Teslalover's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Thousand Dollar Soul]

Amazing!

Wow, I really enjoyed reading through all the endings. I really felt like there was an epic story going on, and we kept just seeing glimpses of it from the outside. The main driving force is future todd's actions, watch out for him.
I found the whole thing to be very well written and compelling although there was a lot of the endings that were similar, but I guess that can't be avoided.
I was actually lucky the way I went through the endings, not finding out where the title came from until one of my last endings.
-Spoiler alert!-

I mean this story had a lot of cool themes in it, for example every time todd told future todd they are not the same. Its interesting to think about whether your future self is still you.
Also the idea of obsession and planting the seed of motivation. If when future todd asks todd if he loves angela, which is crazy he asks since he ought to know, the answer can either be yes or no, with each with different timelines. That means that todd may have not actually loved angela as future todd thought he did, that maybe future todd created a love/obsession out of angela years afterwords. With out future todd obsessing, what maybe was just a simple crush turned into a full blown love, so much that future todd thought that was the cause for all his sadness in his life, and wanted nothing but to go back and have her. But then again, maybe todd will have always obsessed with angela, especially in light of ending 21 when seeing her in the future. But then again, todd seems happy in ending 34!?, I don't know its interesting to thinkg about.
Also, what was the deal with the girl future todd said he was going to get with named Madison(one of the africa endings)? I don't know who that is or why he was acting so strangely about it.
PS. I thought it was interesting that you said ending 34 was the happiest ending, even happier then 32!?! I thought 32 was future todd's dream, to get angela to fall in love with todd and they would grow old together. But either ending 34 was just written happier, or I just got a vague sense it was happier, despite the fact that todd does not end up with angela and instead ends up with some girl ashley. He now has a friend, clint, and has a girl to marry and is really close to angela, but is that really enough for todd? Is that enough to make him happy or does he need angela to love him? Goddamn, people generally should never think about how happy they would be in alternate realities, because no matter what, you can imagine a happier situation then you are living in. Maybe todd would be as happy as can be if he just never thought about the possibility of him and angela being together.
I'm sorry, I'm rambling too much, Its just that this is a very thought provoking game. And it also reminds me a bit of my life, having never confronted my highschool crush about my feelings for her. I think, would I have loved her, or was it just a crush and my true love is elsewhere? Is it possible that there is such a thing as only one true love in this huge world?
There I go again, sorry, well anyway, great game, I love that you used the swain's artwork. I can't rate you high enough.
Cheers
-End spoilers-

GregLoire responds:

Thanks for the review! You've raised some interesting ideas.

Regarding whether Todd truly loves Angela, I leave that answer up to the player, but if you read through both responses, I think it's pretty clear that the "correct" answer is "no" (the happiest endings come from saying "yes," which kind of bugs me a bit). It was really difficult for me to balance Todd's innate personality with giving the player some power to control his actions. A friend of mine told me that it was really out of character for Todd to leave Future Todd alone with Angela in a few of the endings, and I told him, "Well, that's what you had Todd do!" So it's kind of a weird balance, and I think I could have pulled it off a little better.

Regarding which ending is the happiest... I agree that the endings involving Todd and Angela getting together are pretty happy too. I just like #34 because it shows him overcoming his shallow obsession with her, moving on, finding someone he truly cares about, and becoming best friends with Clint, a stark contrast to how Future Todd treated him. It shows that just because Todd was obsessed with Angela doesn't mean that she was the only one who could have made him happy -- he never had anything "real" with her in the first place (though there's no reason to believe that he didn't develop something real with her in the path where they get married).

[Operation BlackKnife]

Sweet

I love the homeworld feel of this game

rytherix responds:

One of my primary inspirations for this game!
I hope HomeWorld 3 comes out some day

[Ghost Guidance]

I wold play again in a heartbeat

Very cool idea. Needs to be developed more by adding more interesting types of ships to infect and more of a story. Where did you come from? Why are they trying to kill?
Also I think you should make crashing your ship into other ships hurt more. At least for bosses I like to shoot lasers at the boss until my health is low then crash into the boss but it doesn't seem like it does much damage.
Cool game once again.

[REDDER]

Why is this not rated Higher?!?!?!

This game is awesome. I loved how expansive the map is and how as you get deeper into the planet, the traps get subtly more complicated. I thought it was really cool how the background changed so I really felt like I was exploring an installation or ruins.
Great game, great mood setting music and fun gameplay for how little amounts of action you have available to you. I always like when somebody comes along and reminds you all you need for a fun and satisfying game is the arrow keys.
I also liked seeing the cool patterns the lasers made as the bent around the corners.
I really like where you coming from in this game, please make more.

[One Button Bob]

pretty fun

461 clicks bi*chez!

[Paradox Embrace]

Very fun and interesting gameplay

I thought it was cool and different to see the landscape change when you changed the different worlds (although I prefer to think of it as traveling through time). I thought the music was really great actually and listening to the same song changing for each different era was pretty cool.
One thing I have to say is this game would be an even better game if you could make a premise and follow through with it!
I want to hear about some your protagonist, learn his name, learn who this shadow is and why he's tormenting the protagonist. I want to know at least a little why he was even searching for these items and why they could ever defeat the shadow or why he had the power to changes worlds. If you could have made the game into a compelling story it would have been an epic submission.
It was a really cool concept though, for the sequel keep just about everything the same(maybe with a few new twists) but give me a reason to have sympathy for the character your playing, like in Time Fcuk.

[Ching Chong Beautiful]

REALLY FUN GAME

Fun story line and characters. Fun game play.
On thing is can you please put up the time requirements for each level so I can see what a platinum is on some of the tracks? It would help for me to figure out how many seconds I have to cut down in order to make platinum.
Then I can be Ching Chong Beautiful.

[Gravity Flock]

maybe you have some tips

i think its a cool game but I'm not good at it at all. The only things I dislike is the time limit and the fact there is no reset button that resets all the particles back to relatives small velocities.
This is a cool demonstration of physics and I really thought it was cool when I was able to get one of the particles to orbit my cursor for a while.
I would like the game more if somehow you could help players learn it. Like have a tutorial. I suspect that the best way to win is to have the particles all orbiting around together slowly and to gently tug that into your box, but i don't know for sure. If that is true, it be cool if you go through some tutorial levels where that is the goal, or something like that.
Maybe the game is best with no tutorial, or it'd be difficult to make one, but I would appreciate some help in some way.

mattfosho responds:

Thanks for your thoughts. It is certainly true that this game is hard to learn. I find that very shold impulse clicks at a medium distance works pretty good, because then you won't accelerate too much. On the higher levels I try to get the particles into clusters and control them as a group. But there are people out there who figured it out even better than me, I'm not even top ten on the high score list anymore :o

So best advice is to keep trying I think...

Edit: I made a quick avi of when I was playing, maybe you can get somethig from it: http://www.duffmusic.net/gravity/ tutorial.avi (you have to copy the address and edit out the space before the word tutorial).
For some reason my capture program put a time-glass-icon over the icon but you can still kind of see when I am clicking and when I am not...

[Siege Tank Defence]

man this game is fun

i love the explosions. I love the tank designs and i love the sounds of a siege tank from starcraft. very fun game!

[Eridani RTS]

yea its fun

I would have really played this game for a while if i wasn't busy. I really thought the graphics and the gameplay was solid and that it was fun to get bigger and better attack ships. The only part i didn't like was the computer AI. They never attacked. They just waited for me to attack with minimal defenses.