zortharg's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Advanced Lights Out]

It seems I was wrong in a review I recently left, for a game called "Make Everyone OK". That one WASN'T the first to get the idea for ternary lights out. Here we have one here, that did it in 2007, and got shamefully little recognition for it, while make everyone ok gets top page results on newgrounds. And this is clearly a superior game.

higgles, that's got to be one of the most ignorant comments in the history of comments. And I think you weren't even deliberately trying to be a troll. By the way, I can solve a Rubik's cube in about 30 seconds. Also, I can spell impossible. and Rubik's. So you rate down a puzzle game because it's too hard for you, even though you know it has a solution? "I'm stupid and angry so I'm going to give this game a score in proportion to my IQ! Grr! Grr!" Well sorry higgles, of we're rating this game in proportion to our IQs, I can't maintain the same ratio of stars to IQ points as you, I can only give it 5 stars total. Rate down a puzzle game if you think there's a problem with it and it doesn't HAVE a solution. Don't rate it down if you think it probably has a solution but you can't find it. Maybe unless it's maybe a nasty NP complete problem which just involves searching through a horrendous number of permutations, like this would be if the board were a little larger. But there are algorithms that you could figure out for solving this where you don't have to search through thousands of possibilities.

MrBobo64 responds:

I really appreciate that. Thank you.

[Make Everyone Okay]

Huh. Base 3 lights out. I wonder why no one else ever thought of that before. Unfortunately that means that if you are wrong about the starting row, you're going to have 3^7 permutations to search through. That's a goddamn lot. And so I'm stuck on #9 now because I was wrong about the starting row. Which isn't quite 3^7, it's 3^4 because it's obviously symmetric. Still, that's 81 permutations. The "music" is annoying the hell out of me too now so bah.

0x6a61686e responds:

Holy hot damn, you got really into it. I hadn't considered the mechanics of the gameplay that deeply, it started as an experiment and evolved a bit from there.

I noticed a lot of similarities to a Rubik's cube, in that you're sometimes left with "incomplete" crosses by solving their neighbors in the wrong order. I stumbled across a couple "algorithms" yesterday for two incomplete cross shapes that basically amounted to adding the crosses you removed too early back for long enough to solve the incomplete shape.

Also, sorry about the music. It was done quickly after already posting as an update based on some feedback. Didn't put much time into the arrangement at all. :p

[Towers of Saigon]

What the hell, there's no game here. I've pressed every key on the keyboard and clicked everywhere on the screen. The only thing that does anything is clicking "theta.freehostia.com" at the bottom and that puts "Welcome to the Theta Games Home Page" on the screen - no, not navigating to a new webpage via firefox, I'm still on the towers of saigon newgrounds page, this is still within the game window! And then the only thing is "puzzlescript" and then it tells me "PuzzleScript is an open-source HTML5 puzzle game engine. " and prompts me to make a game or do the first steps to making a game. STILL within the original game window. I try again to reload the whole page and once again I'm at the thing which only responds to going right back to the thing which now is looking like an integrated development environment. I have a suspicion that's not what I'm supposed to do. But it's the only thing that does ANYthing.

ThetaG responds:

Sorry you couldn't get the game to start - I just tested, and it worked for me. After clicking in the frame to give it focus, you can press X, Space, or Enter to start the game.

[Asteroids]

Huh. There are 3 ways in which the - atari 2600 version - is superior.

1. When your ship is destroyed, in the original, it waits until the respawn area (the center of the screen for me, since I would never move) is CLEAR with a MARGIN OF SAFETY before respawning your ship. This, however, makes your ship come back a fraction of a second after it is destroyed, whether it is safe or not. The purpose of this is so that you aren't put in a completely undefensible position right from the respawn and therefore get forced into losing multiple lives just because there was nothing you could do. In short, the next life shouldn't start out completely doomed in the first moment. In THIS version however, you pay this necessity no regard.

2. I prefer the original in that you shoot the big hulks of asteroids and then they break into smaller ones, generally 2, and then you shoot them and they break into smaller ones still. In this version, they just break from 1 hulk into 4 little ones apparently without exception.

3. There were multiple "skill level" settings in the original. It would allow you to fine tune the rules of the game, so that if you break up the big asteroids, the smaller pieces may continue largely in the same direction, or may completely start up with crazy trajectories. That was the most important option. It would make it so that there was strategy involved, you don't just shoot anything, you take out the big rocks and then you take out the little ones because they'll be going in crazy and dangerous trajectories, and try to not hit any other big rocks until you've taken care of all the pieces. Shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot. 5 shots, to take one out from the big to the tiniest. It would be a precision test for me, seeing how perfectly I could let off 5 shots in rapid succession and take out a big rock from start to finish. The specific rules I recall were that there can be 2 active bullets - that is, you can shoot again as long as 0 or 1 of your bullets is still going out. Which means you can shoot much faster at something nearer. Not realistic, but I liked it. It made for a more interesting game, where the power to have the control was greater, if you were good enough. No such element in this version.

Falkor responds:

Thank you for trying it, and taking the time to comment in such detail.

[D-Pression]

Nice. Good music to go with it too. I like the dark atmosphere. A good puzzle game on its own accord, but it's all about the dark atmosphere. Though I didn't understand a word of the narration. But then I don't believe seeing life as a pit of hopeless despair is necessarily a sign of neurons misfiring in any pathological way, because that's the way it is. Beavis and Butthead said it best. Life sucks, and then you die. And I wouldn't accuse someone who ends it early instead of hiding in the corner from the grim reaper all his life of having made an irrational or wrong decision there. As a matter of fact, the time draws near that I'm going to do that myself.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Thanks, I'm glad you like the music and the athmosphere!

The narration might be a bit odd at times, I agree :p

Well, real depression is a real disease, there's no question about it :(
I think one can view life as bad even if one isn't suffering from it, but then you'd have to live under pretty poor conditions. I'm actually a bit cynical myself, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that life always sucks, but I guess that it's different for all people.

I wouldn't necessarily accuse someone who ends his/her life early, but I would pity them. I think that there are only a handful of good reasons to die, but I do support euthanasia in those specific cases. I don't feel like depression is one of them though, since it seriously affects your line of thinking. If you can't rationalize properly (although you might think you can; one pretty much always feels like one does, even if that's not always true). To think that you know whether you'll want to live ten years from now, is not much unlike thinking you'll drive super well when you're drunk; it just aint so :/

And I think that hiding from the grim reaper might not be as cowardly as hiding from life :) I'm not saying that all people who commit suicide are cowards, but all of them are certainly not brave. Some people don't do it for irrational reasons, especially if they have a horrible uncurable disease, but thinking life sucks usually isn't one of them :p
I hope you'll think twice about forcing the grim reaper to come to you on beforehand, instead of welcoming him with open arms when he comes for you; if not for yourself, then for others. I can't say I have all the wisdom in the world, but I know more than most about issues like this :(
That is also why I chose to end the game in a postitive light :3

[Asslevania: SOTB]

Exactly what I would expect from a sexuallobster video game. I fired all the crosses at the naked lady form of dracula (chocula heh heh) before discovering that you're supposed to whip her breasts. Great. Well. So I did that.

Frigging slimer. Die slimer. I'd really like to kill slimer but alas, you can't kill the ghosts.

Oh good grief. I see now why cupcake mode is called cupcake mode. How the hell could it be possible to do it in "real" mode, all on one heart. Taking damage at least against Slimer is completely unavoidable. Slimer is just too damn fast. Eh, enough of this. I won it, albeit on cupcake mode, I don't need to spend any more time on it. It's the sort of "play once and never again" sort of thing. Some things, are good or ok, but only if you do it once. This is one of them. Like a mystery. It's no good watching or reading a mystery a second time, no matter how good it was. So I give it 4 stars. But all the same, I'm done with this shit.

deathink responds:

It's tough beating it on real mode, but man when you do, you will feel like you are on top of the world.

[Secret Frozen Kitten]

Worst video game music ever. Also I have NO interest in playing it after 2 minutes of this.

LTPATS responds:

Inuit throat singing:

http://youtu.be/qnGM0BlA95I?t=1m

[Ventures Of ♛Cyberdevil]

Oh, another one of THOSE games. Yeah, I don't think someone who says "Jump exactly 23 time" or "My head's paining" is qualified to tell me I have an IQ of negative 400 something.

7777777.... Duke? DUKE? You think that's Duke Nukum? Oh that's sad. That's the frigging Doom guy! Everyone knows that! What the hell. And it's ID software, not 3d realms.

Greigh you have to jump 24 times. It's a stupid trolling game, remember that. Not even to the level of the "I wanna be the" series or cat mario. I think whoever made this was thinking that "go" meant jump again. So jump 23 times and go would mean jump 23 times and then jump a 24th time and land on the flag.

DIWAKAR responds:

The jump counter skips from 9 to 11 Thus its 24

[Trapped 5]

I have completely exhausted all possibilities. The only remote possibilities are the room 1 left and below the starting room, which has a door which expects a password which I don't have, and the special blocks with checkmark characters on them which turn red briefly when you detonate a bomb next to them. But dozens of bombs don't blow them up. I have not found a blank key to turn into an orange key with 50 coins in the shop. I eventually bought the complete map, which was completely useless, and also left me with less than 50 coins so even if I did find the blank key I couldn't get it since I've killed all enemies in all accessible rooms so there's no more coins to be had without getting access to more rooms. But that's not possible anyway, since there is none in any of the accessible rooms. I'm SOL and I'm tired of this.

MakeItSoGames responds:

You get the password after you beat the first boss.