b-random9's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Heartship]

Difficulty feels a bit all over the place, after having it very easy I believe I got introduced to the eyes with about 5 at once. I appreciate a wavering difficulty, but I don't the randomized nature excuses such a big difficult wall. Still, I'm being picky, and once it did get difficult I did start to have fun.

Art and sound I felt were really quite charming.

I did get stuck once I reached the skelly heads with the orbiting shield. I appreciate being able to skip the tutorial though, so a simple prompt or something at the start of every run that tells you about the splitting mechanic might be nice. If you look at Binding Of Isaac, I believe each of Isaacs abilites are drawn onto the background of the first room, completely non intrusive but helpful regardless.

Personally, not a fan of how the character feels to control, it's very floaty. Regarding the splitting mechanic, it's really quite cool, but it feels more suited to a puzzle game. It aside, you've got a nice fast paced shooter, but when you split the pacing comes to a halt. Right now, my strat is to take out everything normally, then switch the split mode to deal with skulls; this approach seemed the most efficient but doesn't at all jell with the fast pace gameplay. Perhaps there exists some mythical strat where I could utilize the splitting and keep up the pace, but doing so would probably involve forcing myself to get worse for a while whilst I try to do both at once and completely fail, and of-course it's not the players responsibility to control the pacing.

Apologies if this review sounds overly harsh, it really is a cool game, I just don't see those two parts uniting. I've done something similar with my game Skyward Descent, where everyone wanted mouse control but I preferred twin-key (WASD move, arrows aim). In the end, even if I as the dev could see something fun with the control scheme as someone who was good at it, but I really should have ditched it and worked with mouse aiming or just found a way to make it more approachable, and I see this game in a similar position.

Whatever potential the splitting has, its easier to just not split until I'm forced to. Perhaps it just needs to feel more like an advantageous thing than a hindrance. Letting the player get used to shooting w/o needing the splitting early on against the bats and stuff seems logical (introduce the basics before adding the twist) but I almost wounder if in this case it's instilling bad habits into the player. Letting them get used to normal gameplay before slapping them on the wrist.

I'm gona shut up now.

HealliesGames responds:

Don't apologies, don't worry! Reviews exists on purpose.
Indeed I thank you for taking the time to play and exposing your thoughts. :)

The whole game, since the introduction, assumes that the tower must be faced by at least two people. The mechanic of splitting is deliberately made an obstacle, as also (little spoiler) is openly said in the end.

And it is natural to put enemies or situations that force you to separate yourself, remaining relevant to the theme of the tower itself. If they weren't there, the sense of splitting would be lost. As if it was a puzzle game, you would use mechanics when it would be right to use.

I agree that it may not be very accessible as a game, because even easy difficulty requires skill and quick reflexes.

So yes, the technique is first to eliminate the enemies normally (skulls permitting, because they could block the bullets) and then think about those for which you have to divide yourself.

[Bunnie's Carrot]

First a few nitpicks:
-The box falling feels a bit slow an awkward, the fact that it and enemies can move whilst in air also sometimes gives the feeling that things end up where you don't want them.
-Buttons really could have done with some kind of connector to show what triggers what, a colour or a symbol or a wire.
-Level 13 feels like I cheated (or so it says in my notes, sry I can't give me detail but I've forgotten honestly)

Those aside, this is quite a strong puzzle platformer. I really like how the mechanics evolve with the story. Nice art, nice music.

I don't really have any big complaints as such, just suggestions on how it could be taken further. The ability to rewind time would be super helpful, for when you've done part of a puzzle but mess up later and need to restart. I recognize how difficult that is so a savestate feature would also suffice.

Overall, as well made as the game is, there was a slight sense that it began to drag after a while. Perhaps puzzle games need an extra intensive, I think the gameplay can feel like work, which sounds bad but with reason to push forward this might be alright for the game. In something like portal this would be the story. Minecraft is one of the most work like games and yet it's fun because your working towards building something. I know this is vague, I just think that some extra drive might help the game from becoming dull.

Another way to help this might be to have more of a world. Making every level separated, boxed in with no real sense of a world around you probably isn't the best way to draw people in.

Again though, nothing I really have is a major complaint, more nitpicks. As a whole this is a really well made puzzle platformer.

jronn responds:

I appreciate the constructive feedback!

[Headless]

Well it's certainly flappy bird. Nice aesthetics I suppose.

Could certainly do with some more polish IE button prompts, a more flashy hud than the text in the bottom left. The arc of the flappy bird I also find is quite vital to the feeling, it gives you a much better idea of that momentum, the arc feels more natural.

I'm curious, exactly what kind of university project is this? What type of course is it? Is this some beginner project or more of a large scale thing? Would this project be considered highly rated or low? Because you've just made low budget flappy bird, which in itself is already one of the most low budget games with a reputation out there. If this is some beginner tech demo I get it, but anything more and I find this highly concerning.

11011010111 responds:

Its a 2D interactive course. Since I'm studying graphic design and not animation or game development, this course isn't given that much attention.

So far, we're learning the basics, drag and drop, galleries and this flappy bird type game. They're giving us the codes, so we don't really have much input there, our job is to link the code to the animate file, and design the look of it.

[Horizon 6]

Could do with some more clarity, I have no idea what's going on, what the challenge is, ect. Am I trying to stop enemies getting past or just dodging.

That said I really like the truly retro vibe.

PatrickOReilly responds:

Thanks for the feedback, and I agree it could use some more definition. It's funny though cause a lot of games back then were more style over substance; the medium was the message and getting the high score and a long play was always the objective.

[BLUE BOY (ブルーボーイ)]

My biggest problem with this game is the arbitrarity. When the blood drops spawn is so disconnected from the players moment to moment actions that it feels almost random. This comes to be a particular problem on the last level when there's so little riggle room that I have to hope everything lines up. I know you could say that "but its meant to challenging", but it isn't. Grabbing the coin and navigating between multiple layers of platforms is fun because it actually challenges the players skill, hoping the dots line up is just a test of patience. Perhaps if there was some sort of sound que when the blood drops so players get a sense of the timing, then it might have a fun rhythm to it.

Overall though I did really like the game. It shines when I have to plan/navigate my way through, that's just lost when there is no room to navigate.

I also really like the atmosphere thanks to the music and art.

plufmot responds:

The player bleeds every 600 milliseconds. I'll play around with some sort of cue for the sequel, I think an audio cue would get annoying real fast though. Thanks for the feedback!

[Machine Minds Preview Demo / Prototype]

What on earth is happening?
I swipe up at start, immediately see the words "game over" before "build phase".
Ok so do I click to build?
*Clicks on middle of screen on nothing in particular*
"Battle phase"
What?
"Build phase"

All of this happens in the span of about 20 seconds. Meanwhile the clocks spinning round like crazy.

I press arrow keys an the screen scrolls at insane speeds.

Finally, after I game over we go back to the title screen but I can't do anything on it.

My guess is this is a bug such as delta time not being properly incorporated so the game runs a lot faster on good computers.

Based on how flashy and polished this looks I'm guessing there's something of a good game here somewhere but right now I have literally no idea what's going on and it's completely unplayable.

I'd be happy to take another look if the major bug is fixed and I can grasp some semblance of what's going on but RN I can't really give more than 1 star if I can't play the game.

KiiraGames responds:

I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy your experience with Machine Minds! I'll update the game promptly with fixes for the bugs that you've experienced.

I'm taking from this, that the scrolling speed is too fast without much control.
The clock actually has two hands (one of them rotates completely after four ticks, or 15 times a second) and is used for finer control of gameplay. It seems that it's presence is simply confusing, so I'll just delete it.
The other clock hand (the bigger one) rotates once a second, and doesn't rely on delta. Enemies move in Tiles Per Second, and Towers shoot once per second. This system would allow the player to track the amount of time to let pass before towers act (shoot, for example, which would use resources). This is the crucial part of the clock.

Not enough time passes between Build Phase and Battle Phase. This has been acknowledged and will be corrected in the next update.

I'll notify you of the update and I hope you'll let me know what you think when it is complete. :) Thanks for your time and consideration! I hope you'll enjoy the game more as it's being updated.

[Parallel Space]

Quite a strong core mechanic, though I feel more could have been done with it to really challenge the player. As is, there was very little thinking involved so it pretty much came down to just going where I haven't been.

I think a good puzzle is one where the obvious path doesn't work, there's some catch or trick to it; like at if some point I had to go back on myself to progress. I'd recommend checking out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjC6fa_YBg) for more on the topic.

I like what's been done with the aesthetic/contextual elements. The voice is a bit cheesy at times and combined with the music there is a bit of sensory overload but all in all there are some nice ideas here that I think compliment the mind-bendy core mechanic well.

My last criticism is with the controls. Using WASD or arrow keys in an isometric world feels very awkward which combines with the stiff movement to be the most challenging aspect of the game sadly.

All in all, quite interesting but could do with work to bring out its full potential.

JelleVermandere responds:

Thanks for the great advice, you are right, I should make more (challenging) levels. This insightful review really helps! I didn't really think about the unintuitive controls, how are these things normally done?

[My Mini System]

Interesting idea. This could be quite fun but RN I think there's too much of an issue with conveyance for it to really be enjoyable.

For starters, I can't see any hp bars that were mentioned in the text dump. Am I missing something?

Then there's the hitbox issue. The wave is quite large but I'm not sure if all or only the center can damage the planets. I'd assume all but whenever the planets go hit there was no feedback like a sound effect or anything to indicate damage. The whole "slowing their rotation" thing is confusing as well, I missed that you can hover over them to rotate them first time round, but now I know I'm not even sure what purpose it serves.

Then there's the issue that it feels fairly random. An asteroid could spawn next to my outer planet and hit it immediately or it could just glide by without me doing anything. Perhaps you could still deal with every threat w/o consequence but this randomness combined with the constant waiting around makes it feel as though there's no challenge present.

I think there's a few surface issues that could be easily fixed. For starters, if all the planets orbited a little closer, so the farthest planet wasn't right next to the edge of the screen, and everything was balanced in accordance with this, then I think it'd help the challenge a little.
Secondly, the game could do with being faster. This would mean I'm not constantly waiting around but also quicker play sessions allow players to experiment more easily.
Finally, info should probably more clearly conveyed, though a big text dump probably isn't the best way to do it.

Overall, a novel idea that could do with some work in order to bring out that ideas potential.

konozabulldoza responds:

Thank you for the critiques, everything was greatly appreciated.

Yea, just realized I didn't communicate about the window in the top left corner you can click to see the health. Also realized I didn't communicate that the planets rotation is like a shield that protects the planets health. Once its gone your planet starts to lose life and you need to rotate them to generate their shields again. Something I added to add a little more challenge to the game.

But thank you again, and I will look into incorporating your critiques.

[Sheltered]

I feel like you should be able to make some kind of impact. I understand you're trying to convey that difficult feeling of not being able to do anything and just wasting your life away, but being forced to do that implies there's nothing that can be done about it, which isn't true.

I'm not saying it should be easy, certainly not, but I feel there should be a way that with enough trying, something changes. Perhaps I missed something. I tried unplugging the computer but it just told me "clothes" -_-. I tried mashing space over and over at the door to no avail. Tried again and again to pickup the clothes but nothing.

I liked that if you play on the computer with friends but then don't play afterwards you regain life when you sleep.

Also, why does your life only sometimes go down, there seems to be no reason?

Overall, it's good to see a game that embraces being art and it's pretty well polished, the clock ticking was a strong touch, but it doesn't seem to be saying much besides A."Depression and anxiety sucks" and B."There's nothing you can do about it". Perhaps I missed something, I played til day 42 but since nothing was changing I stopped. Is there an end? How do I know when I've ran out of content?

Xelalanana responds:

Hello there! The hearts/lives are only lost at the beginning. You start with 2 out of 5 hearts and it goes down as the days pass, this was to convey that you've been stuck in the room for quite some time now (even before starting the game) and "eating" will help replenish back one life!

Others have mentioned getting stuck at this part too, but after regaining life from resting (after playing with friends), you'd get a dream-sequence where it's only the Door and Mirror. Once everything goes back to normal, try interacting with the other objects in the room such as the Mirror, Clothes, and Pizzabox. You might have to "rest" first before you can do anything with them, but afterwards, try interacting with those same objects again.

Once 5/5 lives are filled you'll be able to get through the door!

Hope this helps! If you have any more questions or need help with anything, please don't hesitate to message us! :)

[The march of the blobs]

Really like the improvements that have been made to this game. The changes help and the new "another mode" has some really great puzzles and the new blobs are fantastic. Loved "the blob is a lie" and the "inverted castle".

I think my biggest criticism is how unlenient "another mode" is. I'd spend 15 minutes on a level only to discover that one tiny mistake and I'm screwed. Playing the teleporter on the edge in "the spy" is such a difficult task and yet I lose plenty of time for messing it up once; worst part being I don't know that until later when i can't do anything about it. Difficult puzzles are great and the more skilled focus bits work well in moderation but I don't think being heavily punished for taking only 2 tries at getting a precise part right adds anything to the game. Besides raising the limit, I'm not sure the "delete a blob" and telporter need to cost as much as they do. If I mess up a teleporter I have to not only pay to delete the existing one, but also for a new plain blob and the modification to replace it. In other words, if my math is correct, replacing a teleporter costs 9 blobs.

Criticism aside there's really not any issues left with the game. I guess it could be clearer that the number besides the blob refers to their cost in blobs, rather than that's how many you have as I mistakenly thought but that's about it.

Perhaps a change in music for the different modes would be nice. As great as the game is, after playing for a long while it gets quite exhausting and new music might help with that.

Overall, great game and great improvements. In the end I had to give up at Zen as this was ironically what broke me.

joqlepecheur responds:

thanks for playing and criticism :)
Quick tip on "the spy": it can be finished with 36 blobs with a particular ruse