RaIix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Its Just Pong]

Yes, it's Pong; about as basic as it can get. Actually, maybe it's even simpler than the original Atari Pong: https://youtu.be/e4VRgY3tkh0

Sound effects are the first thing you should add – you don't need music, but it shouldn't be too hard to find a free "bleep" and "lose bleep" sound (try https://freesound.org).

Another thing is that you should add a lower limit to the bounce angle – sometimes the ball bounces in an almost vertical direction and it takes *ages* for the ball to reach the other side. Sometimes the ball is even launched from the starting position like this. See here:
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/be03bf5fa7127326240d36ab8731458f
To keep the game flowing, you should probably make sure the ball can always go across the screen in 2-3 bounces tops.

The final important the game could greatly benefit from is adding a computer opponent. You don't always have two players and I think you can find loads of examples on Pong artificial intelligence opponent on the Internet.
There's also no limit for victory, so the game never ends until you decide so. Ending the game when one of the players get score 10 seems appropriate.

Minor things:
– There's a bug with the score number disappearing (see in the gif).
– The separating line in the middle of the screen looks weird. The distances are uneven and the bottom rectangle is cut off.
– There's a typo in the menu ("Opitions") and strange spacing between letters ("Credi_ts", "Control_s", "Opi_ti_ons").
– The menu navigation controls don't make a lot of sense. You select with arrow keys and press space to confirm. You can't click. Okay. But in the submenus (Options, Credits…), you *have* to click and can't use space. It's inconsistent.
– Not to mention there's no need to add Options submenu if there are no options. "We don't have | Go to men– (the rest of the button text is cut off)" is completely unnecessary.
– You could use the menu font to display the score in the game. For consistency's sake.

It can be a good Pong game, but there's still a lot of space for improvements.

IsNotaGuy responds:

Thanks for warning of some of the errors, I going to try to solve some of them!

[A Little Snake Game]

It's generally fine, although the controls can be a bit unresponsive (changing direction doesn't turn you immediately, but only at the end of a "cycle"), which makes going diagonally ↑→ pretty hard.
You can also crash into yourself by going backwards (e.g. pressing left while going right). That shouldn't happen; the opposite direction should simply be blocked.

PinkHedgehog responds:

Those are some fair points. I implemented so it's no longer possible to go backwards (and commit suicide).

Looking into making the game more responsive might be a bit of a larger procedure, and any potential update on that front might be a quite a while in the future.

[SIMPLE PLATFORM (Do Not Enter)]

Edit: The game was updated and works now.

Actually, contrary to what I expected, it's not half bad!

If I forget the graphics which are pretty underwhelming, it's a quite diverse game with many varied sequences and surprising twists. I mean, if you revamped the graphics, even with some freely available art if needed (e.g. Kenney assets, people on OpenGameArt.org…), it could considerably improve the quality. Now there's a lot of "plain colour" rectangles and overlapping tiles creating stairs – it's simply a bit messy.

Another thing you might want to reconsider is the first few moments of the game. You have one shot at a first impression, and you choose to waste it on pretending the game doesn't work. And it takes quite a long time until the game tells you otherwise.
The problem with this is that a newcomer might just take it at face value and close the game. You also can't move forward until you click on the "1 player" text, which is counter-intuitive. I just thought the game *is* broken because the player seemed stuck.
Since "1 player" is the only option and the first scene might put players off your game before it even starts, I'd remove it.
Imagine a really cool movie starting with a minute-long shot with a plain white screen. No audio. People would look around nervously, tell the cinema manager it's broken. Then the movie would say, “Oh, the movie broke. Let me fix it.” – and then it would start. No, such a scene would end on the cutting room floor almost instantly.
You can mess with the players for sure, but the players have to know it's intentional all the way through… which is not the case here. And doing this when the players aren't even invested in the game yet is the worst possible time.

The rest of the game is pretty good. You probably should be able to close the shop window by clicking on the shop icon again (not just via Escape). While we're at it, dark blue text on a dark green background isn't exactly easily readable. The jumping physics was sometimes weird, which was most noticeable when climbing "stairs" during the bridge sequence – you bounce a lot. And the spaceship boss probably has too much health – he's not hard (he shoots the same pattern of easily-avoidable missiles at regular intervals), but he takes a long time to destroy.

It's a flawed little gem. I was honestly surprised at the amount of content and various levels this game throws at you, but for plenty of reasons, it's far from perfect in its current state.

august000 responds:

I have never had such a good comment THANK YOU
I thought the same thing about the beginning of the game but I forgot
The ship at the end I do not know if to bring it to life or leave it
The character I did
I made the earth
I made the music of the beginning
and other sprites I did that's why they are so bad but I did not want to grab a google sprite as the character's sprite


If you see any spelling mistake, tell me why English is not my
language i speak spanish and all this is translated from the google translator until the game dialogues were translated into english



Thx Rallyx
Edit 2:The mouse shop character did my sister because she wanted to put some character

[Reap]

It's a well-made game with a great concept, congratulations!

In my opinion, I passed through all the levels with relative ease; I don't think there was anything which would be truly challenging or which needs more than two or three tries. You can slow down any number of moving objects indefinitely with a barrage of spells with fast fire-rate and turn very slow hovering in the air on/off as many times as you like, so you always have plenty of options to make the level easier or to fix your mistakes even mid-air.
Perhaps there should be areas which don't allow using your abilities (or moving objects unaffected by them) or some limits on your abilities. Not to make the game very difficult, just to up the challenge a bit.

It would also be interesting to see a greater variety of puzzles. What you have currently is fine, it's just that similar "tricks" and mechanics are repeated very often, well after you proved you know how to do them ("open door, slow it down, run through", "slowing human on a button" etc.). Syncing the blades in the last level was a good idea, perhaps you could do something similar for example to choose the order in which buttons are pressed by slowly falling weights (so you could run through a series of doors), propel yourself with a conveyor belt (which you have to walk across while it's slow) or something else which makes you use your abilities in a new, previously unseen way.

But those are just tips for improvement. The game already is very good as it is. :)

AlienPlay responds:

Cool! Thanks for the ideas! :D

[Escape House (Very Easy Game)]

I think it's good for a first try.
It's a finished game at least, with a clear goal. I think especially the "unlocking door animation" is a nice touch – you didn't have to do that, but you did and it improves the quality of the game.

You could improve, well, everything, but you probably already know that. More detailed backgrounds, consistent outline (the ladder has a thick outline, the door almost nonexistent), *more content*, properly drawn attic, roof or whatever it is… and so on.

Don't get discouraged by bad reviews or score. Yes, the game isn't good overall – BUT everybody has to start somewhere but if you stick with it and continue to learn and improve; in a couple of years you'll be amazed how much you've improved since your first submission.

AleGames4008 responds:

in fact the game came ugly, but I hope to improve. Thank you

[BeatMagic]

It's simply too fast, making it almost impossible to play unless you're lucky. I never got to the white circle in the middle.
You're also not using much of the screen – most squares are spawned in the upper left corner, thus the majority of the screen, especially bottom right quarter, remains empty.

MrCringeKid responds:

So you just admitted to just being bad at the game. (I also suck at it but look at the world record)

[Desperation Ch.1]

Quite better than I expected. There aren't that many text-based games on NG, so if you made a really good one, it could have the potential to become reasonably popular around here.

Your game also has a variety of random events, so it's not all about fighting. And even the fights have dodging, critical attacks, "aiming for the neck" etc. – pretty cool!

However, please get someone to proof-read it. In text-based games, you want to impress the players with the descriptions, dialogue, story… but your texts contain pretty basic English mistakes and typos:
– no commas, periods
– attack / "defence" (should be "defend")
– "ready to fight" (prepare to fight; ready yourself to fight)
– "pionts" (points)
– slime "attack" you and "dealing" 20 damage (attacks, deals)
– start to think how to "escaped" (escape; better yet – start to think *about* your escape)
…
– I'd also put "Stats" or something like that instead of "Menu". Menu makes it seem like it quits the game, whereas it takes you to the character progression screen.

The other problem is that you should pick enemies to at least relatively match the player's level. At first, you have no idea which enemy is strong and which isn't (Is goblin more powerful than an undead?). Without attacking (and dying as a result), you can't tell.
OR at least allow the player to flee from a fight (e.g. for the cost of some HP, i.e. "the enemy stabs you in the back as you flee, dealing critical damage" – but at least you'd have survived).

Also, the text is highlightable by the cursor. There's no need for the player to highlight the text.
Overall, it's a good game, but it needs some improvements; especially fixing the grammar.

G6Q100 responds:

Thank you so much for your feedback! I make this game only by myself so the problem needs to take quite a long time to fix, but I will definitely try to fix the problem in Ch.2. I didn't expect I can get feedback this quickly so I very appreciate it.

[Third Attempt]

Whoa, that's a creative concept. I like it!

I never got too far, though, mostly because it's hard to both build a reliable platform and shoot the increasing number of enemies coming from all directions.
At some point, I either couldn't properly shoot enemies below me (since the shots were blocked by the frozen enemies, or there were too many of them all around and if I managed to get them all in time, I effectively trapped myself.

I guess I would probably get better with practice, but I think it'd be worth a shot to make it a little easier, because the fun lies in jumping, building and shooting, not starting over every fifteen seconds.
As a suggestion; here's a couple of ways which might improve the game's enjoyability:
– make fewer enemies appear at once
– make the bullets slightly larger and pass through enemies (so you can shoot through frozen enemies or freeze multiple enemies which are close to each other)
– add a "special attack" (right-click) which can be activated every once in a while and freezes everything in your close vicinity.

I tried doing a "jump above an enemy and shoot below" a couple of times, but it almost never worked – the enemy froze, but it still killed me because I was too close.

Nevertheless, it's a great game, but my longest ever playthrough was only like thirty seconds, even though I really tried.

Byvsen responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

You do have the ability to change the difficulty in the game. By pressing the button below the start button in the main menu, you can make the game a little easier. But perhaps I have to make it a little more clear.

I do like the idea of having a special attack though! Might try adding this feature to the game. Again, thanks for posting this! :)

[Blocksticles]

Ahh, nothing like the start of summer to play a winter-themed game. :)

I think I've seen someone use the same template/tutorial for this game before, since the core gameplay was pretty much the same. I'll repeat what I wrote back then:
– There's no point in having a score if it gets reset in between levels. That way, a player who didn't die once during his entire playthrough AND a player who kept dying constantly during all levels will end the game with the same exact score => score for the last level. Pass the score between levels.
– I like that crashing doesn't send you back to the start immediately, but there's a slight delay. That's important because you have time to acknowledge the cause of your crash.
– It doesn't have to be a long, wide, straight road. How about a branching, winding path? A high-risk narrow detour which results in a score bonus? You could even set up a scoreboard, so players can compete with each other.
https://bitbucket.org/newgrounds/newgrounds.io-for-unity-c/

But I think your version has nicer graphics. Although some background objects don't have colliders, so things can pass through (e.g. the gate and the trees at the very start). I also loved the last level with the jump, I think it was a great way to end the game, but I don't see the point of the floating fence.

The game crashed with an exception a couple of times when I fell from the edge.
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/yRtD.png
"Failed to execute 'setValueAtTime' on 'AudioParam': The provided float value is non-finite."
See here if it's similar to your problem:
https://github.com/Tonejs/Tone.js/issues/347

The options menu is complete garbage, though. :)
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/xX4t.png
It's unusable because the layout isn't anchored properly and there's no "Back" button (!!), so you have to reload the game in order to get back to the menu, which resets the options.
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/wbue.png
Even when you go fullscreen, it doesn't get better; the options are randomly scattered around (instead of being in the same column), there's no padding, the fullscreen button doesn't do anything… and of course, it's still all pointless, because you can't leave the options settings.

P014r1s responds:

Big thanks for your feedback, I'll try to update the game.

[Lost Cavern(Demo) v. 1.1.2.5]

Pretty good for a demo, although there's definitely some space for improvement.

– Arrow keys cause the page to scroll. Either add an option to use WASD, or better yet, disable page scrolling for the specific keys, if you can.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamemaker/comments/3fnayp/html5_game_causes_webpage_to_scroll_when_arrow/
– The background is too diverse which makes it harder to see the player character
– Text boxes should be *behind* the character when you go through them, not in front of you. Sometimes their text goes outside of the box. And as for the font – everything in the game is pixel art, except for the text. It should use a pixel art font, too.
https://www.dafont.com/orange-kid.font
– Why does the boss die when you avoid him a couple of times? You also don't know how long are you supposed to keep dodging. There should be some visual cue, something like the boss crashing into ground/walls and gradually looking more damaged. Now the boss fight doesn't make a lot of sense.
– The soundtrack is great! A very good choice.
– Looking forward to the graphics update. Especially the rectangular lava and black ground need some polishing.
– (!) If you leave the screen, you don't die, so you have to reload the page to restart the game. To add an insult to the injury, there's a trap in the second level which does this on purpose. Just add lava block off-screen; the player definitely shouldn't be stuck there.
– There's no need to add Construct logo in the game (since it's already shown while the game loads). It breaks the immersion a bit.
– The resolution you set up in the Project System is unnecessarily large for your actual game which seems to be 800×480 or something)

Overall, it's an "all-right" game, but could be made to be much better.

AstralDenizen responds:

That will be remedied in the graphics update. And for the offscreen glitch, thanks. And the Construct logo was purely an easter egg. The boss? Maybe I should make a button, like in Mario that kills him. Otherwise, I should make like a "system status" board on the wall.