3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Y.A.A.G. 0: The Demo]

It's difficult to give a review on such a short demo. There are a few important things that a great game in this genre should accomplish. First, the gameplay should be a fun challenge -- either solving puzzles to progress like in a point-and-click game, or if you introduce combat mechanics then finding creative ways to defeat opponents (other than just picking attack until you're low on health and then healing). Second, the game should create an immersive fantasy world and storyline (preferably branching and non-linear) for the player to experience, as if its main job were to tell a story and the player is a participant. Sort of along the lines of Undertale or Ouroboros or Hyptosis games or something.

With a demo this short, it would be impossible to tell an engaging story. And I have to agree with timeattack that getting washed and dressed and eating breakfast seems more like a chore than a fun gameplaying experience; more like a point-and-click game where you just click randomly on things and eventually make the story progress just by trying everything instead of by figuring things out. So I can't honestly say I think it's heading toward being a great game, but at least I hope I explained why I'm thinking that way and what big-picture things you could focus on to try to improve.

Marcgal responds:

Thank you for you opinion & review.

Though, I must say I'm surprised people find it non-obvious how to get dressed and washed and have to resort to click randomly on everything. I thought I've put enough hints in the dialogue? I thought if my mom with little prior experience with games could, for most part, figure it out on her own, then guys on NG should have little problem with this?

I still wonder where exactly was my mistake here...

[Gladiator Combat Arena]

Graphics are nice, but the gameplay is just random numbers with no skill or strategy or anything? No thanks.

RHMGames responds:

Thanks for comment, Yes, that's the style of the game. :)

[CELLAR]

I'm not entirely sure what to think about this game and how it would appeal to a player. It's sort of like a sokoban but with a goal of just reaching an exit, which is not a challenge at all in any of the levels so not fun purely as a puzzler. It also sort of has aspects of an art game, but what's the artistic message? There's a guy trapped in a puzzle who thinks he can get out but he really can't... maybe if it were extended to IRL in some transcendental way of making people reflect on how their own lives are a futile attempt to achieve an impossible goal, or can be perceived as such unless they realize what's really important in life, or some other such philosophical drivel that makes people feel like they have a deeper understanding of things then I could appreciate it as an art game. Overall, I agree with Ewelupp, Thegamingtrickster, and Mekka23 -- it could benefit from harder puzzles (even if you're going for more of an art game), a more gripping storyline and message (even if you turn it into a more challenging puzzler), and the best graphics / music / sounds you can muster.

[Be a Cube]

That took some getting used to before I could kill the opponent. All the special effects when I fire made it difficult to see much at all, and very difficult to see where the enemy was going and whether or not I was hitting him. That makes it tough, and I suspect most players would want to be able to see what they're doing better and have the challenge come from the opponent being powerful instead of having their own shots obscure their view.

When I was playing, most of the battle took place outside of the buildings area and in an open field. So it ended up being just a matter of holding left or right to strafe around and avoid being hit, while I tried to keep the enemy in the crosshairs and fire short bursts so my shots didn't obscure my view. Then I tried playing again and staying within the buildings area to see if that made it more fun, but it started to seem unfair that the enemy could sneak up and tag me while I was having trouble finding him at all among the buildings, and it got practically impossible to follow the enemy when he started jumping around. Then I got hit and thrown in the air and landed on a rooftop with a small fence-like thing at the ledge with no way of getting off.

This is a very nice engine (idk how much of the engine you made yourself or how much came with the programming package you were using), but there's still a lot of work ahead to turn it into a really fun game.

Java-N responds:

Thank you very much for sharing your experience after playing the game!

I totally agree, it still needs to be a fun game.

By the way, the challenge was to create by myself the system of movement of the main character, and the camera, as well as the artificial intelligence of the enemy (which lacks much to improve) the only thing not done by me were the buildings , The soil, the sun, and the particle system that i downloaded from the asset store.

I will continue to work on it to make it a really fun game :D

[TRY. DIE. REPEAT.]

Reminds me of SeppuKuties :3
Mosdef check it out if you haven't already, for inspiration and to see what's been done with the concept. Fortunately in this game the dead bodies aren't as slippery.

rodolfodth responds:

yeah, I found SeppuKuties after I made this one xD (this version was made in 2015), and now I'm working on the full version which will me a "plot driven semi-open world 2d platformer" xDD
<3 thanks for your feedback!

[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!