Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Infinite Runner Afterlife]

It's mostly a challenge to stay focused on a mundane task.
The game looks nice, definitely; but the gameplay isn't super interesting.

The trick to the game is learning to jump slightly sooner than you think is necessary, because if you jump before the flame hits you, it's already too late.

Then… all there's left is repetition, as long as you are able to. The pace doesn't change, there are no new mechanics, the music doesn't change, the backgrounds don't change, etc.
If you remember to press the spacebar at set intervals, you can keep it up for as long as you wish.

Around 750 points, you realize that's all you're going to see in the game, and around 1500, I mostly decided to give up. If I made it to 5000 to get the final achievement, I would have probably quit immediately after.

Most of all, the game is missing variety, something new thrown in the mix every now and then to keep you on your toes.

Also kudos to you for adding medals and high scores, and crediting everyone whose assets you used.

KobatoGames responds:

I get what you mean. I had made it to be a casual runner where you could relax and enjoy the environment. Maybe I should make that a separate mode and try adding a regular mode as well where the speed increases and it's more challenging. This is also my first time adding medals, so it's possible I set them too high.

[Pop Dot Endless]

It's a quite simple game concept, but executed well. Fun for a while, but after a few minutes, you've seen all there is to this game, so all there is is beating your high score.

A couple of tips for improvements:

– Art consistency. The main gameplay area is a smooth circle, with a smooth yellow disc and a red bar. But, all text resembles a large digital clock or a billboard display, not smooth at all. Then, the hearts are pixel art, and the speedometer is “smaller” pixel art.
You should ideally pick a certain art style, and stick with it throughout.

– Gameplay-wise, I think there should be a way to gradually recover hearts if you play well. Or other bonus (score) or reward if you hit the bar first-try before passing through because I think you want to encourage fast-paced gameplay and should reward players who take risks instead of waiting several cycles before popping. You could also subtract a point for passing, but a bonus reward feels nicer.

– The speedometer seems unnecessary; I can see how fast it is going. The only useful information is that I “maxed out” the speed, but that's also something you can tell rather quickly.

– Hard mode will forcibly reset your current game without confirmation. I feel you should only allow switching whilst your score is zero.

– Padding. “Pause”, “Hard mode”, “Pop dot” and “Change direction” are all differently-aligned

– You could probably shorten “Change direction” to “Reverse” so it doesn't have to be two lines.

– Shouldn't the loss of life reset the speed?

– As with any Newgrounds game with a high score, consider using Newground's built-in system for scoreboards.
https://github.com/PsychoGoldfishNG/NewgroundsIO-Unity/wiki
It's one thing to try to beat your own high score, it's far more motivational to try to beat a “global” high score.

Overall it's a nice little game; thanks.

Edit:
Thanks for your response!

That's a fair point about resetting the speed; you're right, it could encourage making a strategic mistake (or overall triple the baseline for a “good” score without bringing much new to the table).

About the leaderboards, I think I forgot there were any, because I started playing for a while, and then they only show up when you pause. I didn't pause. And since I saw no NG scoreboard/achievement tab under the game, I simply wanted to make you aware of that option in case you'd be interested in it.

Eazymode responds:

TYVM for the feedback, I appreciate all of this, truly. I'm trying to learn a lot and I will definetly keep all of the things you mentioned in mind.

- I love your idea of hitting the bar first try actually super cool.

- Yeah the speedometer feels a bit incomplete I do agree haha, I was mostly trying to learn how to add animations and effects, I originally wanted the speedometer to be a bar for when you get a streak of 20 without losing life you can press a button to get life back, but decided not to.

- I'm really struggling with alignment, I need to look into how to fix that more 100%

- I tried loss of life reseting speed, it ended with making me feel whenever I make a mistake I want to reset + It almost felt encouraged to lose life at higher scores to make it easier, so I decided not to.

- I didn't use the newgrounds leaderboard, but my leaderboard is definetly global, the server might've been down when you were playing?

Thank you so much for your input man, it's my first game and im learning so much

[Pitfall 2024! Ver 1.1 Fan Made Homebrew]

Well, it's definitely a more forgiving and pleasant experience than the original Pitfall as I remember it.

The movement is fluent, it's so much easier to swing on a rope. It's also good that the rolling logs don't outright kill you but you only trip because you stumble into them all the time, jumping over pits.

The jump distance is quite short, but that's probably a good thing because it's exactly right for the spacing of obstacles, and since you can't change direction or anything else mid-air, a longer jump distance might not be that big of a benefit.

I like how you can buy more lives with a sufficient score.

I think the shrinking pools of boiling tar or quicksand expand a bit too quickly, so you have barely any time to react and your timing has to be quite precise. Or perhaps what bothers me is not knowing the exact boundary where it begins/ends (one time I ran right into a pool of quicksand which was gone when the level started).

It feels like the rainbow trail behind you should make you run faster or something; I don't feel any real effect.

As for ideas, I think the underground is a bit underutilized – or at least was in the portion of the game I experienced; it could make for a welcome change if you had to traverse several screens through the caves and some unique obstacles there.

Buckar00 responds:

Thanks for the review. I've tried to keep to the original layout of the game so all 255 screens are the same layout. You're right, it meant the jump had to be short to feel like the original.

Have you tried going back and playing the 2600 version? You should be able to find one online.

The logs are a pain there's one that's static when you run left that I hit every time. There's some definite tweaks still to be implemented.

[Space Jetz Scrollerz - mobile touch and keyboard]

It works as a game and all the elements of a space shooter are in it. But it's not polished in the slightest, and overall, it's just not very fun.

Primarily, there's so much visual clutter on the screen. Backgrounds blend in with enemies and circular projectiles, some enemies look like formless blobs, and the powerups aren't immediately recognizable as powerups (for all you know, they could be enemy missiles). Enemies also take as much as 1/7 of the screen's height, so you can't ever have many enemies at once to make some fleet formation, which is a staple of the genre.
There is too much going on so you can't focus on what's important.

Controls are fairly clunky as well, sometimes keyboard controls just don't work at all, and when they do, your movement isn't terribly fluent. You also can't move and shoot at the same time, which is half the fun in a space shooter game.

The power-ups in my opinion don't last very long for you to appreciate them, and I don't feel like the game progresses at all, as you rank up your score (e.g. by having increasingly harder or more frequent enemies show up). As a result, when the controls happen to work, and you get into a certain rhythm, you can keep it up mostly as long as you want and get a game over when you become sloppy after becoming increasingly more bored.

It's a good start, but it has a long way to go before becoming a fun game people would like to play more than once for two minutes.

ZOSUStudios responds:

Thanks for the feedback! It was made primarily as a mobile phone html game and then expanded to be playable on computers.

[The Great Blob Journey]

You know, if this was done in less than two hours, that's mighty impressive. Please take the score as a reflection of this being an unfinished game with no ending, in which you run out of content in three minues.

There's kickass music, fluent platforming, character animations, moving platforms, collectibles, background, AI enemy – and a secret room which was awesome to discover. And I love the messages in the pits.

As for things to consider:
– the main goal of the game, i.e. have a way to finish it (obviously)
– I would expect the collectible mushrooms to do something eventually if you track them down, either as a currency, or cause some other effect. But if they are important, please don't reset them with death, as falling down a pit in a platforming game is more or less expected to be common.
– Pixel size consistency. In a pixel art game, you should strive to have all pixels the same size, here it's all over the place (e.g. the protagonist vs the tiles)
– When you change the colours of the environment, I'd expect the gameplay to make a shift as well. E.g. you start on the grass with easy platforming and enemies, and “ascend” the mountain to a snowy area with harder platforming, harder enemies or I don't know, slippery ice.
– Look up the “squash and stretch” principle; it could help you improve the protagonist's jumping animation
– The text feels a bit “blurry” and is harder to read, and the font size + colour is all over the place

Overall there's not much else to say, but it's an extremely well-done prototype, so I hope you continue and do something great with it. Good luck!

LiquidVolt responds:

Yo! Thank you so much for this!
Ill keep everything in mind

[DuckJump]

The dinosaur game was my first thought. It's quite similar yet different.

– Mostly consistent, appealing visuals. But try to keep consistent pixel size – the world has large pixels, the up arrow has smaller, and the score has the smallest. That doesn't look good; a pixel in a pixel art game should have the same size everywhere.

– Awesome accompanying music

– There is no immediate visual response to pressing the right arrow to speed up, so you initially have no idea if it even did anything. It could do some speed-up effect as a response.

– Since you can slide infinitely, the birds don't pose much danger. You don't care how high they fly, you can boil the game down to “keep sliding all the time and jump over rocks”.

– Sometimes I encountered obstacle combos that seemed impossible (a bird between two rocks close together), but perhaps it just needed a very precise timing.

– The score doesn't grow at a rate that feels good; you can run at lightning speed and the number increase doesn't seem to match your “speed thrill” very well

– This in no way belongs under the “Visual Novel” genre

– It would be nice to track your high score; it would give you more reason to play for longer

– The hitboxes aren't all that precise, sometimes you get a game over showing you not touching anything, just because the invisible colliders larger than the sprites grazed each other. But well, it's a pixel-art game, inaccurate colliders are more or less a staple of retro games.

It's a cool little game that remains enjoyable for a good while; well done.

someguy323 responds:

I have changed the genre, at the time I didn't see an endless runner genre so I chose the most opposite thing I could find, but I found a genre similar enough to endless runner so I changed it

[Pixel Odyssey]

Honestly, this is a large and ambitious game, entirely let down by the framing and intro sequence.

Before I have any clue what the game is about, you're in a room, manually starting a PC game. Will this ever be relevant in the game, or support its core gameplay or narrative? There are mentions that you've been trapped inside, but unless it has a proper payoff later…
The room is okay; nothing special. Plain walls and ceilings, default Unity skybox outside, a chair you're not sitting on, a light that flashes as you look up and down, a very thin table, a perfectly reflective ball and a bunch of props. Weirdly you can't turn a full 360° angle, but you can turn further to the right.
The in-world Options menu is very interesting, the gun prop is also nice, as you get to use that gun later in the game.
But overall I don't see a reason to keep this in, as this will decide the first impression of people going into your game, and it's not what the game is actually about.

Then you start playing and get a lengthy intro and explanation of many mechanics and again, I don't think you need it.
Firstly, an infodump like this without experiencing it in the game is not something players will remember, and some things I believe people would intuitively understood right away or soon after encountering them in the game. Like red blob = health. Or you could have a brief onboarding level at the start (so you begin with actual gameplay, and learn the purpose of the items by seeing them in context and using them – e.g. see something like the Half Life training room). Or pause the game and show an explanation the first time you collect something.

So I believe I would have a better first impression if I just appeared in a room with many portals without the explanation and learned as I go. Remember this is a web game, and when you let people go for five minutes without experiencing gameplay, many turn away.
I wonder what would the player drop be if you used the Newgrounds.io API for events and added analytics for "started game", and "entered first portal".
https://www.newgrounds.io/help/components/#event-logevent

The goblins' level is the first one with proper gameplay I'd say. It's when I started to have fun and when I realized the scope of the game. It took a moment before I realized I need to select my weapon AND reload before being able to use it, though.

My main takeaway is that I'd prefer fewer, but smarter, more tactical enemies with different attack patterns. There's too many for the starting weapon you have, so you either stand in cover so you shoot enemies coming only from one direction, or run around in circles with an ever-growing horde of enemies chasing you around.

The goblin level at least had more types of enemies and status effects and a clear goal, the night level with zombies (?) and wendigos (?) was all about running in circles until they gradually took me down.
Then I somewhat lost interest to try again for the time being and never got to unlock a new weapon or an ability. Perhaps later.

Other things:
– the glyphs in the pirate level are bugged, I cannot pick them up with 'E' as suggested (luckily you can return to the Hub via options)
– the projectiles shot by the goblins look weird, at first I didn't realize they're supposed to be arrows
– the orbs can appear inside each other and overlap
– it would feel nicer if the enemies had some kind of hit reaction, a brief recoil. There's the on-hit particle effect, but it doesn't *feel* like your bullets are truly affecting the enemies.

As I said, this is a very ambitious project, with a lengthy intro before you can experience the gameplay – which is pretty fun, but has its own flaws and space for improvements.

EDIT:
Thanks for replying with the explanation and considering my suggestions.

One thing many games do and you could maybe try, is starting with the core gameplay already in one of the levels, and then showing the intro and explanation as a flashback when you first return to the hub area (“Don't you remember how you got here?”), when people will be more receptive to hearing more information.

In any case, good luck, I hope you get to finish this and turn it into the game you envision.

leoinpharoh responds:

Thank you! This is a fantastic feedback and we appreciate it. This is our first iteration of the game that we have gotten up on the web and it is a project that has taken up a lot of time. It is definitely not perfect in anyway, and I think your feedback is very helpful in getting us in the right direction.

I'm going to be looking at adding a new tutorial that is more engaging than just an info dump and with more implications on WHY you start in that room and such later down the line. It is part of the lore it just isn't put in just yet.

But thank you so much for at least trying our game!

[amazing clock!!11!1]

I like that it uses the actual time in your time zone.

You could include the ticking sound as a premium feature. And different clock colours.
And a pendulum.

Edit: I understood premium was a joke. :)

EuropeanRat responds:

Premium was a joke, and i already tried to change clock stuff (pendelum and clock coluors) but it got too much lag/delay/fps drop. :(
Edit: It was meant to look like a crappy play store app with every second 297 ads. Thats why i put premium joke ofc

[cool kalculator!!11!1]

Wow, a free calculator with no ads! Bookmarking immediately!

It's a calculator, we've all seen one, so I'll just list some observations:

– Dividing by zero gives you Infinity, and 0/0 is NaN. Wow, impressive. You should probably have a syntax error, too, if you enter no numbers at all and just the operand, it still gives you the result.
– Having no operand and just a number should give you the same number (now it does nothing)
– Entering decimal numbers is broken
– There's some weird spacing when entering subtraction and division
– There's no way to enter negative numbers
– If you get a result, and press an operation, it should use the result as the first argument. That way, you could get around the absence of parentheses and the inability to enter multiple operands, now you can't, so you can only perform a simple calculation

Edit:
Updated the rating; most things were fixed and I also noticed it works on mobile, so that's pretty cool.

EuropeanRat responds:

Im done with the most of them now, but 4 cant be fixed. Thats a problem in the programming language, not the code. Edit: It can work on mobile, but emm, you would need a fast one since i tested it on a phone, we dont talk about speed and lag right? Okay then nevermind