23450's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Kill Coint]

Beat the game. It was actually a well designed game. Very basic little puzzle. Fun to play. And did not overstay it's welcome.

It terms of improvement. I was uncertain how collecting coins was connected to the portal. I would certainly say that communicating the coin requirements would help in learning the mechanic early on. Eg. The portal could count up visually (or with text) as you collect the coins. Change visual state when all coins have been collected.

The mechanic itself did not change much over the game. Think of ways to modify the mechanic over time with other elements to increase variety.

Good luck with your future games.

[Corner Of Cthulhu]

Really clever concept, to be honest. It lacks clear player agency though. Beating the stages feels like luck for the most part, because I cannot predict what the tentacle will do. The stages are composed of invisible areas that move the tentacle around. Which is problematic.

In the future, try to create a set of rules that the tentacle might abide by. The player can try use and manipulate those rules in order to move through the stages.

[Dodge Stuff]

Needed some polish

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.

Xeptic responds:

First of all, thanks for the very useful review. I'm not exactly sure what's causing the framerate issues, I have however uploaded a new version that should run somewhat smoother. There is an hotkey (q) to change the quality of the game though, as it says in the comments and how-to-play. the objects should be falling down faster the higher your score gets, to make the game more challenging , I'm afraid the effect is a little too subtle so I'll look into that as well ;).

The score is lowered by 400 points every time you get hit, that might be your problem. Because 400 points is a little harsh I lowered it to 50 in the new version.

Thanks,

[Unique]

Well made

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.

Coaly responds:

Awesome review, I'm glad you liked it so much and thanks for the suggestions!

[Run Soldier, Run!]

hmm

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.

[moss]

Deacent enough engine.

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.

[Prehistoric 2]

Tis a big one.

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.

Buzzwerd responds:

Wow, thanks a lot for that. It's well needed, and easily illustrates some of the big flaws in the game design. Flaws that I've known, but were never really presented to me so clearly. Most of what you said applies more to David than it does to me, but it does help me pay closer attention to the small things that can make a big difference. Anyways, sorry I can't reply to your long review with something intricate, but a thanks is all I can think of. I'll make sure David reads your review.

Also, it is the lag, big time. For some people it runs fine, but personally the swf runs about 50% faster than the in-browser version. PM me, or give it a quick d/l if you're curious enough to find out how much faster it goes, because it really makes a big difference.

[NG Sketchbook Tour 07]

soooooooo good

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.

[Go.]

good, but needed more work.

It was a deacent game i thought, but the gameplay i felt needed some help here. It was not easy to pick up and play really. The whole sidescrolling snowboard thing just did not work really well in this case. And i really dont like games that control your jump hight according to how long you hold the button. I dont know exacly why, but i think its just slows gameplay down alot. I refuse to use it any of my games, i cant stand it. I did not think jump accuracy was essential to this game, so i think a normal jump plus the double jump that was in there would have done better. Doing that would make jumping alot more responsive, which is another problem with jumping. I also had no sense of speed. It seemed like i was never going anywhere. Just slowly moping along, not doing much of anything. And none of it make any sense...why am i collecting cookies? why am i jumping through big glowing hoops, that by the way kill framerate whenever i hit them. Why is there bombs on the hill? i just like some sort of coherency to the obstacles i meat up into within games, and this game did not seem to have any of that.

and yah....these are just things i think you coulda fixed, i by no means hate the game, nor am i trying to say its a particularily bad game at all. but you get the point. good luck with future projects.

TrueDarkness responds:

I see what you're saying from all sides. And I agree! For the most part...

The jump bar I feel was neccessary in this game for jumping in between some mines, while jumping completely over other mines. The concept, which we don't have, is something I would of like to of added, but we kind of had a set due-date for this, and we winged the last few days getting this out, wish I which we didn't and had more time to work on it, but all in all it came out decent, and more or less the way we wanted. I also might of liked to add more obstacles, but as we were fairly content with the things we had, we left it alone, and worked on a nice boss for the last level. But yeah, I'll agree with you, and thanks for the support and critique :)

Our next game will be a pretty major project, so no more short game crap :D
-TD

[Mario's Adventure 2!]

good remake

very good remake. felt like mario for sure. alot of things left out, like changing size, ducking, etc. that i would have liked to see. But...i cant help but not like the fact that it is only a remake, and not alot of thought goes into level, character, sound, or anything in the game for that matter, sinse its all already there in the real game. But, you did well for what it is.

TrueDarkness responds:

Thanks man. I feel the same way believe it or not. I haven't actually played the DS version, maybe once for like 5 minutes in GameStop, so I don't know how the game should actually act... And I would of liked to of added ducking too, so I can have some differnt moves with jumping and super jumping, but there weren't any ducking sprites.. anywhere I could find. =/

Thanks a lot though, I hope people can see it as a remake the way I want it to be, and not the way it "should" be. =D