3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tattle & Tale]

It looks like a lot of effort went into it with great graphics, good sound, some mechanics that are out of the ordinary, and stuff like intro scenes that go beyond what you would expect from a jam game. But the guy moves so slowly that's it's agonizing; using the spin attack so he "walks" faster helps a little bit but not enough. I tried Chrome and Firefox, and on both it's too slow to be any fun.

[Adventuring Gentleman]

I don't think I've played long enough to really leave a proper review (normally I like to finish the game first), but I have one burning question for you:

What determines whether your character sticks his landing on a higher platform or falls through to a lower platform?

That would greatly affect how I play the game, and the answer wasn't obvious when I was playing.

epictailgames responds:

Normally you should stick on platform that You landed. You could fall from platform by pressing down. If it is not the case it could be bug or framerate isues

[House of Tards]

OMG, I'm so glad this game happened! I was actually thinking that a game called "Master Debaters" would be perfect at this point in the elections featuring Hillary and the Don in a contest of masturbating, with the game description saying "More informational than the actual presidential debates..." would be perfect right now.

4/5 stars because I reserve 5/5 for games that rival commercial stuff with like a year of blood sweat and tears poured into it, but rest assured that I enjoyed this one!

[Sanguine 2]

Needs an opening screen saying "Not for pussies who whine about controls instead of gittin' gud".

After that weird bug that kinda jacked up my first save file I came back and started over again, and it was definitely worth it. Platforming was a challenge, and a legitimate challenge IMO. There were also enough parts where stopping to think and come up with a good strategy was key, and an ever increasing amount of secrets to find as the game progressed, that it made the game a well rounded package and not simply a pure action platformer. I'd put this game up there with the likes of Phoenotopia and am really disappointed that people even at Newgrounds are rating it low just because it feels floaty. (Are we starting to turn into the babies at "Klickers/idles Only, Not Games" who expect games to practically beat themselves for them?) I guess if you ever decide to try to make a game that caters to everyone then the lesson is that you need option toggles for "turn off horizontal momentum", "make chain twice as long", "make chain deploy instantly", "give player a bazooka", and "make game beat itself while player is off at school". Maybe that'll make you a rich and happy programmer instead of, well, whatever that was.

[Comics + Games = ?]

A game can be appealing for various reasons, like if it has a new game mechanic or is challenging or tells an engaging story. This game's main appeal is the storytelling (I wouldn't call it a new game mechanic since the underlying platforming is fairly standard), so if you'd like to continue developing games along this concept my biggest recommendation would be to focus on developing as epic and engaging of a story as possible. People are loving the interactivity with the character's ability to change the storyline, so that should also be included. One natural extension of those two put together would be to have the story behind the game initially be somewhat mysterious and obfuscated but gradually revealed as puzzles are solved, although I'm sure there are many other good approaches you could take.

Aside from the storytelling, the other basic aspects of making an enjoyable platformer would still apply - making sure that the pace of the game is appropriate (in this case make the story unfold at an appropriate pace given the average person's playthrough speed, and if there's any backtracking involved then don't let it get too tedious), that all the physics and collision detection is sound (another reviewer already commented on being able to climb walls), and that the art and music/sound is as nice as you can manage. If you do feel ambitious enough to make the gameplay itself challenging or add crazy new mechanics like a ricocheting clone teleportation mechanism or smth then go for it, but it doesn't seem like that sort of stuff would be necessary if you've got a great story to tell.

Of course if you're doing one game a week for a while, then a big extension of this idea might have to be put on hold or take the back burner as a side project for the time being.

[Sins Of Daisy Episode 1]

It's almost impossible for me to rate a detective game like this after this first episode. A good detective game (at least in my mind) should challenge a player to pay attention to details and draw appropriate conclusions based on everything they see. Since there isn't really any sort of wrap-up in this episode, I'll have to wait until the others to decide if it meets that criteria and how good of a detective game this is. But it did accomplish one mission: it made me interested enough in the series that I'll play episode 2 when it does come out.

[Tori Energy Factory]

If this game is played in a web browser with a mouse: if you click inside the flash player viewport and drag up or down beyond the edge of the browser's window, then the browser will scroll the page up or down which severely interferes with the game. (At least with Chrome, I haven't tested other browsers.) One workaround for that is to have the browser in fullscreen mode while you play so you can't click-and-drag outside the browser's window, but that doesn't seem like an ideal way to handle things from a programmer's point of view.

GriseGames responds:

Hello! I have additioned the fullscreen mode in pause menu and main menu in this new version. Thanks for your feedback!

[about-face]

Almost gets five stars because it takes a fairly simple concept of world switching on jumping (not sure if it's totally new or just something that hasn't been done notably well before) and makes some ball-bustingly difficult levels with it from both a logic and a pure platforming skill standpoing. This is just one of many reasons why Newgrounds > some other site that's overrun with idle games that literally beat themselves with no skill from the player.

Would've been five stars if it weren't for that troll of an ending when you get deep enough into the secret area on the replay.

[GridWorld]

I generally like programming games like this, and it reminds me a lot of lightbot which is a good thing. I agree with other comments on minor things that could be improved: either give a clearer explanation about how to use the keys instead of mouse to enter commands (especially about the fact that you have to press space to select a track before any keys work, even if there's only one track), or make it so the first track is automatically selected to receive keyboard commands. I'm also not a fan of the kids cheering sound at the end of the levels.

More importantly, this seems like a nice game engine, but it really needs more difficult levels. Maybe looking back at other games like lightbot could help spark ideas on how to make more challenging levels. Or if you changed the mechanics slightly so that bulldozers can push other bulldozers around instead of having the level stop if they collide, maybe that could allow you to design more challenging levels where people need to use that mechanic.