Thetageist's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cube The Killerr]

Hey there! I like how excited you are to work on your game! However, before you start back working on that multiplayer mode, I have a few simple suggestions to help make the game better in general and get people more excited about what you're doing with it.

First, I know it's easy to overlook this when you're testing your own game, but currently, there is no way to respawn after you've fallen through the world! You should think about whether you want the player to respawn automatically, or whether you want to have them press R to respawn.

Second, I think people would really like your game if you tweaked the graphics a little bit. Currently they look very basic, and I apologize if this sounds insulting, but they remind me of my days on scratch.mit.edu. If you can't download free assets made for game developers or remake them yourself, why not reach out to an artist on Newgrounds who might be able to help you?

And third, I would like you to take a bit of time to figure out what the objective of your game should be. I see in another review that the first level can't be completed, and I wonder if the problem is that you haven't come up with a thing the player must do to complete it. (If you have, I'm sorry for the assumption.) I know that as a developer, it's fun enough to just jump around and you easily think of it as a game in that aspect, but players, who don't have that love and connection to your game that you do, need to have something to make them want to interact with the world you've built. It doesn't even have to be going through multiple levels - you could instead have coins to collect that award the player points. This type of point-based format would translate very well to a multiplayer version!

I hope you found my advice useful and not insulting. Don't give up on this. It's got a lot of potential to become something really interesting. :)

KamiTami responds:

ty for your review , yeah im trying to setup the multiplayer version to work fine then i will start dev my game with things like equiping weapons and etc.

[Past Persistence]

I absolutely love the concept of this game. However, the difficulty curve wasn't really for me. In the case that it wasn't intended to be so hard from the get go, my one advice is slow down the enemies, or at least make them slower in the beginning. (Maybe even have multiple enemy types with different speeds.) Currently, the speed of the enemies makes it rather hard to get at a safe distance from them, which means I die a lot. I end up having to have a large number of ghosts fighting with me before I can start progressing solidly, and then there's hardly room for more mistakes before the curse takes my soul. Overall, I'd definitely recommend this to someone who likes to play harder games.

SuraimuStudios responds:

Thanks for the great feedback! Also a tip, It's more efficient to go "through" the enemies and bait the attack, which will stop them for a moment.

[Afraid of the Dark (trash version)]

I love the amount of thought and dedication you're putting into this game - it really could be something amazing in the future! A few notes i have. 1- Movement to the left and right makes the camera jerk a bit. 2. I like the thought you're putting into the art, but it seems like I'm not getting to appreciate most of it because of the darkness. I love the smoothness of the walking animations, but I really couldn't tell that there were any at first because of the black stick arms and legs up against the dark background. The strange figures dangling from the ceilings, because they're completely black, look more like thick ropes or vines to me. You'd have to make it a little bit easier to tell what they are for them to be truly creepy. 3 - Maybe I'm just bad at platforming, but it seems like the player's a bit too big and slow to maneuver very well. Just my thoughts. I really hope you keep up with this game, you've got a great idea behind it!

Edit: Finally found the actual strange figures that weren't ropes. Definitely a bit creepier, but I think my comment about contrast still stands, and with the ropes as well. The ropes especially should have some color to them, so that the player knows they're not just decorative.

nulledwine responds:

Thank you for your honest feedback,
Thanks for telling me about the camera jerking, I'll try to fix that with more contrast and lights, and up the intensity on the player's light so the animations are more visible.
I figured that as well for number 3. I'll attempt to speed him up.
Thanks again!

[Dreality]

Building on what scpgames said, I've got some specific feedback that might help you improve on this game and make it into more of what you're aiming for. For one thing, I think it'd be much better if you had a consistent style of graphics - rather than a combination of flat shapes and things that were obviously pulled off the internet/made in Flame Painter(?), you could use free assets made for game developers, or draw some yourself, or enlist the help of an artist to make your graphics for you. Second, I think the down to move boxes control is a bit strange - I can see why you included it, but I think most players will be able to maneuver better with boxes that move when they push them, as that's what most games do, and therefore people will be used to doing that. I don't see any problem with how the player moves. You've got a really great concept, and I dearly hope you'll keep working on this to make it better. It has the potential to even be a featured game if you do! :D

LucidNightmare responds:

Thank you for this detailed feedback !
This is actually an old project I finished five years ago.

I will definitely restart working on this game, with some help for graphism and animations. I agree with you about the boxes, this is one of the first things that will be fixed :)

[Squares are Lethal]

This has a decent amount of potential. It follows the same standard genre of keeping track of multiple things at once, which contains quite a few great games. However, this one, as it is now, does have a few things that could make it better. I suggest that maybe the game should get more complicated as time goes on - for instance, putting the block in the center and having arrows and squares come from places other than above you and to the right, or (playing on the title) having a few non-lethal, non-square shapes thrown in. The graphics in the base game look okay, and I like the effect that happens when you destroy an arrow or block, but the faces for the block look pretty sloppy, and the backgrounds and coin image kinda look like you got them from somewhere else. The sound could be made more engaging as well. I really hope that this helps you improve this game and make better games in the future. Don't give up hope. :)

VicPitic responds:

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it :)

[VOiD]

This is actually a pretty decent game! Reminds me of something I'd find on Coolmath - it's kind of classic that way. I have a couple things, however. One, the intro cutscene was kind of cliche for me, I don't know, having played a lot of Coolmath in years past might have just made me very jaded towards the whole "rescue the girlfriend" thing. I rather like the aesthetic of it - dynamitewhale might have a good point there with regards to making things colorful, but otherwise it's really nice and a little spooky. Nice touch with the eyes in the walls and the strange water colors. The physics of switching gravity would be cool in a lot of other situations, but it definitely does make predicting and controlling my movement harder. Also hard to figure out how fast I can run one way or the other when there's hazards everywhere that stop me from being able to test that. That's how I managed to get stuck - I found it very hard to predict when I should be pressing the left or right arrow key after I hit Z in order to avoid the spikes, and eventually it got to the point where the combination of that and the arrangement of spikes was just too much to navigate.

Edit: I got stuck somewhere in the first section. I remember that I had to go across the entire level from right to left, dodging some gravity-obeying spikes that rose and fell at the same time as I did (as opposed to them obeying gravity in the opposite direction as me). One of them fell at a different time than the others because there was a recessed area in the ceiling. Hopefully that helps.

Retro-Gears responds:

which level did you get stuck in?

[Escape Pong!]

This game is really endearing. I really love the ideas behind this game. I also love the funny dialogue and anime faces, those are priceless. It took a bit to understand the strategy behind the game with gaining control over the ball and whatnot, but once I got a hang of that, the difficulty was acceptable up until the boss round. Which had me cussing all the way through. But I got through it. The ending was really funny. I love it!

CubeBleu responds:

Thank you for the feedback, we uploaded a new version that should fix the problem!

[Paristroyer]

This could be a fun time-waster game, if the creators would only fix a couple boob-sized deal-breakers. I don't mind the tropey storyline, as it seems to be intentional, nor do I mind the sexualized character design. The life currency thing is actually pretty interesting, although I do notice that it was for a Ludum Dare and therefore it wasn't your idea. However, first off, it bothers me that I have no clue what these things in the sky are supposed to be, that there was no tutorial for how to play, what the enemies look like, what that book in the corner does, etc. And not just the one in the author comments - I feel like this game needs a full-on intro cutscene and tutorial, either before the waves start or in the form of a "How To" button. Do the green guys take one or two hits to kill? I can't tell! That's what a tutorial would be for! Second, I also wish that opening the book would pause the waves. Players will want time to examine their options. Most importantly, the game has some pretty difficult controls/physics. It's hard to control the witch, making death pretty easy to encounter. The enemies move faster than both you and the bullets, which makes killing them a feat of dexterity that it shouldn't have to be. Overall, this experience is cute, but it is nowhere near rewarding enough for me to play again. I hope my review helps... but given that there's that random photo of Hillary Clinton in the beginning of the game, I highly doubt I'll be taken seriously.

ninjamuffin99 responds:

Ay dont worry I genuinely appreciate and consider every review. Despite the dumbass bullshit actually included in the game lmao

[Unblocky]

This is... not made for the computer mouse. Because my pointer is smaller than a finger would be in relation to the screen of a phone, I sometimes miss the inner circles and get counted as wrong, even though I knew the pattern. I could see it as being a pretty awesome game on mobile, though. Also, your "get 2500 points in Arcade" medal is named wrong, you accidentally called it a second "Master of Traditional."

MonoFlauta responds:

It was planned for mobile so I understand what you say. Sadly, if we make the colliders even bigger it will still make a mess because it would happen that you can pick by error one option you didn't want. Anyway, I will try to adjust them a bit bigger so it doesn't feel so bad.
Regarding the medal name, thanks a lot for telling me! It should be fixed as soon as Newgrounds updates it :)

[E-Elementals]

I really like this. The controls are a bit unwieldy, the art style is a bit flat, and I wish that the three-lives devices were real checkpoints so that you could hit restart and spawn back there. But the premise is really cool (it's science fantasy, my favorite genre!) This has tons of potential. Like the music too, almost enough that I don't mind the fact that it still plays when the game pauses. Also, the fire icon is derpy, probably fix that.

novusGem responds:

Thanks for the feedback!