3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Blooming]

This is a pretty tough game, both because of the puzzling and the precision platforming (damn those blue flowers when you gotta get a block higher!) with the latter being the more formidable challenge IMO. Great difficulty in both aspects without feeling unfairly tough, excellent pixel graphics, and good music make for an all around impressive package. I bet it'll do really well in the Jam. Good luck!

HealliesGames responds:

Thanks for the kind words!
Now I've made that you can now slightly move up and down with the blue flower,
removing part of the frustration and keeping the level design clean.

Thanks again!

[Hoisted]

It took a really long time to load for me, and instead of having a preloader screen it was just showing a blank blue screen with the boxes for reset, mute, and credits so I thought the game was broken until I started writing this and the game finally started. It did that on both Chrome and Firefox. If you have time, maybe try to update the game with a preloader screen before the Game Jam deadline so people don't think it's broken.

rmkubik responds:

This is great feedback! I just added a preloader bar that I think is working. I totally forgot to add this in earlier.

[Closing In]

The game presentation is simple and clean, and the music does a good job of setting the vibe. I'm not sure if it was intentional that you had the music run smoothly at the start when the player would be on the first few levels and have more of a chilled out and relaxing pace of gameplay, and start getting glitchy musical effects at about the time when things start speeding up and the player's like "oh snap these walls are getting fast, I gotta get srs or I'ma be squished", but the effect was great and you should totes claim you planned it all out that way. The only downside is that every level can be finished with the same pretty straightforward approach, but the game still has a nice overall fun factor.

GoodL responds:

Thanks a bunch! I totally agree with your last point, and I've got some ideas for how to approach making each level more unique if I ever do revisit this idea. I appreciate the review!

[Intergallactic Exterminator]

Lots of bugs.

I started playing on Chrome in Windows. First time loading, the assets for the planets on the level select screen must not have loaded because the game was just showing the icons that it shows if you try to run a Phaser game from a local drive without having a webserver set up. I reloaded on Chrome and it worked ok, but then after finishing the first level and entering the UFO the game went to a black screen and froze, with the background music (which seems too quiet) still playing. I tried reloading the page again on Chrome and replaying and it had the same black screen after finishing the first level.

Then I switched to Firefox and it was even worse: same issue of not loading the planet assets for the level select screen that I saw with Chrome the first time. After reloading the page it still wouldn't load the planet assets, and when I started the level there were a bunch of assets that also looked like they weren't loading and just giving that icon.

IDK what's going on, but hopefully it's just a matter of needing to take the first Scene that loads and adding a preloader to it with a
preload() {
this.load.image("logo", "assets/jamlogo.png");
this.load.image("title", "assets/title.png");
this.load.image("button", "assets/button.png");
...etc...
}
statement to get the game running smoothly before the Game Jam deadline. If that isn't the issue, then I'm afraid it's beyond my very limited knowledge of Phaser to be able to offer much help with.

---------- Edit ----------

It looks like that patch completely fixed the issues I was having earlier, and I played the first five levels and they ran perfectly. It was a pretty fun game up to that point, but then when I start the sixth level it goes just a little bit into the level and then freezes (music is still playing and can even be muted and resumed, but the guy stops moving and bullets stop mid-air before any enemies appear).

What I'm seeing on my browser's developer screen console is:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined
at Object.getRandomItem (phaser.min.js:3)
at Object.getRandomItem (utils.js:105)
at getSpawnProperties (spawner.js:18)
at e.Timer.update (phaser.min.js:3)
at e.Time.updateTimers (phaser.min.js:3)
at e.Time.update (phaser.min.js:3)
at e.Game.update (phaser.min.js:3)
at e.RequestAnimationFrame.updateRAF (phaser.min.js:3)
at window.requestAnimationFrame.forceSetTimeOut._onLoop (phaser.min.js:3)

Netgfx responds:

Thanks for the input, I was testing the game from localhost which always loaded the assets fast (even without cache), I saw the issue and added a fix also upped the music a bit (although with headphones its quite loud). The black screen also should not be an issue now clicking on a planet to launch should properly take you to the corresponding planet+end-boss. Thanks!

@3poch New version uploaded with a fix, you can now enjoy the final battle!

[The Grand Grimoire Chronicles - Episode 3]

Overall it was a nice retro point-n-click game, and while I'm not typically a big point-n-click game fan I can appreciate it. The series as a whole is becoming somewhat memorable as I recognize the style of the previous episodes, although moreso because of the retro styling than the horror/mystery element. Getting a stronger horror/mystery ambiance might be difficult with retro graphics and sound, but the Last Door and Deep Sleep series did it well so it's not impossible, and I get the feeling that it could take the series to another level.

As for the game's puzzles, there was one item that I thought was too much of a pixel hunt to find, and I'm a little ashamed to admit how much time I spent trying to figure out how to enter 11, 9, 2 as a three digit combination.

Edit: I was going based on the room with a lot of barrels -- there was a pile of 11, a pile of 9, and a pile of 2 without any other purpose that I could remember. So I figured they were the three numbers and tried all sorts of stuff like just counting the top row, just the bottom row, taking the difference between the top and bottom rows, and some other things I can't remember.

JeffreyDriver responds:

Thanks. Where did you get the 11, 9, 2 figure from? Because there's two ways to get the number for the lock, and that combination is nowhere near!

[Tanks for the Memories]

Cool concept, I like the surrealnes of it, but aiming gets ridiculous with some of those camera angles.

piratechipgames responds:

Thanks! Glad you liked it and thanks for the feedback.

-Ibrahim

[Arcandies]

This is a very polished and sort of fun game. Way too easy for my tastes, but it might be good for kids or more casual puzzle gamers.

Diemorth responds:

Thanks for playing! I hope to bring more complex games in the future to satisfy this more advanced audience. :>

[Pokemon Circle]

The interact key (n) didn't seem to work if I had movement keys held down while pressing it, so I wasn't actually checking stuff and I had no idea that I wasn't and I ended up confused as heckk. IDK if it's just a synchronous keypress issue with my keyboard, but it made controlling feel unnatural, so best to avoid that in any serious game if possible.

plufmot responds:

Thanks for the feedback! That was a problem I overlooked when making this, thanks for bringing it to my attention! 😀

[Post Mortem]

The mechanic of being able to switch characters that you control is something you don't see very often, if ever, in point-n-click games. It was nice to see it incorporated, but I got the feeling that it didn't end up adding very much depth to the game because the puzzles were still fairly straightforward without much brain-busting over how to keep multiple characters coordinating to achieve a goal. If you decide to make a sequel, I would definitely recommend putting a good deal of work into designing puzzles that exploit that mechanic well -- and if you can really get people to have to think outside of the box to use character switching and cooperation effectively without it becoming tedious to manage then you'll have a real gem on your hands.

A less important point but one worth mentioning is that the controls seemed a little clunkier than with most point-n-click games. I'm not sure how your game engine is set up and whether it would be easy to change, but maybe it would be easier on the players if the arrow by default becomes either a walking symbol if the mouse is over a walkable area and you move there if you click, or a magnifying glass if it's over an interactable object and you look at an object if you click, and there are buttons at the bottom for interaction and talking etc that would override the walking or looking actions if you select it. And for the inventory: pick stuff up by using the interact button on the object to pick it up without having to use a separate inventory button, always have the inventory slots up so you can click on any object in your inventory to try to use it, and get rid of the current backpack-shaped inventory button entirely. Or just find a point-n-click game you like a lot and see how they handle user interface stuff and do something similar.

KnoseDoge responds:

yes, this is something that i myself feel. i don't go deep at all into the switch/combie character mechanics, mostly because i originally had a pretty hard time constraint when i made this game (and some because i am not very good at making puzzles hahaha).

thank you nonetheless for your feedback. if i do start working on the sequel, i will probably have to redo most of the ""engine"" (it is made in gamemaker, but with some HEAVY scripts handling all the point&click stuff). it isn't too hard to add content to it, but i would like to make it even more simple (just text-handling is a nightmare. dialouge trees? oh mama)

[Phone That]

Maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure out what the clues are to realize what numbers you need to use. I could find the level select just by trying a bunch. Then eventually found that there are active numbers scattered all over the place. I googled to find that 112 is actually a cell phone number that's used in Europe, but I would never have guessed that and am not sure if there would have been any straightforward way for me to look it up anywhere. Tried googling a few other numbers that I found worked, and came up with nothing. Then decided that I'm not going to just brute force 1000 numbers to find out what they do.

Other games that you've uploaded have been good, so I'm giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming that I just haven't figured out how I'm supposed to approach it.

Edit: All right, much better now that there's a directory in the comments :)
It seemed more like a matter of just trying everything than really figuring out puzzles, but it was still enjoyable.

joqlepecheur responds:

Hi there, sorry about that I attached a file in the project and thought it was accessible. You are not supposed to brute force on the contrary. I edited the content (I hope you can give it another go !)