Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Caretaker]

Two things:
– This is not the kind of background music which allows you to read and think about long paragraphs. Ominous music is fine, but this too intense even when there's not too much going on in the dialogue. The key to good horror is knowing how to use *silence*. Although I liked that you play sound effects at certain times; that's a good idea.
– This is not the kind of background picture which allows you to read long white paragraphs. It's colourful and changing which makes reading harder. In contrast, the dialogue lines come in a black box which is way more convenient. I'm not sure if the backgrounds could be considered "disturbing visuals" – there are too many filters and it's too blurry to fully discern what they represent, although sometimes you can guess.

For the above reasons, I couldn't really get into the story. I read it three times just to confirm what you say results in the same response (which is a no-no – why even have the choice, then?). There's also an unwritten rule in literature that you shouldn't use digits for common numbers ("20 something years", "80 bucks") unless it's too complex or a scientific calculation etc.
The story itself just didn't ‘grip me’ enough. There's not a lot of going on except for a barrage of (repeated) swear words which can't magically make your story more intense. Unless I missed it, there's no truly thrilling moment or a plot twist and boils down to "a woman murderer is calmly arrested for desecrating graves". But perhaps there's more and I just missed it, partly because of the distracting music and backgrounds.

[Golf World]

It's fairly good; although could be better if there were other kinds of obstacles – e.g. different terrain types, interactive (moving) elements. Sometimes I thought the ball is inconsistent – it sometimes stopped on what I'd consider a hill, and sometimes (the very end of the last level) it kept rolling on a slightly tilted surface despite being really slow.
I'd also write the total number of holes somewhere; I almost quit because the game got too repetitive in the end. Which is fine since there are only nine levels; but if you added more eventually, you'd definitely have to introduce new elements to the gameplay later on.

[Birds Way Home!]

I'm sorry, but the controls feel just so wrong. Flapping wings in mid-air doesn't actually move you up a lot, which makes jumping between platforms difficult and frustrating. You also get stuck a lot and the project resolution is unnecessarily large, not to mention the two-second music loop which would get annoying no matter how good it is.

[Bizarre Cross'd Lovers]

I think it's great. Somewhat challenging (but not too hard) puzzles, the gameplay which evolves as the game progresses, just as the difficulty – with an interesting art style which matches the current mood and a neat little story, too. Reminds me of "The Company of Myself".

As for improvements, I think it could be made more powerful by changing the background music at certain points (it plays the same cheerful loop both during the "warm, we're together" levels and the "cold, pushing back" levels). And when the story finishes, "And she forgave me." with an instant cut to menu feels a bit flat (because it doesn't top anything which came before, it merely returns the story to the state it was a few levels ago).
The movement can be a bit confusing, too. The characters move continuously, but you're expected to tap the key only once (holding doesn't work) which is counter-intuitive. I think moving on a grid, as you did, is the better option, but in my opinion, it would work better if the characters instantly snapped to their new position instead of slowly walking there.

Also, when choosing the vertical resolution in Project System, you need to add the height of the footer, too (unless you pick the "Minimal" WebGL Template in Unity), otherwise your game window is going to be cut off at the top and at the bottom.

But other than that, well done!

kypello responds:

Thanks for your review! The background music does change actually, bongos are added for the autumn levels, and the music becomes snowy in the snowy levels. Other than that glad you liked it
Edit: I see what you mean about the actual tune being the same cheerful melody the whole time

[Blink Runner1.075]

Now we're talking. I liked this game much better than your previous one. It's certainly more enjoyable to play. Again, I appreciate you took the time to add more things on top, such as the shop with power-ups and the unlockable characters (it'd be cool if each of them had something different in terms of gameplay, e.g. an ability – like a magnet for coins, temporary shield etc.).

There's a slight issue with the camera, though. Presumably, it's a child of the player, so when the player skips a bit forward, the camera does too. This unexpected "skip" can be confusing and cause you to run into a spike. It'd take some fiddling with its (or the player's) position, but I'd try to make the camera move at a constant speed.
As for the coins, it's a pity that there's no "collecting" sound as that's the major thing you do in the game. And since you keep track of the gold you own even between different playthroughs, I'd display the whole sum of coins you own in-game instead of only your current attempt.
It might make the game seem more "sci-fi" and consistent to remove the blood from the spike (In-universe, how big of a chance is it that somebody got killed on every single spike you encounter?). Speaking of graphics, there are sometimes gaps of various sizes in between the blocks you run on (their positions aren't precise) and the "play" and "home" buttons on the game over popup are too blurry (probably resized too much).
The pause button and the bottom bar being cut in half is probably caused by choosing a wrong vertical resolution in Project System (it's the resolution of your game + the size of the footer, unless you choose the Minimal WebGL template).

TheOilyGooseStudio responds:

Hey Rallyx ,

I'm working on an update based on your feed back, I saw your comment on the other game too. I really appreciate the time you've taken to write these responses :) . On the other game though I think I won't act on the feedback just yet because I was looking at the code for that game and it's a mess that will take time. Again thank you :)!

[Bot Face Survival 1.521]

It's a fine little game, although with a lot of flaws.
I like the different kinds of enemies, power-ups, special abilities and achievements. This shows some effort has been put into creating the game.

However, I think your movement speed is too low to comfortably move around (I'd at least double it) and everything is way too small. This makes enemies (who are about the size of your projectile) harder to hit and even if you *do* hit them, they take a lot of shots to finish off.
I think the benchmark generally is that the weakest enemy should go down in 1-3 hits. Otherwise, if you don't use special abilities, you can go through the whole game without killing a single enemy even if try hard. And that makes the gameplay uninteresting.

As for the UI, it's pretty messy (especially when you die – it appears all over the place with some text even being on top of the rest).
No clear colour scheme (colours are more or less random), various border thickness, the default rounded UI checkbox – but other things have sharp corners, no alignment, text going out of their respective buttons, pause button being cut in half (and since the cursor is hidden during gameplay, it's harder to click it, too; and once you unpause the game by clicking, the button remains focused and pressing space pauses the game again), random font-style (some headlines are italic, some all caps, some neither), etc, etc.
The worst offender is probably the health bar which has 6 digit precision and the text gets smaller to fit in. If you're passing a float value to the Text field, you could round it before (Mathf.Round) or do something like textField.text = $"{health:F0}".
You also don't need to write the condition directly in the achievement description. "Gain more than 300 points." sounds better than "Score >= 300".

I think the game could be fine, but these are the things which drag its quality down.

[My first game (Castle)]

If this is your first game, then I'm honestly looking forward to what you create in the future.
You should remove the disclaimer and definitely, *definitely* change the thumbnail image.
From those, I was expecting a crappy quickly cobbled-together game that I'd be done with in thirty seconds – and instead, you created a short but fully featured game with a couple of diverse quests, multiple characters and dialogues – essentially bug-free as well.

Here's a couple of tips, although I'm not aware of what RPG Maker allows you to do:
– I wouldn't force the fullscreen as you start the game. Let players choose whether they want it. Also, on the web, it's not exactly "windowed" mode.
– Does the game need to be letterboxed? Why doesn't it take the whole screen? Even in fullscreen, the actual game doesn't change size, only the black frame around it.
– I'd add some kind of interaction with the cat before you know you have to retrieve it. It's probably the first character most players will talk to, and it doesn't "say" anything. Even "Looks like a stray cat." would be better than no interaction at all.
– Since you never fight, do you need the combat abilities? Does RPG Maker allow you to disable them? You shouldn't include visible features if you're never going to use them.
Similarly, I'd remove the path at the bottom of the map, since you can't go there.
– At the "Outside farm", you can only leave through one of the four squares at the left, although there's nothing indicating why the others cannot be used.
– I'd add more than two conversation options to some people, so it doesn't boil down to "pick the top option to continue the game".
– Does RPG Maker have some sort of quest log? You can somehow keep track of what you're doing now because the game is short; however, if you expanded the game, players might become lost in what they have done and still have to do.

The disclaimer somehow makes it seem like you're embarrassed by this game. Please don't be. Most people's first game is objectively bad – however, this one might be short, but it is *good*.
Good luck with your future projects.

bigboimeeb responds:

Thank you so much for the feedback, I'm already working on improving everything I can from what you said

and, i'll change the thumbnail... :)

[First Slide Experience]

Hm… to be honest, I'm not all too fond of this type of a game. It's pretty fast and it's easy to make a mistake which undoes all your progress; so you essentially repeat the level until you know it inside out and get lucky. Or get frustrated and quit.
You *did* put some effort in as evidenced by the different game mechanics (lava, bouncy platforms) which are a nice addition, although it's dragged down by the fact that it's not very consistent (e.g. many blocks have essentially random size and rotation) and by not including any sound effects (which you seem to be aware of).
I love your description, though! Good luck with your future projects.

PandaUnwise responds:

Thank you! I appreciate the feedback!

[The Question]

A neat little game. The art is gorgeous, and I just love the look-around effect with the parallax backgrounds.
But the story is kinda bland. Unless it is a personal story, it feels like something is missing. If this was a properly told story, the only justification for making the instant leap from "we started dating" to "we married" is when you want to focus on something which happened during the marriage (which is somehow tied to the intro, otherwise it wouldn't be necessary to have the intro at all).
But that's where the story ends. If you tore down the visuals and left nothing but the transcript, it couldn't stand on its own.

So I checked the original The Question and it made some things clear. You didn't exactly make a lot of changes in terms of the plot, right?
For the example project/tutorial, it's perfect, since a) it tells about creating a visual novel; b) it's short and simple in order to showcase just the core mechanics; and c) the story is bland and vague enough to let people expand or rewrite it in any way they want.
For any other reason, it's ‘meh’.

So, as a ‘proof of concept’ – yes, it's a neatly polished example project; but I hope you plan to create your own, more interesting stories in the future, too. Good luck.