So hey there, I'm going to start a blog, as part of my university assessment! Yay!
In a few hundred words, I'll try to disect a game or two (or three?) every few days, or weekly, that
I find here on Newgrounds.

I'm going to be looking for all sorts of different games to review and tear apart, and tell you about the organs of them, so tell me if you think you know an interesting one or two!

For now, I'll just go with two ones that I know of, have played, and think are pretty cool.
(And for you uni tutors, I suppose these would both be games that I like)

First game: Pixel grower by joeybets

The game is a very casual, fast-paced game with an interesting design and nice doof-doof music going on in the background. It does get repetitive after the first few levels (say, level 4+?) and ends up being a bit boring, especially with flashplayer (or the engine)'s limited capabilities considering the ability to pick up the little falling dots.

I can play it to level 4 without getting bored, but the amount of powerups that drop, not to mention the unchangable movement and lack of customisation (because, let's face it, by level 5 your thing will be a tree shape) make the game a bit easy and repetitive, and just competing for a high score on a game like this that doesn't require much skill doesn't seem worth it - especially with how long the later levels take to complete.

Come to think of it, this is a bit of a mixer game... if I were ten years old, I could play this game for hours, but to a mature audience, it shows some good design and fast-paced, interesting action, but not much else.

Replayability and longevity (or lack thereof) destroyed this game - let's see what they can do next, perhaps.

If anything, I would suggest having a few more of the larger sized block levels (first level, second level), in order to actually allow the player to customise their block with the powerup/healing blocks - an inbetween level or two would give the player a chance at maybe creating something other than the standard tree.

Second game: Gobtron

This game is one of those action-defence games, you know, the kind where you have a bow-and-arrow, or a gun or something, and have to stop hordes of enemies destroying you/your tower, brought to us by Juicy Beast.

It features a lovable guy called Gobtron, who enjoys using his boogers to capture and eat people, in order to gain DNA points, as well as to survive their wrath. Journey through the game to continue through various levels of difficulty in each little timeline increment and upgrade Gobtron with various abilities!

Apart from animation (which is fantastic) and music/sounds (which are appropriate and lack that annoying factor, IMO), the gameplay is pretty great. It is a simple click-drag-release style of "launching" your dangling booger from your right nostril down at the ground, in order to stick those small morsels, I mean people, and bring them back to your mouth (hey, a guy without limbs has to do something!)

I can imagine the game might be difficult for some people (some Newgrounds users have reviewed saying that the game was a bit hard) but the game is fairly easy for anyone with fast enough, and accurate enough click-drag-releasing action powers.

I suppose, for someone not so adept as I am at playing video games, there would be quite a bit of difficulty and would find the game quite interesting... perhaps I'm jaded against simple regards in this regard, but the timeline moving along gives a slightly different feel, and the spaceship picking people up from the ground is enough to probably keep players like me intrigued.

Overall, the game is the same throughout the whole game, with little enemy unit additions, and a few abilities that are pretty cool. The design of the gobtron character is pretty great and streamlined enough to allow for fast and intuitive gameplay - even the "tutorial" was pretty great, and disappeared pretty much when most players would want it to.

I could rant and rave on about this game, erm, moreso, but suffice to say it's pretty solid, and has many good points.

Perhaps a "hard mode" would be good - just making enemies run faster towards your gobtron, increasing their damage, or something along those lines.

Well, for now, that's my first entry into this little series (that I may continue with for a while yet, maybe?)

Let's see what you flash developers have to offer in the future (and in the past, if I get a move on looking through some of the games made over the years here)

I hope to get some variety in here - and I'm pretty sure Mastermind: World Conquerer is on that little mental list I've got, for sure, as it is undoubtedly one of the most well produced games on this site.

I will also probably mix in a game or two from outside of Newgrounds, but for now I'll try to keep it to the Newgrounds developers - you guys.

-Blaise