Ralix's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Break blocks]

All right, a couple of notes:
– Dragging the paddle with your mouse is a terrible way to control it. It's hard to figure out and you have to hold the button for the duration of the game. Just make it follow your cursor position.
– When you have a magnetic paddle and multiple balls, all of them cling to you, but you can release only one
– I'd make some blocks take more hits to break (but slow the spawning accordingly)
– Every level consist of basically waiting until you get 'Super Ball' powerup, after which you steamroll through the level. This could be balanced by the bricks which take more hits to break, so even a super ball would bounce off them.
– The expand/shrink powerups don't expand/shrink the paddle very much
– Sometimes there are too many powerups onscreen. I'd limit the maximal number which can be there at a given time (to +- 3)
– Pause button doesn't work
– Getting 'Game Over' doesn't stop the balls, so you can get Game Over and Level Complete right after that
– Sometimes the ball bounces in an almost parallel direction with the paddle, which makes it take a really long time to get anywhere. I'd perhaps restrict the minimum angle to at least 15°-30°.

So currently, it's not a very interesting game to play, because controlling the paddle is really a chore and all the blocks are exactly the same.

orangecity responds:

Thanks for your feedback!

[SPACE RACER]

It's quite good, but if you don't have a second player, it loses a part of its charm.
You could try adding a basic computer opponent (go up and if you notice a rock moving in your direction, move the AI a bit to the left or right).
https://books.google.cz/books?id=V-KEDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA92&ots=bQ77--nnIY&dq=obstacle%20avoidance%20triple%20raycast&hl=cs&pg=PA90#v=onepage&q&f=false

Sometimes the patterns of the rocks left a wide gap and I could score two three points just by flying up without even turning.
Good idea with the slowly descending barrier, though.

It might be more interesting if some rocks were slower/faster than others. Or add different kinds of rocks.
There's even a potential for powerups (clear a small area around you when you pick it up, get a temporary shield, block some part of the top screen edge, slow down your opponent…)

Speaking of which, some kind of interaction with your opponent would almost certainly make it better. Because so far, you could just as well play a single-player game on separate computers and compare the results.
I would think of ways in which the players could affect each other (such as shooting when you're below your opponent, or changing the rock pattern as it's coming across your half of the screen).

PaulQuinn101 responds:

Such good ideas Ralix, thank you!

[2D Jump And Shoot]

Since it's a prototype, I'll just list possible problems:
– The first time around, 'space to jump' didn't work for me, until I started using a gamepad, then space jumping became possible, too (as you mention in the description)
– Don't use Dpad on gamepad for movement. The left stick is typically for movement. You can use it even now, although it doesn't turn you.
– I'd reconsider instant death from spikes. There's a lot of them around and with no checkpoints, it may become frustrating
– 'Zero' health still has a thin green line at the left when your health is 0. If you do this by setting localScale, try fill amount instead:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.ugui@1.0/api/UnityEngine.UI.Image.html#UnityEngine_UI_Image_fillAmount
– The jumping animation is super slow
– 'You died' & Restart button are pretty small
– There are different pixel art resolution being used (e.g. the main character vs the enemies)
– Enemies are blurry (bad image? downsized?). Try the pixel perfect package if it helps.
– The last part of the level is quite boring, it's a long predictable corridor making you charge the gun, shoot, move a few steps, charge the gun again several times in a row
– The boss doesn't do anything interesting, and if you didn't have a hiding spot at the entrance, he'd be impossible
– I think the gun has a pretty short range. But anyway, the blast should not just disappear, there should be a 'dispersing' animation

Good luck with further development.

ArcOmega responds:

Thanks for your review Ralix, I'll take it all into consideration. I know there's a lot of adjustments and things to fix but without reviews from people like you its hard to catch everything. I'm going to be making some changes to the keyboard controls and will see about implementing the left stick for movement as well as scaling the restart button and other UI to make them bigger. I will also look into the pixel perfect package to correct the blurry enemies. Thanks again!

[Shadow Grinder]

Ah, yes. The happy meal handheld games, Tiger games, Nu Pogodi game… the lamest way to make a game, but still, they did the trick when nothing else was available.

I don't recall this particular game, but I like how you framed it with the speaker and switches. The game itself looks very authentic as well (judging by the art), although it might be confusing when the 'short' platform suddenly becomes long when it reaches the left side of the screen. I also don't understand the 'S' in the top-right corner, but I presume it means 'speed' which increases over time.

Very well done. I mean, it's not a game I'd like to play for too long, but as a recreation of the original, I believe it does a terrific job.

PKTORA responds:

Tbh I'm not sure what the "S" is either. Most likely means speed.

[Maintenance]

A great game! I love how it starts, how the main menu is a part of the game. It took me quite a while to figure out what you're supposed to do at the very beginning – I assumed I need to avoid the bugs and somehow get into the rooms, which were all locked. I really didn't want to go anywhere near the scary critters, as I imagined they'd attack and I didn't want them any closer to my screen…

The individual rooms were great; I really wondered what they'd be like once I got there (by the way, if the Update function in your game does nothing, it's wise to remove it completely :)).
Although I hoped there would be some more challenge and more interesting puzzles than 'walk to everything and press 'E'', which is probably the most important thing, but I understand you probably had some time constraints.
The background noises like the people talking in the design room were a nice touch.
The inventory slot/icon design is somewhat plain and uninteresting, though.

When pressing 'Start' in the end, I had some trouble in positioning myself properly in order to be able to select it, I think the raycasts (or whatever you use there) is a bit wonky.
The final music is the victory theme from Heroes 3 – sounds great, and matches the ending, but isn't it copyrighted? If so, you should probably replace it with something else to prevent the game from being taken down.

Anyway, for a jam game, it's definitely a very solid entry, and stands well as a meta-game on its own.

boticelly responds:

Thanks for the detailed review!
I'll have to check about the music, thanks for noticing.

[Size Is Difficult]

I think it's an interesting, original concept; well-executed. I definitely did enjoy the game.
The levels are fairly straightforward, I didn't think any of them were particularly hard to figure out, but solving them in practice might have taken some time. You could consider adding new 'puzzle' levels, or, if it makes sense, action levels (i.e. moving environment or enemies would force you to act faster or more precise).

I had a slight issue with the controls. My 'jump' sometimes wasn't registered even when I was on the ground and I'm not sure why. It's also somewhat common in platformers to add tolerance for pressing jump a bit too soon (e.g. ~0.2s) before you actually touch the ground, or after walking off a ledge, for cases when the player doesn't hit jump at the exact frame.
And since the entire game can be played with keyboard except for the one horizontal size slider, I'd consider adding keys (Q, E…?) for manipulating the slider without a need for a mouse.

The character can also stick to walls if you move towards them while in mid-air – if this is unintentional, consider giving something like a PhysicsMaterial2D with zero friction to the character to avoid this to an extent.

Still, for a game jam game, pretty impressive! An original idea with a proper beginning and end, albeit slightly wonky at times.

RealGamesss responds:

Thank you so much for your comment!

[The Wow Game]

Great idea with all the rule changes and replaying the same levels differently.

thebarfyshow responds:

Thanks!

[Mad Mad Blocks]

It's an interesting original game, I don't recall seeing anything like it before, or at least anytime recently. For a first (Unity) game, I think it's awesome.

There's a lot of useless unused space on the right (since you only move up and down), you could move the red line slightly to the right. The difficulty also stays the same during your entire playthrough; I'd consider starting slow and gradually increasing the speed (to a fixed max limit). Or gradually moving the red line to the left, if it starts e.g. in the middle.
I was about to say sometimes there's no time to dodge the blocks if there's a lot of them coming in a vertical line, but it's perfectly possible if I speed up using Shift (and I love the added detail of not being able to touch the walls).
It's also generally a good idea not to restart the song when you restart a level (keep playing it with an 'audio manager' which doesn't get destroyed):
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Object.DontDestroyOnLoad.html
Although this background music is pretty monotonous so it isn't as apparent.

This game is all about the high score, too, so you could also consider adding a scoreboard (build-in in Newgrounds), so players can compete with each other. More here: https://www.newgrounds.io/
Medals and scoreboards usually attract more players.

Good luck with your future games!

Raeino responds:

Thank you for your feedback!

To increase the difficulty I've made the blocks to spawn more frequently over time (still with a random pattern), but it seems to be just slightly noticeable. Also I was worried that increasing their speed could make the game too hard, surely I had to experiment more.

Also I didn't know about Newground's scoreboard system, I'll definetly consider using it.