RaIix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Solobot 0.1]

It's too dark to see anything and it's incredibly chaotic (very high fire rate, numerous enemies, impeccable enemy accuracy).

I like the environment with those glowing objects, but you can't even see yourself, let alone enemies. That's the first thing I'd work on.

Then, I'd decrease the rate of fire and make enemies less common and try making them move smarter. A few good enemies are better than a mindless mob which goes directly to you and always knows where to shoot. And a health bar might be better than exact numbers since it's hard to read them when you're moving around quickly.

You can also hold space to "fly"; I don't know if it's intentional. And obstacles/barriers might help the player with crowd control (i.e. hide behind a wall and shoot enemies which try to go around it).

The game is certainly 'promising', but currently also unplayable.

[2D Jump And Shoot]

Since it's a prototype, I'll just list possible problems:
– The first time around, 'space to jump' didn't work for me, until I started using a gamepad, then space jumping became possible, too (as you mention in the description)
– Don't use Dpad on gamepad for movement. The left stick is typically for movement. You can use it even now, although it doesn't turn you.
– I'd reconsider instant death from spikes. There's a lot of them around and with no checkpoints, it may become frustrating
– 'Zero' health still has a thin green line at the left when your health is 0. If you do this by setting localScale, try fill amount instead:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.ugui@1.0/api/UnityEngine.UI.Image.html#UnityEngine_UI_Image_fillAmount
– The jumping animation is super slow
– 'You died' & Restart button are pretty small
– There are different pixel art resolution being used (e.g. the main character vs the enemies)
– Enemies are blurry (bad image? downsized?). Try the pixel perfect package if it helps.
– The last part of the level is quite boring, it's a long predictable corridor making you charge the gun, shoot, move a few steps, charge the gun again several times in a row
– The boss doesn't do anything interesting, and if you didn't have a hiding spot at the entrance, he'd be impossible
– I think the gun has a pretty short range. But anyway, the blast should not just disappear, there should be a 'dispersing' animation

Good luck with further development.

ArcOmega responds:

Thanks for your review Ralix, I'll take it all into consideration. I know there's a lot of adjustments and things to fix but without reviews from people like you its hard to catch everything. I'm going to be making some changes to the keyboard controls and will see about implementing the left stick for movement as well as scaling the restart button and other UI to make them bigger. I will also look into the pixel perfect package to correct the blurry enemies. Thanks again!

[Turtle Race Survival]

Nowhere it says how many lives you have, or what (high)score you achieved, so it's an infinite game with unclear 'win' and loss conditions.
Also, eventually, I discovered that the best tactic is to hug the left/right wall, as you're in danger only very rarely there. I'd consider adding a reason for the player to move around (e.g. collectibles, extra health).
But I like the artstyle and music. It's also nice that there are multiple kinds of enemies with different movement patterns.

[Shadow Grinder]

Ah, yes. The happy meal handheld games, Tiger games, Nu Pogodi game… the lamest way to make a game, but still, they did the trick when nothing else was available.

I don't recall this particular game, but I like how you framed it with the speaker and switches. The game itself looks very authentic as well (judging by the art), although it might be confusing when the 'short' platform suddenly becomes long when it reaches the left side of the screen. I also don't understand the 'S' in the top-right corner, but I presume it means 'speed' which increases over time.

Very well done. I mean, it's not a game I'd like to play for too long, but as a recreation of the original, I believe it does a terrific job.

PKTORA responds:

Tbh I'm not sure what the "S" is either. Most likely means speed.

[Maintenance]

A great game! I love how it starts, how the main menu is a part of the game. It took me quite a while to figure out what you're supposed to do at the very beginning – I assumed I need to avoid the bugs and somehow get into the rooms, which were all locked. I really didn't want to go anywhere near the scary critters, as I imagined they'd attack and I didn't want them any closer to my screen…

The individual rooms were great; I really wondered what they'd be like once I got there (by the way, if the Update function in your game does nothing, it's wise to remove it completely :)).
Although I hoped there would be some more challenge and more interesting puzzles than 'walk to everything and press 'E'', which is probably the most important thing, but I understand you probably had some time constraints.
The background noises like the people talking in the design room were a nice touch.
The inventory slot/icon design is somewhat plain and uninteresting, though.

When pressing 'Start' in the end, I had some trouble in positioning myself properly in order to be able to select it, I think the raycasts (or whatever you use there) is a bit wonky.
The final music is the victory theme from Heroes 3 – sounds great, and matches the ending, but isn't it copyrighted? If so, you should probably replace it with something else to prevent the game from being taken down.

Anyway, for a jam game, it's definitely a very solid entry, and stands well as a meta-game on its own.

boticelly responds:

Thanks for the detailed review!
I'll have to check about the music, thanks for noticing.

[Apple catch]

With so many apples falling down, there's no way you'll going to be able to collect them all. And it doesn't matter anyway, because the game has no ending. No ending means no goal.
I would consider making the falling apples more scarce, and add perhaps different fruit which you should avoid (orange -5 points). But definitely, if this is supposed to be a game, you need a victory/loss condition. Perhaps make it so that you need to collect 25 apples in a minute, or something like that.

[Life Light Arcade]

Hi. It's a rather simple concept, but you made sure to (almost) perfect it.

The need to collect hearts (and the 'chaser') forces you to move around. If you're fast, you're also allowed to make a mistake or two. All collisions only decrease the timer and the number of yellow stuff onscreen increases over time (thus the difficulty, too) which means the game doesn't go on forever until you quit out of boredom.
You even managed to sneak in an ad which will serve you well on the mobile platforms, because players will naturally want another chance, especially if they were close to the highscore. There's also background music, light glow and particle effect on impact, and the maze-like background; all of which make it more interesting.
If this is really your first game – wow. Incredible. Even as far as marketing is concerned.

I'll list some problems I noticed.
Since you say you're new to this, I'll also give tips on how to solve it.
– Why is there an alpha slider for colour? You can even hide the UI and the character completely (but interestingly, I did fairly well when it was hidden because there's still light underneath). Oh, and I wouldn't use the default UI sprites (e.g. sliders, buttons…). They look a bit lame and are because they're the default, they're also somewhat overused in Unity games.
– External links (e.g. Twitter) should open in a new tab, otherwise, it will crash the game if you try to open it in the same window.
https://bitbucket.org/newgrounds/newgrounds.io-for-unity-c/src/7862ec579a9e452cb33070df663f2e11fcf02eeb/Assets/io/newgrounds/core.cs#lines-105
https://bitbucket.org/newgrounds/newgrounds.io-for-unity-c/src/7862ec579a9e452cb33070df663f2e11fcf02eeb/Assets/Plugins/WebGL/newgroundsioPlugin.jslib#lines-187
– There's a thin horizontal line at the top of the chaser's sprite sometimes. Sometimes it can happen if the sprite's border is tight and something overlaps, or if you use filtering which might take neighbouring pixels
– The game should be paused when you're browsing the settings. The character still moves underneath, so you can even accidentally start the game when trying to alter settings
If you browse the About page, you can even gain an advantage because the chaser is frozen, so you only have to worry about the yellow droplets
– 'Darkness' is outside of the screen. I'd check the canvas settings and the text's anchor (pivot). Make sure you anchor it to the left screen border, and its pivot is also to the left.
– You seem to be checking if the time is 'less' than zero rather than zero, so when you run out of time, it ends up on '-0.02' (presumably Time.deltaTime in FixedUpdate). It can also go way below zero if you collide with something at the last moment.
Clamp it to zero before assignment (Mathf.Clamp(time, 0, float.PositiveInfinity) and check also for zero, keeping in mind it's a float (Mathf.Approximately(time, 0f)).
– This font is good for titles and short labels, but reading the About page using it is a pain
– When the chaser 'smiles' and doesn't hunt you, you can touch it again to reset its timer harmlessly. A bug? A feature?
If you plan to post more games on Newgrounds, consider using Newgrounds API (https://www.newgrounds.io/) to add medals and scoreboards, which in turn tends to attract more players and makes the in-game achievements and highscores more meaningful.

Good luck with your future games and welcome to Newgrounds!

[random adventures]

It's pretty fun. I kept dying a lot when the missiles blocked me mid-air until I discovered the double jump. However, the sword is completely useless – there are too many enemies being spawned infinitely, and the sword also completely stops your movement. But the fact that it's procedurally generated is a big plus in terms of replayability, although eventually, you'll have seen all the building elements many times.

I would like it more if there was a goal you had to reach, or at least if the game kept evolving, so there was something more you could 'discover'. Ideally permanently, so you still have access to it even if you die, so there's some semblance of progress.
For example, if you reach '5' (or multiples of 5), a new type of enemy will be added; or a new kind of platforming challenge and from then on, it may appear in levels even if you die.
Or a sword upgrade if you reach 10, making it gradually less useless, culminating in a 'boss fight' as the final unlock.
…anyway, those are just a few ideas which might make the game more interesting, because personally, I reached '9' and felt that I did everything this game has to offer.

You could also add a scoreboard (Newgrounds has one built-in, with a Construct 2 plugin):
http://www.newgrounds.io/get-started/
https://rexrainbow.github.io/C2RexDoc/plugins.md/rex_ngio_scoreboard.html
If players can compete with each other, they'll typically play the game for longer.

In summary, it's fun, it's challenging, the randomness makes it more interesting, but eventually, there's no 'goal' to keep you playing.

[Zeca vs Pide 2015]

The initial sequence is incredibly long and having to replay it every time you lose the game is quite painful.
The game itself is simple, also quite weird, which makes it more interesting, though. It's a pity the only available language is Portuguese; you're missing out on a larger audience if English was an option.
When collecting musical notes, there's also no need to show +1 popup, since the score counter is right up there and everything in the game only gives you 1 point.

[Size Is Difficult]

I think it's an interesting, original concept; well-executed. I definitely did enjoy the game.
The levels are fairly straightforward, I didn't think any of them were particularly hard to figure out, but solving them in practice might have taken some time. You could consider adding new 'puzzle' levels, or, if it makes sense, action levels (i.e. moving environment or enemies would force you to act faster or more precise).

I had a slight issue with the controls. My 'jump' sometimes wasn't registered even when I was on the ground and I'm not sure why. It's also somewhat common in platformers to add tolerance for pressing jump a bit too soon (e.g. ~0.2s) before you actually touch the ground, or after walking off a ledge, for cases when the player doesn't hit jump at the exact frame.
And since the entire game can be played with keyboard except for the one horizontal size slider, I'd consider adding keys (Q, E…?) for manipulating the slider without a need for a mouse.

The character can also stick to walls if you move towards them while in mid-air – if this is unintentional, consider giving something like a PhysicsMaterial2D with zero friction to the character to avoid this to an extent.

Still, for a game jam game, pretty impressive! An original idea with a proper beginning and end, albeit slightly wonky at times.

RealGamesss responds:

Thank you so much for your comment!