Score: 6
"Nice idea, but some major problems."
date: September 6, 2006
At first I thought this would be a Texas Hold Em sim, and as I haven't seen a decent one done at NG I thought that would be good. But this is something I've never played before, which is even better.
First off - graphics great, sound great. The NG characters and 'other things' made it more enjoyable to play.
But major problem #1 - the concept doesn't really work. All the backgrounds could be won by placing an all-in bet on the highest odd hand (post-flop) and if it doesnt win just reset and try again. I did this on a 20-1 hand, won on 2-pairs and grabbed the Girls 2 background. In a short while I had them all.
There's a serious bug too. If you lose all your chips and forget to reset at the end of a round, you're buggered. Cause when you click deal you cant reset any more, and when the flop shows with no bets on the deal button cannot be selected. So it's a freeze situation, the game must be refereshed.
The bug can be fixed no problem (I suggest re-uploading the fla quickly) , but the first problem would require quite a big rethink. So maybe more testing was needed. Shame because this could have been great. Still, you got a good score and it's deserved, so well done.
Author's Response:
Originally I was going to leave it so that you'd have to refresh the browser to regain your credit when you run out. If you lose all your chips, it's not a bug, it's just poor playing (probably because you're betting on a 100/1 hand to try and get all the credit). In a real-life situation, if you run out of money, that's it, game over. I thought I would avoid people getting frustrated, but if I gave the reset option at any other time, people would just keep resetting on the post-flop or whatever, basically giving them an infinite amount of money to lay as a bet. That's the reason the reset is only allowed at EOG.
Basically, most people who visit NG won't go into the same depth of analysis that you have, so it'd be wasted effort if I tried to adapt it like that.
I appreciate the comments though, thanks a lot for the feedback. I'll probably be releasing more card games in the future. The problem is, providing some kind of reward when the betting isn't done with real money. I might write a mini-game or two into the next.