Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Sky is Falling]

That's a good start. Simple idea, interesting pixel art graphics, but there's still space for improvement.
At first, the controls feel a bit rough. I'd add a bit more force to the drag, so you wouldn't need to drag that much. It's a good thing you can click anywhere on the screen, or else it'd make you unable to jump whenever the angel is close to the bottom edge of the screen.

The game needs some sort of force indicator though, to inform us whether we are dragging the character or not. Either a bar in a corner somewhere, an outer glow, a directional arrow or a dotted line indicating the full trajectory. That's up to you, but in some way there should be visual difference between "now I'm dragging", "now I'm dragging A LOT" and "now I'm doing nothing".

But more importantly, wouldn't it be better if we were able to pass through clouds? Now you can get into unsolvable situations when several clouds in a row appear in a vertical line and you have to jump even though you know the bigger cloud above you will block you.
With one way platforms (since you said you're new to this: in Unity, just adding Platform Effector 2D component → One-Way should do the trick) the game would still remain challenging, but won't force you to commit suicides on a regular basis.
You would also get rid of the "sliding under clouds" bug which saved me a life a couple of times, I admit, but isn't exactly according to the laws of physics.

As for the score, I wouldn't subtract it below zero, nor deduct points for losing a life (but the latter is up to you). And since the main goal of the game is beating your high score, I'd save it somewhere here (you can create a public scoreboard with NG API, so players'll be able to compete with each other: http://www.newgrounds.io/get-started/).
Or at least keep track of your highscore in-game.

Also, a bunch of power-ups or flying birds you have to avoid or anything which diverts your attention from jumping clouds for a while never hurts. Or perhaps more detailed background, now it might seem a bit plain.

Now I noticed the text is a bit blurry (not sure why, perhaps it's scaled too much). It would also look better if your character faced the direction she's jumping. And if you jump very high right at the start of the game, you fall back off-screen and the screen doesn't focus back on you – that shouldn't happen, at least not until you safely land on your first cloud.

I hope some of my suggestions will be of use to you. Welcome to Newgrounds and good luck with this, or whatever you decide to make in the future.

MBelka responds:

Thank you! This was extremely helpful! I didn't know about the scoreboard or the tool in the unity engine! The text is blurry because I used 3d text on top of a sprite. I find that I really need to work on UI design from reading these responses. I am taking lots of notes though! Thank you so much for your warm welcome to newgrounds! I was a bit worried when I started, but damn this is an awesome community! I wish I joined earlier!

[GATHER]

It's exactly as you write in the description – it could be good, but so far it's somewhat confusing. What I understand from the couple of minutes I played this, you use arcane words (or just their combination, perhaps) to order minions to gather (and combine?) stuff and carry it to the gods altars to make vines grow on them to cause a flash of light which does… I don't know.
Basically the only thing I learned to do on purpose and not by accident is to make minions drop their apples.
That was my trail of thought when playing the game.

Hunger for exploration works much better if you have a set of basic, clear rules which can then be used to create more complicated things. You should be able to see an immediate effect of things you do, not randomly mash buttons in hope it'll do something.

For example, you could have abilities like this:
(Let's start on blank grass with just altars, minions, bees and environment)
– "Green" rune:
Grow a flower underneath yourself. If a bee sees it, it flies to it, pollinates it and turns it to an apple (or whatever). If a minion sees an apple, he picks it up and starts roaming around.
Or if you already stand on a flower, it could grow into a tree (→ wood logs).
– "Red" rune:
Plants a totem underneath yourself. All minions in its vicinity will go to it (totem would then disappear and they'd continue roaming). Like that, you could lead "apple-carrying minions" to "apple altar" with a series of totems. Something happens (e.g. icon appears Apples: 1 – and you can use them later to create something).
You are bound to need rocks at some point. How to get them? Since you are an ethereal ghost, you could fly in the middle of a large rock and plant a totem there. Minions would of course go to it, but with the rock in their way, they'd mine through – gathering rocks in the process.

And more and more uses you could devise with "clever use" of four basic commands.
While writing this, I figured out how to get minions to follow you using Z+C, but you if miss the info sign, you have a hard time figuring it out by mashing buttons, because there's not much of a difference between "minions aimlessly wandering" and "minions aimlessly wandering towards you" except for their thinking bubbles which do provide some help at least. And that's likely to be a key command.
In the way I suggested above, you wouldn't need to wonder "what the hell does this do?" that much because a flower/totem/… would always appear (using one button, not two), you would just need to think how to use them – in a basic way which would be clear and easy to find out, or in more complicated way which would need some thinking and "exploration".

Just a suggestion. :)
I know you want the ghost to be "powerless to affect the material realm", but in the end, that is likely the frustrating part which also summarises my feelings about this game. Good luck if you decide to build up on this idea.

Koobazaur responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback all good notes! Yes non-verbal communication was a deliberate limitation I imposed on myself, and you bring up some good points on how this could have worked with totems to gather.

I dig the idea of planting and growing apple trees. In this case I wanted to focus more on interaction/exploration of the world rather than god-like world-building though. Still, cool ideas to expand the series if I return to it :)

[Suprema]

Are the controls Z M K L on purpose to make it harder?
I might be slightly biased with QWERTZ keyboard, but I can imagine even QWERTY users wouldn't be too happy with these controls. It was quite hard to finish even the first level.
Why don't you simply use WASD or arrow keys?

ivane5 responds:

Apparently I was quite biased by my personal experience, now I'm reconsidering my assumptions.

I'll issue and update with different possible input setups(WASD included).

Thanks for feedback! :)

--

Added new key schemes

[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!

[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!

[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. :)

[Survive Day 2]

It really is a strange island.
There's an aztec disc with germanic runes and non-aztec numbers next to an indian temple and a tribal village. The moon stays always at the same spot in the sky no matter which direction you look, enlightening a sun-filled beach with orthogonal palm shadows.
A true world's wonder. :)

selfdefiant responds:

It truly is a mystical place, it reminds me of a dream.