3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[UnderNet: Block Smash]

It was sort of interesting at first, but after a while I figured the way to go is to just take very shallow angle shots and let things bounce around a lot. That does lots of destruction, and there's not really any need to anything particularly skillful or do much other than occasionally click to launch a shot and watch how much damage it does, which takes all the fun out of it. It could definitely stand to be improved with mechanics that force the player to stay immersed.

tikotus responds:

Thanks for the analysis. I think you're right. I have to fix this with deeper mechanics.

[Extraction: Chapter 0]

I see that most of the commenters have already said this is shorter than a game ought to be (even for a pilot) but very good for what was presented, and a few people pointed out the similarities to Submachine. I'll say this: you've got a good engine and hopefully you'll be able to spend most of your effort concentrating on designing an immersive world and story for gamers, because IMO when it comes to point-and-click games in general and the Submachine series as a great particular example, that's a big part of what makes the best ones stand out. The other is of course making a variety of reasonably sensible puzzles that aren't exercises in pixel hunting. From this pilot it looks like you'll probably be safe in that regard; *** [spoiler] *** personally I would have preferred either having the grate change the mouse cursor (at least when the screwdriver is held) or never having any objects change the mouse cursor, but I can respect the design you went with considering how prominent the grate is and how reasonable it would be to screwdrive it. [/spoiler]

Criobite responds:

Thanks for the review, you made some good points! :)

[Dotless]

This is a really nice and challenging game, and rewarding when you finally figure out the tricks. I noticed one thing that I think is a bug: if you're moving a blue block at the end and you quickly move it over two squares such that when you're moving to the first square you're using the last available move and when you're moving to the second square you've gone over the limit, it would count the level as successfully completed. (That's so far the only way I've been able to pass level 28 ^_^). That small bug aside, keep up the good work!

[Dungeons Deep]

I played by swiping the screen (as the instructions said) for a while and then read comments that keyboard is working, and I can say that that's a huge improvement.

IMO this isn't a Roguelike -- in this game, after your first move the enemies move on their own timer so if you're fast you can just blaze past them, while in a traditional roguelike the enemies move only when you move so it's more of a chess match than a sporting game. But even if it isn't a roguelike, this game is something in its own right that people should either love or hate for what it is. I agree with other reviewers that this seems more like an early concept demo than a complete game, but it does have a fairly good foundation to build on.

[Voltaic Triple-Gun (C3 Jam)]

Lol, the explanation of how to make special abilities work is in the title page's "About" button... I spent a while just figuring stuff out in-game (it really wasn't obvious even with the instructions) and after finishing it I went and checked out that button and saw it would've made things a lot easier if I did that while I was trying to figure stuff out.

That said, IMO most of the fun in the game was figuring out how to get those special abilities to work to get through the levels; if I started off knowing how to use them, then getting through the levels would've been a lot more straightforward. If you were to expand this game, or make other games that try to capture the same spirit, I'd say to keep introducing new mechanics as the game progresses for the player to figure out how to use effectively to make it through.

ValettusGD responds:

Haha, yeah I added the ability controls to that page last minute, but it's good to hear you had fun discovering how to use the abilities on your own. It was my intention to have the player learn them organically, so I'm glad it worked for you. I know the in-game instruction wasn't great (thus the addition to "About"), so I'll certainly introduce them more gradually and more clearly if I make another version.

I can't change this version now that the Game Jam license for the engine is up, but I'll probably expand on this game at some point.

I appreciate the feedback!

[Trimage]

This seemed really good until I got to the level where you're on a moving platform complex over a canyon background. Early in that level there was a set of small boxes blocking my path that I couldn't get rid of with any of the spells. But I found that I could walk off the right edge of the platform just above the start of the level and sort of wander around in an "undocumented feature" of the game map on the right edge of the screen. I was able to wander all the way up to a black statue thing that I could hit with the water spell, but that opened a gate late in the level and didn't get me past the boxes that were blocking the path near the beginning. So I kept wandering up that (unintentional?) path on the right and made it through the entire level and (beat?) the game. And the level seemed to be bugging out a lot with glitchy looking graphic effects with parts of the level flickering or going completely black temporarily.

So it looked like a really good game up until then, but that level it was pretty wtf. Using Chrome on Windows 10.

[Escape3]

As others have said: this is overall a very good game with amazing graphics, and the only thing that seems a little off is the fact that the three characters each essentially go through their levels independently without really interacting. Of course it's hard to complain about not having that degree of intricacy to level designs when the game was made in two weeks for a gamejam after all.

At one point I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do and I stopped playing (I needed to take a break from playing these gamejam games anyway), but I came back to the game later on and found that pressing H brought up a screen that clued me in. I guess construct 3 is locked now that the jam is over, but even if so, maybe you could mention the game controls including H key in the author comments.

[Vikings]

So far this has been my favorite of the c3jam games. It has superb graphics, nice music, fairly good gameplay although the levels are short -- leaves me wanting more. I agree with t4upl tho, it could use better in-game description of the controls or any description in the author comments... even after reading t4upl I was all "why isn't the X key opening the chest?" and a few minutes later was all "oooohhhh, that was talking about the X button on gamepad; only the E key on keyboard works for that". Persistent (not briefly appearing) descriptions in the background of the opening area are the way to go IMO, but that's pretty nitpicky considering it's a gamejam.

But wasn't there supposed to be a "three" theme to the jam?

SebbeV responds:

Thank you for your feedback. We made this game in 2 weeks. We put most of the work in to level design and programming. We will keep patching the game as often as we can. We hope that you enjoyed it.

Greetings /Crew

[Three Days Before]

It's not really up my alley. In my mind, good art games should be games first and foremost, but with interesting flavor added to tell a story or evoke an emotion or what have you to make them an art game. In this case the platforming physics felt very stiff, movement seemed slow, and there wasn't much of a gaming experience to speak of which was made worse by the level with the rain cloud and fire where it seemed like the game was stalling just to drag itself out longer. Maybe a game that's more about telling a story than gameplay mechanics would be better suited for a top-down RPG type format than a platformer; IDK. It's not the game for me, but there are people out there who enjoy art games purely for the art and story, and this might resonate better with them.

[3Pants]

Sort of addictive, but I can't seem to get through the "Leave none alive ... take everyone out" level no matter what I do, even if the area is cleared out and I keep killing spawns pretty quick when they do show up.

YellowB responds:

Allright! FIXED! :D