Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Apple catch]

With so many apples falling down, there's no way you'll going to be able to collect them all. And it doesn't matter anyway, because the game has no ending. No ending means no goal.
I would consider making the falling apples more scarce, and add perhaps different fruit which you should avoid (orange -5 points). But definitely, if this is supposed to be a game, you need a victory/loss condition. Perhaps make it so that you need to collect 25 apples in a minute, or something like that.

[Life Light Arcade]

Hi. It's a rather simple concept, but you made sure to (almost) perfect it.

The need to collect hearts (and the 'chaser') forces you to move around. If you're fast, you're also allowed to make a mistake or two. All collisions only decrease the timer and the number of yellow stuff onscreen increases over time (thus the difficulty, too) which means the game doesn't go on forever until you quit out of boredom.
You even managed to sneak in an ad which will serve you well on the mobile platforms, because players will naturally want another chance, especially if they were close to the highscore. There's also background music, light glow and particle effect on impact, and the maze-like background; all of which make it more interesting.
If this is really your first game – wow. Incredible. Even as far as marketing is concerned.

I'll list some problems I noticed.
Since you say you're new to this, I'll also give tips on how to solve it.
– Why is there an alpha slider for colour? You can even hide the UI and the character completely (but interestingly, I did fairly well when it was hidden because there's still light underneath). Oh, and I wouldn't use the default UI sprites (e.g. sliders, buttons…). They look a bit lame and are because they're the default, they're also somewhat overused in Unity games.
– External links (e.g. Twitter) should open in a new tab, otherwise, it will crash the game if you try to open it in the same window.
https://bitbucket.org/newgrounds/newgrounds.io-for-unity-c/src/7862ec579a9e452cb33070df663f2e11fcf02eeb/Assets/io/newgrounds/core.cs#lines-105
https://bitbucket.org/newgrounds/newgrounds.io-for-unity-c/src/7862ec579a9e452cb33070df663f2e11fcf02eeb/Assets/Plugins/WebGL/newgroundsioPlugin.jslib#lines-187
– There's a thin horizontal line at the top of the chaser's sprite sometimes. Sometimes it can happen if the sprite's border is tight and something overlaps, or if you use filtering which might take neighbouring pixels
– The game should be paused when you're browsing the settings. The character still moves underneath, so you can even accidentally start the game when trying to alter settings
If you browse the About page, you can even gain an advantage because the chaser is frozen, so you only have to worry about the yellow droplets
– 'Darkness' is outside of the screen. I'd check the canvas settings and the text's anchor (pivot). Make sure you anchor it to the left screen border, and its pivot is also to the left.
– You seem to be checking if the time is 'less' than zero rather than zero, so when you run out of time, it ends up on '-0.02' (presumably Time.deltaTime in FixedUpdate). It can also go way below zero if you collide with something at the last moment.
Clamp it to zero before assignment (Mathf.Clamp(time, 0, float.PositiveInfinity) and check also for zero, keeping in mind it's a float (Mathf.Approximately(time, 0f)).
– This font is good for titles and short labels, but reading the About page using it is a pain
– When the chaser 'smiles' and doesn't hunt you, you can touch it again to reset its timer harmlessly. A bug? A feature?
If you plan to post more games on Newgrounds, consider using Newgrounds API (https://www.newgrounds.io/) to add medals and scoreboards, which in turn tends to attract more players and makes the in-game achievements and highscores more meaningful.

Good luck with your future games and welcome to Newgrounds!

[random adventures]

It's pretty fun. I kept dying a lot when the missiles blocked me mid-air until I discovered the double jump. However, the sword is completely useless – there are too many enemies being spawned infinitely, and the sword also completely stops your movement. But the fact that it's procedurally generated is a big plus in terms of replayability, although eventually, you'll have seen all the building elements many times.

I would like it more if there was a goal you had to reach, or at least if the game kept evolving, so there was something more you could 'discover'. Ideally permanently, so you still have access to it even if you die, so there's some semblance of progress.
For example, if you reach '5' (or multiples of 5), a new type of enemy will be added; or a new kind of platforming challenge and from then on, it may appear in levels even if you die.
Or a sword upgrade if you reach 10, making it gradually less useless, culminating in a 'boss fight' as the final unlock.
…anyway, those are just a few ideas which might make the game more interesting, because personally, I reached '9' and felt that I did everything this game has to offer.

You could also add a scoreboard (Newgrounds has one built-in, with a Construct 2 plugin):
http://www.newgrounds.io/get-started/
https://rexrainbow.github.io/C2RexDoc/plugins.md/rex_ngio_scoreboard.html
If players can compete with each other, they'll typically play the game for longer.

In summary, it's fun, it's challenging, the randomness makes it more interesting, but eventually, there's no 'goal' to keep you playing.

[Zeca vs Pide 2015]

The initial sequence is incredibly long and having to replay it every time you lose the game is quite painful.
The game itself is simple, also quite weird, which makes it more interesting, though. It's a pity the only available language is Portuguese; you're missing out on a larger audience if English was an option.
When collecting musical notes, there's also no need to show +1 popup, since the score counter is right up there and everything in the game only gives you 1 point.

[Size Is Difficult]

I think it's an interesting, original concept; well-executed. I definitely did enjoy the game.
The levels are fairly straightforward, I didn't think any of them were particularly hard to figure out, but solving them in practice might have taken some time. You could consider adding new 'puzzle' levels, or, if it makes sense, action levels (i.e. moving environment or enemies would force you to act faster or more precise).

I had a slight issue with the controls. My 'jump' sometimes wasn't registered even when I was on the ground and I'm not sure why. It's also somewhat common in platformers to add tolerance for pressing jump a bit too soon (e.g. ~0.2s) before you actually touch the ground, or after walking off a ledge, for cases when the player doesn't hit jump at the exact frame.
And since the entire game can be played with keyboard except for the one horizontal size slider, I'd consider adding keys (Q, E…?) for manipulating the slider without a need for a mouse.

The character can also stick to walls if you move towards them while in mid-air – if this is unintentional, consider giving something like a PhysicsMaterial2D with zero friction to the character to avoid this to an extent.

Still, for a game jam game, pretty impressive! An original idea with a proper beginning and end, albeit slightly wonky at times.

RealGamesss responds:

Thank you so much for your comment!

[The Wow Game]

Great idea with all the rule changes and replaying the same levels differently.

thebarfyshow responds:

Thanks!

[Flying Deris]

Basically, I couldn't figure out what you're supposed to be doing.
A graphical interface with *points* would help a lot.

It's not like you're supposed to collect only certain falling objects, because all of them kill you. You're also not supposed to collect them by touching them from the side, since the result is the same. So why do the first couple of hits seem as if you 'collected' the falling items?
If you have several lives, they should be shown on the screen, so that we know something undesirable happened when we lose a life.

If it's about staying alive as long as you can, then again, the time should be shown onscreen (keep a high-score). You can also leave the boundaries of the screen, just sit and wait, so if it's time-based game, this gives us an opportunity to effortlessly wait as long as we need.

If this is a problem with incorrect dimensions, then you need to set the value from "Edit / Project Settings / Player / Resolution and Presentation"; in the Newgrounds Project System.

[Mad Mad Blocks]

It's an interesting original game, I don't recall seeing anything like it before, or at least anytime recently. For a first (Unity) game, I think it's awesome.

There's a lot of useless unused space on the right (since you only move up and down), you could move the red line slightly to the right. The difficulty also stays the same during your entire playthrough; I'd consider starting slow and gradually increasing the speed (to a fixed max limit). Or gradually moving the red line to the left, if it starts e.g. in the middle.
I was about to say sometimes there's no time to dodge the blocks if there's a lot of them coming in a vertical line, but it's perfectly possible if I speed up using Shift (and I love the added detail of not being able to touch the walls).
It's also generally a good idea not to restart the song when you restart a level (keep playing it with an 'audio manager' which doesn't get destroyed):
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Object.DontDestroyOnLoad.html
Although this background music is pretty monotonous so it isn't as apparent.

This game is all about the high score, too, so you could also consider adding a scoreboard (build-in in Newgrounds), so players can compete with each other. More here: https://www.newgrounds.io/
Medals and scoreboards usually attract more players.

Good luck with your future games!

Raeino responds:

Thank you for your feedback!

To increase the difficulty I've made the blocks to spawn more frequently over time (still with a random pattern), but it seems to be just slightly noticeable. Also I was worried that increasing their speed could make the game too hard, surely I had to experiment more.

Also I didn't know about Newground's scoreboard system, I'll definetly consider using it.

[My Ghost and I]

Very well done, it's a great game in many ways, with many cool gameplay mechanics, and I enjoyed playing it.
I feel like it could have a couple more levels, though. Just creatively combining the things you've already learnt. The final level introduced the interesting mechanic of possessing people in a rather simple level, which is great for showing something new but doesn't quite match the expectation you might have for 'final level'.

gmitchell28 responds:

Thanks, yeah I agree that there isn't enough levels especially for this type of game. The first 4 levels are extremely basic and more of a tutorial for mechanics so more levels would be ideal.

I had lots of plans for enemy NPCs and more puzzles but ran out of time before my Uni deadline was due (I spent far too long in Photoshop).