RaIix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

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It should have been longer. It is nice start, but if you cut a story right after introduction, then it's like you burst a bubble - the atmosphere is gone, the story goes in vain. I wouldn't say anything against an open ending, but the story has at least to start for it to be possible.
I know, you say it's a very short horror game with no obvious ending, but I have just a feeling that it's unfinished if you leave it this way.
On the other hand, graphics are good, worked-through; animations are fluent - although the movement speed could be higher.

stevelovesguitars responds:

thx, very constructive

[Flight of a Slime]

It's not "extremely hard" (in comparison with Give Up or The Impossible Game), but I'm glad I had all those checkpoints there. If the game was in a larger size, it'd be far more enjoyable. The ending is quite nice.

ilovedemongirls responds:

Thank you for the review. Stencyl would not allow me to export the game in a larger size without the game being MASSIVE.

[Recycling hero]

In our school, we spent a whole year learning PASCAL, a dead *DOS* programming language. I believe it gave me the basics, but recently I decided to learn Flash and I have to do it myself. If you like game developing and AS, then there's a ton of great, helpful tutorials on the internet. But I know I'd be as upset as you, if a class focused solely on game development looked like that. Good Luck.

Noobstudios responds:

I know that theres plenty of guides on the internet, but i wanted to learn AS3, and my teacher barely taught us the basics of AS2. I intend to make another game over the sumemr with a friend of mine whos better with code, so i can do the design work i'm more comfortable with, like enemies, level designs, and animations, which as everyone has noticed, are entirely absent. Thank you for your support!

[Heat]

This is nice; *great* for a first game. The story was interesting, even though it's quite common in platformer games. It is good when a platformer isn't just all about "hop all the way to the end", but has also another layer.
I liked that the game mechanics wasn't the same all the time (wind and gravity experiments, etc.), the main models look fine, but you can't really enlarge a tiny pixel figure of Katherine across the whole screen (and add rotated versions of her), it doesn't look very good. A silhouette might be better. The same applies to the monster mess after the level in which you cross the invisible bridge and take the yellow ring.
The difficulty was reasonable, but hard for me because I had to restart the game four times as (in different levels) the plugin suddenly crashed, I don't know why.

I had a slight feeling that the beginning was more worked-through, as you venture closer to the end, the tiles become simpler and are cut either on bottom or on the side (for example the level with "HEAT" written all across the sky and the grass levels afterwards). A little problem I had especially in the cloud levels - when you jump *facing* a tile, you go up freely, but when you turn around and jump from the same spot, you get blocked.
Some of the other bugs I found:
- In the "red level with stairs and a monster going down", the monster can fall on your head and stand there, not hurting you at all
- In later levels, there's a tiny transparent dot in the bottom right part of the screen, it shouldn't be visible I think
- Are the squares in text (for example in the "long fall" level) intentional? Maybe unsupported font, I don't know.
- You can stick to a tile if you keep holding an arrow key (but you say something similiar in your Note 3)
- In the wind level, the first "hill" can be partially passed through
- In the epilogue, a "Th" shadow appears behind few texts

That's all I could find, hope that helps.
I think the very end could be done in a more interactive way, because you play through the game with little to none knowledge of the background story, only knowing that you have to get your memory together. When the real story begins, you can only listen.

But I hope I didn't make you upset - as I said in the beginning, the game is very good, well done.

Dark06Star responds:

first I have to really thank you for this message and I am really glad that you liked it.

now about Katherine.. yeah you do have a point there, but it I wanted to show how he is so obsessed with her.. I tried my best when I enlargeable her, trust me I had to do a lot of fixing to make her look decent, but I'll try again and maybe make her look better.

And the game crashed at some places?.. I wonder why.. I had that problem in the cloud level but I fixed it. I'll look that up too.

and with the tiles. I made them more simple because Heat's "perfect world" started crashing down ... it became bland and empty.. not as beautiful as before, that was my point honestly ..

- thank you for showing me the "enemy falls on your head problem" because I didn't notice it before. I'll fix that right away.
-and yes the blocks are intentional. as in he is trying to block out everything people said..
-The stick to a tile problem is really annoying me :/ I keep trying to fix it but I'm not sure how, I have something i want to try i think it will make it work better.

And about the ending part.. I don't know what to add exactly. because I want the player to start creating his own version of the story while playing.. like "is Heat insane?" or was he always like that. what is he trying to remember. what the big secret is. who is trying to stop him. I want the player to put the pieces together after of course finishing the game. I wanted to add more but I thought It would work better like that..

Once again I thank you for this message, I'll work on the game once again and improve it as much as I can.

[Scorged Moon]

I managed to get stuck in a tile in the level in which you jump in the large chasm with plenty of tiles.
As for improvements, I'd add some ambient music and enhance the graphics in the city, which is quite bad.

friendscomics responds:

Thanks for the feedback. I'm will be adding some music,score, and enemies and of course better graphics.

[Mr. Pong gets Abducted]

For 90% levels it is enough to just hold right arrow key to get to the right side. Maybe the best option is to make a limit for maximum distance per one keystroke, but that's up to you.

baldosgate responds:

Thanks, I prevented that mostly I think.

[The Impossible Game]

That's not exactly the kind of thing you should tell us in the Author Comments.
It really looks like "blah, I quickly patched this together, enjoy or so, I don't care, just give me good ratings!". If your game is worked-through, players will appreciate it, but don't expect any easy 5 R votes just because you need them.

If you want to know any bugs, so for example, you can jump in the mid-air if you just slide off a tile.

monkeywantbananas responds:

Thats the point. It's kind of like double jumping

[Pinkie #1]

Bugs or glitches? It'll be quite a list...

1) I don't know if Pinkie is supposed to be a human or not; but anyway, his jumping is weird the way it is now.
You jump higher than a flea could even dream about; crossing more than a fifth of a screen with a mere tap on an arrow key (and if you forget how to release it, you could most likely hover up to Neverland). It is hard to aim your jumps correctly.
If you want an inspiration for really good platformer movement animations, watch any of the "Prince of Persia 1989" gameplay videos on YouTube.

2) I think there has to be a more sophisticated way to display text. The same applies to the restart button.

3) Another animation while moving is a good idea, but overall height of the main character shouldn't change. And Pinkie looks like he's sliding, not walking.

4) I am able to leave the screen, touch the greenie. But more importantly - when I do it, I still get to the next level (!). The lives (only displayed in the second level, don't matter at all).

5) It is not made clear in the instructions that we have to go up. A door or so could be better maybe.

6) Shift to jump... I can almost feel the pain of Windows XP users, when a Sticky Keys notice appears every time they jump five times. Why don't you use just the up arrow key?

7) Spending more time for graphical development (Pinkie, background, tiles...) *will* get you more players. If it looks like this, somebody may close your game just when it loads.

I know this is just a test (really!) so don't worry about the bad rating. But it's your first game (congratulations :P), something you will surely remember, so try to make it as good as you can. The biggest problem so far is in the movement.
Good luck with v. 2. ;)

MrKingBunny responds:

thank you for telling me I will fix that.

[Nooball Adventure V0.2]

1) Since it's ball, it should roll, not rub against the surface. And sometimes it falls even though it should have stayed on the spot.
2) Music?
3) Why do we need to click on next level every time you win a previous one?
4) More levels?

But it's quite nice game with neat graphics.

Akizutsu responds:

It's just the V0.2 I will put music and more levels, thanks for the idea :)

[Staircases And Slides]

You have few good ideas, but the main problem is that the graphics and animations are not very fluent, worked-through - that's what may (and probably will) drive players away.
Personally, I found annoying that even if you want to play a single-player game, you have to control the computer as well (it's a nice joke in the menu, but quite a drawback later) - is it really that hard to make 1-6 random number generator? The dice animation could also be improved, because no matter what you get on the dice, it always shows "5".

I am sorry for the low rating, but the game needs more work.

ZabuJard responds:

well the game is skill based so i dont know what else to say, what a alucky guy! thx 4 the review