RaIix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[2 ball pong]

Congratulations on your first game here!
It's a classic game of Pong, made slightly unusual by the two balls and a single-player mode without an opponent. The balls also change direction mid-air without hitting anything – I don't know if it's intended.
I also don't think I'd ever play the two-player version because the game ends after scoring the first goal and you usually don't invite people for 'a two-second game'. I'd make the two-player game end after 10 goals or something. I know you can restart it right away and count your score manually, but that's not the same.

Two main flaws:
– Please don't ever use alerts or prompts in games. They block the whole page until you confirm the window, are annoying and after a couple of them, the browser starts to block them automatically, so you'd have no idea what your score was.
Show the score in the game canvas (constantly updated, or just the final one).
– Arrow keys move the entire page. This is a common bug in HTML5 games, you need to block the relevant keycodes from being picked up by the browser:
https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/developer-resources/unity3d-webgl-support#wiki_toc_6
Without that, the game is virtually unplayable.

Additionally, I don't quite understand what the score actually is. If it's time, then I have no idea what unit it's in, and besides, losing as soon as possible seems to always result in score 97 which is an odd choice to mean anything specific.
Oh, and once one of the balls got stuck inside the paddle and just wiggled back and front.
And why is 'soehn' being outputted to the browser console every time you start the game?

Larbagar responds:

Dear Rallyx
Thank you so much for your feedback, the reason that the balls change mid air is because without that you would not be ready to start playing. I will later fix this with a countdown.
As for the 2 player problem, thank you for that comment as I would never had caught that, I will get to work on that.
For the score issues, the score is counted in frames (so slower computers will have slower point gains which is another bug) but later I plan to have the score somewhere in the center of the screen with a color lighter than the background.
I noticed the scrolling issue immediately and have been looking for a fix (I had been using a blank page so there was nothing to scroll down from), but I have found nothing. Thank you SO much for that link.
As for the balls bouncing inside the paddle, I was just being lazy and made the paddle a ray instead of a segment so I will fix that.
Once again, thank you for the feedback.
Larbagar

[Dumbocalypse]

Never mind the game; the news articles are pure gold!

monish97 responds:

News gets much more exciting with coffee (wink) (wink)

[Blue Sky Demo]

In general, it's a fine game with good ideas and nice graphics, but too unforgiving. You make one mistake and despite having three hearts left, you go back to start.
I don't need more levels, because I can barely make it past the first red plane. And when I die, replaying it all over again for a little mistake is annoying and eventually, I stop being interested in playing.

There's no temporary invincibility, so crashing into a building, the top or bottom of the screen is an instant game over. You lose a heart if you crash into an enemy because they are destroyed, but the enemy immediately after them causes you to lose another. The green planes take too many shots to kill and because you only shoot in front of you, unless you destroy them immediately after they appear, they'll crash into you from below or above. You can't move left or right to allow you to circle around them, so once they get close to you, you're essentially screwed.

You could make all this a bit easier by making your weapons more powerful, or extending the time intervals between enemy encounters, *fixing* the temporary invincibility, decreasing the speed, or the health of the enemies… pick anything.
I wouldn't mind losing the auto-shoot feature in exchange for more powerful bullets, even with larger intervals in between.

The red plane moving with you is a nice idea, but unless you make sure to kill it as soon as possible, it's going to kill you when the buildings appear again, together with regular enemies. I'd loop that section of the level (even with buildings) and spawn regular enemies only after you defeat the plane, otherwise, it can be almost impossible to win afterwards.

That's it.
I originally didn't want to write anything, since I couldn't see very much of the game and really didn't want to replay the initial sequence for 150th time, but on the other hand, the game isn't bad or anything, just annoyingly difficult.
Seeing you don't have any comments from other people, perhaps some of them shared my sentiment.

vainius123 responds:

I have a ridiculous passion for insane difficulty i have defeated most of the hardest games in the world(BattleToads, BattleToads n Double Dragon, IWBTG, all Contra series and so on ) so this game is very easy for me i win 80% of the time from the first try but i released another game before and not a single person was able to go through the first level so for now on i will make the game easy for me so that it is possible for others to play. Thank you very much for the feedback the feedbacks keeps me motivated creating more and better games and you mentioned all the things that I didnt notice so Thank You very much!!!

[clockwise]

I think it's a very interesting concept; brilliant. Whenever it started to feel repetitive, a new mechanic was introduced to mix things up a little. Really nice puzzle game.
Although, I'd appreciate if you saw the total number of levels beforehand in the level select screen, not after you unlock them all.

josehzz358 responds:

Thanks for playing, in a future update I'll add that to the level select screen :)

[Ship adventure!]

Do yourself a favour and change the description. This is a very good game, especially if it really is your first one; far from horrible. If you say that, you'll either be perceived as fishing for compliments, or you'll just needlessly undervalue your game.

This is great. I don't think I've ever seen a space-shooter with close combat, nor did I see a spaceship-robot transformation. It's also nice that the art style is polished and consistent throughout the game.
The controls might be a bit wonky; moving with the mouse is unusual, to say the least (and moving with arrow keys moves the entire webpage since the default events weren't blocked).
With the mouse, you also continue to move and shoot if you move the cursor out of the screen.

The boss is pretty interesting, but after shooting from the laser, he perhaps starts shooting from the top and bottom canyon too soon. The rest of the level is okay, you could perhaps spice it up a little by adding obstacles, or something which cannot be shot – because now I can just carpet-bomb the whole screen to keep enemies out of my way until I reach the boss.

Very well done; good luck with your future games.

Spencer293 responds:

.9q

[Ice Car]

I like it. It has potential. The driving controller is fine. I think it's also a fun idea to create a level from plain models, realise you don't have materials and textures for them, and call it "the snow city". :)

But there are some things which make the experience frustrating and could be improved.
– The angle of the view! If you drove a car and only seen ten meters of road in front of you, you'd be causing accidents left and right – which is what happens here, unless you drive really slowly. Either tilt the camera (or let us tilt the camera), or zoom out further.
– Looking left and right. The cursor doesn't lock, which means you can only turn the view in like 130° range. That's fine when you're driving forward, but very limiting when you turn left or right. You have to resort to weird hacks like right-clicking, moving the cursor and left-clicking again to allow yourself to rotate the camera again. Lock the cursor.
– You can't see yourself on the mini-map which makes it nearly useless. I don't think you really need the minimap anyway.
– Sometimes you can get stuck in the snow with no change to reverse back. Could there at least be a key to restart the game?
– 'Quit' button in a WebGL game is pointless and only freezes the game.
– There's no goal in the game other than driving around. You could easily make it a time-race around the town, or have us collect items scattered throughout the city.

With this car model, you're also almost halfway to the new Tesla cybertruck – and now would be the perfect time to release a game with the car in it when it's trending as a joke/easter egg. Just a suggestion. :)

fabilan responds:

hi bro, as time went by I have created another game much better than this, I plan to post it for you to see :)

[Little Buddha - Quotes & Meditation]

I think it would be better if it showed the text all at once (with fade-in effect), not very slowly typed it like this. Some of the quotes are pretty long and if you wanted to read several of them in a row, you'd have to wait for a long time.
Instead of skipping to the next quote straight away, I'd first show the whole text with the first click/tap if the typewriter effect is still progressing.

Segediinc responds:

I tried that, but the whole feel changes of the text. I think it makes more sense on mobile since the idea is to take the time to read the text, if I give you all the text at the same time than the experience becomes different.

[Ctulhu's Missing Eye]

Hm. Okay. I understand there's no way to win, but there's also no way to do anything differently, no options. The entire game can be completed in less than two seconds if you hold the up arrow.

The premise also isn't anything spectacular, although I do like the animated face of Cthulhu, but that's, unfortunately, all there is in this game.
'It Was 4' was a better game; but still, I'd consider trying a different, less restrictive game engine than Bitsy (e.g. Construct is simple enough and doesn't require any programming).

Inco-Nito responds:

Two second of existential dreadd - is exactly what I tried to convey.

[It Was 4]

I'm not sure what's the deeper meaning... it's not apparent and I'm not going to try to guess. The dialogue has three lines whose connection I don't really understand and the shrinking room could mean a whole bunch of things.

I was left confused, though… mainly because during my first playthrough, I somehow got stuck in the top-left corner wall when I approached the door. :)
I also think the text font ought to have the same pixel size as the rest of the game. Sound effects might also enhance the experience.

As for forcing the right arrow, you could momentarily override the left arrow to also progress dialogue, until it's finished.

Inco-Nito responds:

Text font, sound effects, some other stuff... it all due to the Bitsy game maker limitations, its a very simplistic game engine and you really can't do much with it (at least at the time I was creating this ... game). It's not quite there, I admit. But I still hold a faith in the concept and maybe I'll make a more decent version of the game at some time. Thank you for your responce.

[Bad Guy Bootcamp]

Nice little game. I like the roll-back effect when you die.

Although, don't add new characters if they're not going to do anything. Currently they'd be just different ways to obstruct view and I'd pick a small rolling ball over Darth Vader anytime, just so I could see better. But you could add special ability to each character to make them worthwhile. For example, with Darth Vader, a large 'force' leap every 20 seconds. Or a lightsaber slash removing obstacles in the near vicinity usable every now and then.

Your Project System's game window resolution seems oversized though. It's roughly 1300×700, but the actual Unity game is 960×638.

In general, I think the jump is too dangerous to use (not very long, and unreliable – try jumping quickly, several times in a row) and left/right movement sometimes wasn't as fast as I hoped it would be. I'm also not sure what the blue boxes do. You can crash into them, but they neither help nor harm you.

cloop responds:

Hey we really appreciate the feedback! Some of these are things we plan to change/fix already and your review is very helpful. You are right, we defiantly plan to give each character different ways to get through the generated maps.