Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Arcane Board]

It is actually a very unique game with a cool mechanic.
Like Tetris meets Slay the Spire.

I played for a while (almost reached the boss), didn't really discover any “strategy”, and mostly went by luck and trying to match non-empty tiles. That sometimes led to blocking myself from completing a line with a lot of items because I left 1 or 2-tile gap, otherwise surrounded.
But that's part of the game, and I imagine I would've developed a strategy eventually.

Mainly I'd say the text could be larger. All the on-hover texts seemed to be quite small, hard to read, and tucked in the corner, so I naturally paid less attention to what the text said but it is quite important. It's small even when I open the tile summary on the map.
It looks okay proportionally in your GIF in the comments, so I don't know. Does it scale appropriately with resolution?

Otherwise, it's a pretty cool game.

Edit: My resolution is 2560×1140. So big screen, too. In the game window, the text is too small to read comfortably, with fullscreen it's better but still I'd say small (especially compared to the coin numbers or the "End turn" / "Skip" button).

FancyReckless responds:

Thanks for the feedback!
Some friends complained that the on hover is too big on big screens, so I just made it constant pixel size. I guess it's too small now on other ones. Can you tell your screen resolution? I will try to adjust it

[Julie's Basics and Early Development and Learning]

There's really not much to do at the moment.
If there's something hidden somewhere, I didn't find it. I imagine that will be the case of most of your players now, because I spent a while looking but everything looks so uniform with no clue as to where to go.

So my only comment right now is really to think about texture tiling for your walls, so you can stretch them as you wish without having looong blurry bricks on the wide side, and thin squished bricks on the narrower side. The tiled picture in “skybox” I can excuse as a creative choice and doesn't bother me.
Looking at the gameplay of “Baldi’s Basics”, they actually seem to tile the wall texture correctly. The bricks look crisp, the only problem there seems to be showing partial bricks at the top and the bottom.

Movement and jumping work all right.

And that’s all I could really find in the game right now.

Good luck with ongoing development!

JackELad responds:

Merci, so this is like just a test to see if the game can run ok on Newgrounds, It's been having a few problems while exporting.

but yes this is just a really really early development of the game where everything is just you know start of everything, I actually got tons of things done and fixed some stuff that newgrounds for some reason couldn't support, that update will come soon.

As far as like some gameplay stuff it is supposed to be like you found your old computer from 1999 and in it you find baldi's basics floopy disk for it but unfortunaly the game isn't functionally working correctly.

As you play the game in a very glitchy state you collect notebooks as per usual but there will be secret codes you can find within them, with the codes you've collected (being there 2 in each notebook so 14 codes) you will be able to restore the game to it's normal state.

Unfortunaly I can't share too much because I have a really cool concept I would love to add later as a twist.

[Total Wingage (original)]

I believe the spawn rate of falling items has to be bugged.

Within the first second of the game, *everything* falls down (you usually lose a life), and then there's no gameplay anymore, with maybe a full chicken falling every five seconds or so. Past 120 seconds, for the entire duration of writing this review, nothing at all fell, so I don't have anything to do anymore besides watching the best time increase.

Other than that, and conceptually, it doesn't seem like a bad game at all, and I assume it's just a bug and the player is meant to be constantly dodging and collecting falling items.

It also took some head-scratching to figure out what “hs” and “bt” mean (high score and best time…?). It would be nice to have those more descriptive, because when you start, it feels a bit placeholder-ish and low quality.

Since the background is a very curved hill, have you considered moving along the curve left and right as well?

[Meteor Mayhem]

The concept is quite good and has potential, but it needs a bit more polish.

I like the idea of dodging meteors, and gradually speeding up the spawn rate.
The indicator of a meteor about to hit is good, it gives you a clear indication of when exactly it's going to hit. And there are three separate game modes! All in all, cool.

The issue is in keeping the player occupied. At the start when things are slow, I can easily stand still and just observe the dots. The beginning of the game is the most important to get people excited, and the player should have something active to do.
One way to encourage movement could be having things to collect. You could have a score that increases with time survived AND with noticeable boosts you get from collecting e.g. something like fruit or fish. That would keep players moving all the time even when it's not yet as dangerous.
Another option is to gently tinker with the randomness, for example, ensure that if three meteors spawn away from the player, the next one is guaranteed to spawn close.

One thing I was missing is some “impact” from the meteors. Now the fully red circle is just gone, it would be nice if it triggered a sound effect and there was some sort of “cracked ground” after-effect lingering for a few seconds.
When you die, it also instantly goes to the “game over” screen and you don't really get time to process what happened.

Regarding game modes, they were a pleasant surprise, but a bit hidden in a submenu. It's also quite awkward to have to always select something there, go back, and press play.
Why not just have all modes on the screen with the “Play” button underneath each of them? That way, you make them more visible and avoid having to needlessly navigate menus.

I thought I understood the survival mode, but maybe not. In my head, I simply have to outlast the other copies of myself to “win” – but something I think I lost when the meteor hit my clone, and I lost when it hit the last copy, not me. I hope you're not meant to keep them alive, because you can affect neither where the meteors hit, nor how the cats move.
Or perhaps there's the same screen for “win” and “game over” which I'd say would be a mistake.
There's also a bug in the survival mode that the number of cats doesn't reset when starting a new game.

There's certainly space for improvement, but overall good job!

CheddarChees responds:

Hm, I'll try to fix all those glitches thanks for making my job easier and thanks for leaving this review!

But I'll also keep in the bugs that I like because this was a passion project

[Fish Tank sim (BOIDZ)]

I didn't see the settings at first (they're hidden at the edge of the screen with no indication something is there), so I spent a while thinking if this was actually flocking AI or just the same starting direction and some randomness.

Because at the start fish spawned everywhere and swam somewhat in random circles and it didn't look great. After fiddling with the settings and creating larger groups, the simulation started behaving more naturally.

It behaves well with a large group of fish meeting small groups, but when 2+ equally-sized groups meet, it's pretty chaotic. The very mobile foreground doesn't help in making it feel organized and fluent.

Comparing it with an example of the same thing here:
https://ddavidhahn.github.io/cs184_projfinal/
there, groups tend to join more naturally.

Maybe what causes some problems in your iteration is the steering. A fish starts the process of joining the flock, but at that point, they're already behind it, so it has to make a full 180° circle to catch up, and that doesn't look great. Once I saw three or four fish just make a circle in random directions to catch up with each other.

But in any case, it's a fun little experiment.

[MagixVox]

I wish you luck with the project. At the moment though, there's not much there.
There's of course the environment which looks very close to Minecraft, so kudos for that. You can mine things and move around, so the basic feel is there, too.

The procedural world generation needs a lot of work. You should ideally prefill the seed field with something (so people don't have to invent a random sequence of letters) and ensure any seed generates something sensible, *varied* and gives you a good starting location. Perhaps I was just unlucky.

My first experience with the game involved falling in the middle of the ocean, which had mostly uniform terrain. Not very fun to spawn in a fully blue screen.
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/bc91f567aac8111f3849124b91e24492

My second try had me spawn on top of a tree – and there were hills with many trees in every direction; not much variety. I was eventually able to reach a beach, so at least there are biomes.

Water physics is funny. You can swim in water, but if you're not too far from the shore, you're walking on water, and can mine water. Water doesn't flow in any way, so you can create an empty block in the middle of a body of water. If you dig through the seabed, you can stay dry and mine water from underneath.
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/b37dfdb1bad7d394bc4c86082a332e4f

There's not much to mining, you can mine a lot of things, but that's about it, not much to do with it, no crafting or building yet.

Main Menu – entering Options and clicking Done crashes the game. Having a Quit button in a browser game is also pointless because all it does is crash the game too, but you're still looking at it in your browser window. You're not closing anything and if you'd like to, you'll just close the tab.

Of course, I'm pointing out things you may very well be aware of. The game is a good technical test, but there's not much reason to “play” it yet.

I am very curious about how a “survival horror” RPG would work in this Minecraft style.
I would be worried it would either not be scary enough in this style, or I'd be aimlessly wandering in a procedurally-generated world without a goal or reason to continue playing (i.e. if everything is random and I begin with access to everything, there's no reason to expect something unique or interesting further down the line).

So I hope you get to see it through and make the game you envision.

[Mech of the dead]

It's quite good, it's an enjoyable game. I especially liked how you can clearly notice the difference when you upgrade your exosuit; it's not just a cosmetic change or minor stat increase. Collecting a ton of XP and seeing the bar animate across several levels was also nice, at the level progression and introducing tougher enemies felt just right.

My main gripe was with entering and leaving the base. You run to the base, to enter you need to press 'V' and 'Enter garage' (meanwhile enemies pile up) and then leave – however, later in the game I almost always died when leaving because I reappeared in the middle of a crowd of enemies.
You should think about ways to make entering/leaving less frustrating (e.g. kill everything in a small radius around you when leaving, teleport to a completely different place, or limit how often you can enter + have safe zone around, or don't have the base at all and add an upgrade screen you can access anywhere).

I don't know why I need to press a separate button to pick items (when moving with WASD and shooting, pressing 'C' means you have to stop moving all the time to grab something).
Couldn't you pick items automatically? Or is there a benefit to *not* picking an item you encounter?

Inside the building, I encountered a couple of bugs. The exosuit was invisible (I only saw the frontal cannons), and enemies were getting pushed through walls as I shot then (which made it quite tedious to finish them off, as I had to run around to different rooms after a shot or two).

Around the screen edges, XP (and enemies sometimes) tended to accumulate out-of-bounds, taunting you but you couldn't pick the XP up as it was out of the range of the magnet.

Thinking about it, I wish there was at least fullscreen mode, because the screen displays so much information there's not enough space for the actual gameplay which feels small and not clear enough (everything in the actual game has a similar colour and blends with the environment, so the more colorful UI also takes away your attention).
It's said by UI designers players can mentally track like about 7 pieces of information at the same time until they start ignoring parts of what you display. Here with all the onscreen numbers – ammo count, material count, wave information, health, minimap, XP and level, collected XP numbers, damage numbers, kill streak… it feels quite crowded.

Bdjskd responds:

Thank you so much for this thorough feedback. And I agree with all the points you have presented, and I have already had most of them written down, but some I havent actually thought to much about.

Base + Zombie sorrounding:
It really is a huge annoyance to have a crowd of zombies around your base, and ready to attack you at once. The next update coming out in the middle of february will be having base build elements. It will be my fouc for the next month. You will be able to add walls, towers, traps, booby traps, explosives and much more.

Pickip up items:
Regarding the fact that you have to stop and pick up items, seems tedious, I totally agree with this point. I dont have any plans on what direction to go with this, that wont alter the players focus from combat to some complex mechanic. But I will look into adding a creative twist, so it fits with the game loop in a more enjoyable way.

Xp around the screen + invisible character:
These are just straight forward bugs that will be fixed with the next update.

Crowded screen:
I really hate how the whole screen is covered in ui, and not enough gameplay. I will be changing the ui to have a dynamic style. Where the ui that is reacted will be shown, where the ui that hasnt been active in 3 secounds, will move out / be hidden. This will put focus on the important stuff, while also giving the player a better overview.

---

Again, thank you for taking your time for this feedback. Means alot to me :)

[Level 9 Access]

This is seriously awesome, and a lot of fun! I have nothing but praise.
I kept thinking of various possible improvements, “I wonder if he thought of…” – and yep, you did, every time.

== Gameplay

The gameplay itself is great. A ton of variety, there are several ways to obtain a keycard and progress that are selected randomly. It's always very clearly presented so you're never struggling to figure out what to do to progress. The individual objectives vary greatly in terms from what's required from you, such as “kill enemy”, “destroy stationary objects” but also “platforming with disabled ladders and jump pads” or “rescuing hostages”.
It keeps you on your toes as to what the next crazy thing the objective is going to ask of you.

Around level 7, I started getting the hang of the game and thinking I may have seen it all and now only the level layout will change… and lo and behold, lava.
It seems it went quite fast (not sure if it just stops rising at some point), but I managed to complete the two penultimate levels in time by dropping to the top of the door and grazing the lava a couple of times, so the timer isn't overly strict, which is good.

I really hoped the finale would have something unique… and of course it did, and I loved it.

Masterful work with the game feel, too, all the little impacts, gentle screen shakes, colourful animated text, particle effects and so on.

At first, I struggled to time my shots right when I wanted to kill someone with a gun, and wondered if there was a way to recover health if I'm running low… but soon you'll learn to time your jumps right, and health ultimately isn't as important because the levels don't last as long.

Tape 6 often kept spawning interactable items or high-profile targets underneath the left trampoline, collecting them tended to slow down the pace of the level a bit (since you need to leave the jump pad, but not fall to the pit). So that was the one hiccup in my view.

I'm not sure if you can get the same keycard event twice in a row. I think I saw that (two high-profile targets), but perhaps I simply stood close enough when the next objective spawned and completed it without realizing it.
Either way, it'd be best if you couldn't get the same thing twice in a row, but if it's allowed by any chance, it didn't seem like a widespread issue that could become a big deal.

You even have Newgrounds medals with ingame popups, too!

== Controls

Kudos for using the new input system (or some other smart solution) for controls.
Whenever a developer picks 'Z' as an important key, I always struggle as a Central European with QWERTZ layout (Z and Y swapped), here it seems to be based on the physical key location.
AZERTY users will probably be happy, too – and you can even rebind if that wasn't the case.

But you're still displaying 'Z' key even though I'm technically pressing 'Y' in my keyboard layout.

The arrow key information in Key Binds settings seems needlessly long, and results in tiny font size barely fitting into the button.
Consider just going “Up / Down / Left / Right” or perhaps try icons with actual arrows.

The game doesn't seem to have gamepad support; you could consider that to add the proverbial cherry to the perfect cake.
(At least I think it doesn't, with my Xbox One controller. Movement axis yes, other buttons nope.)

== Sounds and music

They perfectly fit the game.

At this point, let's also appreciate you crediting everyone whose sounds and assets you used, even though in some cases it technically wasn't required.

== Graphics and UI

Let's not forget to mention this.
I love the style, and how consistent everything is. Important objects are clearly highlighted, and impending doom is well-telegraphed. In the Settings, even hovering over the animated menu buttons is fun.

There's rain, a gentle parallax effect on the backgrounds and environments but you can easily distinguish important objects from the backgrounds. The player character has a faint glow around to make this even easier.

When you die, the restart message flashes at you, prompting you to have another go right away.

There are quality-of-life features, like displaying your best time when you retry a level.

The fullscreen button overlaps the keycard count. The other side of the screen seems free if you'd like to avoid this.

If you pause while you're on the game-over screen, the menu appears behind the semi-transparent fader.

== Closing thoughts

Did I mention I quite like the game? I think I did.

It's an amazing game, you've done a terrific job and can certainly be proud.

P.S.: Do you know about Pixel Day next week?
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1541117
Since it's been published here and elsewhere before the event, it won't be eligible for the competition, but you can still get added visibility later with the “pixelday2025” tag.

BlueEagle421 responds:

Thanks a ton for your review :)
It was very nice to read it all. I will look into pixel day - sounds interesting.
I'm aware of some of the bugs you mentioned. Some of them are easy to fix, but others are quite complex. The small input button text in settings has something to do with how browsers label keys I think. It looks regular on the PC version.
I will do my best to fix the bugs ;)
Thanks again.
Cheers!

Edit: Thanks a lot for featuring the game!

[Pacific's Journey Legacy: Lost Level]

The opening sequence is visually gorgeous. The main character and her animation, the lava and sparks, and the layered parallax background.

It almost feels like it's a cinematic intro to the game… however, it isn't, really. It's an introductory platforming section which would be okay in itself, but you're also being targeted by sentries quite likely to knock you out of a jump into lava towards instant death, quite soon after starting the game.
You're not very mobile mid-air, and since you occupy a third of the playable height of the screen with lava underneath, it's impossible to effectively dodge anything. The lava sparks are also the same colour as the projectiles harming you which can get lost among them if there's a lot going on.

This section mainly seems to want to get you comfortable with the controls, and teach you about attacking and blocking. But to achieve that, I don't think you need *that* many sentries.

---

The environments in the boss arena are (visually) very plain in comparison, but at least you clearly see what's going on. It was wise to scale the character down.

The combat itself felt a bit weird. Your only way to attack is to slightly graze the boss – by moving closer but not too close to avoid getting hurt. Since the boss is a lot faster than you, it's difficult to time it right. Sometimes you get slammed against a wall and hit multiple times, and it's quite frustrating to have to start from the very beginning of the game, not even from the start of the boss arena.

On the other hand, kudos for designing this many boss phases. That was pretty cool.

The boss phase with the splitting in four with the parts gradually starting shooting projectiles was conceptually the best part, at least to me. But in my experience, it took *an eternity* to get through. The boss is out of reach so you're bouncing the flying tiles towards him, but more than half the time you won't do it right so the tile stops just before the boss. And when you manage to pull the attack off, it knocks off like 1/20 of the total health.
I was in a hurry the morning and genuinely wondered if there was a way to pause the game somehow, because I was already maybe fifteen minutes into the phase and if I died or had to leave sooner, I definitely wouldn't care enough to replay the game from the very beginning again.

This phase is very good, it just mostly could be more lenient with deflecting the tiles and definitely shouldn't have as much health. I had the most trouble with performance during this phase, the game ran quite slowly up until the end of the boss fight.

The final phase felt a bit unnecessary because it seemed like you should have won already.

---

After leaving the boss arena, I understood I should be running away, but didn't know what was chasing me and I stopped midway to consider if I was perhaps meant to investigate first. Soon I saw the rolling rocks and managed to escape with a split second to spare. If I died there (either from the wall of doom or the lava) and was sent to the very beginning of the game after successfully beating the boss, I would be quite annoyed.

---

Overall, I believe the demo is nice, has interesting visuals, and the intro and epilogue almost have a cinematic feel to them. But it definitely could use checkpoints (at least entering the cave and leaving, perhaps after the boss splits, too) and better balancing at times (enemies around lava, length of boss phases).
The main mechanic is the attack/block which can also prolong your jumps. As a block and a poor-man's double jump it's awesome, but as an attack it's not very fun to use, but that's what you do for the majority of the game.

Hope that might be useful, and best of luck if you decide to continue development past the demo!

EdgyWedgy responds:

I greatly appreciate the feedback! There is definitely some imbalances and parts that are agreeably frustrating. I was a bit iffy on releasing this old build to the public, fearing that people might see it as too 'scuffed'. But, I may consider going back and make a full fledged game out of it.