Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Throw Rocks at Boys]

Well, I see two really bad flaws in this game. If you hold space bar, you create a "rock wall" and instantly dispatch of a column of boys. There's no time interval between the rocks. So all it takes to win is to hold space bar right at the start of a level and wait for the enemies to crash into it.
And the second problem, the difficulty is increased by adding a row of boys every level. But there's no limit either, so if you reach level 9, you die. Instantly. It's because the grid has grown too big, so right at the start of the level, enemies touch you.

As for other things, there is no sound and the graphics are too simplistic (rocks have a black background, boys' sprites have a green border, the white lines behind the rocks are unnecessary and at the end of the level, rocks fly above the "Level Up" button, not below it). Also, screen boundaries are a little off, so both you and the boys can move off the right edge of the screen, but you can't reach the left edge.
Then I could probably say there's a little variety, e.g. there could have been more than one kind of enemy, power-ups, anything. But shooting the target at the top every once a while is a nice idea.

If you are a beginner, don't worry and keep learning, perhaps with a different tutorial. Everybody must create a hefty amount of inferior games before being able to create the great ones. Good luck.

shawndabob responds:

Thanks for your honesty, and yes I was trying to learn at the time. I am now slowly trying to learn more... maybe even see if there is a course I can take at a local facility or something. Thanks for playing it though.

[Mission Escape: Library]

I appreciate you added medals to your games once again. As for the scoreboard, you should probably award points (some value divided by time), not directly the time, because then the lazy, slow-witted players like me show right at the top. :)
And I liked the game, too. The puzzles were diverse, and while usually after getting three pieces of something your games end, here there was still an underground level to go through. Apparently the Tab button is blocked now, which is only fair, so we are not tempted to cheat every now and then.

My minor complaint would be about the bookshelves; the background ones look all the same and the front ones are just flipped, which is quite noticeable and breaks the immersion a bit (perhaps recolouring the covers of few books might help). I am also not really sure what I am looking at when zooming in to the green couch. Is it the armrest? Perhaps, either way two green rectangles might be too simplistic to depict a part of a couch. But that's okay, it's not really that important for the gameplay.

[Bleep Sheep]

Now that's a creative use of one room! Good job!
On top of that, the transitions and your movement are really fluent, and although I usually dislike time limit, here it forces you to take risks, which – with the fact you can't stop and everything around you shifts – creates a constant flow of challenging action. There's also double jump and air dash which can help you but also kill you. I'd say that was very well spent twelve hours. :)

Aaants responds:

Thanks!

[Pure Fire]

The graphics are really good, however the game itself feels repetitive. There's no new aspect later in the game (an enemy, obstacle, power-up, consumable item, anything), just more and more of the two kinds of enemies. Cool to play, but just for a short period of time.

[Amelia]

Quite short, but good enough for a LD entry.

There's just small problem that the recoil from shooting can hurl you through walls (especially in the narrow corridor). The movement animation is quite shaky, too.
And I wasn't completely happy with the AI either – you can shoot each enemy in the game from distance and the bystanders won't react at all, and will wait to be shot too. On the hand, if you do come close enough, everybody will instantly turn in your direction and shoot directly at you, even when they can't see you. All of them shoot together at the same time, and then again after a fixed period of time.
Not to mention there's only one kind of enemy.

But I understand there is only so much of what you can do in two days. :)

xinelu responds:

:) next time i eill work on a proper AI, but thamx for the review!

[Witness]

Is there any content in the game so far? I walked all around the place twice and found nothing to interact with. Also:

– Why is it so hard to walk a straight line? You bend slightly to the right when going forward. The camera's also not positioned at the height of an average person. And when you tilt the mouse up, you can turn it around in full 360° circle, so if you want, you can walk upside down. Jessica must be a cool art teacher.
I'd recommend you to save yourself a lot of trouble and use the "FPS Controller" from Unity Standard Assets/Characters. You just drag the prefab to the scene and there you go, flawless movement and camera control (just disable jumping if you don't want it).
– Is there no ceiling? I'm not completely sure, but it looks like it. Either way, there should be a ceiling.
– "Press Space to continue…": Well, pressing space didn't do anything.
– The gate to the gallery protrudes out slightly
– The window blinds disappear if you go near them
– Even though it looks "more decorative", there's no purpose of a door if there's a big gap right next to them (door to the hallway with lockers)

I apologise if I missed some of the game's content, but if there was more so far, it should be a warning indication to you that somebody can play through the game twice without finding any interactive thing at all. Good luck if you develop this further.

adglenn94 responds:

Hi there,
Thank you for the feedback. This is a first project of mine so I was expecting several problems. However, with feedback such as yours, I can take some notes to work on a patch that I will release later in the week! Thanks again for the feedback and I would love to hear your thoughts later this week after the update happens!

[Tilt Christmas]

Yes, as people have already said, it could have been a neat, simple game, but it's lagging too bad. I don't know why, though. Too many objects? The snow in the background? Time-consuming methods in Update?
When the lagging is gone, you could probably add some more variety to the levels (currently, the only obstacle are the walls, the only danger are the dark blocks). It's Unity, you could quite easily add e.g. a steep slope and a pitfall behind it, so it would require some manoeuvring ability to survive. And other things.
But the lags are a crucial flaw, so that should be your priority.

BlastOffProductions responds:

The FPS problem has been fixed. It used to be around 30FPS, now it can be around 60FPS. However, if this doesn't work please tell me. Thank you.

[Brick 2]

Well, that's boring.
Yes, it does not break my mouse unlike clicker games, but on the other hand, it requires your attention and a lot of patience. Scoreboard is a good idea (if you can get it working), so players can compete with each other, but there's not much fun in running around collecting the exactly same items in order to purchase updates to collect even more of said items.

Yet you have a great foundation, if you wish to improve it.
You could e.g. warp the terrain, so there would be some obstacles (and add jumping, because that's usually what Space does in 3D games). Then it would feel *almost* as collecting coins in platformer games.
You could add more kinds of bricks (e.g. a chance of spawning gold brick with value of 100*someCoeficient points, which slowly fades away if you are not quick enough)
You could have powerups, e.g. every 100th brick, you could unleash powerup of collecting everything in line in front of you; every 500th brick, collect every brick on the ground (of course, the magnet upgrade already does this, so you might want to think about something different).
Stuff like that – just add something which is not directly related to collecting bricks, or the game will feel quite shallow ("Street sweeper simulator 2").

As for other things, is there a max count of bricks that can be in the game? While writing this review, the scene got a bit cluttered and I imagine, theoretically, if I left the game running for an hour or two, it could get pretty laggy and messy. And some of your potential players will want to do that in order to collect loads of bricks at once with minimal effort unlike "honest" players who run around collecting bricks as they fall one by one.
Also, shop screen is (I assume) a jpg with visible compression artifacts (try png instead), text overlaps upgrade icons (wheelbarrow) and development build is not ideal for release (slower, larger).
And I feel it would look much better if the long distance bricks were dragged towards you instead of just simply disappearing.

So far it's an okay game, but not something anyone would want to spend more than a couple of minutes with.

[platformer 1 lvl demo]

Good luck! I wrote down some notes which will hopefully help you improve the game.

– First of all, outstanding graphics. I like the colourful toon style.
– Yellow font in the menu is bright, the background behind is also bright, so it might be better to choose a different color for readability. Also consider changing the font, this one is more suited to small handwritten text (e.g. a letter), but in the menu, you want the options to stand out. This is especially case of the score count (if you wish to track score), the number in the corner is quite small in comparison with everything else (e.g. the heart counter)
– "Credits" are cool :)
– "Exit" button is unnecessary in a web build, it does nothing
– For a platformer game, your jump height is pretty low and so is the gravity (you jump up quite fast, but it takes ages until you land back on the ground. Even if you walk off a road to the water, you sink in very slow). You can even continue walking in mid-air.
– Add a splash sound when you touch the water
– Add a sound when collecting a coin (or any graphical effect when collecting it, so it doesn't just instantly vanish)
– The grass appears gradually, that's fine, but the boundary is too close to you. Ideally, you shouldn't notice the appearing and disappearing, it might feel intrusive
– Music doesn't loop
– Improve collision detection
　• Trees and rocks don't have any colliders
　• Player's collider is too large (you can stand next to spikes, don't even touch them and still get hit)
　• Player's feet are sunk into the ground a bit (enlarge ground's collider?)
　• When you go towards a wall, you can pass through without extra effort
– "F" as run key is a bad decision. The way you hold WASD leaves you to a choice between walking right and running. "Shift" would be much more logical and comfortable option.
But in my opinion, this is a platformer and you want to be running most of the time, so I'd make "run mode" default and holding Shift/Ctrl as "walking".
– After game over, the load button should be inactive (greyed out). Now it works and (apparently) loads the menu scene (judging by the small lag when you click it). And nobody needs that.
– If you're not in the fullscreen mode, text in game over screen is broken into more lines (e.g. Game *newline* Over, Main *newline* Menu)
– When you die, the enemy who followed you returns to his original spot. That's okay, but he flashes back *while* you're dying. He should wait until you return to your respawn position
– The rabbit doesn't cause any damage, his "follow player" distance range is too small and when you run away, he "pops" in a different place and starts walking again
– You should try to be consistent. If your hero is a medieval warrior, your enemy is a medieval warrior, a creepy rabbit out of nowhere may seem like somebody tried to mash up several free assets together and the game won't have an identity, world of its own. I'd ditch Mr. RabZ. :)
– Walking over a dead enemy (not the rabbit) makes sound every time. It probably shouldn't.
– The sword swiping sound is fine if you hit an enemy, but swiping a sword through plain air doesn't make this "cutting flesh" sound. Check freesound.org, there's plenty of "whoosh" sounds you could use
– It's great you've added some birds as a background. Sometimes they fly too far away, maybe, but it's a great idea.
– Spikes' up/down cycle is too fast to pass over them without harm. Now it's okay because you just need to avoid them, but later if you added a batch of them in the player's way to walk over them when it's "safe", it probably wouldn't be possible. There could be e.g. a second long pause when they're inactive
– Being stabbed once with a sharp metal (spikes) certainly doesn't make a "BAM BAM BAM" sound
– Spikes harm you only once, even if you stand on top of them. In Unity, instead on "OnCollisionEnter/Exit" like you probably use to not deplete player's health all at once, you could harm player always at the specific time of the spikes' animation if he touches them (create an animation event). Or simply use the animation event to set whatever "spikesCanHurtPlayer" bool variable you use back to true, so it will harm the player with each push.
– You don't move with moving platform. You could either add the platform's velocity to the player's (hard solution), or simply set the player's parent object to the platform when he touches it, and to null when he leaves.
– Moving platform passes through ground. Either lower the ground or relocate the platform's end target point.
– Trees stick through the platform above them
– The interval of disappearing platforms might be too short (impossible if you don't run) and most importantly - they don't reappear. Fall off a disappearing platform and you might as well restart the whole game.
And it's always good when you can tell a platform is just about to disappear, so it doesn't come as a surprise. Some games add cracks, but you could make the platform slowly fade out (gradually change the platform's color's alpha to zero).
– Consider building the game as WebGL, so everybody can play it, not just Firefox / Explorer users who installed a plugin.
https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/developer-resources/unity3d-webgl-support#wiki_toc_3

Anyway, as you can see, there's still some work left to do, but I'll repeat that I quite like your game and think you are on good way to make this a really neat platformer. :)