Firebug

I was very confused to see that you didn't just add polish and new levels to an already functional game. You really remade the entire thing from scratch. While the old game felt stable as a minigame, the rework seemed to bring a lot to the table, even though some of it felt a bit clunky, and the shortness of the game was a huge disappointment. =(

The ladder/stair climbing mechanics probably should be explained somewhere. It took me fifteen minutes over the course of three playthroughs and many dead people to discover that those weren't buggy jumpthrough platforms, you just had to hold up or down while approaching it. Since this is a mechanic you don't see often since the NES era (or ever since Kirby games seemed to popularize jump-through and fall-through platforms), it was a bit frustrating to try and figure it out.

The ladder felt weird and a little unnecessary sometimes. It actually frustrated me more than it helped, although I do remember one part where it was required. But for something you can keep picking up and placing, being used only once was kind of disappointing, because I think that could add quite a bit to the timed puzzle element. On that note, the inclusion of a hose and limiting fire extinguishers to temporary use was brilliant.

I feel like this is a far greater puzzle game than its original rendition, or at least has the potential to be. With a few more puzzle elements and a lot more levels, this would be one hell of a unique game.

Also, Aeron's music rocks.

Abysmal

When I said Polyman's screenshots made me feel like I was on drugs, the gameplay didn't disappoint. The vibrant colors were just icing on the cake. The gameplay itself, which wasn't completely captured in the screenshots, was an entire trip of its own. It's a very difficult game that I enjoyed trying to figure out on my own, and I was wondering how the difficulty might ramp up until I realized…

…that the points further from the center move faster than the rest. Fucking physics class all over again. I wish they tried to teach centripetal force with this game.

There were a few nasty bugs, however, including:

- Weird lighting issues when you got further along

- Some of the physics threw me around on the faster sections

- Due to the above point, I was thrown off and fell for ten minutes before quitting

- I could ride a single disc by slowly circling the edge

- Falling onto the lowest disc actually got me "higher" than climbing did, though I didn't end up actually reaching the top this way

I wonder if there's a possibility of expanding this game beyond the ferris wheel though, because while it stands as a difficult minigame, there's not a whole lot to do aside from that. Still, props for the Unity entry. That was very well polished.

Magical Castle

It's funny. People look at Daggerhog's games and are like "lolgraphics", but they turn out to be very popular and quite fun. In fact, no 8-bit game has brought me back to the NES and arcade days like this game did. Everything from the one-hit-death to the inter-stage screen to the stage designs to the passwords to the ability to continue at the cost of score to the level design and stage gimmicks to the goddamn DIFFICULTY. I had way more fun with this game than I thought I would.

And I'm still trying to fucking finish it.

I wish I did a Let's Play of this game so you guys could see how angry I was getting while never being able to just fucking quit. The level JADE is what gave me a lot of trouble for some reason. That's my name. That's my fucking name. Well actually JAED is my fucking name but I'm sure it doesn't make any difference.

The element-based gameplay was excellent and difficult to master for some reason. I really liked how using the wrong element could actually make things worse, rather than just doing nothing the whole game. Also, as Cesque said, the death animations were fucking awesome. Daggerhog's games have this certain level of cartoon morbidity that reminds me a lot of Crash Bandicoot. I was actually trying so hard to die to certain enemies just to see the animation.

…And attempting to do so was just as frustrating as trying to clear the goddamn level. In fact, it was easier to clear the goddamn level when I was trying to die.

The things I didn't like were mostly the control scheme. Everything seemed entirely backwards. Z is kind of an active key, so using it for switching while using C for the casting felt really backwards. Using X for jumping was weird as well, and I think it would have been easier using the up arrow. The controls are actually part of what made this game hard, next to the enemy unpredictability.

Man, I have to take a break from this game.

Blob: Invasion

Okay, first of all, the screenshots made this game look excellent, just saying. The graphical style, though simple, looked pretty cool, though despite the blatantly obvious grid, I didn't expect grid-based platforming at all. In fact, when Cesque commented on it, I was sitting here wondering how the hell it could possibly work. I was pleasantly surprised, actually, even though while it felt fluid, it seemed to make the gameplay very quirky.

The gimmick (being able to grow and shrink at will) was actually pretty cool and would've made for some unique gameplay. However, most of that gameplay was used for fitting in tight places or jumping higher than usual. I was also angry to see I couldn't goomba-stomp enemies, instead having to rely on an annoying shot which, for a main weapon, really sucked. Regardless, I didn't think the game was that hard, though the graphics and grow/shrink mechanic don't feel like enough to make an entire game.

I'll get to the other games a bit later.