Game's grt but IT ISN'T THAT SIMPLE! :-/
Reviews for "Simplicity"
This is one of the hardest games I've played in a long time. But it is still really fun to play. The controls are good, but I do think you should specifiy what the controls are in the Author Comments section because there are many different control schemes for sliding games. And my only complaint about the game itself is that if you let go of a block in between spaces it just stays there, but that is easily fixed.
garylu1999 responds:
Okay, I will take your suggestion of explaining the controls in the Author Comments section. Thanks for your review. Yeah, now, I think I understand what people are saying about the blocks being hard to control. I spent some hours trying to fix the blocks getting stuck, but had to give up eventually. I am terribly sorry :(
pretty challenging but sometimes the blocks get perma-stuck
garylu1999 responds:
Thanks. This is not the only complaint I get about the blocks being hard to move but on my computer, they work just fine so I need to see what is up.
It's amazing how faithfully this recreates the old ~2003 Flash game era. The graphics look authentic in a way that's imitated but almost never done right.
This would have been a hell of a game 15 years ago. It's still a decent game now. The puzzles are pretty varied in their difficulty which is good, but the time limit seems unnecessary. Combined with the music, you don't really help the player relax and think and instead you seem to be hurrying them up. Not a good model for a puzzle game.
Other than that there's a lot of things you could have done to make the graphics more impressive. Think about lighting, beveling, texture, etc. Rather than just having text as buttons, put them inside of boxes and give them some level of uniformity. Pick ONE font and stick with it, and unite all of your graphics under one color scheme. The chaotic main menu should have some transparent fill over it to bring the menu items into focus, and what you have makes the green and blue level selection and play screens clash too. The time gauge, mute button, clock, etc. all seem slightly off-center and there's a lot of blank space that seems awkwardly placed.
As far as the game is concerned I think what you have is good. The level design is strong, but some levels really are frustrating. I suppose that's what you want for a puzzle game. Some of the puzzles seem to be out of order in terms of how difficult it is, so perhaps you should have other people tell you how difficult each puzzle is and re-order them so that there's a smoother curve.
garylu1999 responds:
Thanks for your review. Your review is the most helpful one so far and I would definitely use some of these tips for future flash games. Thank you.
By the way, about the difficulty order, I actually did have other people try it, but different people did not agree on which puzzles are harder and the way some of them ordered it seemed odd to me as well.
I actually found this somewhat easier than I expected, Not that that's a bad thing.
Either way this is a nice puzzle game.