HerbieG's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Electric Rubber]

For those who were playing this game and getting irritated because of impossibility of getting the last medal: I had a talk with Applessmillion and the thing that was probably worrying you - the prices of the Offline Watts upgrade are now also being reduced by the Price reduction upgrade, the issue was fixed. You only need to buy one more and if this won't work - get another price reduction upgrade and now it should definitely work. I just earned the last medal and I can guarantee all of you that it is now much, much easier to get it, because the prices of the Offline Watts upgrade were also revamped.

[Sneaky Bay Day 3]

Good game, as always! :-) I'm only stucked at the box, I got the clue, but tried to take letters from the Alphabet - bullshit, from the Sneaky Bay - bullshit, from the sentence in the list - bullshit, from the telephone board - still bullshit... sorry for lots of bullshit ;-)
Oh, is it intentional or is it an error when I click on the locked door and get a comment "The door is locked, the keyhole is red"?

[Alien Hunter]

Ok, the game is well-made when it comes to the graphics, gameplay etc., but...
I got a crucial issue: a meaning of the game is that you can win it if your skills are good enough, but since - I think - the Aliens are being placed by the game in a completely random way...
The question is: can you be sure that you will win this game after a certain amount of tries or if you don't have luck, you can play it for entire eternity not being able to find the last Alien.
I don't know how many times I returned to this game and still nothing. When oh when the game will decide that I finally deserve to win it?
Answering to one of reviews below you wrote: "If the aliens were too common the excitement of finding a rarer one would be significantly less". Well, when I would finally find the final one, it would not be excitement, it would be nerve exhaustion caused by frustration, something like that and a bit of relief: "It's finally over". I mean it is a bit ridiculous that I am finding an orange legendary one almost every single time now, but cannot find the final Alien. And the game itself isn't doing much to keep you entertained during these more and more repetitive flights.
Oh, one more thing: the Miles and Miles medal is obviously broken.

Cartoon-Electra responds:

Hey, I am sorry that the game has frustrated you so much! You can blame my programmer for making it so rare haha..Once you pass i think it's 32,000m there is something like a 0.1% chance of seeing the rarest alien every small bit of distance you move(impossible before then). with a fully upgraded rocket, making sure you travel far out as possible, and throwing away other aliens, It would be bad luck to not catch the rarest alien within 15 launches. I have caught it 3/4 times and had to do it to test the game ending so i know your frustration you're probably just having bad luck. The second rarest alien i think is only 2-3 times as common as the rarest.

[Electric Cock Rocket]

Only one suggestion: enable an alternative button for shooting, a, x, space, something different than the arrow key.

DBuck-Eye responds:

Sure, I could probably add that!

[Code Box]

Ok, we got a brain twister and manual skills tester in one, a great combo! :-) After finishing the game you only got a feeling that there could be maybe more room types, or maybe more levels, the game is a bit short. Maybe a sequel? Oh, about the secret medal: now this is really clever and tricky! ;-)

[30 Second Clicker]

Good game! It reminds me some others I played here on Newgrounds. It has one glitch though: every single time you have to restart it by reloading it, because either you click "retry" or "begin" from the menu, you get a timer with -1 second and no score counter.

applessmillion responds:

Thanks for the report.
Edit: Fixed!

[Evolvo]

The game is great, that dodging at the beginning of a game is really challenging! I got one question though: does this game makes it possible to get medals after entering a cheat code? I entered the endingvolvo code in one game to get the first medal and check how does it work, obviously the game ended and when I selected the hardest difficulty next time during the game I got the Xpert medal. I beat it anyway, finally eating all the possible fish, but should it work this way? I think it is rather some kind of a bug.

[PAWZ V]

Ok, you probably remember the earlier version of this game, even I admit that it was a bit impossible, while this one is definitely playable, you only need to fully understand its logic.

When I was a kid I played a board game, it's title was Master Mind, try googling it. In this game one player was setting up a "code' composed of 4 "pins" with different (or partially same) colours. The opponent had to guess in a certain amount of tries what is the code. When the second player was submitting his/her proposition, the "coding" player was "saying" whether the code was correct or not by using small black and white smaller "pins". One black "pin" meant that one "colour pin" was in correct position, while the white one meant that a "colour pin" is in fact in the code, but in a different position. And this is how this game is also working, obviously with some changes.

What I am missing here is the ability to "ask" the game with my own submitted words, not to be forced to choose between the clue words that sometimes aren't very helpful, at least not necessarily fit with the letters I would like to currently "ask" the game about. This is my only half-star drop for this game.

It would be also good to have a version of thinking-only game, without the time pressure, it would be good if you are planning to submit versions with longer words.
I must admit that this game can be a serious pain for people not so familiar with English language, few times even I was submitting words that I did not know what they mean, but the letters fit perfectly and the word was correct.

The game is also partially luck-based, since in the first choosing you can get a word with 4 letters in place as well as a word with only one letter in position or even none, with only 1-2 letters not in position. In this situation if you don't get/pick a good word from clue-words 2-4, you're rather screwed. This could be eliminated by my abovementioned proposition of allowing the player to directly "ask" the game about the words/letters.

There is one difference between this game and the Master Mind, sometimes it seems that after picking all the "clue words" there can be more than one answer possible. An example:
The base word was hoist with 4 letters in position.
I "asked" the game about some letters and all my logic thinking told me that the answer should be moist (there was no "m" in clue words, so it was impossible to determine whether this letter is in the word or to exclude it), while the game considered it as being incorrect and took some points from me.

Only one thing: the way in which the Doge's "hints" appear are completely unclear for me, I don't get it when they appear and what are they trying to tell me.

Whoa, that was long ;-)

jemcy responds:

Thank you for the good review. I also think Master Mind was a fantastic board game for teaching and building logical skill and am happy you see the connection.

This game requires both logic and vocabulary skills to reach the highest levels. Although many of the puzzles can be solved with either pure logic or brute lexical memory, the ideal is a combination of both. It is nearly impossible to recall words as pure letter combinations, and it is nearly impossible to remember every word you might need short term. The idea is to exercise brain circuits that actively produce words by engaging both logic and memory for optimal efficiency. Most people need to strengthen the logic skill. In your case, it seems you may benefit from more of the memory practice to solve at least some of the puzzles most quickly.

After briefly trying a rule change that would allow for a penalty free first attempt at the answer, I found that players did not respond well to the idea. It seems that it is better to leave the game simpler than to add such additional complication. With build 1080, the game again penalizes every wrong answer. Like many other memory games, you must play the odds best to win. If there is no instance of a single letter in any of the clues, then chances are it is not in the solution because the game screens every crossword clue to contain at least two correct letters with at least one in position. Nevertheless, there are no guarantees and luck does play an important role for the game.

I also experimented with starting the clock later in the game, with the second clue, but again ultimately decided against it because it too easily allowed for cheating using scrabble cheating tools. Furthermore, I again determined that the game is simpler, fairer and therefore better without such a change. The clock now starts with the selection of the first clue. However, because you know that each of three choices is pre-screened to contain a minimum number of letters you will need, you can (and should) take as long as you want (no time pressure) to think about likely target answer words based on the letters you see in the choices before starting the clock with the first clue.

The doge-hints are just a way of tracking / marking expired time (with some pre-credited puzzle points removed with each doge-hint) and are used for posting a few synonyms near the end of the countdown time to possibly jog your memory like a regular paper crossword game. Every time the dog periodically speaks (barks), the game takes back ten of sixty points advanced for the round. The doge-hints do not actually show (print) until after the player selects all the available crosswords. The first doge hints are intentionally broad and cryptic. The doge-hint "such do" for example, just indicates that the answer word is primarily a verb. The solution is obvious (revealed) with the last doge clue.

Players may currently use this game without time pressure by choosing when to end each round. Simply wait to select “show answer” to see the last doge clue until you really want to give up thinking about solving the puzzle by yourself to better practice and build your logic / memory skills with practice games.

I have found that if you let the user submit specific crosswords, every puzzle is normally too difficult to get started without using a significant number of guesses, and people immediately give up trying to keep track, therefore the current presentation has proven to work better.

[Cyber Rush]

I would give this game 4,5 stars, because it's a great thing, but I can't because of 2 issues:
1. When I turn off the ad-block the game gets extremely laggy and I could effectively earn only the "first death" medal; before earning any others the game freezes for a moment and is not sending the achievements to the NG system;
2. When I turn the ad-block on I turn off the lag as well, but cannot earn medals.
I PMed the author about it months ago, but got no response. I hope that I will get an answer to the review.