Java4K.com

I got a bit confused about the difference between the bugs and power-ups. Some bugs were just idle, and I don't know why, must be a bug :) I ran out of ammo relatively quickly, wish it would have regenerated as I did not find any more ammo power-ups before I died.

Clearly a well done game, multiple levels and graphics seem pretty good for a 4K. I would have been able to move diagonally. Overall, a well-playable game but still doesn't capture my admiration.

This is a fairly standard shooter-type game with a pretty funny plot (it's great how many people navigate to BullSquared in 2037, no?). I was impressed by the size of all the levels and the intricacies of the enemies and the ships, but the gameplay was definitely lacking for me. I was having a difficult time aiming exactly where I wanted, but most of the time didn't even need to shoot. Enemies seemed to just leave me alone as I flew around looking for computers. Even so, I ran out of ammo fairly quickly and began to wonder why there was an ammo bar at all. To top it all off, it is a big no-no to have a Ctrl button for shoot and arrows to move for any Mac user; this is an OS restricted function and makes the game unplayable. I was able to alternate which finger I was pressing to make it doable, but that's something to remember to avoid in the future. Overall I'd say add a lot more gameplay complexity and less graphical complexity, and get rid of the ammo bar.

2037 has a great story line, I love it :) The game is smartly designed with the limited firing giving some really tight tactical situations. Unfortunately as I played locally there were several bugs (the screen not refreshing appropriately, and the collision system jamming on me) which prevented me enjoying. As a side issue the graphics I was seeing seem to be slightly different to those in the screenshot.

Good attempt, plenty of content for 4k but slightly ropey implementation.

Pretty amazing, an RTS in 3D!!! It was impressive enough to do a 2D RTS in 4K, but in 3D, that's pretty cool.

It's too bad that the gameplay doesn't match the cool-factor. I was unable to get beyond mission 2, except when I decided to do nothing, then I won. Clearly, not how the game is supposed to be played :)

Having to click on the shields was annoying, minimap was missing. But overall, very cool looking game, seems to work generally, but I get the feeling that doing it in top-down 2D would have left much more room for gameplay, minimap and other things.

Very cool little game. I played it when you first put it on JGO and am happy to say that it was far far better than it originally was. The warping of the hills is a beautiful technical effect and the rock/paper/scissors of the 3 unit types is wonderful. I had a great time distracting the enemy with my "heavy" units so that my fast guys could run behind and take out all their archers. My only real problem with this was the navigation - it was difficult to take command of the entire map in an efficient manner, and it was particularly annoying to find the enemies and destroy them in mission number 3. In number 4 I had no idea who "Siward" was and as a result wasn't able to defeat him (if it meant the whole army, well, I'm just not good enough). Also it would be really nice to be able to select multiple groups at once. Regardless of my gripes, this is a great 4k offering.

Amazing technology for a 4k game. There are always a few technology games that stand out a long way each year and this is one of them. For technology this is awesome, but the game is somewhat lacking and the performance here is pretty poor making it quite hard to play.

Still giving a reasonably high mark simply because the technology impresses me so much.

Interesting. I remember creating similar missions in Warcraft 2 editor back in the ages. They were pretty fun.

My feeling about this game is that it's very thinned out with too many features. Instead of enumerating what's wrong, let me tell you what I would have done:
1) Fewer unit types, 3-4 types, each unit with a different purpose, e.g. tank, artillery, rpg soldier, humvee. You get where I'm going.
2) Get the graphics right, terrain and units (this is not such a big issue).
3) Get the AI right. (they all seemed confused and jerky)
4) Different bullet types for different units.

So, instead of having a well-thought out input system, minimap that serves no real purpose, some info bar that isn't really needed, and eight different unit types that all work the same, I'd do what I mentioned above.

Good try, but somewhat missed it's target.

I was disappointed with this one. The complexity of the controls is both a bonus and a detriment at the same time, but mostly a detriment. I felt like I was just sending all my dudes to fight at once and had really no idea what was going on or why. I couldn't win. I'm also an old hand at StarCraft, so that didn't seem to be the problem. The big issue I think was that I would select to attack a point and rather than choosing a nearby target, the units would all move to that point and try to attack exactly there. Similarly, if I told them to attack a unit, they would all scramble around the thing instead of attacking it. This really was the main problem, aside from the fact that I had no idea which unit was better than what at what sort of range, etc. and, in the end, it just seemed like a crapshoot where the strategy was to try to get all my guys shooting at once. You get points for the technical achievement of having so many commands and unit types, but lose a lot of points for what I view is a broken game.

Nice to see another attempt at an RTS for 4k. Unfortunately while this game is incredibly rich in features (so many units) it doesn't play well. The graphics are ok, the controls work but the game itself is very awkward to play. This party because the AI of the opponent and the home units don't obey standard RTS rules. They don't attack when attacked and they don't keep their distance where possible.

Good attempt but really doesn't work well as a game.

Probably one of the most graphically impressive games ever submitted to the 4K contest. I was very impressed when I first played it, and still am, if for nothing else but to walk around in the environment.

The gameplay is, well, not really there. I got quickly bored of trying to find some gangland murderers, and just started killing everyone. Probably not what I was supposed to do :)

Not really sure what I can suggest to improve it, this game seems to be more of a graphical exercise than actually making a playable game. But a very good exercise though!

Very cool perspective and surprisingly complex gameplay for 4k. However, it wasn't particularly difficult and got boring very quickly. Pretty much I'd mash the space bar and various arrow keys to kill everyone around me, get shot maybe once or twice, then heal back up to full health. The enemies, therefore, were pretty negligible, and so I was just running around looking for blood puddles the whole time. I stopped at level 30 when it still wasn't getting noticeably more difficult. I definitely give you high points for technical achievement, but gameplay left a lot to be desired.

Got to level 15 before realising that the opponents weren't actually doing me any significant damage. This game had such potention, great graphics and style given the 4k limit and a simple game play that could have been really good. The streets really do feel bustling.

Unfortunately the controls not responding terribly well and the lack of feedback (when collecting evidence, or being hit, or killing an assasin) leave the experience feeling pretty unrewarding.

I always enjoy those pushing Sokoban games. This is a pretty good implementation too, graphics are neat and the robot and boxes work well together.

My first thought was the color of the red squares. I'm a bit red-green color blind and I barely noticed the coloring difference. I would have recommended something like pallet for it, or a bright orange.

A side from not being an original game, it's a good implementation and deserving of a decent score.

This is a nice little block pushing game. Fairly addictive and I am quite amazed that you managed to put in 50 levels (although I didn't go past 10 or so). I think the puzzles are actually very well thought out and the graphics are quite pretty; the only problem is that block pushing isn't particularly difficult to implement nor is it original. You definitely did a wonderful implementation of block pushing for 4k and fitting in all those levels is mighty impressive, but otherwise there isn't too much to say here.

Sokoban Sokoban Sokoban, it's always there. This implementation is very pretty, nice clean and simple graphics. You'd be forgiven for thinking this wasn't a 4k restricted game. 50 levels is also an impressive feat. Nice game, but been done before in 4k several times.

Good work.

From the RTS games submitted this one is pretty decent. I admit, I was skeptical at first because I did not understand anything, but after clicking around for a few minutes I finally got it. This game has some neat AI and an interesting strategic aspect. You can multiple items, attack, harvest resources, collision avoidance, particle effects. I think this is the first 4K RTS game that has all those elements, and working! My only complaint is probably the graphics, I don't understand why you have a road there, and I would recommend you look into anti-aliasing :)

But, a good submission worthy of recognition.

This is a great strategy game! I didn't play all the way through the whole thing, but that was more because I have a lot of games to review than anything else. The difficulty curve was very well executed and the gameplay was well balanced. On top of that, the number of unit types you have and your enemy AI is very impressive. My only rather small issue with the game was that I had a fairly difficult time getting my units to do exactly what I wanted sometimes - if I wanted to make one run away, they would often keep turning around and fighting again, and oftentimes I would get pileups because the pathfinding wasn't quite as good as I wanted. If you were able to fix these problems within 4k then I would be enormously impressed, rather than just incredibly impressed. Still, this is one of my favorite games this year.

Good attempt at an RTS. Unfortunately I couldn't get anywhere with it. Could harvest stuff but couldn't build anything. Not sure what was going on. Any chance of some more instructions?

Extremely addicting game. At first I wasn't expecting such a good game, but after I started playing I got hooked.

It has that perfect balance of gameplay fun, replay value, original, being challenging enough and looking pretty good. Who would have thought up this stuff, a burning man walking on bombs and timber trying to reach some water?

I don't recommend too often that games should be remade as a non-4K, but I believe you have something good going on here.

Great job!

What a wonderful, wonderful game. I'll say right off the bat - this is one of my personal top picks. That's not because it's amazingly innovative or technically impressive or because it blew me away - it's because this game hits the mark in every single aspect. The style just oozes out of Burning Man, as well as tremendously fun puzzles and easy to pick up gameplay. The level of polish that went into this is incredibly impressive, as is everything else. I loved all the different puzzle objects you had, from bombs to burning ropes to acid - it all is a great touch. And the idea of expunging my burning man is just hilarious.

This is just awesome. Let's start by saying the implementation is nice. I played this on several machines (while showing other people) and it worked flawlessly even with the lowest performance netbook. The graphics are nice, the central character is good and the level tiles are well defined. It all looks and feel great.

More than that the though, the idea is fantastic. You're left wanting more and thinking each time just one more moment and I could have done it. Great great great!

Reading the description I thought this would be a fun game, but I did not really enjoy it.

After playing for a few minutes I'm still not sure how the game works. Shooting at other units doesn't do anything to them. All the flags get blue, even the ones I capture, I see no score. What is this healing for? I'm very lost in this gameplay.

Technically this game is sound, you got some AI there, scrollable screen, etc. But the gameplay is hard to understand. Graphics could be a lot better too, and co-op gaming is so 80's :)

I can think of some ideas how this would have been a good submission. Keep it simple is a good start, and better graphics. Need to do better!

I thought this was a great idea that just didn't get pulled off perfectly. It was very difficult to shoot the enemies without getting shot myself, so I mostly felt like I was just avoiding them and hoping my team would win. It was also frustrating that the bot representing player 2 would give me a loss if it died. Perhaps this would be much better with the 2 player co-op, but I had nobody to play with so I wasn't able to see. I thought that the AI in the game was definitely pretty good - all the bots seemed to work pretty well together - and the size of the playing field was fun too. However, I didn't see much of a reason to keep playing after the first match.

Interesting idea, and while the graphics are simple they do at least happily represent the game. The controls feel too slow, making it hard to get a hit without being hit.

I think the focus was the AI which seems to work quite well. Your team mates spread out and support you. However, it feels a bit more like an experiement in AI than a game.

What a nice fun little game :) The name really is all the description you need, so simple, fun fluid graphics and audio to match.

I did get a little hooked on it, but after a few frustrating fails I realized this game relies more on random luck than it does on learning how to play certain levels. Not a big issue though.

Good game, nicely polished graphics and deserves a decent score.

Oh noes, I reached the square! Cool graphics, cool sound, and nice easy to pick up gameplay. I'm a fan! I feel like I played a less pretty version of this game a while ago somewhere, but I can't remember where. Either way, even if you were just improving on your own gameplay or mimicking someone else's, you did a wonderful job for 4k. The ripples made me feel like I was on LSD and the music was catchy (and there at all!), and I thought the level balance was pretty good too. The only issue I had here was that once you figure out the gameplay it gets very easy (until it becomes pretty much impossible). Just corral the crosses into one place and then keep them there at the edge of the screen. It would have been cool to have a bit more variety, maybe having some crosses move differently than others or something like that.

Right, so I start this game thinking meh. Then the music starts - which is scaryily good for procedurally generated stuff. Then the game starts, the graphics are simple but really well put together. The game plays really well and I found myself going back again and again.

Very nice job. The best compliment is that this game reminded my pixeloids from last year. Same sort of vibe somehow.

Haha! I laughed a bit when I started playing. Funny graphics too, the cops are hilarious. I did not reach Driver4K champion, but I think I did alright.

Game is easy to understand. Original idea. Graphics are perhaps a bit too simple, but sufficient. You seem to have some alright AI in there and physics too. My only issue is perhaps the map is too simple. I would have liked to see a more complex environment, other buildings, more roads, etc.

Anyway, game gives you a decent entertainment and gets a score accordingly.

I thought this was a very cool idea and well executed. The game started to get crazily frantic and I found myself wondering why the cops weren't shooting out my tires. The gameplay was fundamentally simple and yet worked quite well - I could tell the physics were based upon Craig's Race. I did find the steering a little bit annoying, though. The car rarely went exactly where I wanted to go, and often went in a completely different direction. I didn't know exactly how I was supposed to make it work better, given that I had a fully upgraded car. It seemed like I was spending more time trying to get the car into the green box than avoiding the cops. I would have rather had a game where the difficulty stemmed entirely from being captured, not from a difficult to control car.

Driver4K is a neat game, the graphics while simple work well. The concept is light but works well. The controls let the game down a little, the car feeling sluggish and the hand brake not providing the advantage it should. The upgrades were a nice touch for a 4k game.

While the controls are awkward the game is still fun making me come back for a few goes. Adding a larger play area, more targets and maybe some sounds from the sirens would have made this better.

Looks like a very thought out game, it's just too bad those thoughts don't translate into easy intuitive gameplay. The description text does not fit on a A4 paper.

Blue is what? Red is what? Uh? Where's my opponent? Is this a co-op game? My brain hurts! There is no way to get any action and fun out of this game. I'm sure the game works as you intended, and you put a lot of effort into it, but I'm just not enjoying it.

I really liked the style of this one. The screenshot looks completely unimpressive, but the way you managed to make the game feel totally destructible via the pixels was quite cool. I also thought that this seems like it has the potential to be a great 2-player game, although I was unable to try that out given I have no one to play with at the moment. My one main gripe with this game was that it was quite difficult to understand exactly what I was doing. The state-based cursor really wasn't working out for me. Also, I understand you were going for the two-player approach, but this game really would be much better played with a mouse.

Was a bit hard to evaluate this one. Appears to only be two player and theres only one of me. It looks interesting and according to the instructions theres a lot of depth in the game. However, I had a play around and while I could light some areas on fire I couldn't really understand what the game was suppose to be. Also a little disappointed to see so much space wasted on the intro page.

This looks very cool. I'm impressed by the physics/bubble-packing algorithm you use. However, it's on the brink of being a non-game and just a tech-demo. I'm not really sure if there is much gameplay in there. After a few minutes pressing the keys I'm not seeing that my input matters much, this game has a mind of it's own.

Looks neat, but wish there was more gameplay.

Seems like an awesome idea, but I just couldn't figure out the gameplay. I played for about 5 minutes against 2 bots and it just felt like a standstill. I had no idea when it would end and nobody seemed to be winning at any point. Furthermore, although the explosions were a very cool mechanic, they seemed to inhibit me more than help - I would gain a few bubbles at price of having no idea what was going on for about 5 seconds. Couple that with the other players constantly doing the explodey thing as well and I had no idea what was going on 95% of the time. The physics of the bubbles were definitely impressive and the AI seemed good (although honestly I couldn't tell if it was), but yeah it just didn't feel playable.

Neat concept but very slow here. Graphics are simple. Gameplay is smart. Wasn't enticing enough to keep playing.

Seems like alot of space must have been used on AI, which seems to play quite nicely (assuming I knew what it was meant to be doing). Unfortunately the lack of performance on this machine made it very hard to enjoy.

Very pleasing graphically. I've not seen many isometric 4K games, but this one is probably tops them all.

It is perhaps too complex. I could feel my brain just swell up trying to keep my ship alive. A very difficult orientation/perspective I must say. Too difficult to pilot a ship that goes north-east up on a isometric map where you can go up/down, north-west and south-east, trying to stay away from walls, towers and also pick up those craters with nothing but the shadow really to give you a clear indication where you really are. I just could not handle it well. It would have been a fun game if the orientation/perspective was better for the player.

Everything else in the game is high-class.

Very very good but very very difficult. I read in a comment that there is a boss of some kind, but I never got there. I didn't even get to a blue gate or whatever that is in the screenshot, after several tries. I don't know if it's because I'm a bad player or not. Either way, although the perspective was mighty cool I found it was difficult to navigate it. I would often hit walls I didn't think I was near and miss fuel pods I thought I was about to get. I think this game would benefit a lot from a health system rather than a lives system - do away with fuel altogether and just make all of those medpacks. Every time you hit a wall or get shot you lose some health. For a guy who likes easier games, that definitely would be an improvement for me.

You could easily be forgiven for thinking this wasn't a 4k entry. Fantastic graphics (aided by the carefully chosen colour scheme), smooth play and a classic concept. This is what 4k is meant to be about. Really enjoyed playing this one.

I like this submission. It's a fun simple game in a nice setting. More oriented towards children perhaps. Good use of sounds and graphics. Gameplay very straight forward.

It is a bit hard to try and catch that fish that is getting away. I would suggest that you make the ship go faster when the net is closer to the surface, that way you can drag up your net and try to catch the fish at the other side.

Fine game.

Pretty cool little game. I stopped when I got to 100, I had let 6 fish go by. I think this is a great idea and there were a lot of good touches (like the sound effects, the waves that the ship ride on, etc.), but overall I think the gameplay was a bit flawed. Basically, it would either be overly easy or impossibly hard. The fact that many fish could go faster than the net meant that without a sonic wave ready I undoubtedly lost them. The sonic wave itself only seemed useful for catching so fish I couldn't catch myself, otherwise it often made the situation worse. The other end of the problem was that the fish slower than the net were often too easy to catch so I wouldn't lose any points at all. I think a different measure of failure would have been better - let as many fish go by as you want but have some other challenge you are facing.

A surprisingly fun game. Graphics are limited but plenty enough to be given the impression. I particulaly liked the way the ship followed the waves. Gameplay wise it's a bit limited, would have been nice to see some different fish or some way of getting lives back.

Still very enticing and lots of fun. Good job on this one!

What confuses me are the keys. Up pushes you down, down pushes you up, left pushes you left, and right pushes you right. Whey have it reversed the other way? It's not consistent. Either the arrowkeys push you away or take you in the direction.

Beautiful graphics really, and good use of audio. I'm not quite sure about the gameplay, the tunnel are so colorful that you don't know where the segments or goals are. I could let the game run on its own and I always reach the end.

Nice graphics and audio demo, but gameplay is lacking.

The tunnel is sweet looking and the tunes are awesome. The gameplay is meh. I noticed that when I looked below to read what you had written in the description I actually appeared to be doing better than when I was actually controlling things. The reason? Actually, the two reasons: the first is that it was often very difficult to tell what the roof was and how the track was currently bent as well as it being difficult to tell whether I was colliding with anything or not. The second is that there is no way to predict what's coming next, so rather than avoiding obstacles I am moving off ones I've already hit. That means that the gameplay doesn't feel much like gameplay. As a solution, I would try to include a 3D object representing the ship so you can actually see if it's touching or not, make the actual locations of the walls more obvious, and somehow indicate where the track will bend next.

We've seen a few tunnel games over the Java 4K years and this one stacks up very nicely. A simple but effective engine and a classic race theme. Not bad at all.

This game does stand out though with sound technology, where it's really special. Nice work!

This was one of the first 4K submission this year, and boy oh boy did I waste some time playing it :)

The graphics are just wonderful, very toy-like, which fits the gameplay. A few levels of challenging arrangement of structures. One of the best physics games in the 4K contest! Perfect example of how much you can do with so little, and make it so easy to play, when you put effort into it.

Good job.

I thought this was an awesome physics simulator and a whole lot of fun. I played through the whole thing and wanted more, which is rare for me in a 4k game. I'm definitely a bit biased because I enjoy physics games especially, but either way I think you pulled off all aspects of this game quite well - the physics are great, the difficulty progression is solid, and the gameplay itself is sound. That being said, I felt a few things could have been slightly improved. One was the cannon shooting mechanic. A drag-and-shoot to select power would have been preferred, because it often seemed a bit random how it was flying. Also, some other way of making the yellow blocks work could have been nice - the tower would sometimes fall in completely unpredictable ways which led to just "digging out" some yellow blocks.

Wow Wow Wow Wow! What an amazing 4k game. Really nice (and stable?) physics engine. Performs well on my netbook and the game is fun too. Simple but very classy graphics and intuitive game play.

Great job! This had me playing for a while coming back trying to just about get those yellow blocks off.

I like this game. I only wish the ship had other weapons, shooting that only gun isn't all that fun for long. Having something like limited amount of bombs that could take out multiple targets would add to the fun and give it allow the player to think in more strategy.

The graphics are alright, nice particle effect, but overall very simple in an arcade way. I would have shown the score points each time pop up where you kill a enemy unit, like a balloon, to remind you that you're playing for the score. You also need to know what units are best to kill score-wise, e.g. what units give you the most score.

Anyway, good game, not at the top of my games-to-play list but alright for a 4K :)

This is great stuff. Simple, well executed gameplay and some very well done style. Having the enemies fade in, circles coming across the screen to indicate hot spots, and all the other little touches make this work very well. I've never played the original Geometry Wars, but this looks to be a faithful 4k clone of it. I really liked being able to control my shots with the mouse and move with the keyboard - it felt really comfortable. There are a few small problems with this, like being able to survive in certain areas of the screen without flying around, and an overall potential of monotony, but overall I think this is a great game. I don't really have any specific suggestions to improve it, actually, other than small tweaks.

Really good testiment to the original game. This might look simple (the graphics are in tune with the original) but the number of different enemies is really nice, with some really good AI patterns.

Nice job and throughly enjoyed playing. Would have liked sound.

Something like Pacman meets Snakes :) I remember playing that game, Snakes, on my old Nokia cellphone, and this game instantly reminded me of it.

I really like this game. You've taken a well known game and turned it into your own. The graphics are well polished a good example of how to do the graphics right in a 4K game, simple, yet stylish!

Some audio would have been very cool.

Nice gameplay and a game worthy of a good score.

This is a fun rendition of the classic game of Snake. I quite like how you turned it into a competition, although I think it lost some of Snake's advantages and didn't really gain too many new ones. The main fun part of Snake is avoiding running into yourself as you get progressively longer and longer and longer. In this, I felt I was more fetching eggs and not really doing much else, as I couldn't collide with myself and my opponent and I were for the most part just going on different sides of the rink. I think this could have kept avoiding yourself on top of making the worms much longer (so it is more like a Tron light bike game). Overall though, the enemy's AI is impressive for 4k and I think it's definitely a good idea.

A simple game but a lot of fun. The AI of the opponent snake some times leaves a bit to be desired. The graphics are fine but the game didn't keep me playing for long.

Would have liked to see more snakes, more features and more graphical effects. Otherwise a very neat entry.

The graphics are just awesome! Sort of reminds me of T4XI by Kevglass, but yours has much cooler graphics. I really like the details on the streets, all the markings are there!

It's a fun game, but maybe a bit too difficult. The cops just show up from nowhere and clash into me without me being able to do evade them. Probably needs a little touch of balancing there.

But overall, I like it, probably one of the top 5 games on my list, and that's primarily because of the tech and graphics.

One word: brilliant. You did an absolutely wonderful job in all aspects. The 3D view is perfect. The gameplay is perfect. The amount you've crammed in is mighty impressive. You even made the cars bounce up after running someone over. I've got only one (minor) issue: the police cars are not smart enough. I could drive around the entire level running people over without seeing a single police car as long as I stuck to the outermost sidewalks. Naturally this doesn't win the game, but I had a hefty amount of money before I entered the heart of the city to do damage. But otherwise - perfect.

Extremely impressive and brings back memories for me. Great implementation, I loved just driving the cars around. Graphics are good, fit the theme and the blood splats are just awesome.

Performance was very good for the most part and the control of the cars was good. Only issue is the AI of the cars seems to get them bunched up in the street quite regularly, makes it hard to drive.

Colorful and good looking, but that's really only what it is. Click and see the cubes drop, not much fun in my opinion. I realize that you're playing for the score, but all I want to do is to click rapidly, because that's what I can do!

Maybe there needs to be some sort of a limit to how often you can click, or you get a penalty score if you collapse fewer than X cubes, and if you reach 0 score you get punished.

I'm sure a better gameplay can be designed. Graphics seem nice enough though.

Woo, 1536 points! I thought this was pretty cool, but I couldn't really figure out a great strategy for it other than going very very slowly to just find the biggest possible clicks for points. Then at the very end I needed to be careful to remove all of them. I think therefore that this game could have benefitted from a smaller amount of initial blocks - it just takes too long to finish at this point. Don't get me wrong, it's still fun, but I found myself just mashing the mouse though the middle 60% of the game (only stopping to make sure I could remove everything). The gameplay mechanic is just a little too simple to last that long, I think. I also didn't really think your scoring system was perfect - I found most games ending with nearly the same point totals, leading me to believe that the random spread allows for little strategy.

Well we've all seen it before, and it is a good game. Not much of challenge to fit it into 4k and this version doesn't have any extra bits to make it stand out.

However, the graphics are very smooth and the theme well chosen.

I got really confused about what seemed to look like pink and blue doors, and something like a square with a small filled gray circle, and those red squares. I'm sure they have some function, but there is no description of it.

Knowing where you are in the world would be helpful too, and being able to restart certain levels too, not the whole game.

Otherwise, great game, good graphics too. I had fun exploring the world, trying out the puzzles, etc. Just wish you had more description of those red squares and how to use those doors.

I was very impressed with the number of rooms you crammed in and the overall complexity of this game. The number of different item types, block puzzles, complicated room connections... it's definitely well done. It also had me scratching my head trying to remember where I was going and where each key was - I even wrote some stuff down. What really inhibited me from finishing this game though was the fact that there was no way whatsoever to reset a block that was (accidentally or purposefully) pushed to the wrong place. One time I had two keys and was like 20 rooms in when I accidentally walked into a block the wrong way and permanently sealed off the way I needed to go. If there's anything I don't like in games, it's redoing things - and this one mechanic caused me to redo things just a few too many times, so I quit.

A huge game with a lot of potential. I played for 10 minutes and managed to get a key and a coin or two. However, its slow paced nature makes it hard to enjoy. While there are plenty of features nothing jumps out as original.

Graphics are clean and simple, but don't endear the game to the player. The game does gets points for it's size thought, it's huge!

Really cool looking and original game. Almost like a puzzle game. Too bad there are only 4 levels, I finished them quite easily as it's quite simple to figure out how to manage the slime creatures.

Good graphics and original gameplay, maybe a few more missions and some other beings (e.g. red blobs wandering around attracted to the light), water, or cubes, or something dangerous in there would have only given it more depth.

Be-a-u-ti-ful lighting effects. I am even jealous of how well you pulled it off in 4k. The world felt dark and interesting and it was quite cool to be looking around in this hidden environment. The overall atmosphere was great. I thought the gameplay was pretty good too, although it got a little boring eventually. The blobs just started to frustrate me for not going exactly where I wanted them too, but it was nice not having to worry about dying or time limits or anything. Overall this is a pretty good time waster, but it's unfortunate that the best thing about it is the lighting.

Very neat idea for a game and very well implemented. The light effect is well implemented and the game is very entertaining. Particuarlly like the way the slime move. Only down side is it feels a bit slow paced, but maybe thats just a style thing it didn't suit me.

Really impressive game. The graphics are very nice and the game idea very original. The ball handles really nicely and it has that puzzle factor where you have to use those light crates to jump on top of larger ones.

I did not finish collecting all the coins. I found the world to be perhaps too large, and felt it was too repetitive. If you would make this game as a non-4K I'd recommend smaller worlds, where each world has some puzzles unique to that world.

Very nice!

This is an interesting little Mario Galaxy-esque game. I thought the design of the puzzles was quite brilliant, but there was one major problem inhibiting this game - bugs. I found two big ones that basically break the gameplay. The first is that you can easily scale big blocks by getting stuck in the side of them, the second is that occasionally (and I don't know exactly when) you can get stuck at the top of a elevator (one of the ones that doesn't connect to a planet) and therefore be forced to restart. The game also felt a bit too big, getting a little boring before I collected everything. Less coins might be better.

Not sure if it was the low performance but this game didn't respond to the controls as I expected it to. The collision system also seemed off (most of the time the little ball went half way into the boxes). I managed to go between worlds collecting coins.

Graphics are cute, the concept I'm not really sure about, I'm not sure what the game was. Didn't really enjoy this one.

I did not expect this game to be much, but after taking the time to play it I realize this is probably a very underestimated game. The graphics do look OK, but they are not really exciting. I got a bit lost in what object is what, having the icons at the bottom of the screen with their name would be helpful.

Good puzzle game, maybe you need some different graphics for it, but for anyone interested in puzzles this is good fun.

The number of mazes you've gotten into this 4k is very impressive, as well as the complexity of your sprites and having multiple people, switches, and more. Unfortunately, I don't have what it takes to be good at this or I just don't understand. In one of the earlier levels (somewhere around 5) I just couldn't figure it out. I tried everything I could think of and just came away frustrated. That's obviously not your fault, but was a bummer nonetheless. One big problem for me on Mac OS X was that the little white square and my actual mouse pointer were separate entities. So, I would often be clicking out of the applet with my real pointer while the square was at a totally different location. This made it really frustrating to move the mouse with any real precision most of the time. Anyway, this is definitely impressive and the plain deviousness of your puzzles is to be applauded.

Loved the concept of this game. Implementation is pretty good too. The graphics seem a bit noisy (like they're compressions of bigger images) but still pretty impressive they've managed to squeeze in. I appreciated the number of levels/features and the complexity of the design.

I actually played this for quite a while. It's a novel concept and had me puzzling for quite a while. Good job!

I got totally flooded with missiles, something like 10-20 of them, and I just tried to shoot whatever but got obliterated. Just no way to defend against it. I admit, I never played the original, but I think it's a bit harsh on newbies :)

Technically and graphically the game is good. Maybe some audio effect would have been nice, like explosion effect or when shooting and such.

Nice remake, but I quickly stop playing because it's not a game that I find much fun. Despite of that, I give you a good score.

Auch! I am a terrible Missile Commander! I found the fact that I was shooting at lines rather than actual objects very difficult to work with. I wasn't sure what part of the line I needed to hit and with what part of my shot, and I also noticed a lot of explosions that completely engulfed my cities and yet they remained standing. As a result, I eventually just started mashing buttons until I ran out of bullets. I'm sure it's just me, but I was just having a very difficult time with this. Although I've never played Missile Command, I did look up a Youtube video of it because I was curious how faithful your rendition was. It looks like your enemy missiles travel MUCH faster and your own missiles are slower. Any reason for this? It seems like if you had kept it consistent with the original the gameplay would have been much better.

Good implementation of missle command. Works as expected and look and plays pretty well. Would have been nice given the basic game to see some extensions to the game - maybe some upgrades or repair stations or something. Some sound would have raised the bar on this one too.

However, in general good attempt and it is entertaining.

I'm sorry, I just did not understand this game. The only word puzzle game I've enjoyed was Hangman, and I never do crosswords, so this wasn't very intuitive to me. Graphics aren't all that great either. Sorry, but I'm not all that impressed.

Holy. Moly. You fit an astounding number of words in here, and just looking at your report of how you fit all of them shows a great understanding of how Java works. Big points for that. The gameplay itself is pretty straightforward and there isn't much to comment on. The one problem I have with it is the sometimes ridiculously obscure words (as discussed in your thread). It would be cool if you were able to choose multiple difficulties. Either way, I am not as good a Scrabble player as I thought I was. :-)

What an amazingly hard game! Very good though, and especially impressive that the dictionary is packed into 4k. Very good work.

The support for hints is very nice. The fact the game doesn't kill the puzzle when the score runs out is also well done. Generally a very cool puzzle and if you're into this sort of thing, which I am, very addictive.

I tend to think that games that pretty much need no explanation how works are the best. The only thing the user needs to do is use the mouse, then try out if the arrow keys or WASD keys work.

Once you start the game you have no way to know how to buy those things, because the intro screen vanishes and you have no indication in-game. You die quickly because you're just lost in what to do as you get attacked very fast.

Unbalanced, hard to play, all sorts of keys you can't remember how to use. A recipe for players to shy away. Graphics don't attract anyone to learn it.

Woah, that's a lot of controls. I am both impressed by the gameplay complexity that you've managed to stick in here and annoyed with it. I couldn't really figure out how to do it, in the end, which is naturally a big problem. I basically just tried to speed towards the fleet, pop up out of the water, fire, and then drop down quickly again. That was working pretty well, but not after the first ship because then the destroyers just kept following me around. Otherwise, the graphics seem a bit simple and there are some edge cases that don't seem taken care of (like when the enemy ships just sail off the screen). I think this is a pretty good entry, but definitely has a lot of room to be further refined.

Found this one really hard to play. Maybe it was just there were too many controls, or maybe the sensistivity wasn't quite right but I found my self mashing at the keypad trying to get the sub to do what I wanted it to. The AI is extremely aggressive and seems to wipe you out very quickly.

Managed to have a bit of fun. The graphics are neat but not particularly special. Generally it looks like a game that was on the way to be something good but needed a lot more polishing.

Hehe, I played on easy, but I never lasted more than 10 seconds. And the levels change too, so I can't avoid making the same mistakes, that is getting rushed by bats within 2 seconds of entering a new screen.

Nice graphics and game idea, but you need to fix the gameplay.

This is a simple easy to learn game that is marred by the "unusually deadly bats" you've already had a comment about. The character looks great in his walking animations and feels pretty good as he moves, but there are just too many little issues. The obvious one is how deadly the bats are - I was sort of amazed when I originally died just from touching one. A life bar would be a vast improvement. Another issue is the fact that the only way really to win this is to enter a screen, look to see if there are bats in your way, and if there are just exit the screen and come back to it and hope for a better spread of bats. The fact that they were randomly distributed every screen felt very NES, but not in a good way. Also, my character seemed to walk at seemingly random speeds - sometimes he'd be running really fast and sometimes not. I think you've got a gem of a game here if you just refine it, but for now there are just a few major problems in the way of that.

Please please please continue development of this game. It gave me such a flash back to playing games on the spectrum, the feel is just right. The graphcs are very cool and the simple gameplay actually makes it way more enticing than some of the more complicated games in this years contest.

However, the keys didn't seem to change anything, I could walk through the doors with or without them. The instant death on touching a bat was also a bit too absolute. A health bar with a slow draing when a bat is touching you and some health around the levels would have made this a much more enjoyable experience.

Even so I loved it. Please do make a bigger more complete version.

What can I say, IT'S TETRIS!!! How else can I rate this game but super good? I actually saw the black-themed version of this game and thought it was better, but the white one is pretty good too.

Nicely done, good graphics, fine implementation of tetris and good use of audio!

Well, it's Tetris! And it's well done Tetris! Hooray! What else to say? I've got no comments, really. I mean... it's Tetris! The fact that you got the music in there is great, but what else to say? Hmm... I thought "R. Squiggly" was funny. And, um, the pace was good. Yeah?

I read tetris and thought oh no, not another 4k tetris. I was extremely surprised to find the polish level in this version is amazing for a 4k game. The graphics are clear and crisp. The controls respond properly and the game works as a traditional tetris should. However, the sound and music are what makes this.

Gold star for music performance, even if the game is just another tetris it's really very well done.

First mission is perhaps a bit too difficult. After a few tries I was unable to finish it. First missions should really always be lessons for the player, the simplest mission he can possibly accomplish, and then make it more difficult. Now I can't see more of the game, because I allocate a certain amount to each game when reviewing, 10 or so minutes, and if I'm not able to continue then the game needs some balancing.

But I do like this puzzle game, the graphics are good enough. I think this would be a fun game, but needs to be balanced.

I think this is a really great idea. I actually did feel a bit of a rush as I slammed down tracks as quickly as I possibly could to try to beat the train in time, which was definitely good fun. My main issue with this was that the difficulty of a particular situation was based entirely on random numbers. I would hope for a lot of straight tracks, or I would just wind back and forth. Simple. In some cases I would get almost all curved tracks, in which case I'd just curve back and forth but wasn't quick enough to get to the goal, even with nothing wasted. What this really needs are some new gameplay mechanics (like items you can use or something) that remove a large degree of the randomness of it.

Very nicely implemented game. Graphics, particular the tracks, look very good. The controls work though I found it very odd that after you placed a piece the next piece appears over the top.. it would have been nice if that were slightly transaprent or something.

Good concept and good fun. Might have been nice if the levels weren't random.

I really like this game. The problem with pool games is they try to implement some sort of opponent AI. This game proves you don't need any opponent, all you need are a few levels of trick shots. Pool + puzzle, a good match.

Original for a unoriginal game :) Good polished and simple graphics, physics are good too, and gameplay very balanced. Nice job.

Awesome ball rotations, man, I've got to say. They look like real 3D balls and only occasionally rotate the wrong way. The simple trick shot idea is also very cool and executed I think very well. In some cases it becomes very difficult to get the exact shot you need, which was my only real problem with this. I would literally need a pixel-perfect aim to get things right sometimes, which seems a little too unforgiving. It would be nice if the board cheated a little bit in your favor, rather than being exact, or if perhaps you could adjust the position of your cue via the arrow keys. Still, the "puzzles" in this were fun and tricky to solve and overall this does what it does quite well.

Love the fact a pool game has been attempted. The good bits, the graphics are great and the controls are right and the idea of a series of trick shots rather than a full on game is really good. The bad bits, the physics don't feel right. I play alot of pool, both online and in real life, and I simply didn't feel like I had control of where the balls went in the simulation. There seems to be some funny transferance of momentum going on leaving the white ball not moving as expected. The accuracy of the shots seems to be some what limited.

I did have a lot of fun experimenting try to determine what wasn't right tho. I didn't managed to get any of the trick shots apart from by accident tho.

Hehe. Ok, let's be serious, is this a serious game? Anyway, hehe, it's a good try. It made me laugh, but it's really cheap :)

Where are the clouds? Where's the environment? Just gray background? And the rain doesn't look very nice. And is the butler invisible? I'm sure you could have earned a few more points for graphics, but I'm not finding a reason to give this game much.

Har har. This is pretty funny, and a great first entry to Java 4k. It's good to have you here. I'm sure you can guess what I'm going to say about this: it's nice and simple and works well. But, it has no depth whatsoever. You probably could make this with only 1/8th of your allotted bytes, as long as you use proper compression and whatnot. Why not make this a little more complicated? Add some more gameplay elements! How about rain that changes in direction, and maybe cats that run across the screen and you have to jump over, or something? This is a good start, but let's see more!

Very silly game, but very fun. Graphics suit the game and are consistent. The concept is simple and a laugh. Not much to the game and not terribly impressive to fit in 4k, no star for technology here. However, it is strangely addicitive!

Would have been nice to have something else to grab at the same time to get bonus points, balance that up against keeping the boss happy. Maybe different bosses aswell would have been nice with different personality. Some sort of end where the bosses face goes bright red would have been cool too.

Did enjoy it though even it is very very simple!

I think this game has a gameplay that could be enhanced more. I do enjoy these kind of games, simple risk like strategic games of conquering stuff, territory games.

What I found is that all you need is to send one blue virus to every cell as fast as possible, and then send all extra viruses towards the red ones. So, it's quite easy to defeat.

Graphics could have been a lot better. Just white background? Not even an attempt to make it look like something organic, pink or reddish? You could have done that and skipped the audio.

Slight improvement of gameplay and better graphics (skipping audio) was all that you needed.

I really like the idea of this and I think overall the game works quite well. It was fun to play and although it was fairly easy I found that I could challenge myself by leaving it going for a little bit before actually starting. Overall the main (and only) issue with this was that it was a bit too easy. If you play aggressively, you can win inside of two minutes. Not that I mind easy 4k games (most of them are very difficult), but it was definitely a bit too easy. The music was a nice touch, but it has one major problem - it continues to play after closing the window! Major point loss! Well, not really, but it's really annoying (it is still playing 20 minutes later because I don't want to lose my tabs). Aside from a difficulty adjustment, this could also use having more than two teams, different abilities, etc. Just overall more depth would really help it.

This is like a mini RTS, very nicely implement in 4k. The graphics are simple but incredibly effective. This is probably my favorite looking game of all. The concept works well and the rules the world works by seem to leave a nicely balanced game play. The AI is very good but just about right to provide a challenge.

In general I think this game is great. However, on top of that it's got programmatic music going on as well. So it's packed in good graphics, music and AI along with the actual game into 4k. This is what the contest is meant to be about!

LOL. I think I spent half the game floating somewhere in mid-air, a quarter dying, and the rest trying to figure out where to go. Okay, I then took a minute to actually learn there's a minimap, wonderful! And now I realize it's more of a puzzle game than it is a Megaman.

I really really enjoy the retro looking graphics. The floating stars in the background. Very nice gameplay too. Not an original, but a very good implementation, a very impressive implementation.

Wish there was someway to save your respawn location, because I just could not survive one screen, and every time I died I started somewhere far away.

Great game, but too difficult.

Hm, for some reason I can't get it to load, so any changes you've made since you first posted it I won't be able to judge. :-( Anyway, I think this is a wonderful adaptation of VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV(etc.). You've managed to capture the essence of it and distill it down to 4k while losing almost nothing aside from sound and storyline. For some reason, though, your version didn't draw me in quite as much as the original did. I suppose it might be due to the lack of a story and music, but I think it might be more because of the level design. Your level feels a little bit too complicated - the first level in the original is more or less linear, but in yours you can go all over the place and easily get lost. The addition of the minimap helps, but overall this was a bit too much for me in terms of complexity. I think if you were able to ramp the difficulty a little more gradually that would really help.

Very neat interpretation of the original. Quite fun to start with but rapidly found my self just falling and bouncing around the place without really having much feel of control (maybe just my lack of skills?). Graphics are cute and good representation of the original. Concept is good but as with some others it's not original.

In general a good game, well implemented, but not earth shattering for me I'm afraid.