RaIix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Story Master]

I really like the idea, but I wasn't able to write anything yet ("2 players needed").
Like this, I think people will just pop in, see that there's nothing here and log out – at least I did, after fifteen minutes of waiting for somebody to join.

I think I'd drop the requirement; you should just let people write – but no more than ~50 words and a single consecutive entry. That way, even when nobody is currently logged on, a player can write roughly a paragraph of text as their entry and then check at a later time.

GMcLean responds:

That's a great idea, it looks like people are trickling in one at a time so that would probably work alot better. Something to keep in mind for a future project!

[The Curse of Malnoir]

A very good game, especially since it was made under time pressure.
Unfortunately, it largely depends on luck. The only time I won, I had two pieces of meat every night and used them both to save myself and the guard.

Without them, there's a little to no tactics involved. Once the werewolf starts chasing you, you've lost. He's too smart to be slowed down by buildings, too persistent to change targets. On the other hand, you get exhausted too quickly and even all your stamina can't be used to outrun the werewolf completely, just to prolong the chase. There's also no place to hide during the night (e.g. jumping into a haystack) and the guard is defenceless against the attack (it'd be cool if you could reliably save the guard by pelting the werewolf with a stone and making him chase you) and unlike you, he wanders about randomly, so letting him stumble upon the werewolf is an instant game over (and luring the werewolf away without a piece of meat, too).

All in all, I think the difficulty still needs a little balancing, especially the amount and regeneration of stamina, and your running speed. Basically, any feature which gives you a little edge over the werewolf and depends on your skill, not a randomly appearing consumable item.

And now that you have time, I'd change the ending pop-up. It took some effort to earn the ending! Show them hugging or something, don't just write 'Game Over' as if you lost. :P

punknower responds:

Thank you for taking the time to write me so much. You didn't need to do that honestly but I feel touched by such dedication. Thank you.

You are totally right, it is based on randomised object placement, and each time you get back an item, objects are reloaded and placed randomly. So you could stumble into 3 object in a day or none at all for 2 days. And I'm sorry if it brought you some meh moments during gameplay and I know it is not very efficient in its state.

All your recommendations are really good ideas and some of them were thought, like hiding during the night. We couldn't implement it because we wouldn't have time to balance the meat, the rock and the hiding to give each one a unique ability. For example, how long would you be able to hide? Can you hide only one time a night? Does the wolf lost himself when you hide? If he sees you and you hide in front of him, will he find you or go wandering like he lost you? Etc,
hese questions needed balance and balancing a gameplay is one of the most dificult tasks. So we decided against our will to simplify it in order to not give the player a too easy task. (I'm not explaining all that to look like a smartbutt, but I just wanted to share our vision)

And you are totally right, it needs balancing, especially what you outlined about stamina and that you could win a night without the use of critical items to give you a feeling of survival.
But let's say this idea born in this gamejam could be a base-prototype-idea for more polished and furnished little game. Still looking at this possibility if it gets some attention here and there. In its state as a game jam game, it's enough to have decent, constructive and pleasant feedback as you gave to me.
And yes the game over is a bit harsh and out of place. It's really not rewarding and well I wished I could have made that a bit better but I will remember your advice and will work on that on future project.

Thank you.

[Enemies And More Enemies]

Sorry, I can't get the game started; and I tried multiple browsers.
The browser console reports a missing resource ‘chão-sheet0.png’, if that's any help.

[Curse of the hideous hag head]

Was it really too hard to create a couple more scenes? More choices, something which would make you actually think? You could create a nice simple point and click game just by jumping between scenes like you already did.

Right now, unfortunately, the game is basically:
1) Click to lose
2) Click to win

Not a lot of fun, is it?

[Fishy Wishy]

Oh, people are going to be nice… but you're kinda making it harder for yourself by openly telling them. Throwing in the disclaimers as if you're already expecting an argument just finishes the job. Now, can I really believe the game is going to be awesome before starting it, when even you don't seem all that convinced?

As for the gameplay, there's not much to talk about. It's done well, sure, although it's eerily similar to another rather fun game which has however been done to death already. The problem isn't making a clone, the problem is that 95% of clones of this particular game don't bring anything new apart from a different art style. How about different shapes of obstacles, death mechanic, collectables… anything? Retain the signature movement, but try to add your own touch to the *gameplay*.

A little side note about the pixel art, though. If you decide to go for that particular art style, there are some guidelines you need to follow.
– First of all, consistency. If most of the game is pixel art, there shouldn't be any graphic which is not ("High Score", the ground).
– When you die, two thin black lines appear. That suggests you didn't set the camera, canvas, sprites or something to be pixel perfect – which can cause seams like this when you move.
See if this approach helps to solve it:
https://youtu.be/CU4YjSZNTnY
– No antialiasing or compression. In sprite import mode, set the Filter mode to 'Point (no filter)' and make sure you're not using a lossy image format like jpg (e.g. the dead fish looks blurry, and the ground is one big compression artefact).
– The font looks… hand-drawn? That's cool and all, but it results in bad spacing between the letters and uneven thickness ('w', 'g' or 'y'). There are plenty of free pixel fonts you can use, even for commercial use, for example this one:
https://www.1001fonts.com/orange-kid-font.html

It's a 'good enough' game, especially from a beginner, so please do continue and improve; but the fun in trying out a new creator's work is from seeing your creativity and ideas despite some flaws here and there, not the ability of being able to accurately replicate a well-known game. Please keep that in mind before completing the mobile version – and good luck.

[Focus]

It's 'okayish'. Not bad, but there's really not a lot going on. It starts feeling very monotonous soon, so 'Focus' is a very appropriate name for the game but for the wrong reasons.

I like that you can jump to different heights, plus there's also the double jump which allows you to fix your mistakes in timing. However, the main problem of the game is that it doesn't utilize this at all.
'Low jump' is completely useless, as a single tap on the spacebar can't be used to jump over a single obstacle (e.g. a 'half-sized cube'). There's also no 'tall cube' (or two cubes on top of / next to each other) to utilize the 'high jump'. But you can use the double jump from time to time to correct yourself if you accidentally jump too soon or too late.
If you decide to add more kinds of obstacles (which I think would definitely improve the game), I'd also move the player square a bit to the left to allow for more reaction time.

Since your colour doesn't change after becoming black and there's no other goal – at that point, I'd just show an ending screen. And because you move at a fixed speed, it might be pretty cool to sync the ending of the game with the end of the song.

[RUN PIXEL RUN!!!]

The graphics are not the problem. Great games can be made with simplistic graphics (e.g. Pong, Snake, Pac-Man); they just need to be fun to play.

The core concept is fairly good but it needs improvements. I think it's great that the squares come from all four corners and not a single fixed spot, so you need to be constantly on the move. The best strategy I found is to circle around and through the gaps in order to bundle all the red squares together. And frankly, it's the 'only' strategy because the squares are too fast, new ones appear too often and don't disappear as quickly, so you need to get the red squares close together, otherwise, the screen gets too crowded.

Having to click to show the time (which doesn't update nor does it reset when you die, by the way) is just a bad decision. It's a distraction at a time when you need to concentrate, and it also blocks a small part of the area around you.
Because of this, I don't know the time of my best attempts (I'd say roughly five seconds) because during those I concentrated and didn't distract myself with the timer.
I think you should just either show the timer at the corner of the screen or your final time when you die (with a 'Retry' button).

There's also a significant problem with lag. If you click to show the time, the game slows down and then speeds once the bubble disappears again.
The same happens even during a regular playthrough, as soon as there are too many red squares onscreen at the same time.
This spike in speed can easily kill you. You rely on the blue square to follow your cursor at a certain speed. When that speed decreases, you move the cursor further away to balance it, but then the speed increases again, your square shoots towards your cursor to catch up – and you most likely die.
Delete the squares more often, or just merge them once they overlap.

Here are a few ideas for taking the concept further; use any them or none as you like. They're all geared towards giving players more breathing room, in order to allow other strategies than making circular motions in the center.
– Make the red squares slower. This allows the player to move around a bit more. Best time wins.
– Slow down the squares and add collectable dots which appear at a random place on the screen and award points. This should force players out of their comfortable position in the center and make them take risks. Most points win.
– Keep the speed but add collectable dots. Collecting a dot purges all the squares onscreen. Best time wins.

I'll repeat that I quite like the concept. It just needs some more polishing.

Edit – Bumped up the rating a bit after the game improved.

FoolProofGaming1 responds:

Thanks for the great ideas i'll fix the problems with lag and add in the dots - Max ps i'll see about making the game more balanced

[Handulum+]

Wow. A challenging, but incredibly enjoyable game.
Certainly an improvement over the original Handulum, especially in terms of controls and the colour palette.
You really are the king of creative game concepts.

[Eatable Numbers]

A simple game which can keep you entertained for a few minutes.
I would probably have the red ball follow your mouse cursor all the time instead of having to be dragged around (and subsequently, pause the game by pressing 'P', 'Esc', the right mouse button or something similar).
I slightly dislike the fact that you get no warning before the blue balls appear at the corner of the screen (e.g. a blue arrow half a second in advance would've been nice), so when you're forced from the center, you have to be lucky not to run into newly created large numbers. I would've also probably made the screen into a square instead of a rectangle to give the player more 'breathing room'.

Some bugs:
– If you don't drag the red ball from its center (e.g. move the cursor a bit to the right and start dragging), the ball can't reach the right edge of the screen but can leave the left side completely.
– Pausing the game moves the player a bit (try rapidly clicking the pause button)
– You can't 'unmute' a game. If you turn the audio off and play the game, then the audio toggle appears 'on' – but no music plays and the toggle can't be toggled again.

[Hit the Bag]

Well, it's a test, but it looks promising. The attack sequence if you just stay on the ground and keep pressing 'C' looks especially great.

The 'X' special doesn't seem to do anything yet and there's no roof, so perhaps the particular version 0.04 isn't uploaded yet.
Anyway, I think instead of adding a roof, it might be better to add a cap on the upwards force you apply to the punching bag since you'll likely run into a similar problem once this becomes a full-fledged game. And then, even if the enemy is blocked by a roof, it doesn't look good if you can propel him across the whole screen.

A couple of times I ran into a jumping bug in which you would fall to the ground more slowly than usual after a jump – this is hard to reliably replicate because it doesn't happen every time, but I think it has something to do with with the jump attacks. The gravity or whatnot is lowered during the air kick but it isn't always reset to default correctly and all following regular jumps use the lower gravity until you perform another uppercut or air kick.

I'd add an attack to do while walking since now it's either standing still or the two jump attacks; nothing if you move around on the ground.

Good luck.

SparkliMotion responds:

I don't know what to say :000
But I'll try to keep this in mind
Thank you!!!! ^3^