RaIix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ezra's Art Quest]

The platforming in this game is fairly basic (so is the level design), but as an art project, it's quite unique and each level is very different – we go from hidden feathers, through chopping down a tree to collecting imp skins (!).

– I think the first level is the weakest one because there's no hint or visual indication as to where to look for feathers, so I almost thought I saw everything there is to this game, but I just needed to find more feathers – by methodically jumping over every accessible pixel of the screen. Not very fun.
– The shift to the tree is amazing, I would have never guessed the second level would be this after the first one.
– I would recommend not simply vanishing enemies when they are killed, that feels cheap. Ideally do some disappearing effect afterwards.
– The boss can be fought and defeated in the same way as the other imps (that's good, it's consistent and you can use what you learned before), although the one-hit-kill would be pretty annoying if the boss was harder (the fireballs are nearly impossible to dodge, so you learn to pogo on the boss’s head and expect when it turns)
– I would not end the game with the corals, but rather with the imps and the boss battle (for pacing reasons)

But it's really awesome we get to see the finished art project at the end in its full beauty.
Thanks – it's not the greatest platformer, but certainly an interesting and memorable one.

Edit: Updated the rating. Thanks for listening to feedback. :)

Mythicvenom responds:

OK thanks for the input, I changed a few things.

[Pumpkin Dash]

I think it's a fun game at its core, it just needs better balancing and tweaking here and there.

Aesthetically it's stellar, and the spooky Halloween color palette + pixel art is what has drawn me to the game in the first place (but you shouldn't have different pixel sizes for various assets, because then something looks “pixelated” and something looks “smooth”; breaking the consistency)
The update system is awesome and would definitely be what makes me keep playing for a while – if I didn't have trouble with actually collecting the coins at a satisfying pace.

The main flaw and the most frustrating part – in my opinion – is the unpredictability of the falling pumpkins. When they appear, you have very little time to react, let alone avoid other pumpkins falling in the direction you're running towards.
Then you're supposed to be primarily collecting coins to progress, but those are scarce and again, you need to be quite near to reach them, avoiding the pumpkins in the process.
All the while you're wondering why the ground has to take up so much of the screen.
Consider the following options:
– move the ground lower (this gives the player more time to react)
– show an arrow at the top of the screen briefly before a pumpkin or a coin is about to fall, so it's not a complete surprise
– it suddenly starts getting insanely quick around the 15 score mark, is it the difficulty curve you want? Or should the increase in speed and pumpkin frequency be more gradual?

Secondly, I gave up before unlocking anything because after several runs I had just about ten coins, but in fact, I would need twenty-five to unlock *anything*. You ideally want to give the first reward pretty soon, almost immediately, to keep the players motivated.
Consider increasing the coin frequency, or lowering the required costs, and perhaps give some small amount of coins for a good score, so you can feel you're progressing after a good run even when you didn't manage to collect an interesting number of coins.

And btw, using 'space' to confirm anything isn't very intuitive – before reading the Author Comments, I thought the game was stuck after either clicking on the button or pressing enter did nothing.

Nevertheless, it's a very solid Halloween game, pretty fun and enjoyable. Well done!

P.S.: Did you hear about the Halloween event?
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1528553
If so, and you wish to participate, you may need to use the tag “halloween2023”.

J4cko16 responds:

Thank you for trying the game. I am glad you enjoyed the game and will take what you said into consideration. Did you claim any of your milestones? After reaching a score of 50 you can claim a decent amount of coins for the first upgrades? (It only took me around 30 minutes to unlock every upgrade in testing) I recommend going back to collect your milestones?

[jogo labirinto]

This game doesn't really have much going for it, except for the medal and high scores (kudos for that!).

– Clicking buttons is a terrible way to navigate, especially when each movement moves you barely by a pixel
– You can completely ignore the red lines and move outside of them (and the starting point is also in the black area); there's no collision with the “walls”
– The entire game is tucked into a small top-left corner of the game window
– The timer is invisible and you have to highlight the text to see it

And that's all there is to the game. But even if all the issues mentioned above were fixed, completing a single maze level would still make for an extremely short game; the game would genuinely need more content (or gameplay mechanics) to begin to be enjoyable.

[Scratchy's fun platformer]

This is actually pretty decent!
The movement is mostly fluent, and you have tons of gameplay mechanics. Spikes, moving platforms, enemies, locked doors, wall jumping, checkpoints, lava… quite a lot.

Sometimes, though, the cat is quite too big to navigate between various perils, so you lose lives quickly and ultimately I don't think three is enough.

The first screen especially feels like a mistake because it's actually the hardest one I found – with spikes that can be avoided only with a well-timed precise jump, after which you can still be killed by the moving platform. It actually made me think moving blue blocks are enemies as well, so I avoided them.
The second screen has an enemy that will always get stuck under the moving platform.

I think I explored quite a bit of the place, and took the checkpoint in the top right corner behind the locked door (why is there a checkpoint in a dead end in the first place?).

What ultimately killed me was wall-jumping where I wasn't supposed to and jumped into a wall from below. The same happened later by falling into an innocent-looking hole in the ground somewhere else. And that's where I gave up.
I think if you want to make something unreachable, wall the area off, and put spikes in supposed deadly pits because this feels like bugs.

Other than that, I'll repeat I was quite surprised by the amount of different mechanics your game offers, it just needs a bit more polish.

Cooljack2003 responds:

press up up down down left right left right to get 10000000000 lives ok
ps: i'll also fix that

[Tiles in progress]

This is a pretty cool idea, and I like the visual style as well.

I can't tell if the symbol selection is completely random or if it's somehow ensured there's a fair balance, since often I feel like I'm simply moving back and forth between the same symbols and I can't really be “clever” and do the right thing, I have to also be “lucky”.
At least you have three symbols to choose from, so there is room for some strategy.

I didn't get to the end because the “Levels” button seemed like a level selection (I wanted to check how many there are) but instead it throws you back to the title screen and you have to start over.

Good luck in the jam!

[Isometric World Alpha 0.41]

It looks pretty cool. There aren't that many blocks, but the pixel art of those present is very charming. But I'm missing several quality-of-life tweaks.

– Select a block or slope by clicking. Cycling through all of them with a space bar is too slow and inconvenient.

– Some sort of mild snapping on blocks or working with curves between the current and last known position. I wanted to remove a big chunk of the world, but if you move the cursor too fast for the framerate to catch up, you'll skip blocks. Same with drawing too quickly.

– Moving the camera is clunky. I'd expect it to work like the Hand tool in graphic programs, this feels like you're using the screen as a gamepad stick with max speed around the edges and zero in the center, no matter if you're moving the cursor or not.

– Just two layers are somewhat limiting. And I can't always tell what the result will look like after I place a block. Especially with the tall building.

– Undo/Redo. At least remember one step so you can take back bad mistakes (a long line of blocks with a single stroke should still count as one step).

– Some sort of export option. Ideally not just a screenshot, but a serialized text version that can be used further (let's say you design a world here that you want to use as a base in a game engine) and re-imported in this world creator to make edits.

– The background clouds don't move fluently at all.

Overall it's a good idea and quite visually appealing, but I don't think it's truly usable at this stage yet.

Kehmicle responds:

Some of these things ive heard from folks and some I havent, very in-depth review I thank you greatly for it.

When I return to this project ill start by addressing these changes first!

[Shoot seagulls with an Airsoft Sniper]

I think this game is more than anything else a patience test.
The seagulls come at fixed intervals and move at a fixed speed, so they become predictable. It can be relaxing for ten or so shots, but then you notice there's no gradual increase in difficulty or evolution in gameplay (e.g. if new elements got introduced).

I kept going until 50 to be sure there wasn't anything else that appears later. After giving up, though, I found out the game never ends, even if you let seagulls fly past the right edge of the screen. So what is the goal? Keep clicking on seagulls until you get bored and close the game?

Unfortunately, the scoreboard doesn't seem to be working either, so there's not even that incentive to keep playing.

[R-Cube 1.3]

I don't have much to say about the actual puzzle; it's a Rubik's cube, it's well-known and you made it work and visualize it pretty nicely.
Just a few notes since you plan to work on the project further and publish it on other platforms.

– It would be better if the “Solve” button had shown you the steps towards completion, so you can learn
– Equally, it'd be nice if you could (optionally) skip the mixing steps
– You can glitch the cube when you rotate while mixing is in process.
– I wasn't able to rotate the bottom (and middle) row horizontally; it always does a different move. If it's too tricky, consider adding an option to rotate the entire cube if you drag outside of it (you would also then not have to look at the same three starting colours all the time, and could inspect the finished cube).
– Players will love it if you included a switch between different backgrounds
– "Guide" menu is coming soon, but for now, there's no Back button, so once you go there, you're stuck

RCPython responds:

Thank you for response!! Thank you for writing large a comment!! Yes I am currently working on anthor project so when I am done with that I am straight coming to R-Cube 1.2! Bye and have a nice day!

[untitled]

It's not too bad, mechanically. The movement is very fluent and there are seemingly no technical issues. At the very start, I was wondering if I should be avoiding or collecting the falling objects, but that became clear soon enough.

It's just that it gets boring fast. I get the first five and expect a change of gameplay that never comes, and around the tenth point I have already lost interest in the game but kept going up to 35 just to confirm that yes, there is nothing more to this than what I've already seen.

You've got a solid base here, but to keep players engaged, you should gradually increase the stakes and difficulty. Shorten the intervals between spawning the falling items, or make them faster (but not so much that it becomes impossible). Spawn multiple at the same time at different speeds, or in manageable patterns close together. Spawn harmful items you have to avoid. Or temporary obstacles (why else have the jump, anyway, if everything is on flat ground?).

There's also no pause (or grace period before you first move), so I keep dying over and over while writing this review. This could be a good place to show the score from the previous attempt (perhaps the all-time high score).

About the score, consider if you want to allow it to fall below zero (which looks slightly weird), or if you even want to subtract points when you lose a life in the first place – because that means your “final score” will always be 5 points lower than what you were looking at just before you died. Your score (and potentially high score) isn't shown when you lose, either.

Overall it's fine and has potential, but currently, you have no reason to play this for longer than thirty seconds.

[Seraph - Demo]

It's a great game, even as a concept. The gameplay is very enjoyable, aesthetics are pleasing. Dashing mid-air until you run out of “stamina” is a cool concept. And I loved the tutorial with the ghost clone of yourself showing you around.

I probably missed a couple of optional areas since the road I chose seemed to be the correct one to reach the boss. I was wondering what the flames you're collecting actually do, since I've had a full bar for the latter half of the game. I passed it to the tree (?) which recoloured my animations but I still don't really know what changed (was it a damage boost of some kind?).

I'm glad for the checkpoint system, and it's placed very well so the game never becomes frustrating because later on, it's quite easy to die with all the floating danger and spikes. Even the boss's health is saved. Death traps send you to the last safe platform, too.

The boss himself seemed more like a challenge during the ascent, the actual boss room was very easy. As long as you keep moving, you're invincible, and the boss doesn't change tactics, so it's really about dashing up to him a few times and he's done for.
He's a giant skull; I'd add a few directly damaging attacks aside from the exploding skulls you've already seen.

Yeah, the no sound/music is a shame, and would definitely be my number one complaint if this was supposed to be a finished game.

It is a very good game in all regards, I'm excited to see where you take the concept.

Magiclaw responds:

Thank you so much for the great feedback!
The recoloring animations is actually all the flames do. I tried thinking what I can do with it, but this feature was added on at the very end when all the platforming was already completed. For sure it can feel underwhelming, but it's a feature that I wouldn't be fully happy with unless it wasn't this very short demo..

As for the boss, I'd agree it's a little easy, it could benefit indeed from different attacks, but tbh when I play tested this game on my friends a few had really hard times with it so while it could be harder, I think currently is a good-enough middle ground, at least for the 1st boss.

Thank you so much for the positive comment :)