Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Penny Rant]

I love the premise – an obstacle course with a rolling coin throughout the house is great.
However, I think you need to give us a little more control over the coin, especially turning left and right. It feels very stiff, so either I didn't manage to turn in time, or overdid it and the coin fell down.

I don't think I ever managed the pass more than two checkpoints in a row because it was hard to make sharp turns or stay on track once the boost kicked in. Thankfully, the checkpoints realign you, so after the first 90° turn, I only needed to go forward and turn a little between checkpoints. I think the coin should move similarly to a motorbike, just slower (e.g. see here https://youtu.be/CLGnRhsIgDw).

Additional details:
– As for the fountain, shouldn't it have water in it? Also, it's clear the pennies are mapped onto square tiles (or planes), because the textures don't align at the edges.
– Falling on the rug at the beginning makes the coin fall through it. The same with the floor around the fountain.
– You slow down too quickly and the kick from the boost is instant. I don't know how the slowing down is implemented, but in Unity, I'd recommend using 'AnimationCurve' ("[SerializeField] AnimationCurve curve" in code to make it editable from the Inspector). Make a fairly steep, but not instant slope at the beginning (the boost) up to 1 and then go gradually down to zero (slowing down).
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/AnimationCurve.html
https://tinyurl.com/wp9y3ks
Multiply "curve.Evaluate( timeAfterBoost )" with the max speed and you'll have a much smoother speed increase/decrease.
– Everything is fully textured except the walls. Even if they're supposed to be solid-coloured, add a normal map and height map, so it doesn't look as flat and synthetic.
https://www.textures.com/search?q=plaster

Good luck with further development! :)

[Little Buddha - Quotes & Meditation]

I think it would be better if it showed the text all at once (with fade-in effect), not very slowly typed it like this. Some of the quotes are pretty long and if you wanted to read several of them in a row, you'd have to wait for a long time.
Instead of skipping to the next quote straight away, I'd first show the whole text with the first click/tap if the typewriter effect is still progressing.

Segediinc responds:

I tried that, but the whole feel changes of the text. I think it makes more sense on mobile since the idea is to take the time to read the text, if I give you all the text at the same time than the experience becomes different.

[Ctulhu's Missing Eye]

Hm. Okay. I understand there's no way to win, but there's also no way to do anything differently, no options. The entire game can be completed in less than two seconds if you hold the up arrow.

The premise also isn't anything spectacular, although I do like the animated face of Cthulhu, but that's, unfortunately, all there is in this game.
'It Was 4' was a better game; but still, I'd consider trying a different, less restrictive game engine than Bitsy (e.g. Construct is simple enough and doesn't require any programming).

Inco-Nito responds:

Two second of existential dreadd - is exactly what I tried to convey.

[Parkour to Treasure Ep.4]

I love this character controller. It moves really fluently, the speed and jumping distance feel just right. The only things which break the movement flow are the trampolines which are slightly trickier to use.
I'd love to see a full-length obstacle course or a platformer, something like the v1 you posted earlier, but longer. Walking down/up the stairs isn't as much fun as moving horizontally.

In both of your games, I can't move when I start the game, until I press space and refocus the game window. Only then I can move.
I also thought there's a bug that you're still being hurt when moving after falling to your death, but the actual bug is that the fire at the top wasn't visible during my first playthrough.
I'd also really enjoy being able to drop all the way down to the ocean if it wasn't just background – and since this game is all about jumping down, I guarantee most people have tried.

I'm not aware of the limitations of HiberWorld though (first time I hear about it), but even from what I see here, it has more potential to get creative.

[It Was 4]

I'm not sure what's the deeper meaning... it's not apparent and I'm not going to try to guess. The dialogue has three lines whose connection I don't really understand and the shrinking room could mean a whole bunch of things.

I was left confused, though… mainly because during my first playthrough, I somehow got stuck in the top-left corner wall when I approached the door. :)
I also think the text font ought to have the same pixel size as the rest of the game. Sound effects might also enhance the experience.

As for forcing the right arrow, you could momentarily override the left arrow to also progress dialogue, until it's finished.

Inco-Nito responds:

Text font, sound effects, some other stuff... it all due to the Bitsy game maker limitations, its a very simplistic game engine and you really can't do much with it (at least at the time I was creating this ... game). It's not quite there, I admit. But I still hold a faith in the concept and maybe I'll make a more decent version of the game at some time. Thank you for your responce.

[Bad Guy Bootcamp]

Nice little game. I like the roll-back effect when you die.

Although, don't add new characters if they're not going to do anything. Currently they'd be just different ways to obstruct view and I'd pick a small rolling ball over Darth Vader anytime, just so I could see better. But you could add special ability to each character to make them worthwhile. For example, with Darth Vader, a large 'force' leap every 20 seconds. Or a lightsaber slash removing obstacles in the near vicinity usable every now and then.

Your Project System's game window resolution seems oversized though. It's roughly 1300×700, but the actual Unity game is 960×638.

In general, I think the jump is too dangerous to use (not very long, and unreliable – try jumping quickly, several times in a row) and left/right movement sometimes wasn't as fast as I hoped it would be. I'm also not sure what the blue boxes do. You can crash into them, but they neither help nor harm you.

cloop responds:

Hey we really appreciate the feedback! Some of these are things we plan to change/fix already and your review is very helpful. You are right, we defiantly plan to give each character different ways to get through the generated maps.

[Tunnel]

A simple concept, but tricky to master and very well done.
I like the artstyle, the little details like the shaking screen, the movement trail and the popping effect. It's also good that the difficulty wasn't over the top and was adjusted to each respective level (i.e. in terms of speed). You also thought to prevent us from cheesy strategies like going around the maze or stopping at every corner – both of which cause the player to pop.

Please note that if you're using the 'Standard' Unity WebGL template, you need to add 38 to the vertical resolution you enter in Project System here (to make space for the footer), otherwise a part from the top and bottom of the game window here is going to be cut.

I didn't finish it, to be honest, because there's only so many attempts you can try before losing your patience… but the game is perfectly fair, so you can only be frustrated by your own motoric skills.
So unless the game becomes really dreadful after level VIII, it's pretty neat and I enjoyed it. Thanks.

By the way, did you know you can add Newgrounds medals & scoreboards to Unity games here, and have you considered it? It usually helps to draw more players.
https://bitbucket.org/newgrounds/newgrounds.io-for-unity-c/

[Spherical Time]

It's fine as a prototype if this is still work-in-progress. Despite that, it can be completed and apparently there are even two endings (although I didn't find the other one).

However, I do have some gripes.
I guess the main one is the moving background which is incredibly distracting. The approaching grey border isn't an obstacle or a 'death-zone'; you simply make the background slide out of the frame. If you can't create an infinitely-scrolling background, make the background colour a solid colour (blue, red, whatever) and only move the objects in it (clouds, stars). And once they reach one side of the screen, pop them back to the other. That's the simplest way to do a scrolling background.

The rest of the game is okay. It's not much in terms of level design and gameplay mechanics, but you use what you have well enough. Perhaps the gravity is too low and I might have preferred if we were able to hold the space key instead of continuously jumping, but that would change the game a lot, probably. I don't really like the main character hovering over the surface because of the animation, even if you are still.

In the last level, with the falling meteors, there's a problem because if you wait long enough, all the dangerous things would have already passed you and the path is clear from danger (that's a similar situation as with the scrolling background).

[My Room (OLD)]

Given the category is (appropriately) "Simulation", I'm going to give this a pass since it's not actually a game, more like exploring a room. But as a simulation, it's fine. I'd check the weights of the objects to make sure it's proportional to their real-life counterparts (for example, the wardrobe is way too light). It would also be convenient to be able to restart the game when you mess the place up too much (e.g. by pressing 'R'). 'Esc' simply quits the game which is useless, because it doesn't restart and you can't access the game again without reloading the page.

If you want to improve the scene, make sure to add other textures besides just one (the colour/diffuse/albedo texture), such as normal map, height map, specular map, perhaps displacement (depends on your shading mode) and fiddle with the material settings.
Speaking of the wardrobe again, that's not how wood would reflect light (way too shiny) and because normal map etc. wasn't used, it appears flat (even though there are drawers etc.).
Also, the door texture seems slightly tilted and doesn't look right on the model.

As for the copyright – first, it would be pretty hard to extract models from a built project (and without having access to the files) and second (and more importantly), every piece of work is protected by copyright, all over the world, from the moment of its creation, until after 70 years after the death of its author. BY DEFAULT.
You don't have to say nobody is allowed to use it, in fact, the opposite is true. You'd have to say you allow people to use the models, otherwise, they won't legally be able to.

Good luck with further modelling. :)

chunker999 responds:

I made this 3 years ago, found the account today, I have learned so much in the last 3 years, I'm surprised this crappy modeling test i made in my first couple days in the unity game engine actually got some traction. If i saw this comment when I first made the game I would've been so confused by what a height map is and how to make the objects have different weights, I have actually learned my way around c#, unity, HDRP/URP, physics, texturing, modeling pretty well, so If you would like to see my modeling skills from today I would be happy to make a complete over haul and remake of this!

[30 Second Save]

The ending is the best part which increases my rating considerably.

The rest of the game… well…
Just one thing – the blue blast has a different colour than 'blue' you and it's annoying because initially, I thought you're supposed to mix 'cyan' from blue and green. That can be an idea for a game mechanic if you wish to expand the game. Or just fix the fireball.

Although, I do feel like 'adding improvements' wouldn't fit with the overall spirit of the game…