Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Block and The Parkour]

There isn't much going on here, unfortunately.

It's a single static level consisting of several platforms going up. You cannot lose by falling, and winning is not as satisfying as it should be (a small fixed text thanking you for playing).

In a game like this one, usually, the screen slowly goes up, falling offscreen kills you, there's some kind of score count and the game tends to be endless and procedurally generated, possibly with checkpoints that change colour scheme, speed up the pace or introduce new element like special platforms.
Not to say it absolutely needs to be like that, you can definitely come up with a ton of different ideas that are as enjoyable, but what you have here right now is somewhat underwhelming.

The art as simple as possible; the level is quite wide even though the entire game takes place in the middle.

I wouldn't mind most of the issues highlighted above if at least the platforming aspects felt good, however, they don't. The gravity is quite slow and if you fall from a great height, the camera has trouble catching up.

And I'm missing two things common in platformers that make the controls feel good – coyote time (accept jump a few fractions of a second after the player leaves a platform), so you can reliably make a jump from the very edges of the platform); and queueing jump (if a player about to land presses the spacebar fractions of a second before falling and touching a platform, trigger the jump instantly as soon as you touch it) so you can chain jumps reliably.
Without it, the controls sometimes feel unresponsive, because you often trigger an action a tiny bit sooner/later and nothing happens.

It's a good start, I simply think it needs a bit more work before it's a game people would enjoy playing for more than twenty seconds.

[Slope Game Xtreme]

It's a good game.
The movement is enjoyable, it's visually appealing, and plays smoothly. There are various obstacles introduced as you go on, and there are even quality-of-life features like marking the spot with your previous record.

But my biggest issue by far is not being able to see where I'm landing. Countless times I missed the ramp or bumped immediately into an obstacle because the ramps are obscured by the ball or the cyan trail behind you.
And since you don't have extra lives or anything, and even the initial area is not a safe zone, missing a jump or bumping into an obstacle is fatal. And after roughly fifteen tries and at least eight early deaths, I sort of lost interest.

Also I initially opened and tried the game on your website on a phone, and while it allows you to start and play and the controls respond to taps, it is definitely not playable that way (you're too fast to react well on a phone, and the launch key still mentions the spacebar).
If it's not meant to be played on a phone, consider showing a warning / disable the game when somebody reaches your website and is not on a desktop computer.

Edit:
Yes, it's genuinely much better now! I played a few rounds, and no death felt “unfair” and I was able to get much further. I updated the rating. Thanks for listening to feedback!

(Also, just in case you didn't know about it, Newgrounds has a built-in achievement/scoreboard system you can use to lure more players in:
https://www.newgrounds.io/
https://github.com/PsychoGoldfishNG/NewgroundsIO-Unity/wiki )

m9think responds:

Thanks for your detailed feedback! I've made some adjustments to improve the gameplay experience based on your comments. Hopefully it feels better now! 😊

[Bonefields]

This is a really fun game, and quite well-polished for a prototype.
I love the gradually expanding ability pool based on abilities you've already collected and all the new enemies introduced along the way.

I would overall increase the size of the UI, the tiny pixel text is hard to read, but the icons are small, too, so I didn't really pay attention to the UI at all with the exception of level-ups and health.

I wrote some comments during my first playthrough, and then my second playthrough contradicts a few points, but it might be useful for you if I keep the first-time player experience up.

FIRST:

I suppose I'm missing some kind of emergency abilities, something to use when you're in a pickle to either escape quickly or clear enemies.

I'm spending most of the game running in circles to control the crowd – the best AoE damage dealer seems to be the poisonous breath, but to use it effectively, I need to get close enough to likely get hurt.

And when I know I'm in danger (low health), or the path is blocked, I can't do much about it (like dash through enemies, temporary invincibility, defend block, a health item marked on the map, manually-triggered powerful attack with a cooldown etc.).
I see "roll" mentioned on the stat screen, so perhaps that's the ability I was missing, just wasn't lucky enough to get.

3:40 minutes

SECOND:

I didn't read the controls properly the first time (I started the game and there's no time to reread stuff during the game) and didn't know about the dash.
It is of course a game-changer, now I can get out through tight spots and avoid being hit by projectiles if I know something unavoidable is coming.
That allowed me to survive much, much longer (11 minutes).

I thought it always seemed better to pick new abilities instead of upgrading the existing ones (five attacks spinning around you is going to deal more damage than three strong spades), but having five strong spades + two sheep made me change my mind.
What do you think about introducing bonuses that might combine two of your abilities? It might bring your replayability from finding cool new combinations.

Forget about wanting an ability to defend myself. I have the dash.
I instead thought it would be really satisfying to dive into the ever-increasing crowd of enemies with a powerful AoE attack and slice a few dozen. But none of my abilities seemed capable of doing that, and with half of the enemies shooting random projectiles, coming close was always a gamble.
So I had to accept I'm never going to out-damage the enemy spawn rate if I can only control the direction of attacks, not frequency. So I ran around, trying to survive as long as I could.

It was becoming somewhat monotonous towards the end. The enemies all walk the same way (no one for example goes towards you along a curve, with a dash, teleporting behind you, slightly faster to force you to treat certain enemies differently). You can't clear or thin the enemy horde too much as I explained above. So you run in circles, chipping off at the edges, and collect radishes from time to time.
I would love it if there was some goal you have to do from time to time, to make you move to a certain spot on the map instead of running clockwise along the edges for five minutes.

And could the chicken do something interesting to help?

---

As you seem new to Newgrounds, note you also have the free option to introduce medals & scoreboards which tend to drive more people to your game – and more importantly for this stage of your project will give you a gauge of how far people get before losing.

That, or "Events" (= custom analytics) can help you prototype and balance.
https://www.newgrounds.io/
https://github.com/PsychoGoldfishNG/NewgroundsIO-Unity/wiki

Thanks for this, and good luck with further development!

rumyoonomicon responds:

Wow. thank you for the playing the game. Tho yeah it really is a prototype and some stuff that is really a QoL that supposedly be there in the first place is missing, I'll have those change be added for the you and other players as well. And yes I'm new to newgrounds. I kinda want to post my game here as well. I'll look up to the links you provided with heartfelt. Thank you! :>

[Pool Smith]

A game about collecting leaves, but unfortunately, the core gameplay mechanic doesn't work most of the time (and that's not an exaggeration). The clicks don't register.
Rarely do I manage to collect a leaf – sometimes I'm lucky, but most of the time I'm walking around a leaf in circles, trying to find a better angle, yet no amount of clicking works.

That's the most important flaw which completely overshadows everything else I could say.
And there are many other potential problems:

– Presentation. Collecting leaves should feel satisfying (the entire game is about it), but when you do collect them, they simply vanish out of existence without a sound, visual effect or anything.

– When the game is over, you cannot ‘Retry’, you can only Quit. Wouldn't you rather want people to play the game again? Furthermore, quitting a web game simply causes the screen to freeze which is almost never a good idea.
‘Return to menu’ would be better, but since there's not much you can do in the menu, ‘Retry’ is the better choice.

– The leaves may land on their edge.

– When the leaves fall outside of the pool, they hover above the ground.

– I would expect the leaves to cause small waves after falling into the pool.

– The water doesn't feel like water, more like a mirror. It's not translucent, you cannot see the bottom of the pool. It's completely solid (but I understand it would be complicated if you couldn't reach the center of the pool where most of the game takes place).

– The reflected parts of the pool in the water look wrong.

– The ‘white’ leaf doesn't look much like a leaf.

– When the protagonist is a capsule (which is perfectly fine), disable the shadow so it's not obvious.

– The UI elements in the game are weirdly stretched, with blurry edges. Check the documentation about 9-slicing, it could help you:
https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/Manual/sprite/9-slice/9-slicing.html

satovamp responds:

Thank you for the feedback. I am trying to sort some of those issues. The restart only restarts during gameplay which I'm not understanding and something seems to be messing up the colliders for the leaves. The build definitely came out buggier than the solution. I will update it as I fix it. ;-)

[Lightkeeper]

It's definitely a well-made puzzle platformer.
If you created it for a game jam, it's all the more impressive because it actually feels finished. You could add some polish here or there, but there's a beginning, a sense of progression, and a conclusion.

The puzzles are fine. I thought they were harder at the beginning of the game, but it's mostly because it's a similar concept all the way through, so once it all clicks in the underground section, you can repeat the same with multiple colours.
By the end of it, I started feeling like I could use a new puzzle mechanic because the approach stayed the same for the past few rooms – but the game isn't too long for this to be a big deal.

I like how you explain the puzzle mechanics with visual cues, meaning you don't have to show a popup with a wall of text. E.g. when the line crosses a wall, it will play a rejection sound and flash red, when you don't connect the required nodes, they'll let you know with sparks once you reach the finish line.

And separating the lighthouse in an underground and above ground level with the finale at the top is an awesome touch.

[Cut Short]

I would never predict the final sequence. Very interesting; a very cool change of pace.

But I feel like you don't have long enough breaks to return to your primary goal, and mainly you also can't effectively make sure the house stays okay. (And it also could become pretty laggy at times.)
So the best tactic is probably to try to outrun the inevitable and find the right balance between that and mowing.

A cosy game about lawn-mowing, with the most intriguing twist at the end.

AleuxGameDev responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

[Maze Shift]

It's so much better than the last version I played and reviewed a week or so ago.
Many things I found annoying then were fixed, and this time, I managed to get to the subsequent levels, play with different kinds of weapons against new enemies – and complete the game.

So I'm happy, and it was fun.
I also should compliment you on one other aspect – the game is quite performant despite being a 3D Unity web game.

I'm slightly disappointed by the large enemies (demons? minotaurs?) – the way they're placed, you'd expect them to be a scary miniboss type with a smarter attack pattern, but they're no harder to defeat than the zombies. You can easily hide behind walls from them, but there's no need to – just open fire and they're gone. The large spiders breaking into groups of tiny aggressive spiders were scarier.

Graphics-wise, the “poison gas” and “fire” particles seemed out of place a bit (e.g. the gas wasn't translucent, was very bright against the surroundings and looked more like dots made with a brush tool). The spike trap could have been dark between the parts of the iron grill, to make it look like the spikes come out of holes in the ground, not through the ground.

But those are all nitpicks. I didn't encounter any major annoyance any more – on the contrary, it's a fine game. Well done!

[Maze 1]

It's a maze game, it has a start and an end, but it's very barebones.

Everything I see just says “default” me.
Default Unity scene, default skybox, default material, probably default sun placement (why do you need sunlight at the top of the walls, but keep the playable area mostly in shadow?).
As a result, everything blends together, so my biggest challenge wasn't the maze (which can be traversed fairly quickly), but figuring out if I was looking at the left/right wall or the floor when I quickly turned around sometimes.
Please consider using something to make the walls and the floor stand out, something that is not the default grey.

Some walls don't touch at intersections, so you can see outside the maze occassionally.

If you're using planes, make sure players can't see the edges or look from the other side. Your signs turn invisible from the other side, for example.

I mentioned the capsule shadow and some effect when you reach the victory sign under your platforming game, it applies here as well.

If you're preparing a harder version of the maze, consider adding something to do as you traverse to keep people engaged. It could be as simple as collecting coins thrown around the maze to accumulate a high score. Because running around in tight corridors with nothing else until you reach the end will probably fairly soon feel boring.

Good luck!

Edit:
Sorry, by effect I meant to do anything that underlines your victory, like a final “oomph” that concludes the game.

If you simply see a sign saying “You win”, it's fairly boring, because you can see the sign even from further away and nothing happens when you reach it.
If this was a race, it would be akin to winning when you see the finish line, but no response from the crowd or anyone else when you cross it, so the runner then wonders if that's it, or if there was supposed to be something else yet.

Usually, you want to trigger something to tell the player the game recognizes the victory, a small celebration – for example, a fanfare/applause sound, particle effects (fireworks etc.), or write the “You win” text across the screen.

WindowsTechNerd responds:

I have started making games and also I wanted to make this game in one day but it was almost bedtime so even though I knew how to apply a skybox I didn't have time and also I forgot to change the lighting because I was rushing. And also please tell me what's the effect at the winning sign. I would like to know for an update. I can upload a update of this but I can't edit the project ever since I deleted It on my disk and from my projects list. By the way I used to be Roblox dev. Thanks for telling!

[Garden Parkor (Level 1)]

It's fine! Definitely a very cool project for a beginner.

A quick little platforming level, with differently-shaped platforms with different materials, some of them fall-through to trick players. Also with slight changes of elevation (not much, but it's there), different environments with trees and flowers to jazz it up a bit.

Quite nice and a brief bit of fun, although obviously not very long and with some flaws.

I suppose my major annoyance is the lack of a possibility to restart (either automatic or manual) – a player should never have to refresh the page and reload the game to continue playing.
Falling off a platform should be expected in a platforming game, especially when you add platforms without collisions.

The level design could be slightly better – you provide various kinds of curved platforms, but you can complete the entire game by going in a fully straight line, except for moving just once to the right (while you keep jumping).
You could put some obstacles in mid-air to force you to move to the sides.

The victory sign is nice, but it would feel better if it interacted with the player somehow; some effect to let you know the game recognized your victory. E.g. a victory popup on the screen, a small firework, etc.

I'm now realizing the game doesn't have sounds. You can do without music, but sounds can significantly support the feel of the game, and some funky jumping sounds would make the game a lot better.

To rattle off some other suggestions you might even be aware of yourself:

– The angled platforms consist of overlapping blocks, which don't align well at corners and also result in Z-fighting (texture flickering because it's the same height and it doesn't know which object to draw in the front).
Ideally, make one of the blocks slightly taller (they'll still overlap, but it won't Z-fight), make the blocks only touch but not overlap, or recreate the model in some tool which allows extruding faces, like Blender, or even ProBuilder inside Unity.

– The materials seem to only have the albedo (colour) texture and the same material settings, making everything look shiny and reflect light like it's a uniform piece of metal. Most visible with the grass material.

– The grass texture is somewhat stretched on large blocks.

– The capsule of the player casts a shadow. It's fine to be a capsule, but I'd disable the shadow (players don't need to know)

– It'd be nice if there was some way to tell which blocks are fake and which aren't before you take the leap of faith

But overall, good job.