Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Great Blob Journey]

You know, if this was done in less than two hours, that's mighty impressive. Please take the score as a reflection of this being an unfinished game with no ending, in which you run out of content in three minues.

There's kickass music, fluent platforming, character animations, moving platforms, collectibles, background, AI enemy – and a secret room which was awesome to discover. And I love the messages in the pits.

As for things to consider:
– the main goal of the game, i.e. have a way to finish it (obviously)
– I would expect the collectible mushrooms to do something eventually if you track them down, either as a currency, or cause some other effect. But if they are important, please don't reset them with death, as falling down a pit in a platforming game is more or less expected to be common.
– Pixel size consistency. In a pixel art game, you should strive to have all pixels the same size, here it's all over the place (e.g. the protagonist vs the tiles)
– When you change the colours of the environment, I'd expect the gameplay to make a shift as well. E.g. you start on the grass with easy platforming and enemies, and “ascend” the mountain to a snowy area with harder platforming, harder enemies or I don't know, slippery ice.
– Look up the “squash and stretch” principle; it could help you improve the protagonist's jumping animation
– The text feels a bit “blurry” and is harder to read, and the font size + colour is all over the place

Overall there's not much else to say, but it's an extremely well-done prototype, so I hope you continue and do something great with it. Good luck!

LiquidVolt responds:

Yo! Thank you so much for this!
Ill keep everything in mind

[DuckJump]

The dinosaur game was my first thought. It's quite similar yet different.

– Mostly consistent, appealing visuals. But try to keep consistent pixel size – the world has large pixels, the up arrow has smaller, and the score has the smallest. That doesn't look good; a pixel in a pixel art game should have the same size everywhere.

– Awesome accompanying music

– There is no immediate visual response to pressing the right arrow to speed up, so you initially have no idea if it even did anything. It could do some speed-up effect as a response.

– Since you can slide infinitely, the birds don't pose much danger. You don't care how high they fly, you can boil the game down to “keep sliding all the time and jump over rocks”.

– Sometimes I encountered obstacle combos that seemed impossible (a bird between two rocks close together), but perhaps it just needed a very precise timing.

– The score doesn't grow at a rate that feels good; you can run at lightning speed and the number increase doesn't seem to match your “speed thrill” very well

– This in no way belongs under the “Visual Novel” genre

– It would be nice to track your high score; it would give you more reason to play for longer

– The hitboxes aren't all that precise, sometimes you get a game over showing you not touching anything, just because the invisible colliders larger than the sprites grazed each other. But well, it's a pixel-art game, inaccurate colliders are more or less a staple of retro games.

It's a cool little game that remains enjoyable for a good while; well done.

someguy323 responds:

I have changed the genre, at the time I didn't see an endless runner genre so I chose the most opposite thing I could find, but I found a genre similar enough to endless runner so I changed it

[Crypts of Chaos]

This is a good game, a great prototype and a solid base to build on. You can see all the effort put into it, and the potential. But there's a lot of room for improvement.

1) I completely agree with Shenroncrafter about being able to turn in an instant, and on the spot.

This is a game about hitting enemies with a sword. I didn't find a way to do that safely.
When enemies get close, they attack within a microsecond. You cannot block, you cannot roll in the opposite direction and it puts you miles away, so you slowly turn and run. Then once there's enough distance, you slowly turn and hit them. But if you're close to hit them, they're close to hit you. Which you can't deal with.
Health potions become a necessity, and your skill can only delay the point when you need them.

Please let us turn like humanoids, and/or block attacks.

2) Second reason why I don't enjoy the game too much, is the lack of game feel in the combat.

I whack an enemy with a sword, and I don't feel like something happen. No hit reaction, no effect, mild screen shake on death, whatever. You're watching the protagonist lose blood, but the enemies don't even flinch. The small goblins don't even have health bars, so I simply swat the air wondering whether the hits even connect before they fall to the ground.

3) There's just a single attack. If all I can do in combat is either the same old attack, or leave combat, it's going to get boring quickly. This is a roguelike, but what use I have for endlessly replayable levels, when the one thing the game stands on is not replayable?

Take a good look at those pressing problems, and the game will improve 100%.

---

Then when the core gameplay is more enjoyable, you might want to take a stab at the following:

– What makes playing more than a few runs compelling? Would some sort of progression make sense? So you get to see more content later on (and the player is aware there's more to look for)?
Content could mean new enemies, new weapons, new obstacles, new environment; you decide.

– What is stopping me from rolling past everything? Does the game ever require me to kill enemies (e.g. locked door before I kill everybody in the room), or do I benefit from it (e.g. XP, currency)?

– Animation layers. When you swing the sword with your arms, your legs should continue the walking animation.

– You seem to hit as you begin to swing, not when the sword is at its most swinging power which you would expect. This may be confusing, especially combined with the lack of hit reaction.

– The game freezes as it generates the level, a second or so after giving you control. I'd prolong the loading and block the player until all is done, instead of letting the player move for 1 second, then having a 5-second lag, and then being free to continue.

– The Controls screen is really bad. Dark text on dark background, it's a long wall of text instead of highlighting the important parts, the text overlaps if you're not in the full-screen mode

– Just for the heck of it, I tried to play with a controller. You can *move* without animation, and probably do nothing else. Just for the consideration, if you want to expand the game. Players will eventually want to play with a controller, and it's easier to start controller-first than trying to fit mouse/keyboard scheme to fewer buttons.
The new Unity input system should it make it easy to map both controller and keyboard to the same virtual actions without needed to go through some big loops.

– Quit Game button is unnecessary in a WebGL game, all it does it freeze the game – there's nothing to "close" except the browser tab which people can do themselves

---

I really do think it's a fine game with a lot of potential, but as of right now, I think I would feel done with the game after three dungeons; starting to be somewhat bored and believing I have seen everything the game can offer.

[Pixel Odyssey]

Honestly, this is a large and ambitious game, entirely let down by the framing and intro sequence.

Before I have any clue what the game is about, you're in a room, manually starting a PC game. Will this ever be relevant in the game, or support its core gameplay or narrative? There are mentions that you've been trapped inside, but unless it has a proper payoff later…
The room is okay; nothing special. Plain walls and ceilings, default Unity skybox outside, a chair you're not sitting on, a light that flashes as you look up and down, a very thin table, a perfectly reflective ball and a bunch of props. Weirdly you can't turn a full 360° angle, but you can turn further to the right.
The in-world Options menu is very interesting, the gun prop is also nice, as you get to use that gun later in the game.
But overall I don't see a reason to keep this in, as this will decide the first impression of people going into your game, and it's not what the game is actually about.

Then you start playing and get a lengthy intro and explanation of many mechanics and again, I don't think you need it.
Firstly, an infodump like this without experiencing it in the game is not something players will remember, and some things I believe people would intuitively understood right away or soon after encountering them in the game. Like red blob = health. Or you could have a brief onboarding level at the start (so you begin with actual gameplay, and learn the purpose of the items by seeing them in context and using them – e.g. see something like the Half Life training room). Or pause the game and show an explanation the first time you collect something.

So I believe I would have a better first impression if I just appeared in a room with many portals without the explanation and learned as I go. Remember this is a web game, and when you let people go for five minutes without experiencing gameplay, many turn away.
I wonder what would the player drop be if you used the Newgrounds.io API for events and added analytics for "started game", and "entered first portal".
https://www.newgrounds.io/help/components/#event-logevent

The goblins' level is the first one with proper gameplay I'd say. It's when I started to have fun and when I realized the scope of the game. It took a moment before I realized I need to select my weapon AND reload before being able to use it, though.

My main takeaway is that I'd prefer fewer, but smarter, more tactical enemies with different attack patterns. There's too many for the starting weapon you have, so you either stand in cover so you shoot enemies coming only from one direction, or run around in circles with an ever-growing horde of enemies chasing you around.

The goblin level at least had more types of enemies and status effects and a clear goal, the night level with zombies (?) and wendigos (?) was all about running in circles until they gradually took me down.
Then I somewhat lost interest to try again for the time being and never got to unlock a new weapon or an ability. Perhaps later.

Other things:
– the glyphs in the pirate level are bugged, I cannot pick them up with 'E' as suggested (luckily you can return to the Hub via options)
– the projectiles shot by the goblins look weird, at first I didn't realize they're supposed to be arrows
– the orbs can appear inside each other and overlap
– it would feel nicer if the enemies had some kind of hit reaction, a brief recoil. There's the on-hit particle effect, but it doesn't *feel* like your bullets are truly affecting the enemies.

As I said, this is a very ambitious project, with a lengthy intro before you can experience the gameplay – which is pretty fun, but has its own flaws and space for improvements.

EDIT:
Thanks for replying with the explanation and considering my suggestions.

One thing many games do and you could maybe try, is starting with the core gameplay already in one of the levels, and then showing the intro and explanation as a flashback when you first return to the hub area (“Don't you remember how you got here?”), when people will be more receptive to hearing more information.

In any case, good luck, I hope you get to finish this and turn it into the game you envision.

leoinpharoh responds:

Thank you! This is a fantastic feedback and we appreciate it. This is our first iteration of the game that we have gotten up on the web and it is a project that has taken up a lot of time. It is definitely not perfect in anyway, and I think your feedback is very helpful in getting us in the right direction.

I'm going to be looking at adding a new tutorial that is more engaging than just an info dump and with more implications on WHY you start in that room and such later down the line. It is part of the lore it just isn't put in just yet.

But thank you so much for at least trying our game!

[Pico Clicker (Pico Day 2024)]

The clicker itself is fine. There are goals (to earn all medals), the click differences between them are well-designed. The next step always feels “achievable” and “close” so you never feel like now is a good time to close the game because going further is not worth the effort. The final threshold isn't too bad (it's not some insane stretch that would take hours, or force you to get an autoclicker).
There is visual feedback to clicking and even on hover, so it feels fun.

I do have issues with the upgrades.

First of all, balancing. You have three available upgrades
– the first one gives you +1 for 100 (+5 for 500)
– the second one gives +2 for 250 (+4 for 500 (!))
– the third one gives +5 for 500 (+5 for 500)
Usually, the idea is to give more click power for costlier upgrades, so you get more value for powering through with less power and saving up.
Here, there's no reason to wait for +5 (it saves you four clicks over clicking +1 five times), and you actively get less for +2.
I'd expect something more in the range of: 100 → +1, 250 → +3, 500 → +7, so it's always advantageous to save up.

Then you can't actually purchase the upgrade when you have “100”; you have to have at least 101 to confirm.

But the bug with not unlocking medals sucks, and I imagine will be what will annoy most people, as you will achieve the goals, but don't get the reward.
I was unable to unlock 2500, so I restarted and bought only under ten upgrades and pushed through to 2500 and much further beyond, only to not unlock anything again. So what actually does “excessive clicks” mean? Surely it can't mean ten upgrades is too much.

Well, I reset the 250 medal a few times to figure it out. You have to hit the number exactly.
I purchased +1 at 101 and nothing else, and therefore eventually went 249 → 251. But when I did the same at +2, I went 248 → 250 → 252 and the medal unlocked.

If I'm right about this, then a significant amount of people (pretty much everyone who doesn't follow rounded values with multiples of ten) will eventually miss a medal.
I don't know how the conditions for unlocking a medal are implemented, but since you know all values (clicks, click power and medal threshold), you should be able to check for the exact click that will unlock a medal even if you don't hit the exact threshold.

This is the most annoying problem I had with the game, but otherwise as I said, everything else is really fine and it's a good clicker.

[amazing clock!!11!1]

I like that it uses the actual time in your time zone.

You could include the ticking sound as a premium feature. And different clock colours.
And a pendulum.

Edit: I understood premium was a joke. :)

EuropeanRat responds:

Premium was a joke, and i already tried to change clock stuff (pendelum and clock coluors) but it got too much lag/delay/fps drop. :(
Edit: It was meant to look like a crappy play store app with every second 297 ads. Thats why i put premium joke ofc