Score: 5

"Some problems..."

submission: RGB Cannon

date: 5 hours ago

Well, for starters, the "skip" button for the tutorial doesn't stop the audio, so even if you skip the tutorial, you still have to listen to the whole thing. Also, at the end of the tutorial, the narrator states "you will return to the title screen".... however, the game just stays on a black, blank screen with no way to return to title. Because of this, the game must be closed and relaunched. Also, the tutorial isn't really complete.. it states "that's all you need to know to play the game," however, you don't cover how to change the pixel colour or how to shoot the cannon. I realize there is a controls section that covers this, but what's the point of having a tutorial if the player still needs to check another section to find out how to play? The tutorial should be all-inclusive, and the "Controls" section should only exist as something for the player to refer back to so they don't have to sit through the whole tutorial again.

This game is also pretty darn difficult, mainly due to the fact that multicoloured emoticons, once turned into a solid R/G/B colour, still deduct from your Passion if you continue shooting them with the previous pixel colour that was used. Personally, I don't think this is fair, as there is no way to tell how many shots it takes to change an emoticon from one colour to another. I think there should be a brief moment, once the emoticon has changed colours (even if it's not a solid colour yet) in which the pixel being fired at it has no bearing on your Passion meter.

Additionally, the emoticon colours are a bit superfluous... why are there C/M/Y emoticons, as well as slightly brighter versions of all three C/M/Y icons? I would think it goes without saying that any brightness variation of a colour would result in the same combination of primary pixels (magenta = red + blue; bright magenta = red + blue... gee, really?). What was the purpose in putting in these extraneous, minor colour modifications? The pastel versions, in my opinion, aren't different enough to be too noticeable; if the "bright" emoticons were removed, the pastels would definitely stand out compared to the regular C/M/Y colours.

Overall, an interesting concept indeed, but I think the colour combinations make the game get too hard too quickly, and having the powerups as white blocks (i.e. requiring all 3 colours) takes too much focus away from destroying the emoticons; more often than not, trying to get a powerup involved a great loss to my Passion meter.

Score: 6

"Interesting take"

submission: Pongnop

date: August 31, 2008

I like the new take on Pong, essentially playing two games at once. I realize the game is only to get the highest amount of points possible, so I'm guessing that it's impossible to actually get the ball past the AI paddles, correct? Anyway, it does get decently difficult fairly quickly; I could only make it up to 1605 points on my first try. However, this game lacks replay value; after that first try, I really didn't feel motivated to play it again. I think the music was a little overbearing as well; with music that loud, why even bother to add sound effects?

Score: 3

"Speaking of too slow..."

submission: Erebus The Hedgehog

date: August 31, 2008

The animation leave a lot to be desired... I personally like sprite animations, but there's no background, no music, no story, and the tweens for some reason are horribly slow. I'm not sure what the purpose was for submitting this... do you plan to follow this up with a movie or a series about your fancharacter? Honestly, this looks like something that should've been submitted to NG Alphas instead of the Portal.

As an unrelated sidenote, a roommate and I did actually own two hedgehogs, one named Erebos (an alternate spelling) and the other named Aether, thus essentially representing Shadow/Darkness and Bright/Glowing Upper Air. One was black and the other white, so we thought it was appropriate.