Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ignis mortis]

It looks very good. Just some things:

– The movement speed could be slightly faster. All the characters look like they are "slowly running" when you move
– If you jump in an opposite direction (e.g. face right, jump, hold left arrow), the sprite doesn't change to reflect that (= you still face right)
– Jumping on lava tiles kills you, OK, but jumping on platforms elevated from lava which look safe harms you as well (which means insta-kill for the archer)
– More ways to regain health would be neat. There's the priestess, but I only found one and it was quite complicated to reach her
– I was really thrilled when I found out the "zombies" can climb. Great job on that!
– If you run out of lives, you are instantly taken to the menu without even seeing the "You're dead" message. AND (!) if you start a new game then, you die instantly with your NEW character and appear at a checkpoint from you previous playthrough

But most important of all; I think the game could really use some sort of hinting where you need to go. We've got the map, which is fine, but it shows all the stuff you will eventually need to collect and with the world as open and vast as it is, you can wander in +- six directions, each of which forking into more paths.
I started the game three times and didn't even find the water shoes. Yet I wandered through many different environments, found three items I couldn't reach yet, killed plenty of enemies (which didn't cause a trouble) and eventually got killed by lava or acid (which caused a lot of trouble) when I reached a dead end.
You don't have to point out a specific glowing X on the map, but you could add some more natural obstacles in the directions that shouldn't be explored yet (for example a "lake" which requires the blue shoes) – early, not after you go the wrong way all the way up/down.

Overall, I am glad I tried out the game. It has really neat graphics and animations, three different playable characters which is always a plus, and it can keep you entertained for quite a while; so my biggest complaint here is probably the navigation.

[Click Farm]

82 farmers with 123 tractors, silos and barns to harvest 6×6 farming patch? Well, WHY NOT! :)

I just feel there was too large gap between "Helper" ($25,000) and "Mansion" ($1,000,000), so I began to lose interest when I was around 100k and needed 900k more to buy the next item in list.
In general, it was way easier to gather clicks than gold - perhaps something that enhances gold income would be good, so the gold/click values would stay more or less even. Or faster level-ups, so you can afford the more advanced crops.

But it's good to see you try something new. It was a neat game.

selfdefiant responds:

Thanks! It's tricky balancing everything out!

[Riddle Transfer 2]

A great ending to a wonderful series.
I have always adored your sense of humour. It shows in all your games (Esotericism of Bargo :D) but I always felt we see most of it in Riddle School – and now we finally got a worthy closure to the story.
Good luck with whatever you decide to create in the future. I believe it will be just as amazing. ;)

[city jump]

In these jump precision games it is always helpful to see where your feet are, so you can time your jumps better. Half the times I fell here it was because I jumped too early/too late in attempt to jump from an edge.
Also, because you always need to jump while holding Shift, it might make more sense to make sprinting enabled by default.
Good luck with the game.

[Robo Jump]

Good start, but it could use some polishing.
For example; please disable screen scrolling with arrow keys, because it makes your game really user unfriendly – the screen goes up with the up arrow and I had to scroll back down constantly. Try something like this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8916620/disable-arrow-key-scrolling-in-users-browser
Or simply use WASD instead of arrow keys.
Then, the score counter is black, but so is the background – you can't read the numbers.
And your character has a black border, which is visible when you fall through the "green box".

In the current state, your game can be entertaining for a while, but it needs more work.

[Pong Simulator 2016]

Before I say anything else – I really adore the television look. Some care must have been put there to make the screen and paddle movement curvy and I like it.

Furthermore, well, it's Pong, it's simple, so I don't have any remarks here, but the main downside of this game is probably the absence of computer AI. If there was some kind of switch to make computer control one of the players, it would be great. There are some tips how to do that for example here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23960654/unity-pong-ai-movement-speed
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/scripting-ai-for-2d-pong-game.229226/
Just don't forget to make the computer somehow beatable (e.g. slow paddle speed).

Good luck!

[Enkid]

A neat game!
I like the idea, it might be a good base for a great platformer game if you decide to invest more time in it. It is probably the best you could have accomplished in such a short time frame.
Some things you might consider improving:
– There's a lot of walking on dirt. I completed the game and didn't feel like there was any challenge, any real danger. The jumping was quite ordinary and enemies (just one kind of enemy) ceased to be a problem when you became able to shoot. So maybe… more enemies? More kinds of platforms? More sources of water (e.g. rain, waterfall, geyser)? Health? Whatever you want.
– The third guy is probably slow by concept and that is fine, but remember to speed him up a bit if you decide to make the levels more challenging (or it's probably going to be a bit frustrating)
– Play a sound when shooting fire?
– (Just a personal note) It's helpful for some players if you can avoid using "Z" as a control key, because in whole Central Europe (and few other countries elsewhere) "Z" is switched with "Y" on keyboards and that makes controlling the character a bit unfriendly.
– I found water that didn't kill me:
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/68d78bcaebf563d16d7ddbd2d3730981
– A game-breaking bug that made me start the game over. If you step on breakable platform and let it break and reappear, it won't break for the second time (it seemed like more platforms were generated on top of each other). In this particular situation, you won't be able to proceed further:
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/e22cf32674a0a094407395ee90915296

Hope that helped a bit and good luck in the competition! :)

leronir responds:

Wow, nice review!

I really appreciate your time to write it all down. We noticed dthe breaking platform bug, but assumed it won't be a problem, we're so wrong haha.
We will let the game fastest in general, increase the speed of all characters, we just can't do it while the game is on trial, because it wouldn't be fair.
Also, we really want to improve the game design and level design in general, your notes will be considered to do that.
I didn't know about the "z" "y" button, originally it would be "x", maybe we change back.

Thanks for your feedback!

[Escape Race]

This is actually quite enjoyable, well done. I'd recommend you to shorten the time interval when your car is burning after crash, because before you get the general grip how to play this game, you crash a couple of times and waiting several seconds to restart the game can feel a bit annoying.

[Epic Adventure]

Well, that's an improvement! In the interface, atmosphere, game mechanics… yeah, I'm looking forward to the next game. Some other stuff:

• I definitely didn't think about "borrowing" a torch from king's castle. Well, a tip for the next time. Also, let me appreciate that now your walkthrough button links directly to the video, not to a list of all videos

• You can't close either of that king guard's dialogues

• Nice Majora's Mask reference… kid with sword and shield = adult :)

• There were some things you've probably prepared for the next chapters (colourful flasks, water/raft, cart, horse), but their descriptions hint you should think about them in the current one ("how do I smash the stable's lock, so the horse can move the cart?") – which is not necessary yet

• I'm highly suspicious about dragon eggs that almost never hatch. :)

• How do shields work? I tried "blocking" an attack from the slime, for no effect
↑ About this, if you plan to make combat more common element in this series (as I would assume from the shop and the level system), you might want to consider improving the combat mechanics, because "click until it's dead" gets quite boring after some time. Something simple, really, e. g. adding three icons hovering over enemies' heads: „slash“, „stab“, „block“ (+ „toadstool“). Just to make things a little more interesting, while still maintaining the overall adventure feel.

Hope that helped a bit, good luck with the next chapter. ;)

selfdefiant responds:

Thanks! That was a lot of help. :)