Reviews for Zombies - Surrounded

[Since90something]

10/10 Front Pager. Perfect for Halloween.

I actually really enjoyed that game. Its 1:30 am here, and I didn't finish playing it once I fell into the basement because frankly it is scary, and I'm not in the mood right before bed to be startled that much, so I'll finish tomorrow :)

-Great story, suspensful, creative, SCARY, loved it! Couldn't even finish it and the graphics are awesome. I don't know if you have a full time job or are in school, but it takes a lot of creativity, motivation, talent, hard work, time and effort to make a game, cartoon, story, drawing. And on top of that, courage to post it up here for everyone to judge. I'm really proud of you; even though I don't know you personally, were both human, so were not that much of strangers.

Also, I don't want to give too much time to the negative, but I do want to adress this because it just blew my mind as totally ignorant, mean and couldn't be further from the truth. And I want to take the shot to stick up for you right here and now, and reassure you. YOU MADE THE FRONT PAGE! I just read the review below me from Supernerd, and all of his "constructive criticisms"... I clicked on his link: he hasn't one single cartoon, game, drawing or story of his own on here, but yet he feels the right to bully you like his opinion means anything. Frankly, it's embarrassing for him, but eventually he will grow up and earn the right to his opinions (hopefully)

My opinion:
Great game! Really intense! Great voices, and good creative story with suspense and twists. It was fun, and I didn't even play through the whole game in one sitting which is actually a good thing.

Honestly,
I wish I could say one thing wrong about your game to help you be a better artist, but there is nothing wrong here at all. I guess then, pat yourself on the back, you did it! My Advice... make more.

Thanks,
Mike

MichaelJ responds:

Thanks... you should have just finished it though, it was almost over. I know it's short, but I encourage you to scroll down and read what I wrote on his review.

And no, I don't do this full time, I am only 14. I have school and other things like that. :/

[supernerd1103]

Apart from the animation, just terrible.

A) It was short, just wanted to get that outta the way.
B) Why is it that it takes days for the virus to take effect for the man upstairs but only took a few seconds for the girl to fully reanimate?
C) Not enough interaction, I spent the entire time looking for one key, a set of batteries, and two parts of an axe.
D) Facial artwork was mediocre.
E) I found it irritating to have certain items that were present that were useless such as the rat-eaten book, the stuck drawer, the pile of garbage, and the empty buckets, and on top of that telling me specifically why the character can't pick it up like some kind of Hypochondriac afraid of the cooties. It just makes him sound like a sissy.
F) There were only two reaction events, if you're going to throw some of those in at the very least go all the way with it and make a few more if you're going to make a suspenseful thriller.
G) The whole "I found the journal of some dead guy" is very played out, and is at this point kinda cliche, try to find more ways of showing that a survivor was there and had a message. No one wants to read 18 pages worth of information about what the guy had for breakfast to "Oh no it turns out I'm infected, better go hug my kids and shoot myself", they want to get back to the game not sit and read, if they wanted to that they could just play Exmortis (which, in my opinion did a GREAT job with their journal entries if the player had enough patience to read through them). L4D2 (and 1) showed it by writing messages in the safe-rooms, maybe you can show it by having messages written in blood on the walls or spray paint writing "Alive Inside", give us some atmosphere!
H) I don't want this message to be all negative so I'll leave with a positive comment: I thought the animation of the people running took a lot of time and effort and for that I applaud you on your hard work.

This is without a doubt the longest review I have ever written on Newgrounds so please, before you click on the USELESS button read through this and hear me out. And to the Author I hope you put this information to good use because I'm actually trying to be HELPFUL here and give you ideas.

MichaelJ responds:

A) I know It's short, but it seems like even if it was long you would have a problem with it.
B) The man upstairs wasn't bitten...
C) Not enough interaction? You had to press space multiple times and shoot zombies...
D) I know I'm not great at faces...
E) You aren't going to go somewhere and NOT find items you won't need. That wouldn't make sense. That's like saying you use every item in your house every day...
F) Like previously stated, the game is short, and animating these reaction events is time consuming.
G) The journal is 3 pages long, not 18.
H) This was the hardest part -.-

All in all, you gave me no helpful ideas, all you did was bash my game that I worked hard on and gave me a 3/10 for my work. You have NO IDEA how hard it is to make these games, especially because I did 95% of it myself, having to miss out on study time, and even sleep. I see you have no flash submissions, that speaks for itself. Also, seeing how you gave a stick figure animation and madness animation a 10 in your reviews, you are totally one-sided. I am guessing you don't like point and click games at all.

[Nambread]

Great audio, great gameplay.

Most people on here have already bitched a little about its length. So I'm going to point out the strongest points instead.
Firstly the audio is fantastic, the bgm, sfx and voice acting all really set the mood. I'm guessing you would've had trouble animating all those cutscenes and I think they're better for it.
Second I really like the different gameplay elements you have going on here, the point n' click, the fps and the top-down styles of play mesh quite well, I'd love to see it spread over a larger world. I'd seen shooting in point n' click before, but not as well as you did it here. (Hitboxes, fluid animations etc.) Athough the quicktime event right at the start did make me panic a little haha, was busy texting at the time.
Lastly I'd say the graphics are very impressive for a mouse, I'm giving a ten despite the length since it's clear just how much work went into it. I look forward to any new projects you work on!

[sup3rcr0n]

Good combination of genres.

I did enjoy the game overall, especially your combination of different genres. However, the few problems I do have with the game involve how real it feels. Who is really going to tap on a crack a few times to get a key? Where exactly did the rifle come from? I assumed from the corpse on the bed, but it was leaning up against a wall. I read through some of the other reviews, and I saw that you said you wanted the gun to be more realistic. I can't think of a sniper rifle that is bolt action that carries that many rounds. The one thing that really bothered me though, I don't know exactly why, is that you had an ax handle and head separated by a few yards. I hope that you do make more games, and continue to improve. I hope this review was helpful to you.

MichaelJ responds:

I wanted to make shooting it feel more realistic. That's what I meant.
I don't really care about how they reload. It's just a game.

[WAR11]

great to see another zombie escape game

awesome job with the graphics i was really scared when i saw the first zombie. great job