3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[My First Game]

Awesome visual effects and audio. I thought from the music that this must be a meme phrase or something, but Google said no.

A friend of mine thought they might've liked to have R reset instead of having to grab the mouse and do some clicking around. Totes not an issue for me though 'cuz I got double the highest medal score on each game my first try. With a broken keyboard. And my eyes closed. [And it's still April 1 in my time zone tbh.]

HealliesGames responds:

Woah! So pro!
Added the 'R' button, thanks for the suggestion and for playing, 3p0ch!

[Hell Freezes Over]

Not bad for a game jam. A couple of things I noticed are that it seemed like it was taking an awfully long time to nom the elves even if I transformed while I was right on top of them. Seems you need to be already transformed while moving toward them to nom? And when I clicked outside the game area to scroll down and read the comments I had died just before the game lost focus and couldn't respawn after refocusing. (Although now it's not reproducing that bug.)

konozabulldoza responds:

Thanks for the feedback, I will look into that bug

[Cloud Ball]

This is far more addictive than any game this simple has any right to be. At least it got brutal enough to make me ragequit after 25 points so I did manage to eventually stop.

Foamgoswamp responds:

Thank you, appreciate the feedback!

[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!

[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!