Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Up]

Hi. I must say I barely finished this game, because towards the end, it was more frustrating than enjoyable. I understand it was a school assignment and you may not want to continue developing it, but if you do, there are things you definitely should consider (possibly in the next game you wish to create).

- Most importantly, the movement was stiff and it was annoying that each move left/rightwards made you pass cca 1/6 of the whole screen. When near spikes, you'd be perfectly able to avoid them if there was a slightly higher movement precision.
- You can't even touch the walls and spikes, there is always quite a big gap between you and them, which results in you being killed before you should and some impassable areas (lvl 2).
- Level 2 is harder than Level 3, perhaps you should switch them.
- What definitely shouldn't happen is you moving a little up when your sprite is changed for the one with fire. The robot should always stay at an fixed spot and the fire should appear below it.
- The thrust fire contains some white pixels - are they intentional?
- The white balls don't do anything. I know you can collect them, but that's all, they don't yield score or anything that would show up somewhere. I don't say there should be a score counter, it could e.g. require 2/3 of the orbs to pass to the next level, or anything else. But it shouldn't do nothing.
- The white orbs sprite seem to be cropped slightly on the left.
- I'd consider adding a little more accuracy to the thrust, but it's up to you.
- If you decide to add more levels, it should contain something new, a new aspect every once a while (for example, a key locked door, something other than the spikes to kill you).

I hope the tips were useful to you. ;)

[Test Game 2014]

It looks like a neat game so far, I hope it will turn out well.
- I don't know if you plan to set a level cap, but you probably should - with a higher level (100+), the combat takes almost an eternity (with the basic 'test' weapon, the pencil is all right) and the combat is very laggy (due to big numbers I suppose).
- The animations are fine, I just noticed that the chest sprite overlays the krocks, not the other way round. This is similar to the problem that you can walk over the upper part of the chest and it appears below you.
- Also, it might be better if the huge chest wasn't spawned with each defeated enemy, it would make it seem scarcer. Or just make it into a pile of collectable items on the ground to save yourself from trouble.
- The attacking animation is good, too; but you should push the enemies back a little with each swing at least - it would seem more realistic, because now you harm them just by swinging the katana above their heads (when facing left or right), which doesn't look very well.
- Using an item from the inventory probably shouldn't automatically close it, because you might need to use more healing items at once and instant opening/closing inventory slows the process down.

That's all I could remember, hope it helped a bit. Good Luck. ;)

[Remember Death]

Glad to see another game from you! They are always very interesting, but this one was really great. The people who push the rating towards 3 clearly don't know what to look for in a visual novel.

*Spoilers below*
The story is complex and full of twists, some of the side characters were written so well that I quite started liking them. Honestly, in the very beginning, I expected Liam's vote to be something weird, but I saw his choice I was like - woah, the main hero's dead this soon? Even later, it was never obvious whether you should or should not trust him. And aside from the story, there were even few puzzles and interactive areas, so we could have a little break from reading every once a while. Kotaro's running animation was fluent, had even a jacket waving in the air (I dunno why I noticed it) and standing on a person's head while having emotional dialogues is definitely one of my favourite moments.

To the things that could be improved. (Eh, I'm sorry; this review is basically all reading... if you do not enjoy reading you might not like this review, but giving it a try won't hurt anybody ^^;;)
On purely technical matter, sometimes it was frustrating to continue through dialogues, because you had to press "S" several times to go to the next talk, not just once. Also, I'd make the down arrow key show the whole text at once, not just speed it up. Somebody might read faster, somebody might not want to read while the sound of the text showing up still plays. Just my opinion.
Also, not everybody might have heard the phrase "memento mori" to be able to complete the puzzle - and trying to assemble an English word won't work for them. I know it can be skipped and six notes aren't that hard to put together (although that makes 720 possible options), but it might be better if a sentence like "It seems like Latin to me" popped after two minutes or so. Again, my opinion.
There were also some typos, I've noted some of them down. I can send it to you via message - if you want - no need to clutter up the space here.

Story-wise, I could have some remarks.
I know you need the characters say the things they said in the order they said it, but I'd add a few lines here and then to make them look like upset, nervous, panicking or anyhow more emotional. They all just seem way too calm for the fact that they were all abducted, locked in an underground dungeon with scary masks and poison bracelets on their feet, one of them is already dead and they are forced to vote for their lives, or die in six hours.
As it seems to me, Simon is a calm character who won't panic, Liam got angry, fine. But the others?
Nana is clear; supposedly she had some time to calm down while she was awake (but she should pretend to worry more). Alice and Sera are said to be joking to lighten up the situation, but in a situation like this one, every joke would be much more convulsive, maybe cynical. Not many people would manage to fend off every worrying thought and joke in such a playful way. Maybe Alice could be one of them, but probably not Sera.
I know that by accepting the situation, the story gets pushed forward, but staying rather calm when one of your friends is suddenly dead and you read things like "if two people die, blue door opens", etc? At least one of such a large group should be "less calm" - it would be more realistic, make us delve deeper in the atmosphere and get to know the characters better (which might come in handy, seeing as you plan two sequels).
To post an example: (Alice) You are an asshole, Liam, you killed me. (Kotaro) Alice is acting weird again. - or a similar argument Kotaro had with Liam in Chapter 1.
Is that really that weird? Imagine that somebody caused you to die in two hours, although you thought you can trust him. What would you say (or more likely *do*) to such person?
A slight plot hole might be in Chapter 4. If I haven't missed it, Nana says that they made all that to make you feel scared to leap in time, that to experience all that was the only way to go, but why did she had to make it in the complex game-like way? She could just gather everybody and shoot them before Kotaro's eyes and it would probably produce the same effect. So why did those two put you through all the puzzles? Did they want to test your time-leaping abilities, or does Nana secretely hate you because she is the one living, while Aria is dead; or something yet different...? I admit, I might have missed it.

Ew, I apologise for this meaningless pile of words - I just enjoy good stories and yours was a very good one with a lot of interesting plot-twists, and I thought these observations might help you make it even better.
Yeah, and good luck with the sequels, I'm looking forward to them! ;)

[Dead Wave - Reanimated]

VERY linear.
The zombies are just as fast as you and don't change direction that quickly, so it's quite easy to avoid them. That, added to the fact that you can one-hit everything (and with the size of the zombies, you almost never miss), makes you practically invincible.
There are so many things that could be easily added in later levels to make this much more enjoyable game. Different kinds of zombies (e.g. faster ones, exploding when shot, more durable ones,...) more weapons (weaker longrange (rifle), stronger shortrange (flamethrower, shotgun), something that pierces through everything in its way,...), obstacles, etc.

But with a working, fluent mechanics like this, it would be almost a shame not to make it into a larger game - e.g. something with a story - for example an adventure in a zombie infested city, survival horror, I don't know... I would gladly give five star rating to any more complex game based on this mechanic, because now it is just too linear and becomes boring quite quickly. The competitive, score aspect isn't that fun, as the final number depends on everyone's patience more than on their skill.

DeadWaveProductions responds:

That is very kind of you dear sir.

I will point out that I should have put "BETA" in the description as I can a small time limit to get this done with all the other work I had. - There is SO much I want to add into the game I will get around to doing - More weapons, armour, Zombies is certainly a thing on my list, including more levels!

Thank you - Ash

[escape !!!]

Nice game.
To make it better, I would definitely adjust the text fields, so the text-edit cursor won't show up. And these games might get boring after a while

cass12 responds:

yeah thx it get bored cause there not much to do yet imworkingto add more helicoters morecities and even night artin it and more

[Bounce game(pl)]

Hi, neat game. I think it could be very good, if you get rid of few bugs and reconsider some things.
What I noticed:

- Mostly the graphics. It would really make your game look more professional if you spent some time with drawing the main character, the tiles, and so on. Now it looks just as Microsoft Paint. I don't say it couldn't work, but you should at least ensure (for example) that a wall is straight (not randomly placed tiles over each other with holes and gaps), black lines on wood are narrow, etc.
I don't know which drawing software you used, but Flash/Photoshop/Gimp/Inkscape/.../ might be better, as every model would definitely seem more fluent (especially in Flash, because it has vector graphics).
There are even drawing tools which can be opened online (http://www.ratemydrawings.com/startdrawing.php).

- Sometimes, the main character floats in air, although the ground is much lower. I don't know how you detect collisions, but if you make whole tiles impassable, you can't have diagonal slopes there, because we will have to go over invisible stairs no matter what. Either change the collision detection, or put 'stairs' everywhere (e.g. the way how it is done in Mario).
This link might help you, but I don't how well you can read in English (http://www.hobbygamedev.com/adv/2d-platformer-advanced-collision-detection/).
Yeah, and it is impossible to move while jumping, if you were standing by a wall before. So you always have to move a little backwards to be able to jump over a wall or so.
Also, I wouldn't recommend 'Shift' as the jumping key, because it pops up the annoying Sticky Keys (Klawisze trwałe (:D)) pop-up after five presses in Windows XP. If you don't like up-arrow key, the Spacebar is the usual pick for jumping. It's also bigger than the shift key, so it helps, because in platformer games like this, it needs to be pressed quite often.

- Please, make the character move faster in water. I liked that there's is an animation of falling in the water (just adjust the timing, because it plays in front of the main character, not above him), even the spikes sparkle, that's all good, but no matter how much I press the arrow keys, I can barely move left and right, that means I will almost always touch a spike.

- Wouldn't it be better if the spike hurt you just if you touch its tip, not its side? A clearer health bar might be better than the green/red cross, because players might get confused until they get its meaning.

- Touching a ceiling makes you stop moving forward. So you are jumping over a spike, touch the ceiling a bit, thus you stop moving forward and fall down on the spike.

To be honest, because of the last two notes, I couldn't complete the second level (I only got to the part with the lever), so I can't judge the content following it, sorry.
You might say it's a matter of difficulty, but there's a difference between hard difficulty, which is generally fine and challenging, and unexpected invisible walls with slow movement speed, which might be challenging too, but more likely it will annoy the players.

To sum it up - I think it will be a great game, I just recommend redrawing few models and adjusting the collision detection.
I hope I didn't make you upset by this review, I just posted some tips which I believe could make your game better.
Good Luck. ;)

[GRAIL]

Interesting idea, really.
The background colours fitted the dungeon atmosphere, I noticed the character animation fluency, which was truly perfect. Maybe the game could have been a little longer, but I know you had a time limit.
Oh, and there's a typo in the end (You died ** "timtes" in the process).

[House in the Hills.ver_0.]

It looks good and could make a great game depending on how you plan to expand it. I don't know if you plan to make it a horror, an adventure, or what, I haven't found any interactive objects, so I guess it's only the environment so far.
I will just sum things I have noticed while playing it.

- Mouse movement rotates the camera even if the cursor is out of the game screen area. It is quite annoying, especially when you need to move the scrollbar, go to another tab, or so.
- It might be better if the cursor was hidden, but of course it depends on how you plan to expand the game (e.g. crosshair, or a cursor for point and click adventure)
- It is possible to fall out of the map on few places
- Some trees are levitating (I noticed two in the starting area)
- Fireplace in the house (and few other objects nearby) has some clipping issues, which causes flickering if you turn around
- Maybe there should be ambient music aside from the rain, but I know it's just a demo so far
- The sound while walking through puddles doesn't sound like walking through puddles at all (it's more like shooting)
- There are strange green horizontal lines in grass
- There is no speed(/life) penalty for being underwater (not important in a demo, but don't forget about it later on)

That's all I could remember after falling off the map. ;)
Also, be prepared that some people will give you zero rating, solely because your game requires them to install another plugin (it happened a few times already), but don't let it discourage you. Good luck with the game, it will be great once it's completed.