RaIix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Donald's Build a Wall]

A fun little game. It reminds of Attack on Titan in some way. :)
The way Donald's hair is animated is also a nice touch. My only complaint would be that you can't move at the very start of a level yet, but the power-ups already fall down, so you are bound to miss the first one or two.

MinorAtrocityGames responds:

I never even thought of the Attack of Titan thing, but now that you mention it...

I'm glad you noticed. I wasn't sure how many people would pick on the "toupee" thing.

Yeah I forgot to fix that bug. I'll have to see about fixing that this weekend.

[Tilt Christmas]

Yes, as people have already said, it could have been a neat, simple game, but it's lagging too bad. I don't know why, though. Too many objects? The snow in the background? Time-consuming methods in Update?
When the lagging is gone, you could probably add some more variety to the levels (currently, the only obstacle are the walls, the only danger are the dark blocks). It's Unity, you could quite easily add e.g. a steep slope and a pitfall behind it, so it would require some manoeuvring ability to survive. And other things.
But the lags are a crucial flaw, so that should be your priority.

BlastOffProductions responds:

The FPS problem has been fixed. It used to be around 30FPS, now it can be around 60FPS. However, if this doesn't work please tell me. Thank you.

[GUI Examples]

You know, there's a "Preview" button in Project Settings, if you need to test stuff, so you don't have to publish games you barely even started developing. Ergo the rating.

But since you uploaded it already, here's some advice if you continue working on the project:
– Build the game as WebGL. That will make it accessible to everybody. Unity Web Player requires you to download the plugin (which many people won't do) and doesn't work at all in Chrome. Thus many players will give you zero rating, since they won't even be able to load the game. Refer here for more info:
https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/developer-resources/unity3d-webgl-support
– There's no need for an Exit button on web, it does nothing

That's really all there was to comment about so far, so good luck with further development.

jbc5 responds:

Thank you, for the response. The Exit button was a test, and I'm aware it does nothing. This is more of a proof of concept, and something for me to put it out. I'll be sure to take your advice on my upcoming game, if any.

Thanks!

[Through The Warp [Old Version]]

Hm… I couldn't figure out the third level, the purple square always seemed to be faster than me and there was (probably) nowhere to trap it like the guy in the previous level. But I guess there probably is some smart way to do that. Aside from that, the music's good, the movement is fluent, but pressing Ctrl or Alt makes you very slow all of a sudden… I'm not quite sure that's intentional.

Playing the game in fullscreen is better than zooming out to 80%, perhaps you should recommend that instead. ;)
And about Chrome compatibility – what about exporting the game as WebGL? That won't take much of your time and make Chrome's (and Edge's, and soon enough Mozzila's) users able to play this.

AssRGBGnome responds:

Ok thanks first of all for reviewing , it really means alot! Let me explain some things : I made this game with All default unity assets , and my code (the charactar controller has a crouch , that is the slow.) sorry about that! Also , I though you needed the webGl Package from unity to do that , They do not have it on their official website. About the full screen thing , I will change that Imediantly! thank you very much! And the third level....I've actually never encountered that problem? That is strange. I'm sorry you ran into issues! Oh , never mind sorry (I'm not going back to erase) The reason for the third level one going faster is because you were in full screen or a wrong aspect ratio! I remember this in mid development. Any way , I hope you have a good day :) (I'll make my next game more bullet proof!)

[The Sky is Falling]

That's a good start. Simple idea, interesting pixel art graphics, but there's still space for improvement.
At first, the controls feel a bit rough. I'd add a bit more force to the drag, so you wouldn't need to drag that much. It's a good thing you can click anywhere on the screen, or else it'd make you unable to jump whenever the angel is close to the bottom edge of the screen.

The game needs some sort of force indicator though, to inform us whether we are dragging the character or not. Either a bar in a corner somewhere, an outer glow, a directional arrow or a dotted line indicating the full trajectory. That's up to you, but in some way there should be visual difference between "now I'm dragging", "now I'm dragging A LOT" and "now I'm doing nothing".

But more importantly, wouldn't it be better if we were able to pass through clouds? Now you can get into unsolvable situations when several clouds in a row appear in a vertical line and you have to jump even though you know the bigger cloud above you will block you.
With one way platforms (since you said you're new to this: in Unity, just adding Platform Effector 2D component → One-Way should do the trick) the game would still remain challenging, but won't force you to commit suicides on a regular basis.
You would also get rid of the "sliding under clouds" bug which saved me a life a couple of times, I admit, but isn't exactly according to the laws of physics.

As for the score, I wouldn't subtract it below zero, nor deduct points for losing a life (but the latter is up to you). And since the main goal of the game is beating your high score, I'd save it somewhere here (you can create a public scoreboard with NG API, so players'll be able to compete with each other: http://www.newgrounds.io/get-started/).
Or at least keep track of your highscore in-game.

Also, a bunch of power-ups or flying birds you have to avoid or anything which diverts your attention from jumping clouds for a while never hurts. Or perhaps more detailed background, now it might seem a bit plain.

Now I noticed the text is a bit blurry (not sure why, perhaps it's scaled too much). It would also look better if your character faced the direction she's jumping. And if you jump very high right at the start of the game, you fall back off-screen and the screen doesn't focus back on you – that shouldn't happen, at least not until you safely land on your first cloud.

I hope some of my suggestions will be of use to you. Welcome to Newgrounds and good luck with this, or whatever you decide to make in the future.

MBelka responds:

Thank you! This was extremely helpful! I didn't know about the scoreboard or the tool in the unity engine! The text is blurry because I used 3d text on top of a sprite. I find that I really need to work on UI design from reading these responses. I am taking lots of notes though! Thank you so much for your warm welcome to newgrounds! I was a bit worried when I started, but damn this is an awesome community! I wish I joined earlier!

[GATHER]

It's exactly as you write in the description – it could be good, but so far it's somewhat confusing. What I understand from the couple of minutes I played this, you use arcane words (or just their combination, perhaps) to order minions to gather (and combine?) stuff and carry it to the gods altars to make vines grow on them to cause a flash of light which does… I don't know.
Basically the only thing I learned to do on purpose and not by accident is to make minions drop their apples.
That was my trail of thought when playing the game.

Hunger for exploration works much better if you have a set of basic, clear rules which can then be used to create more complicated things. You should be able to see an immediate effect of things you do, not randomly mash buttons in hope it'll do something.

For example, you could have abilities like this:
(Let's start on blank grass with just altars, minions, bees and environment)
– "Green" rune:
Grow a flower underneath yourself. If a bee sees it, it flies to it, pollinates it and turns it to an apple (or whatever). If a minion sees an apple, he picks it up and starts roaming around.
Or if you already stand on a flower, it could grow into a tree (→ wood logs).
– "Red" rune:
Plants a totem underneath yourself. All minions in its vicinity will go to it (totem would then disappear and they'd continue roaming). Like that, you could lead "apple-carrying minions" to "apple altar" with a series of totems. Something happens (e.g. icon appears Apples: 1 – and you can use them later to create something).
You are bound to need rocks at some point. How to get them? Since you are an ethereal ghost, you could fly in the middle of a large rock and plant a totem there. Minions would of course go to it, but with the rock in their way, they'd mine through – gathering rocks in the process.

And more and more uses you could devise with "clever use" of four basic commands.
While writing this, I figured out how to get minions to follow you using Z+C, but you if miss the info sign, you have a hard time figuring it out by mashing buttons, because there's not much of a difference between "minions aimlessly wandering" and "minions aimlessly wandering towards you" except for their thinking bubbles which do provide some help at least. And that's likely to be a key command.
In the way I suggested above, you wouldn't need to wonder "what the hell does this do?" that much because a flower/totem/… would always appear (using one button, not two), you would just need to think how to use them – in a basic way which would be clear and easy to find out, or in more complicated way which would need some thinking and "exploration".

Just a suggestion. :)
I know you want the ghost to be "powerless to affect the material realm", but in the end, that is likely the frustrating part which also summarises my feelings about this game. Good luck if you decide to build up on this idea.

Koobazaur responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback all good notes! Yes non-verbal communication was a deliberate limitation I imposed on myself, and you bring up some good points on how this could have worked with totems to gather.

I dig the idea of planting and growing apple trees. In this case I wanted to focus more on interaction/exploration of the world rather than god-like world-building though. Still, cool ideas to expand the series if I return to it :)

[Suprema]

Are the controls Z M K L on purpose to make it harder?
I might be slightly biased with QWERTZ keyboard, but I can imagine even QWERTY users wouldn't be too happy with these controls. It was quite hard to finish even the first level.
Why don't you simply use WASD or arrow keys?

ivane5 responds:

Apparently I was quite biased by my personal experience, now I'm reconsidering my assumptions.

I'll issue and update with different possible input setups(WASD included).

Thanks for feedback! :)

--

Added new key schemes

[Click Farm]

82 farmers with 123 tractors, silos and barns to harvest 6×6 farming patch? Well, WHY NOT! :)

I just feel there was too large gap between "Helper" ($25,000) and "Mansion" ($1,000,000), so I began to lose interest when I was around 100k and needed 900k more to buy the next item in list.
In general, it was way easier to gather clicks than gold - perhaps something that enhances gold income would be good, so the gold/click values would stay more or less even. Or faster level-ups, so you can afford the more advanced crops.

But it's good to see you try something new. It was a neat game.

selfdefiant responds:

Thanks! It's tricky balancing everything out!

[Brick Breaker Intergalactic!]

It is somewhat a classic Arkanoid game, but with a lot of creative spins: like moving blocks, indestructible blocks, lasers and even fireballs in cages. And all that with a bunch of diverse power-ups and very fluent animations.
For all those reasons, I really enjoyed it, good job!

3DSauce responds:

Much appreciated Rilifaen!

[Enkid]

A neat game!
I like the idea, it might be a good base for a great platformer game if you decide to invest more time in it. It is probably the best you could have accomplished in such a short time frame.
Some things you might consider improving:
– There's a lot of walking on dirt. I completed the game and didn't feel like there was any challenge, any real danger. The jumping was quite ordinary and enemies (just one kind of enemy) ceased to be a problem when you became able to shoot. So maybe… more enemies? More kinds of platforms? More sources of water (e.g. rain, waterfall, geyser)? Health? Whatever you want.
– The third guy is probably slow by concept and that is fine, but remember to speed him up a bit if you decide to make the levels more challenging (or it's probably going to be a bit frustrating)
– Play a sound when shooting fire?
– (Just a personal note) It's helpful for some players if you can avoid using "Z" as a control key, because in whole Central Europe (and few other countries elsewhere) "Z" is switched with "Y" on keyboards and that makes controlling the character a bit unfriendly.
– I found water that didn't kill me:
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/68d78bcaebf563d16d7ddbd2d3730981
– A game-breaking bug that made me start the game over. If you step on breakable platform and let it break and reappear, it won't break for the second time (it seemed like more platforms were generated on top of each other). In this particular situation, you won't be able to proceed further:
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/e22cf32674a0a094407395ee90915296

Hope that helped a bit and good luck in the competition! :)

leronir responds:

Wow, nice review!

I really appreciate your time to write it all down. We noticed dthe breaking platform bug, but assumed it won't be a problem, we're so wrong haha.
We will let the game fastest in general, increase the speed of all characters, we just can't do it while the game is on trial, because it wouldn't be fair.
Also, we really want to improve the game design and level design in general, your notes will be considered to do that.
I didn't know about the "z" "y" button, originally it would be "x", maybe we change back.

Thanks for your feedback!