Introducing Add Number! A small puzzle game that might as well be meant for children, because no adult other than myself and possibly the developer is ever gonna play this for more than an hour.
The object of the game is to do math work. There is a white number that you can barely see at the bottom-left of your screen. Each time you click on a red balloon, that white number will increase in the amount of whatever the number value is on the balloon. You must have that white number match the shaded-out star at the bottom right of your screen, in order to score a point. Go over the value, and you lose a life. The game ends when you lose all of your lives.
So first impressions on Add Number is it's a very simple game. Nothing exciting or over the tops. Just simple and easy to understand. A game like this is often something you see developers make for their first-time projects. That was my first impressions....
Add Number's biggest problem is it has players sitting there doing nothing for long durations in a game that generates random balloon value numbers between 1 to 10... Usually waiting for that "1" balloon. Saying it's a puzzle game is no excuse either. A good game does not force players to sit around and do nothing. If it does, then it needs to have them using their brain more for something more than just simple math work.
The second biggest problem is that there is no variation to anything. I played up to a high score of 50 before intentionally picking the wrong balloons to end it all. Nothing changed in between that time. It was the same cookie-cut balloons magically sliding upwards on screen, the same chest piece with a nose attached place in the centre of a blue-shaded background for every game, the same randomly generated number garbage with no change in difficulty or excitement, and the same feeling of "Why am I playing this undercooked mess?" after 2 minutes into the game. Even more-so, this game a simple as this comes with more problems....
- A bug happens where if you click on two balloons overlaping each other, it only registers one of the balloons. The other unregistered balloon doesn't despawn, can't be clicked on, and just continues floating off-screen without a number value at all. (100% confirmed bug)
- When you click on balloons, there are no sound effects. The only time you hear a sound is when you total number(s) successfully match the required number, or when your total number is higher than the required number.
- A Leaderboard for a game that never ends? Bu-Ha! Ha! Ha! Hah!
At the main menu; you might have noticed a blue icon with the words "More Apps" on it - located at the upper left side of the screen. It leads to a website with allegedly more games. Whether or not they are actual games was unknown to me at the time of this written review, as I didn't feel particularly safe clicking on them. Even if true, it feels pointless to click on more games when the Author has no golden projects to show off here on newgrounds. We, the gamers, want the best of the best! We'll even play a good game! But nobody wants to play someone's knockoff. A developer's passion shows with the effort they put into their product. You don't have to be part of some multi-million dollar corporation to make a great game. But a true gem takes months, sometimes years to craft before it can be released for the market. "Is it complete? Is it fun? Would others buy it if it charged real life money? Is it worth showing off?" These are questions developers ask themselves constantly. And it would have helped in the developing process of Add Number, as more variation to it's gameplay was painfully needed. Another game mode to it would have been nice, or an auto-scrolling background. Different color balloons, or fake balloons designed to trick the player into causing them to lose a life when clicking on them? Or game music? Or a time limit between each Total? Or a creature attempting to destroy the balloons as they pop up? - GIVE ME SOMETHING TO WORK HERE! COME ON!!
The game is all right. It's functional, and a decent time waster. But under newgrounds standards; it only wastes everyone else's time for it's repetitive, unchanging, unexciting core. A perfect tagline for Add Number is: "It's painfully average..." And that is why I am issuing a 5 out of 10. Not a bad game, but the likelihood of somebody coming back to play this is about the same as jam turning into silver.
Final Verdict: 5 out of 10
NG Rating: 2.5 Stars