Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Red Land]

Come on. This isn't a game… nor a simulation, really. There are no interactive elements (at least as far as I can tell), it's quite literally "Red Land" and there's nothing else to talk about.

You could quite simply turn this into a full-fledged game by doing something like building a maze with a start and a finish, adding items to collect, adding obstacles and platforms to jump on….Or something more difficult like monsters etc.

There's no reason to play this other than to admire the "scenery" – which is basically a red carpet with some parts heightened. Not exactly eye candy.

[Carrotborn]

I like it; I think it's going to be a great game, eventually.
I love how you recreated parts of Super Mario Bros levels. :D

Couple of things I wrote down:
– In the menu, going back from level select to the title screen with 'Esc' doesn't remove the text from the level select, so you see it overlapping
– Your movement, especially jumping, should be faster. It's great that there's different jump power depending on how long you hold the up arrow, but overall it's slow, so it feels like you're on the Moon. If you draw inspiration from Mario, check how fast the movement and his jump arch were in comparison.
– You look left/right when moving, but straight in front of you when jumping. You should also probably look left/right in the jumping animation, otherwise it looks like you're jumping sideways. Also no need to reset the player to the same "facing front" position whenever you stop. Just keep him looking left/right according to the direction you were going. In 3D games, you also wouldn't rotate the character around whenever you stop; no need to do it in 2D.
– The coin count number could be slightly bigger
– Fullscreen option? The game's resolution is pretty big, so being able to play it in fullscreen mode would be an additional benefit.
– Mario also had movement inertia (continue moving a *little* bit until you stop completely) and running. It's up to you whether you think your game could benefit from that.
– I'd pick a different colour for the flying enemy. When I saw him for the first time, I thought he was a collectable item or some sort of bonus, since he's gold and has wings.
– The controls are very reliable and feel alright – thanks! Plenty of platformer games sometimes refuse to jump when you need to but it never happened to me in your game.
– Punching a "?" block sometimes moves it slightly below its original position.
– Mouse clicks move the character to the left. Uh… why?

It's a very good prototype. Good luck with the rest of the game!

[Third Attempt]

Whoa, that's a creative concept. I like it!

I never got too far, though, mostly because it's hard to both build a reliable platform and shoot the increasing number of enemies coming from all directions.
At some point, I either couldn't properly shoot enemies below me (since the shots were blocked by the frozen enemies, or there were too many of them all around and if I managed to get them all in time, I effectively trapped myself.

I guess I would probably get better with practice, but I think it'd be worth a shot to make it a little easier, because the fun lies in jumping, building and shooting, not starting over every fifteen seconds.
As a suggestion; here's a couple of ways which might improve the game's enjoyability:
– make fewer enemies appear at once
– make the bullets slightly larger and pass through enemies (so you can shoot through frozen enemies or freeze multiple enemies which are close to each other)
– add a "special attack" (right-click) which can be activated every once in a while and freezes everything in your close vicinity.

I tried doing a "jump above an enemy and shoot below" a couple of times, but it almost never worked – the enemy froze, but it still killed me because I was too close.

Nevertheless, it's a great game, but my longest ever playthrough was only like thirty seconds, even though I really tried.

Byvsen responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

You do have the ability to change the difficulty in the game. By pressing the button below the start button in the main menu, you can make the game a little easier. But perhaps I have to make it a little more clear.

I do like the idea of having a special attack though! Might try adding this feature to the game. Again, thanks for posting this! :)

[Blocksticles]

Ahh, nothing like the start of summer to play a winter-themed game. :)

I think I've seen someone use the same template/tutorial for this game before, since the core gameplay was pretty much the same. I'll repeat what I wrote back then:
– There's no point in having a score if it gets reset in between levels. That way, a player who didn't die once during his entire playthrough AND a player who kept dying constantly during all levels will end the game with the same exact score => score for the last level. Pass the score between levels.
– I like that crashing doesn't send you back to the start immediately, but there's a slight delay. That's important because you have time to acknowledge the cause of your crash.
– It doesn't have to be a long, wide, straight road. How about a branching, winding path? A high-risk narrow detour which results in a score bonus? You could even set up a scoreboard, so players can compete with each other.
https://bitbucket.org/newgrounds/newgrounds.io-for-unity-c/

But I think your version has nicer graphics. Although some background objects don't have colliders, so things can pass through (e.g. the gate and the trees at the very start). I also loved the last level with the jump, I think it was a great way to end the game, but I don't see the point of the floating fence.

The game crashed with an exception a couple of times when I fell from the edge.
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/yRtD.png
"Failed to execute 'setValueAtTime' on 'AudioParam': The provided float value is non-finite."
See here if it's similar to your problem:
https://github.com/Tonejs/Tone.js/issues/347

The options menu is complete garbage, though. :)
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/xX4t.png
It's unusable because the layout isn't anchored properly and there's no "Back" button (!!), so you have to reload the game in order to get back to the menu, which resets the options.
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/wbue.png
Even when you go fullscreen, it doesn't get better; the options are randomly scattered around (instead of being in the same column), there's no padding, the fullscreen button doesn't do anything… and of course, it's still all pointless, because you can't leave the options settings.

P014r1s responds:

Big thanks for your feedback, I'll try to update the game.

[Space Hole]

I think it's a pretty good idea. It was fun to play for a while.

The controls could be slightly more intuitive – like holding the mouse button to keep the spaceship in and moving the "space hole" around and releasing to release the spaceship. Just clicking and instantly teleporting around makes it much easier to make a mistake.
It might also be a good idea to add some sort of sound for warping from one place to another.

Sometimes I teleported in the last second – the brick crashed into me but I survived, and then there was a bug with two space holes simultaneously onscreen.

Draining your life while hiding was a really good choice to prevent the players from spending most of their time in the safety of the space hole. However, since there's no way to replenish lost health, not even slightly, you're basically guaranteed to lose after some time. Losing should depend on your skills and you should be able to delay it indefinitely if you're very good at playing the game. I'd make the bottles replenish a bit of your health.

And since it's a spaceship, you could make the graphics more consistent and instead of "spaceship, bottles, bricks" make something closely related, like "spaceship, stars, asteroids".

PhongDuong responds:

Thank you for your feedback Rallyx. I hope you enjoy it

[Ketch Up and Down]

Wow, it's a well-done game. "Hardcore vertical Flappy Bird?" :)
But honestly, there are so many additional mechanics, like different kinds of food to collect, gradually losing jump power, danger at the top and bottom of the screen, changing orientation.

On PC, if you use the mouse, I'd make right-click change the orientation, so you can play without using the keyboard at all.

Edit: Of course, you have my permission. There's no "copyright" for ideas and all reviewers mostly want to help you make the game better. So, yes, definitely; you're free to use any idea the review might have given/suggested to you.

Max-B responds:

Tnx Rallyx,

Something like that ...

I like the mechanics of Flappy Bird however hate the direct and dumb game cloning.
So I've mushed it up with my own shticks :)
The aim was to have as less controls as possible thus i decided to toggle one button for side movement.
At first I made spiky platforms slide down but found out that game play was a bit linear so i decided to add another item to collect upon reaching the top or the bottom, to make it more challenging :)
I like your input about making the right-click change the orientation, i might even implement it with your permission ;)

[The Square]

I like the style. It would be interesting to see what kind of game would you make if you developed this idea further. So far, there's not much in terms of gameplay – just walking and jumping around on objects forming together a loop. How about turning it into an actual platformer with a proper obstacle course?

The movement and camera aren't that great. "Rotate in place and move forward" isn't well suited for a platformer, and the worst offender is how the camera moves when you jump – making you unable to see the ground below you until the last moment. I'd look up some videos of well-made 3D platformers to see how they handled the movement. For example:
Super Mario 64: https://youtu.be/m44y7Q-QtdE?t=58
Rayman 2: https://youtu.be/NmTuuuxHO-E?t=256

Also, the game should restart when you fall, there are some colliders which don't match the objects below them, especially the stretched toruses (making you look like you float) and right at the start, there are two objects at the exact same height overlapping, which makes it flicker (move either one of them up or down).

Nevertheless, as a first game, it's pretty damn good. Good luck with your future projects!