3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[B L I N D]

I didn't really find it very much fun, but hopefully I can articulate why in a way that offers some potentially useful perspective.

As the player, I felt like I was thrown into the game with almost no visibility and not a lot of choice other than to hug a wall and see where it leads. On my first play I wandered around for a while, finding some money bags but no gun or ammo, and wondering where all the bad guys are for me to shoot until the thing eventually ate me.

On my second play I found some ammo and started to figure out that the messages about the monster being able to sense / hear / see me could be used to tell how far away it is and kind of triangulate its position a little (though not very effectively). But using that as an indicator of when and which way to run to keep my distance was a fruitless endeavor, and after a few more playthroughs I have yet to find a gun to be able to try to fight back.

After a few more, I see that the map is the same on each playthrough. So I guess I could systematically walk around mapping the place out until I get eaten, and do that enough times to map out the entire area and come up with a strategy. But I'm not going to do that; the game so far just doesn't look fun and interesting enough to warrant spending that much time walking around with near zero visibility to construct the game's map.

Bottom line I guess is that this initially came across as a game where I was just helpless, and later came across as a game where I would have to do a lot of trudging through in order to make progress, and neither of those seemed fun enough to keep playing.

katalv responds:

Thanks for a huge review!
Looks like I was looking at this game at a different angle, because I created this map and ofcourse I remember it.
In order to have more light you need to pickup lanterns, but in part 2 I'll better make something like flashlight to have a direct light
About sense/hear/see the same situation, players don't have any hints about this text, but I do, that's why game was easy to me hah, next time I should think more about how players will see this game, thanks again!
Well, by the way:
Sence - monster is 5000 or more px away from you
Hear - less then 5000 px
See - less then 1000 px and directly see you without any obstacle's on it's way

[ThePowerOfWhat]

This is a really nice little game, at least from what I've seen so far. I'm stuck at the same place as Spastard; not entirely sure if I've seen everything, but it seems like I might not have.

joqlepecheur responds:

There is one more ;)
contrary to previous challenges it is about powers you already have.
SPOILER : death is the negation of life

[A Hat on Time]

I agree with ultimatum about jumping being sticky. I got the feeling that jumps were delayed a little bit -- at first I would hit jump as I was nearing the end of a platform and I would just walk off and die before the jump happened, so eventually I sort of trained myself to hit jump earlier than I thought I needed to. But it definitely felt "off" the whole time. But aside from that, the game was pretty cool.

platformalist responds:

Hi 3p0ch! Thanks for playing, I really appreciate it! Yeah, a few people have mentioned the controls being a bit sticky - it might help in future games if I can nail the one-frame of leniency when it comes to tricky jumps - still allowing the player to jump for just a moment after walking off the edge. I’ll remember that for my next platformer! Thanks again for playing, and for the feedback!

[Jelly Blocks]

Nice idea, but two comments.
1) It's tough for me to tell the difference between the very purple-ly colors, and I don't really consider myself color blind.
2) Seems like triplets only disappear while the falling block is flashing, and I would more than occasionally drop blocks that stopped flashing before it seemed like enough time had elapsed to make a legit triplet disappear.
Also plz to add roxor muzak, kthx.

CreativeCogGames responds:

I've re-enabled music and sound in the HTML5 build and added watermarks to blocks so they're easier to tell apart.

[Paradise Inc]

As I was starting to write this comment, I noticed on the side panel that you were the one who made Extraction Chapter 0. And I'm going to say essentially the same thing now that I said in that review: in games like this, it's all about creating an immersive world and story. But that's hard to do, especially in the time frame of a game jam.

In this particular case, I have to agree with the reviews saying that there's not much beyond a sort of stock dystopia theme. The main character believes the facade of the evil corporation and goes along with them until he gets betrayed and finds out that they're evil, and then by the sheer power of his will he breaks free from their evil clutches. We don't see an explanation for why the corporation is evil, or whether it's rooted in characteristics that we ourselves should introspectively see if we're harboring. The hero doesn't undergo much development, or have to rally people to the cause of fighting evil despite risking anything and everything they might have, instead of accepting the shallow existence that the evil corporation offers them simply because they think that's the best they can make of their situation. He doesn't have to confront potential turncoats within the evil corporation and try to get them to see that what they're doing is wrong and needs to be stopped, and have to talk them out of believing the lies the corporation has been feeding them for most of their lives to justify their cruel actions. There are many ways a story like this could go if you just had more time than a gamejam to develop a compelling story.

While I have to side with the naysayers on this one and offer my two cents on what I'd like to see in a game like this, I wouldn't go so far as those who think that a game that's just walking through a set path to reveal a story shouldn't even be considered a game. Although I do prefer art games that have good gameplay too -- Perdition being a perfect example. But I digress.

Criobite responds:

I definitely agree with your points about this game! I'd love to make a more rich and interactive story next time I do a game like this. Getting some interesting ideas right now, so maybe I'll end up making it sooner rather than later. :D

[Demolo]

It's a nice interface as a web game and I imagine it could be even cooler on Oculus. It's a fun experience for a little bit simply because of that, but when it comes to actual gameplay it didn't seem like there was really any strategy or puzzle solving involved. It might be nice for a very casual gamer but it wasn't my cup of tea. I got bored after playing a couple of levels with 5 colors and not seeing a real challenge, but if it does get challenging after a while then I'd say to give an option to start off with tougher settings.

jhocking responds:

The level of difficulty is definitely one thing I'm looking to tune from feedback. Right now it starts out really easy on purpose and then ramps up hard, but I'm not sure if it's TOO easy at the beginning. As you note, I'm shooting for a pretty casual gamer (since the Oculus Go is pretty casual VR).

[Do you know De Wae]

I checked out the high score screen and all I've got to say is...
Knuckles, mah bruddah, YOU KNOW DE WEY!!1!

jeremy7986 responds:

"We want to see De Wae in your buttocks."

[Atomic Alice]

Oh shit don't tell me mah fan levels are lost 4evar? My compy that I made them on and the email account I sent them from both died ;_;

They would totes kik everonez asses :3

MakeGamesHappen responds:

Yeah. I am sorry. We halted developement on the game because Flash was kind of a bad choice, but was what I was most proficient at the time. I am learning WebGL and OpenGL. With the intention of re-making the game with an awesome rendering engine.

The goal is to be able to have all the original level design data compatible with the new engine.
So if that happens I'll try and dig up your old levels.

-John Mark

[Musk Mining Industries]

Dude no way are asteroid mining spaceships that hard to control IRL!

Sometimes a hard game seems like it's hard because of cheap moves on the programmer's part that just makes people want to ragequit. Somehow, this game ended up being as hard as staying awake through an English class but still just made me want to keep playing instead of ragequitting and eventually start to git gud. But then I ran into that frickin monstrostiy of an alien anvil on a pendulum that just bent me over whenever I tried to pick up the miners on the third level, and I've had enough of that tormentor for now. I might come back sometime later to see if I can figure out how to deal with that abomination tho.

colburt187 responds:

What happened was they designed the ships on earth then when they got to planet Musk the gravity was nothing like they thought it was, but they had blown the budget.

[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...