3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[ABC]

This is a really good concept that seems like it hasn't really explored a lot of its potential. There's some degree of puzzling based on the mechanic of switching from top-down to side-scrolling and the accompanying change in gravity (or lack thereof), but it's sort of basic in this form. I'm not faulting you for that because I know this was done for a gamejam with a very limited amount of time so there's not really a chance to sit down and design super intricate puzzles. But if the purpose of a gamejam is to get you to explore an idea quickly and potentially find something that's worth fleshing out with more time, then you've mosdef accomplished that mission.

[The cave]

On the third level I walked through the walls going horizontally, I think I was in mid-air from jumping but I'm not sure if that was a critical part of making the bug happen. The guy fell down through the bottom of the screen and didn't die or anything, just fell off the screen, and the game at that point was pretty much locked for all practical purposes (even though the guns were still firing) and I had to reload the page. Happened twice.

If it's a fixable bug then by all means fix; if it would be very difficult to find and/or correct then maybe just make the guy die if he falls off the bottom of the screen so at least the game doesn't get stuck.

LucasRebelato responds:

I will fix those bugs, sorry for that. And thanks for review

[Robot Fire Dragon]

OMG I got bored to death putting the fuking dragon together before the game even got started. Games are supposed to be fun; if I wanted something that was dull and monotonous I would go do homework instead of slaking off and playing online games.

[Sliding Bridge]

I thoroughly enjoyed this; it goes beyond the usual sort of puzzler because you really have to think outside the box for many of the levels in ways that I don't want to spoilerize here for anyone who's still working on solving them. When I was playing it, there were many times when I thought "is this cheating?" but I think they really were meant to be solved that way.

Minor gripes are the long loading time (much longer than I would have expected since it doesn't seem like the assets would have big filesizes) and that the music during gameplay started to feel repetitive fairly quickly, and I could've sworn I heard the title/level select music elsewhere before.

Dat ending tho... wut?

[CLONESPACE]

This was a really fun game from start to finish that had me glued to the computer until the end and making the effort to ace every level. I was on the fence between giving it a 4/5 and a 5/5 until I read the other players' comments. 5/5 for making a puzzle platformer that's challenging enough to get downrated by weak players for being too hard. Git gud r git rekt.

Chaz responds:

Hey thanks man!

[In Ruin V2]

Overall it seems fine for a beginning programmer, but there's lots of room for improvement. It could definitely use a preloader screen like the game description mentions. The gameplay is very basic, just top-down shooter with a small empty field where you kite the zombies around. There's no reload button so you have to intentionally empty your gun to reload. The story doesn't seem to be interactive (I always prefer to have the story be revealed in the gameplay rather than with text, and having the text presented as sort of a side note on the main menu detracts even more than if it were at least presented between levels or smth) or compelling like the game description says, although I haven't gotten that far into it. The graphics are pretty basic. Sound worked on Chrome and Firefox but not IE.

That said, if you're new to game making, then making a functional top-down shooter is a big first step and would let you add on more stuff to the platform you have, depending on how flexibly it was programmed. Most of the top-downs I've seen that I liked involved running around in a maze and solving puzzles as well as killing enemies (along the lines of Outpost:Haven). Which might be easy to do with the existing code or might not depending on whether you're locked into having the entire playfield be on the one stationary screen. Or if you want it to be more battle-centric than exploration and puzzling, then I would suggest making enemies with different behaviors that call for different approaches to kill (maybe you've done that and I just haven't gotten far enough into the game to see it) and giving the player different weapons with different mechanics throughout the game. But see if you have the same issues with no sound in IE because that's kinda a big bug if it's not just something screwy with my computer.

[Astral Crashers]

I'm only a few stages into it, but so far so great.

There are a few things I personally would like to tweak on the controls. First, I would want to have the default movement for soldiers to move in attack mode (stopping and attacking if any enemies get in range) instead of moving to the destination first and then attacking (make that be the mode that requires pushing a button). Second, since I have a mouse with a wheel, clicking the center button to pan the map will sometimes make the screen scroll up or down. I would rather pan the map with the keyboard, but it's tough to hold the mouse with one hand and use the arrow keys to pan and use the number keys to select squads and use the A button to move in attack mode all at the same time. If it were possible, I would have WASD pan and have a button other than A switch between attack mode and moving mode.

Also, in case anyone complains about lag or choppy play: switching browsers from Chrome to Firefox made a HUGE improvement for me. Even though the FPS on the display was a little lower in Firefox than Chrome, I could actually tell (or feel) that the game was running much more smoothly in Firefox. (I know, I should have quit using Chrome for gaming ever since they stopped supporting Unity, I'm just a slow learner.)

moligames responds:

Thanks! I have noticed the control problems you mentioned.
I will try your suggestion in the new game, it will combine RTS and other genres of games.

[Bullet Phaze]

Can anyone confirm this? My experience was:
Chrome -- lags like a *female dog*
Internet Explorer -- not as much lag but the controls are just unresponsive enough so you can't really control it well enough to play
Firefox -- runs fine

If it's that way with other people too, put it in the Author Comments and maybe PM the people who posted complaining about the lag.

Oh yea, I guess I should talk about the game itself, too. Uuuuhh... the guy moves a little slow for my liking, but other than that it's pretty good.

[Submachine 10: the Exit]

The artwork is definitely good, but I don't think I could call it outstanding. The music is background ambiance, again good but hard to call exceptional. The puzzles don't rely too much on pixel hunting which is a plus, but they mostly are the usual sort of point-and-click find objects and figure out where they go, with some parts requiring more in the way of puzzle solving to get through. The storyline is a mish-mash of stuff having to do with dimension jumping in a universe whose mechanics are only semi-explained, with the explanations coming mostly from notes of text. Considering each of those things individually, I'd give the game a rating of "reasonably good".

And yet I just played through all 10 episodes including this one, and all I can say is holy shit this series in general and this finale in particular is simply amazing.

You've somehow managed to create something that's far greater than the sum of its parts, and I'm just as baffled at how you did it as I am about the workings of the submachine in the story.

[Lectrovolt]

It looks like a very good beta right now. The only sizeable bug I ran into at one point was after I used C to charge-jump, the guy kept charge-jumping after that even when I used a regular jump. It was after I had been trying to charge jump a few times but the charge-jumps weren't working because I was right next to a wall, so I was sorta mashing C for a little bit. And it went back to normal after I used the X charge. A minor bug is that charge-jumps didn't work when I was up against a wall.

Aside from those little things, the controls seemed very responsive and the puzzling was fair. Puzzle difficulty could probably be expanded upon in future levels even without adding new mechanics like enemies or timers on the switches or portals or anything, but if you'd like to add any of those it'd be rad. This is just a personal preference, but I'd recommend making a Metroidvania type giant world rather than individual discrete levels in the full game (which you might have been planning all along anyway); that somehow makes games stand out as more memorable to me. Also I might recommend going easy on using / abusing boundaries of the rooms' camera views to add difficulty (some of the buttons were deliberately obscured from view because of where the boundaries lie or came immediately after a room transition); I felt like it was fair game to do, but I imagine some players would consider it to be a cheap way of making the game difficult. Other minor things would be to make a restart key and save/respawn points in case the guy gets stuck somehow like Zylofan mentioned, and WASD-JK controls for people who use their hands backwards from us (or customizable keys for those crazy European AZERTY keyboards).

Anyway, 4/5 only because it's a short beta and I'll probably have a 5/5 for ya when the full game's posted.

VFHolloway responds:

3p0ch, thanks for the help, I'm really happy you left such a constructive review! Some of the contact points are a little out of line (Honestly, I'm more of a game designer than a coder, I love figuring out how to create the best experience for a gamer than coding the game itself) and the bug report is appreciated. I've written a review for DamonandSky's review above, and it really goes into what I'm aiming for.

Thanks for the review, and please follow me! I love how in-depth you've gone with helping me improve the game; I am a firm believer in games being something someone should enjoy, not an ego-fest by someone who wants to be seen, and I think the game should be ALL about what the gamer enjoys. I would love if you followed me and gave such a fantastic review to the next attempt, with a new level map :) thanks for all the help!