Score: 6

"Not Bad"

submission: DeRoze Picross

date: July 15, 2008

CONS:
The lack of an drag-based auto-fill is a fairly ugly problem.
On the puzzle 'Message' (15x15), if I click on the upper-left-most box, I can't get it to color in. If I click on the box that is 5 squares to the right of that one, the box in the corner fills in. I can't fill in the box that is 5 squares to the right at all.
The puzzle selection was a bit short.
The animated logo transition during every menu click got irritating real fast.
The animations in the tutorial could take a while to load. Clicking through it to go back took longer than it should have.

PROS:
The music was acceptable, and did include a volume and mute, so good going there.
The gameplay was simple enough, and while the pencil/pen mode switching felt clumsy at first, it's at least a way to deal with a lack of drag-based auto-fill.
The tutorial was enlightening, and included clues such as looking for patterns that you do not see in many picross games.

Score: 9

"Wow."

submission: MIRC

date: June 27, 2008

A nice twist on an old-fashioned game. Reverse Polarity was a blast to use, the music was perfect for the pacing of the game. The controls were simple enough to understand.

I give you 9/10, simply because there wasn't a lot of powerup variety. Clear the screen and reverse polarity were the only ones I saw, up through level 26. Are there more?

Score: 9

"Awesome Game"

submission: Tactical Assassin 2

date: May 23, 2008

Good Graphics
Good Music
Good Controls

I liked the concept of a store, as well as the different options that were available. I admit to some frustration with mission 7, as there really was no way to tell how I kept failing the mission. Other than that though, I had a blast.

Score: 10

"Perfect"

submission: Chronotron

date: May 23, 2008

Great music
Great graphics
Great gameplay
Great slope of difficulty

Quite original. This has to be one of the best games I've seen from NG to date.

Score: 10

"Perfect"

submission: flipit

date: May 9, 2008

Perfect Learning Curve
Perfect Graphics
Perfect Difficulty

What can I say? Perfect. This is a game you can spend hours at work wasting time on. Take that, corporate oppressors!

The graphics are clean, concise, and match the feel of the game exactly as they should. There are none of the unnecessary frills and extras that plague NG of late.

Easy to get hooked, and easy to stay hooked.

Score: 6

"Too Random"

submission: Cog Factory

date: May 8, 2008

Solid Controls
Decent music
Good sound effects

Essentially, a well-built game. Too bad the actual design of the game has issues. Not enough control, too dependent on luck.

Score: 6

"Good Start"

submission: Bowja The Ninja

date: May 8, 2008

Good graphics, easy enough game play. Sound was just to be expected.

The problem with a puzzle game is that you should have either clues or boundaries for each answer to be in, instead of random trial and error (The doorways, the alphanumeric code for the trolley). Perhaps put some sort of clue or riddle in there next time that will give the person the right way to go or right keys to press, instead of forcing trial and error.

Score: 6

"Good Concept"

submission: Spectrum Genesis

date: April 22, 2008

Simple colors, sounds, and lights. Gameplay was different enough to catch attention, and had a good learning curve.

The only thing wrong with this game is a certain amount of latency issue. I found myself frustrated by the fact that I had to tap the key before the bar was even touching the node or I'd miss it. Perhaps this is a hardware issue (I've tested it on two different machines with the same problem), but even so, the timing needs to be more forgivable.

Score: 9

"Great for Kids!"

submission: Anika's Odyssey

date: December 4, 2007

Considering a target audience of 7 year olds, this game is great. The graphics are clean and understandable, the music is just upbeat enough to keep a child interested, but dark enough to be scary. The interaction is simple, but not overly easy (I spent over 15 minutes trying to figure one part out), and ranges up properly in complexity. The only drawback to the game (and the 9 rating instead of 10) is that it took nearly 5 mintues to load up. Your average 7 year old doesn't want to wait that long, but at least the little bunny graphic was worth the wait.

Score: 7

"Well Done"

submission: - Keytar Hero -

date: October 4, 2007

Music Selection
Excellent. I liked the mixing of rock and video game sounds... the rock of the technological generation.

Graphics
Clean, crisp, not so busy they take away from the game. I particularly liked the size of the flame being indicative of a solid fret or a bad one.

Gameplay
The timing on the notes compared to the music is somewhat off, with strokes missing the notes by a tick or more in some cases.
Also, the timing on the keystroke to fret is off, with keystrokes registering after they've been pressed, and occasionally not at all.

Suggestions
Clear up the sychronization issues.
Add configuration settings to change the keys.
If sychnronization eludes, perhaps add a synchronization slider (a control to count a keystroke as late or early) to help clear up the issues.
Make more songs unlockable.
Allow more songs to be played at different difficulty levels (Kirby could be easy or Very hard, depending on what notes you require).

All in all, though, this is still a damn fun game.