Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Reap]

It's a well-made game with a great concept, congratulations!

In my opinion, I passed through all the levels with relative ease; I don't think there was anything which would be truly challenging or which needs more than two or three tries. You can slow down any number of moving objects indefinitely with a barrage of spells with fast fire-rate and turn very slow hovering in the air on/off as many times as you like, so you always have plenty of options to make the level easier or to fix your mistakes even mid-air.
Perhaps there should be areas which don't allow using your abilities (or moving objects unaffected by them) or some limits on your abilities. Not to make the game very difficult, just to up the challenge a bit.

It would also be interesting to see a greater variety of puzzles. What you have currently is fine, it's just that similar "tricks" and mechanics are repeated very often, well after you proved you know how to do them ("open door, slow it down, run through", "slowing human on a button" etc.). Syncing the blades in the last level was a good idea, perhaps you could do something similar for example to choose the order in which buttons are pressed by slowly falling weights (so you could run through a series of doors), propel yourself with a conveyor belt (which you have to walk across while it's slow) or something else which makes you use your abilities in a new, previously unseen way.

But those are just tips for improvement. The game already is very good as it is. :)

AlienPlay responds:

Cool! Thanks for the ideas! :D

[Escape House (Very Easy Game)]

I think it's good for a first try.
It's a finished game at least, with a clear goal. I think especially the "unlocking door animation" is a nice touch – you didn't have to do that, but you did and it improves the quality of the game.

You could improve, well, everything, but you probably already know that. More detailed backgrounds, consistent outline (the ladder has a thick outline, the door almost nonexistent), *more content*, properly drawn attic, roof or whatever it is… and so on.

Don't get discouraged by bad reviews or score. Yes, the game isn't good overall – BUT everybody has to start somewhere but if you stick with it and continue to learn and improve; in a couple of years you'll be amazed how much you've improved since your first submission.

AleGames4008 responds:

in fact the game came ugly, but I hope to improve. Thank you

[BeatMagic]

It's simply too fast, making it almost impossible to play unless you're lucky. I never got to the white circle in the middle.
You're also not using much of the screen – most squares are spawned in the upper left corner, thus the majority of the screen, especially bottom right quarter, remains empty.

MrCringeKid responds:

So you just admitted to just being bad at the game. (I also suck at it but look at the world record)

[Third Attempt]

Whoa, that's a creative concept. I like it!

I never got too far, though, mostly because it's hard to both build a reliable platform and shoot the increasing number of enemies coming from all directions.
At some point, I either couldn't properly shoot enemies below me (since the shots were blocked by the frozen enemies, or there were too many of them all around and if I managed to get them all in time, I effectively trapped myself.

I guess I would probably get better with practice, but I think it'd be worth a shot to make it a little easier, because the fun lies in jumping, building and shooting, not starting over every fifteen seconds.
As a suggestion; here's a couple of ways which might improve the game's enjoyability:
– make fewer enemies appear at once
– make the bullets slightly larger and pass through enemies (so you can shoot through frozen enemies or freeze multiple enemies which are close to each other)
– add a "special attack" (right-click) which can be activated every once in a while and freezes everything in your close vicinity.

I tried doing a "jump above an enemy and shoot below" a couple of times, but it almost never worked – the enemy froze, but it still killed me because I was too close.

Nevertheless, it's a great game, but my longest ever playthrough was only like thirty seconds, even though I really tried.

Byvsen responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

You do have the ability to change the difficulty in the game. By pressing the button below the start button in the main menu, you can make the game a little easier. But perhaps I have to make it a little more clear.

I do like the idea of having a special attack though! Might try adding this feature to the game. Again, thanks for posting this! :)

[Blocksticles]

Ahh, nothing like the start of summer to play a winter-themed game. :)

I think I've seen someone use the same template/tutorial for this game before, since the core gameplay was pretty much the same. I'll repeat what I wrote back then:
– There's no point in having a score if it gets reset in between levels. That way, a player who didn't die once during his entire playthrough AND a player who kept dying constantly during all levels will end the game with the same exact score => score for the last level. Pass the score between levels.
– I like that crashing doesn't send you back to the start immediately, but there's a slight delay. That's important because you have time to acknowledge the cause of your crash.
– It doesn't have to be a long, wide, straight road. How about a branching, winding path? A high-risk narrow detour which results in a score bonus? You could even set up a scoreboard, so players can compete with each other.
https://bitbucket.org/newgrounds/newgrounds.io-for-unity-c/

But I think your version has nicer graphics. Although some background objects don't have colliders, so things can pass through (e.g. the gate and the trees at the very start). I also loved the last level with the jump, I think it was a great way to end the game, but I don't see the point of the floating fence.

The game crashed with an exception a couple of times when I fell from the edge.
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/yRtD.png
"Failed to execute 'setValueAtTime' on 'AudioParam': The provided float value is non-finite."
See here if it's similar to your problem:
https://github.com/Tonejs/Tone.js/issues/347

The options menu is complete garbage, though. :)
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/xX4t.png
It's unusable because the layout isn't anchored properly and there's no "Back" button (!!), so you have to reload the game in order to get back to the menu, which resets the options.
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2019/06/07/wbue.png
Even when you go fullscreen, it doesn't get better; the options are randomly scattered around (instead of being in the same column), there's no padding, the fullscreen button doesn't do anything… and of course, it's still all pointless, because you can't leave the options settings.

P014r1s responds:

Big thanks for your feedback, I'll try to update the game.

[Space Hole]

I think it's a pretty good idea. It was fun to play for a while.

The controls could be slightly more intuitive – like holding the mouse button to keep the spaceship in and moving the "space hole" around and releasing to release the spaceship. Just clicking and instantly teleporting around makes it much easier to make a mistake.
It might also be a good idea to add some sort of sound for warping from one place to another.

Sometimes I teleported in the last second – the brick crashed into me but I survived, and then there was a bug with two space holes simultaneously onscreen.

Draining your life while hiding was a really good choice to prevent the players from spending most of their time in the safety of the space hole. However, since there's no way to replenish lost health, not even slightly, you're basically guaranteed to lose after some time. Losing should depend on your skills and you should be able to delay it indefinitely if you're very good at playing the game. I'd make the bottles replenish a bit of your health.

And since it's a spaceship, you could make the graphics more consistent and instead of "spaceship, bottles, bricks" make something closely related, like "spaceship, stars, asteroids".

PhongDuong responds:

Thank you for your feedback Rallyx. I hope you enjoy it

[Ketch Up and Down]

Wow, it's a well-done game. "Hardcore vertical Flappy Bird?" :)
But honestly, there are so many additional mechanics, like different kinds of food to collect, gradually losing jump power, danger at the top and bottom of the screen, changing orientation.

On PC, if you use the mouse, I'd make right-click change the orientation, so you can play without using the keyboard at all.

Edit: Of course, you have my permission. There's no "copyright" for ideas and all reviewers mostly want to help you make the game better. So, yes, definitely; you're free to use any idea the review might have given/suggested to you.

Max-B responds:

Tnx Rallyx,

Something like that ...

I like the mechanics of Flappy Bird however hate the direct and dumb game cloning.
So I've mushed it up with my own shticks :)
The aim was to have as less controls as possible thus i decided to toggle one button for side movement.
At first I made spiky platforms slide down but found out that game play was a bit linear so i decided to add another item to collect upon reaching the top or the bottom, to make it more challenging :)
I like your input about making the right-click change the orientation, i might even implement it with your permission ;)