Score: 5

"Needed some polish"

submission: Dodge Stuff

date: September 20, 2008

Good effort i would say. But really what it needed was just a bit of polish. In the sense that there is alot of small things that need work.

First, being the character and control. There is not enough friction between him and the ground, he slides around way to much. And the walk animation was broken. He took one step and just floated the rest of the way.

Also there are frame rate issues. First off, i think the overall frame rate needs to be raised. Secondly, when you get that many vector graphics moving around on screen, your going to get some lag. Unless you change the quality to medium or low. Which was not an option here. You have no buttons for it and you took away the right click menu. Lowering quality would have made the game run alot smoother.

There also needs to be more variety. Change the game up a bit every once and a whole to keep the interest of the player.

There also needs to be some kind of icon for the extra points that float down. Simply having white numbers is a little hard to see.

And me score was 0 every time i played, even though i lasted about 3-4 minutes. Wierd.

And one last points. The music you put it sounds like its from a prono, and the moans you made for the character certainly dont help the prono theme either. lol. Accidental funny. Well done.

But the game looked good and th webcam and high score table was a nice touch. So keep going.

Score: 8

"Well made"

submission: Unique

date: June 10, 2008

An extremely simple game made great by its fluid and unique approach. The icons were very well made, easy to look at and pick out designs. The flow of all the icons was soft and fluid, making it easy to stare at for a long period of time. Music worked great, just enough sound effects (especially when the level goes up, nice sound). You could have possibly added another level of difficulty to it all though. Having it rotate was a good idea, but maybe have it rotate and have the radius of the circle move outwards??? Possibly even having the single icons themselves rotate. Either way, one more little change would have been nice, seeing as how the rotation change was introduced and taken so well.

So, good job. Keep it up. One of my more positive reviews.

Score: 6

"hmm"

submission: Run Soldier, Run!

date: May 25, 2008

Funnny, I have a version of this game near completion sitting in my hard drive. After Banana stopped talking to me, i supposed the project was over. guess i was wrong. Nice to see it got done anyway, could have been done a long time ago though. I had it near done.

As for the game itself, i never was sold on the gameplay. Kinda hard to controls the characters. And i did not see those curving bombs that you origonally wanted in the game. I had a hard time implementing them, seems you guys did as well. You dumped it. lol.

Anyway, i always thought the animation was top notch. Programming was fine. Some things in there that i had done that seem misplaced in this version. Good job getting it done anyway.

Score: 6

"Deacent enough engine."

submission: moss

date: April 17, 2008

Ok. I actually seen this on the forums not to long ago. Cant remember if i posted or not...nice to see it got done.

So, it is fun. The engine was pretty neat. But, i usually tend to have alot more negatives then posotives in my reviews. But its all done to make games better. Right?

So, while the engine itself is nice, i really have a hard time jumping around on the walls. From wall to wall is fine, but it is awkward trying to jump up a wall.

Your stance on sound is ignorant to say the least. The game felt very empty. Nice background music and some small sound effects would have made the experiance alot more ingaging. Listening to my computer hum and click is not what i want to be listening to.

The one level with the lever that you have to jump on or something to make that ball roll blah blah blah. It was confusing. Puzzles are hard like that some times. You want them to be, well, puzzling. But, sometimes its just confusing. Sinse my character did not interact with the lever at all, i felt as if it was the background, not something i needed to jump on. Even when i jumped on it, it did not seem as if i was interacting with it. I just fell fast through it and it reacted. I did not land on it or anything.

I feel as if you could have done so much more with it. It still feels like a simple engine. I suggest making a sequal that has alot more thought put into it. I would love to see some more effort put into the puzzles and more interesting things done with the levels. Could be great if you did.

And yah, graphics worked fine for me. The animation of the little guy was fun to watch. Made it fun to control him. Colors were pleasing to the eye.

So, good job on it all. You just need to work on a few things. Spend some more time on it. It was not to long ago that i remember seeing the engine on the forum.

Score: 7

"Tis a big one."

submission: Prehistoric 2

date: March 9, 2008

Im not sure why, but so many problems hit me when i played this game. I've played a good majority of your games, and there all fairly well done, and this game is no different. But i feel compelled to shed some light on its many shortcomings. Not sure why i feel this way this time.

1. The controls. There very clunky and unresponsive. Im not 100% certain if its the design of the game, or simply lag. Because that is another issue. Lag. It runs very slow. But again, im not 100% sure if this is lag or the game design itself. Either way, its not a good thing. He does not react to my key presses in a short enough amount of time. It seems like there is to much time between the time when i press jump and the time that it actually takes him to jump. This also goes for ground stomping (especially frustrating), walking, and pretty the while game in general. Its a common issue with alot of your games, but i think your overlooking it to much. Maybe you need to sacrifice some of those nifty graphics for smoother gameplay, or maybe optimize the code to allow faster reactions.

2. Level design. Its a pretty big issue. There are some flaws in the overall design of this game and others of its nature that you guys have made. There are always separate paths leading to random platforms in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes, they are random and simply provide a few more egg things. Other times, they are essential to getting past the stage. This poses a problem. I do not feel the need to take every path, nor do i notice every path. This amounts to missing alot of these essential paths. This, leads me to a dead end. It takes me a few minutes to figure out that i cant go foreword any longer, and have to backtrack. Backtracking is a very bad thing. It simply isn't fun. Been there, done that. Also, it causes me to spend countless minutes figuring out how to continue, now knowing where to go. Ignorance on my part is hardly my fault. Its the game designers fault. The correct course of action should be clear, if not implied. Your puzzles really don't make any sense. Like in the little robot level, i need to turn a floating Gear to make a big wall of dirt blocking my path to fall down...it makes no sense. Puzzles are supposed to make sense. You use logic to figure them out. If the solution is completely illogical, then the puzzle is completely lost to random fucking around with everything i see. You need to streamline the levels.

3. I cannot shoot or throw while jumping. Im not sure why this was left out, but it would be nice to have.
4. Being a somewhat vertical platformer, the camera does not work especially well. Its hard to see what it is your jumping on. You need to have a balance between how far your zoomed out, fall and jump distance, how closely the camera follow the character. They need to work together to allow the player to see where he is jumping, what he is jumping on, and avoiding those leap of faiths where you simply don't know where your going to land.

5. The character needs to be stuck on the ground when going down a slope. Up the slope is fine, because he is constantly pushed up. But when the character is going down a steep slope, he just runs off, gravity takes over and brings him back down. What you basicly need to do is the same code you use to keep him above the ground, except reversed, so that he does not come off the ground when walking either.
6. Animation system needs to be more intuitive. EG: When I walk off an edge while walking, the walk animation should not keep playing. There should be a fall animation.
7. Getting hit is no fun. Does not feel like I got hurt in any way. Needs more impact.
8. Dying is not fun. My health depletes (after being hit a bunch of times and not noticing), and it simply goes to a menu screen. No death animation. Music. Nothing.
9. When I was the robot, the white bullet blended in with the background much to well. Often white on white. But of a design issue there.

Now more character space left for positives. But there there. Critical statements are more useful anyway.

Score: 7

"Nice style"

submission: From Life to Death

date: March 6, 2008

Good and effective, for the most part. The art style fit well. Having each character coloured differently gave it a sense of individualism for each character, and properly seperated them throughout the story. What i didn't like is how you chose to draw most of it with a brush tool, but chose certain elements like the car and coffin to be drawn wit the pencil tool. Simply didn't do it for me.

But, if your going to make a flash that is basicly a slide show, it would have been nice to have some added detail. Character models were well done, but more thought put into the backgrounds and maybe seperate fills for all the elements would have done nicely.

The story was an interesting one. Not so much the story itself, but the basic concept you were trying to achieve. I do beleive alot more could have been done with it though. Something a little more thought provoking, ironic, or simply sad. I would have liked this guys life to have been a little more interesting, to say the least. But the whole idea of it was an interesting one at least.

So, story needed some more strength behind it, music worked well, style worked well, and was overall and effective effort. Good job. Hope to see some more from ya.

Score: 9

"soooooooo good"

submission: NG Sketchbook Tour 07

date: October 7, 2007

You would not believe how much fun i had watching this. Even had to go through it twice in one day just to take it all in. lol. Very good job, to you and everyone involved. Cant wait for next years(?). Mine will be better, i swear.

Score: 7

"Very good."

submission: Xionic Madness

date: September 24, 2007

K. You did a good job with this thing. But there are some issues to work out, of course.

Firstly is, I've been watching your work for years now, and it does not seem you have evolved much. I found your fight scenes more exhilarating back in the day. Just seems that after so many years, you should be destroying your earlier work, but it fails to go above and beyond what you used to do.

Another issue is pace. The content and structure of the movie did not seem to parallel the pace well enough. The fight scenes seemed to be slower than they should have been, and did not last long enough. There were simply small sprints of action. And the music was not dynamic enough. Music can control pace of a movie very well when used correctly, and it did not pace this movie correctly. Sound effects work the same way. Going from just music to constant slashing and killing sound effects and quicken the pace of a movie as well. There seemed to be a lack of sound effects, and did not seem to help the pace a whole lot either.

The storyline was another issue. Not that it was too thin, because thin story can hold up in an action movie like this very well. Thing is, it only holds up when it works in parallel with the movie itself. Like...Maness movies are pointless violence with a very thin storyline, and the storyline is displayed and explained in the same fashion. Short and quick. Story never got in the way of the action. This is not the case with yours. Your story is thin, yet it slows down the pace of the movie by trying to be a more noticeable presence. This simply does not work.

But, even with all this "critique", you managed to make one heck of a movie. Keep it up.

Score: 7

"Hmm"

submission: Intruder : Revelation

date: July 18, 2007

It was pretty intense. Well done. Someone has been playing way to much FEAR.

You lose alot of points on the sound effects. Stealing sounds from a game is not what i consider quality sound effects. I think maybe you shoulda done something different there.

But i enjoyed the character movement, even thogh it looked a little wierd at times, but overall a very well done piece of animation.

Score: 5

"Very borring."

submission: 3D Pinball Animation

date: June 26, 2007

Pretty lame actually. The animation itself was lazy, not realistic at all. The models and invironment were bland, did not look like a pinball machine at all. Camera movement should have been made more dynamic, make it a little more interesting. Just sorta sat there. And....well, it just needed alot of work. Maybe look at some pinball machines, change the colour theme (add lights, and more mettalic looking), and alot of it seemed to have a wood texture, even though modern pinball machines are for from made of wood. Also, it need some kind of theme, like how all pinball machines have a theme like South Park, Lord of the Rings, and shit like that. Maybe you coulda made it outer space or something of that sort.

I dont really see any overwhelmingly positive feature in this movie. Song was alright i guess.

Anyway, work a little harder next time. Im sure you can come up with something alot better if you spent some more time and effort. Anyway, good luck.