3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fish Canon (Prototype)]

This is among the impressive entries that don't look at all like your typical Game Jam fare when people get just one weekend, and whoever decided to make it a month long jam might have been on to something... even if you did still upload it at 11:59 in true Game Jam style :)

I'll echo GoodL's comment that your tutorials were really helpful, and in my case showed me how to set up the preloader correctly with a minimal init scene followed by a true preloader scene.

I see you have a lot of stuff you already plan to add so no need for me to make more suggestions there; the only comment I have so far is that by the end of the tosses the fish is moving and bouncing awfully slow so I might recommend harder stops at the end and/or keeping more horizontal velocity near the end so the player gets the feeling like the fish is still making decent progress until then.

PsychoGoldfish responds:

I ended up tweaking the drag stuff because it really was slowing you WAY too much. Now you have to make the fish almost perfectly vertical to slow down (and you'll see a slight effect indicating it's happening), otherwise, turning the fish will actually steer it slightly as long as you have enough speed.

[Infinity Dungeon]

It's a nice game but it looks like you didn't set it to capture the arrow keys, so if I move with arrows the entire browser screen scrolls. If you have time to edit it before the Jam deadline, the API docs describe key capturing at

https://photonstorm.github.io/phaser3-docs/Phaser.Input.Keyboard.KeyboardPlugin.html

and it looks like it would just be a matter of adding a addCapture() function to your code so it should be a quick fix. I used createCursorKeys() in my game which I think handled capturing automatically IIRC so I can't just paste my own code. This looks like a really nice game so I'd hate to see it downrated because of arrow keys scrolling (I'm using Chrome on Windows but I don't think that matters).

dlodz responds:

Thanks a lot 3p0ch for the link and the explanations. I tested the preview with WASD 😅
Using `addCapture()` fixed the issue.
The game is up to date.

[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!

[Sun Temple]

When I play it, even if I hold down space constantly on the first level, the rocket doesn't generate enough thrust to get off the ground. Does that in either Chrome or Firefox on Windows FWIW, but I get the feeling that's probably unrelated to the underlying issue. Assuming the game was working fine for you when you were developing it, the only think I can think of is if it's an issue of different framerates when you're in Unity vs in the WebGL build that're screwing up the physics if it's not scaling by Time.deltaTime (or if the scaling math didn't end up behaving like you would want it to). I hope you get it working 'cuz it looks like it might be an allright game if I could actually play it.

[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. :>