarter of a second after it gets on the screen. It's frigging space. No up or down. They should be able to defend the poles as well as the equator! So it shouldn't be harder to defend up and down than left and right just because it's inconvenient for you to make a game with a 1x1 display aspect ratio.

Satyre responds:

Thanks for the feedback. I'll change the impact points or the aspect ratio in the next update, to let the player defend the planet better.