ladygish's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hotel Management]

Pretty good time-management game!

I love the graphics, upgrades, setup of the hotel, sound effects/music, and I'm a total nerd for time-management games. The icons are clear and easy to understand without having to read a bunch of directions. The pace of customers is good, enough to keep you scrambling to keep up! The tutorial is nice, easy, and unobtrusive. I like how you have a meter showing a customer's happiness and the way a character's face changes as they get angry. It's also really cool how you have different customers with varying levels of patience. Something I haven't seen before is the occupancy limits on the spa and restaurant...I thought that was a very clever idea.

Some things I would change:
- The white highlight around selected characters, laundry, etc. isn't contrasting enough and it's often hard to tell if you have selected something. The red you use on the vacuum, though, is very nice and visible.

- The game play was a little easy. I probably play more of this sort of game than any one person should and that helps me to fly through early levels of these things, but I usually get caught up later on. I made it through day 18 without ever once being in danger of not making the goal. I even made enough money that I had all the upgrades by day 11. I think the problem is that the customers tip too much or the upgrades could be more expensive.

- Just a small thing, I didn't like that customers can call for something that isn't in the hotel yet. I upgraded my restaurant instead of the gym not realizing that the spa was "necessary" for the next level. It wasn't much of a problem, but it was annoying to have customers fuming while you couldn't help them.

- I like having a cumulative customer satisfaction "score." I noticed that if I took too long to check someone in and their happiness dipped, they were immediately back to full once in a room. In other games of this type, the customer will be a little happier but you need to work at it to get them back to the top. The angrier they are, the less they tip, until their bar equals zero and they leave. This setup makes it so you miss out on any more money from that customer whereas in your game they're likely to just pick something else they'd like instead. I also didn't get the sense that I made any less money for making them wait longer. I know that probably makes it way harder to program, but it would make the game play more engaging.

Some possible bugs:

- On day 17 I had a sudden rush of people and a lot waiting on the couches. A family appeared beside the reception desk and they had no icon above them to indicate what they wanted. I assumed they needed to check in, but they weren't clickable. Eventually they got mad enough to leave.

- Often times I would have to click 2 or 3 times before something would select, most often when selecting the vacuum. It was also hard to choose the correct person if two were sitting on a couch or waiting to go back to their rooms. In a game based on speed this can get irritating.

- Many times a customer request would pop up and I would immediately respond, but the second my mouse touched the door, the request would disappear. Then the customer would come back out with a request to leave. I don't know if this is intentional or a bug of some kind.

All in all, I think this is a very fun game with some potential to improve. Even adding more upgrades and/or increasing the cost of the current ones could really go a long way in adding to the playability. Keep the awesome games coming!

[Governor of Poker]

Could have been cool...

I was really excited for this game. The graphics and idea are awesome. Unfortunately, I was horribly disappointed. Maybe it was just me, but my hand only hit 3 times out of 40+ hands. I counted. I was playing on the medium mode, but it was just impossible and, consequently, not fun at all. It's nice to have some sort of challenge but when my best hand is consistently a high card, it gets a little dull. The AI was cool though and I liked the player's personalities. I don't know, maybe I somehow just have really bad luck, but I couldn't get anywhere in this game.

Youdagames responds:

Just because you were unlucky for a long time you give it a 2?
My advise stop with poker all together because this is what happens now and again. When it happens the best pokerplayers keep their calm and don't let that get to their emotions. This is something that you apparently are not capable of.
:)

[The World's Hardest Game]

Don't Press Menu....

This was a good game, very hard. I quit though when I pressed "menu" to find a way to turn the music off or down...and it put me back at level one. I didn't want to redo all of it. Grr.

[Anika's Odyssey]

Cool Style!

I really liked the gameplay and style of this. My only complaint would be that it goes a little slow at times. Otherwise, awesome.