3p0ch's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[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!

[Sideomorph]

This seems like a very good game so far. Definitely not too easy, especially on the diamond runs. I haven't even gotten to the point where I'm picking up gears (without it trapping me) yet. I haven't run into the problems other people have talked about with lag, even though I'm using Chrome.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do at the first boss. Only after looking at the walkthrough did I realize the point was to find ways to stomp its body/tail.

The only thing I don't really like is the mechanic where if you go from one face to another by ascending, and then cross into another face by moving sideways, then gravity rotates. It seems like it ought not to do that, so it's giving me fits. But maybe my brain will adapt to that instead of what I think should really happen (I realize the definition of what should "really" happen if you're a two dimensional man walking around on the surface of a cube and pushing it around in a three dimensional world with gravity is somewhat subjective).

Wackiedk responds:

Good to hear you enjoy it - I hope you will finish it.

Yea the bosses can be kind of tricky - they are probably "too hardcoded" so it can be quite hard if you don't do the exact thing that is expected.

Heh, maybe you're right - but I thought this way would make the most "sense". :)

[Chessworks]

I think it's a very good game for anyone who has played some chess. But the number of such people may be dwindling. I might suggest making the early levels be clearly marked as tutorials (maybe with a conspicuous "TUTORIAL" showing up in the right hand info pane while you're playing those levels) until you get to level 32, with an option to skip them and go straight to the harder levels, just so people don't see many easy levels and think that the whole game is going to be easy.

It might also be nice to allow the game to run as it currently does for casual players, but also make a more difficult mode where the player has to position all of the pieces and then click a button saying "declare checkmate" when they think they've got a solution instead of having the computer automatically check it after each repositioning of the pieces. If the solution is not correct, then show a move that gets the black king out of check.

Background music and possibly sounds would also be good.

Also, I think I spotted a bug on level 60. It counted it as a solution when I had the knight at K4, bishop at QR4, and rook at Q7. But I think the black pawn should be able to advance one space to block the bishop's check.

Antworks responds:

Hello, thanks for the feedback!

Having a How To Play with chess rules is in our to-do list. However, we believe it would be kind of troublesome to have players skip all the way to harder levels, since we do introduce some new stuff even for chess players. Also, we had some chess players try out the game and many got confused at the first levels, so maybe having pretty easy ones in the begining is good for making the player more confident.

About the "Declare checkmate" button. It is something we are considering. Did you find that you kind of accidentally solved the level?
Animations are also on the work!

Background music and sounds are also on our list! Sounds like we have similar views hahaa

Lastly, the bug. Yes, it is a bug, thanks for reporting! We will fix it asap.

Thanks!

[Pico's Exile]

First time I played a level, it worked OK.
Second time, my guy went right but couldn't face left and couldn't hit anyone to his left with the beet.
Third time, his gun was floating in midair away from his body. It would fire OK (from the position of the gun, not from Pico) but no enemies fell to fight.

So it looks nice but wasn't really playable for me.

HappyWhaleStudios responds:

That's really weird, I know there are some issues with the game, I had to rush development to finish today, tomorrow I'm going to do a massive debugging session, I hope you can take the time to try and play it again. Thanks for the feedback, a lot of that stuff I haven't heard before so I'll try to fix those things too

[Rock Simulator 2015]

I've got to admit, it made me chuckle.
Day 7 had two moons?
By that point, light/dark was getting out of synch with sun/moon anyway.
I wasn't able to keep patience long enough to see if there were any other easter eggs.

AerionsRealm responds:

Thanks for pointing that out. It'll be fixed in Rock Sim 2016. ;)

[Only One Chance]

lol at the secret ending (even if it's not really a secret when you talk about it in the game description). worth a second playthrough if you haven't gotten it already.

johnfn responds:

haha yeah fair point but if i don't mention it then people are like "zomg i didn't get the girl THERE'S A BUG"