Newgrounds Five: Bouncy Kitties, Fish and Evolution, Oh My!

To kick off my reviewing of indie games in addition to making them, I'm going to do something I plan to do a bunch of: The Newgrounds Five. If you play five games on Newgrounds, you get to deposit your experience and level up, which makes your votes worth more. When I play those five games (or more), I'll write a bit about the really fun, awesome ones!

Note that I DO NOT play with audio on for the most part, so I won't be discussing the sound. I also won't be reviewing any Mature/Adult games whatsoever.

Cats'n'Fish
Rated Everyone! :)

The concept of this game is simple enough: get the cat to the box of fish! There are fish that are optional on each level as well; they don't give you any special bonuses or anything, but they're a good challenge to get!

What makes the game unique is how you do it - your mouse becomes a bouncy pad that angles toward the kitty automatically! You have to aim it to make sure that the cat won't go off the screen, and of course the faster you move your mouse, the harder the cat will get hit.

It's a great concept with some fun art and 30 total levels! I played through the first 10 completely, and this is a shot of #11. :)

Evolvo Plus
Rated Everyone, but it has some blood in the form of red circles and stuff

Evolvo Plus is all about eating fish! Your goal is to move around with the arrow keys and eat the number of fish required to level up. After each level up you'll get bigger and able to eat more fish, and every so many levels up you can evolve and do fun stuff like go all the way to the surface, turn invisible temporarily, get a shield to stop a hit and even the ability to use your whole body to eat fish (MASSIVELY helpful when you become so huge that you take up the whole screen!).

What's amazing about this game is the art and the amount of fish. It's a really simple game concept, one that's been made a lot, but it's really been expanded upon - there are 100 types of sea life and some are poisonous (they glow and have a little biohazard symbol on them) that make you go slow for a moment - plus other hazards like red tide, oil spills, hazardous waste spills and mines. There are also multiple difficulty levels for those who would rather relax, or who want a challenge. I started on regular and then tried again on the most difficult, and it seemed to make everything move much faster (as well as add new types of sea life!)

As your little fish gets bigger and bigger, it really morphs into an awesome beast (complete with a spiky tail!) and can take up the ENTIRE screen. A little bit after that, there's the "boss battle". Oh, and there are also cheats that can be used, Newgrounds achievements to get and the challenge to try to get all 100 kinds of fish.