Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[wickgame]

You know, you didn't *have* to release a game you don't believe in just because of a game jam's deadline. Especially since half of the game consists of: "Make a Wick game" – "Uhh, I don't want to…"
But… there are multiple outcomes with several mildly amusing lines, so if I was generous, it could be called "a point-and-click adventure with branching narrative" – but not something I would recommend others to play, or in fact even remember next week.
Interestingly, the most hard-to-get ending is also the worst one because you get neither cheese nor a polymorphing hat. Yeah, and it's a pity that there's no restart button.

davidpuralocura responds:

you are right i didn't have to
but it has happened soo many times that i make something and don't post it anywhere
i think its funny talking on not making a game while it is one
i appreciate that you got all the endings and you are right that the hardest is the less rewarding
one, i guess next time i will have to look more into it
and you are right that i did not make a restart button(will try and and one)
thank you for the review
Edit:I added a restart button and a better ending for the people that get the hard to get ending

[Space Buttons]

A fine puzzle game, a pity there's only a few levels.

I think having so much open space to move outside of the central board makes the game massively easier because it allows you to fill a small chunk of the board, leave, move around freely and fill in another small chunk elsewhere. You need some empty space, but having less of it – or some inside the central board (i.e. only a part of the centre is filled with red buttons, the rest is empty) – would make you plan your moves more carefully and make the game more challenging overall. I completed the game mostly with trial & error strategy.

likliklik0 responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I'll try to use this to improve my future games!

[A Little Snake Game]

It's generally fine, although the controls can be a bit unresponsive (changing direction doesn't turn you immediately, but only at the end of a "cycle"), which makes going diagonally ↑→ pretty hard.
You can also crash into yourself by going backwards (e.g. pressing left while going right). That shouldn't happen; the opposite direction should simply be blocked.

PinkHedgehog responds:

Those are some fair points. I implemented so it's no longer possible to go backwards (and commit suicide).

Looking into making the game more responsive might be a bit of a larger procedure, and any potential update on that front might be a quite a while in the future.

[SIMPLE PLATFORM (Do Not Enter)]

Edit: The game was updated and works now.

Actually, contrary to what I expected, it's not half bad!

If I forget the graphics which are pretty underwhelming, it's a quite diverse game with many varied sequences and surprising twists. I mean, if you revamped the graphics, even with some freely available art if needed (e.g. Kenney assets, people on OpenGameArt.org…), it could considerably improve the quality. Now there's a lot of "plain colour" rectangles and overlapping tiles creating stairs – it's simply a bit messy.

Another thing you might want to reconsider is the first few moments of the game. You have one shot at a first impression, and you choose to waste it on pretending the game doesn't work. And it takes quite a long time until the game tells you otherwise.
The problem with this is that a newcomer might just take it at face value and close the game. You also can't move forward until you click on the "1 player" text, which is counter-intuitive. I just thought the game *is* broken because the player seemed stuck.
Since "1 player" is the only option and the first scene might put players off your game before it even starts, I'd remove it.
Imagine a really cool movie starting with a minute-long shot with a plain white screen. No audio. People would look around nervously, tell the cinema manager it's broken. Then the movie would say, “Oh, the movie broke. Let me fix it.” – and then it would start. No, such a scene would end on the cutting room floor almost instantly.
You can mess with the players for sure, but the players have to know it's intentional all the way through… which is not the case here. And doing this when the players aren't even invested in the game yet is the worst possible time.

The rest of the game is pretty good. You probably should be able to close the shop window by clicking on the shop icon again (not just via Escape). While we're at it, dark blue text on a dark green background isn't exactly easily readable. The jumping physics was sometimes weird, which was most noticeable when climbing "stairs" during the bridge sequence – you bounce a lot. And the spaceship boss probably has too much health – he's not hard (he shoots the same pattern of easily-avoidable missiles at regular intervals), but he takes a long time to destroy.

It's a flawed little gem. I was honestly surprised at the amount of content and various levels this game throws at you, but for plenty of reasons, it's far from perfect in its current state.

august000 responds:

I have never had such a good comment THANK YOU
I thought the same thing about the beginning of the game but I forgot
The ship at the end I do not know if to bring it to life or leave it
The character I did
I made the earth
I made the music of the beginning
and other sprites I did that's why they are so bad but I did not want to grab a google sprite as the character's sprite


If you see any spelling mistake, tell me why English is not my
language i speak spanish and all this is translated from the google translator until the game dialogues were translated into english



Thx Rallyx
Edit 2:The mouse shop character did my sister because she wanted to put some character

[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! :)