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Fro

378 Game Reviews

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Perhaps a little too simple?

I think this one was a little too simple. I recommend adding a higher difficulty level in any future orb games, but other than that I really enjoyed the audio and the artwork. Coming up with the lvel names was extremely hard as well. :P

Congrats on the sponsor. This upcoming weekend we will finish the next Pyroscape since I'll start my break. Thanks for the patience, but we will finally get it finished!

Fro responds:

I can respond to my own reviews?

I hate to review a game so shortly...

~ First Comments ~

I really hate to review a game so shortly after playing, but I found so many faults with it that I found it too annoying and distracting to play. No this game isn't hard. A hard game is something that is challenging, this was just poorly programmed in my opinion.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

The artwork is good, but like usual very boring. There are bad pixel artist, mediocre pixel artist, and great pixel artists. You could be a great one, but you have to work on some detail before this happens. Details, details, details! The smallest amount of detail could make this go from another boring game visually to something that Tom puts on front page because it looks great.

For example, the opening scene was very detailed. Once you got down into the cave it was just dirt, hole, dirt, hole, dirt, hole. Have you ever seen an underground game or cartoon? I always loved seeing the cool things that they stick in the soil. For example, the generic dinosaur bone, the UFO, and other generic things, but this is your chance to have some fun and be creative. Add some cool things buried in the dirt and you've turned this from mediocre graphics to great graphics just like that.

You also need to code two different animations for the walk cycle. When the person is walking then use the cycle that you're already using. When they are standing still you should simply have a standing graphic. He looks like a douche walking in place. :P It probably wouldn't hurt to add a different jump animation as well such as one of the arms being up in the jumping stance.

~ Story/Content ~

Well it basically has no story. It would be nice to add one, but it's not always necessary. In a game like this it is nice to have some sort of plot. As for the content of the game, I'm sure it was good, but I'd never find out because I couldn't get more than a couple of seconds into the game.

I just can't jump over the holes. It seems like (from both playing the game and reading reviews) that it's more luck then it is skill to make it over a hole. A hard game involves skill a bad/poorly programmed game takes luck. I think you either need to make the hit detection a little different or have the guy jump further. Maybe making the tunnels a bit taller will allow the character to jump higher and make these jumps.

I really want to see what happens in the game, but just can't make the jumps needed to no matter how many times I attempt it. I usually don't take points off for me being bad at a game, but I seriously think it's the game that is making me bad and not just me not being good enough.

Now that I've voiced my opinion on the content of the game let me make a suggestion of how the story line could go if you decided to use one. (If there is one I apologize, but it's not possible for me to figure out without being able to beat the game) I suggest having this guys friend trapped down in the mind and he needs to save him. Something personal that would make people want to try or relate to in someway to give it that extra touch.

~ Audio ~

The audio that you picked was perfect in my opinion. In fact, I think it was the best aspect of the flash game. It really gave that feel of having to complete a task before the time runs out or before it's too late. That's also why I think the theme of saving someone would go really well here. A great choice in music.

~ Overall ~

Sorry for the negative review, but I do think that a lot needs to be worked on before this is enjoyable. There needs to be some work with the animation when standing still and jumping, the graphics need more details to really get the player involved in the scenery, some sort of plot would be amazing, something needs to be done to make this game playable by getting rid of the luck aspect and make it about skill, and the audio that you picked for this submission was perfect.

This score is more of a 4.4 than it is a bottom line 4, but I felt it's faults should slightly bring it below a 5 for sure.

~ Review Request Club ~

I don't get it lol

I don't get how to beat the boss. I know I'm missing something and because it's my ignorance that won't count against your score at all. It's my own fault that I can't beat it.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I like the graphics here, but really didn't like the way that things moved and how stationary everything was. It never gave off the illusion that things were actually moving. I don't know exactly how to explain what I mean or how to make it better, but it's my view on the visuals.

~ Story/Content ~

It's a basic game with really no story. I kind of like when the shooter games like this implement a story, but it's not really necessary. The directions were good and the gameplay was self explanatory, but I had no clue what to do with the boss. I see that you say you can fly in front of him, but I couldn't hurt him no matter what I did.

The aiming was a bit weird to get use to, but it wasn't impossible by any means. I actually found the game to be pretty easy up to the boss where I just ended up quitting.

~ Audio ~

The sound effects were pretty good and if you ever decided to implement a story/plot then it would be cool to have some voice actors. Hit me up if that ever is the case.

~ Overall ~

A decent game all around, but it doesn't have much that would make me want to return. Unless you let me know how to beat the boss and then I might attempt it again in the future. :P

~ Review Request Club ~

SantoNinoDeCebu responds:

Haha ye, there's not to much indication what to do on the boss, but if you can't damage him with your own weapons. Damage him with his ;)
The boss only gets better after that first phase! ;)

If I decide to make another game like this I'll try pull all stops to create the illusion of things moving towards you, but ye its a hard one to pick up on what needs changing to make it feel better!
I didn't add a plot to this since it was just a sort of test level to see if a game like this would be well recieved and can work..obv some work still needs done! I'd definitly plan to starfox up the game if i make another one. With the corny dialogue during the levels and barrel rolls!

Pretty cool!

~ Comment To Players ~

HOLD DOWN THE BUTTONS FOR MORE POINTS. IT'S MORE THAN JUST PUSHING THE BUTTON AND LETTING IT GO. PLAY THE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE YOU PLAY THE GAME ITSELF!

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I really liked the style of art used here. it was very simple, but yet effective in it's own way. The small amounts of animation that you did have were good. There really isn't anything to critique here so good job.

~ Story/Content ~

I really liked the idea of the game. I'm assuming a lot of people are playing it wrong by looking at the lower scores of the review and what they are claiming they are scoring. I half assed it and got the first two medal so I know when I go back and play this in a serious manner that it's going to be much easier to get a better score.

If you can build up the combo it really helps as well so it's important not to get too greedy going for a few extra points when you could very well destroy your combo meter. I really like the idea of the game all in all. Even though it's a very simple concept it's challenging and fun to try at the same time.

~ Audio ~

The sound effects and music were very fitting all around. There's very little to comment about here as well.

~ Overall ~

A challenging game that I will be sure to come back to for sure. I like the concept and even though it's a very simple game design it can almost become addicting if you're chasing a certain score. Keep up the good work!

Willseph responds:

Thanks dude, glad to hear you enjoyed it!

I have a few comments.

I'll go along with the whole shift key thing. If you press shift more than five times on your computer it brings of sticky keys. Of course this is only when you press it five times in a row without a press from another key. In this game that was actually common though as you could very well hold the arrow key on some levels and just tap shift. I would suggest changing it to another button.

I would suggest adding something at the end of the level so people know it's the end of the level. I know that it's pretty self-explanatory to just walk of the edge, but it would probably be better if they had a goal to reach such as a flag, tunnel, or some sort of item. This will just help clear up some things and in my opinion will probably make the game more interesting.

What's the point of collecting things if you don't actually get points or have a reason for collecting them? At first I thought you got something, but shortly after getting a few here and there I noticed that they virtually did nothing. Not only that, but you got rid of them in later stages. (I say stages even though I only made it to stage two for reasons that I'll talk about later)

I liked that you had multiple levels and even a boss later on. The thing about the boss is you had no idea if you were actually hurting him or not. You need to give the players some feedback by having an explosion of some sort or even a health bar that moves down as you hit him. The best case scenario would be to add both the health bar and the explosion.

Here's a comment that goes with the boss and the rest of the game. You basically have no control over the direction that you shoot. More than half of the time my fire would just go straight through the ground during the boss fight and during the second level of the sewer stage it would hardly ever shoot in the direction that I needed it to shoot. This really took a lot away from the game. I would suggest having it as a mouse option so when you click it goes in the direction of where the mouse clicked.

I also don't think the graphics were the best, but they kind of had their own little style to them. A simplicity that wasn't terrible, but wasn't really that great either. I say they get by for the game, but it might be nice to add a little more here and there to make the game more pleasing to the eye.

Leaving on a positive note now, I really enjoyed level three of the first stage. Challenging enough that it was fun, but not too hard to make people get frustrated. The fact that you had placed items in areas that would confuse them added to this challenge. Sometimes there were collectible (and useless) items that would make you die if you went after them and sometimes there were platforms that were too far away and useless, but if you would have just been more patient you would have noticed that proper path to take.

dullsworth responds:

I agree on several aspects of your review. In a revised version, I would change the jump button from shift to ctrl or z, clear up the usless collectibles in the first few levels, fix up the graphics and add more animation.
The fact that you can't tell that you're damaging a boss is part of the sound issue that I had to fix. The program can't play multiple wavs at the same time, so any sound effect would interrupt the music. as for the direction of the fireballs during the first boss, you can control them much easier in later stages.

Keep on trying!

I know that you said this was a final one, but can I suggest that you make it a little better with a few hints and tips?

Things to fix:

1) When something explodes it never actually leaves the screen. It leaves that weird imprint on the screen and it really looks bad after you kill a certain amount of things.

2) I'll go with one that you already know. You obviously can't die in the game so that is something you want to learn how to fix for sure. I'm assuming it's another thing that you can just ask in the forum and learn how to do.

3) I know that nobody with the right sense of mind would travel all the way to the right side of the screen, but for some reason if one wanted to they wouldn't be able to because there is some sort of barrier there. Perhaps get rid of that if possible.

4) I hate that the background doesn't move. That's one of the things that really throws me off in flashes. If the space ship is moving then the background should slowly be moving to the left. It'll actually give the illusion that progress is being made.

Things that would make it better:
(Note, I know your a beginner, but I'm just giving you suggestions of things to slowly learn and implement into your game)

1) Make it have levels of some sort. I actually don't think that levels are very hard with this program.

2) Make it have bosses or other things to change up the pace of the gameplay. This would go along with the levels.

3) Have upgrades of some sort come into screen. Perhaps like a shield or whatnot, but you would probably just want to start off with something simple like a health upgrade.

4) Make the plasma stronger or the regular gun weaker. I found that it didn't matter what gun that I used. I suggest making the blast for the plasma a lot larger so it has the potential to hit more things.

Other comments:

Keep on working. I think you're going to be on your way to creating decent games pretty soon. Once you create a couple of decent games you'll be on your way to creating some good games. It's only a matter of time, patience, and practice.

CAN-OF-SPAM responds:

Im still new to the program lol, im still learning and whatnot. if i could i would make it so enemies have to take more than one hit to die. and i cant seem to fix the death bug its really frustrating the piss out of me that i cant find where its going wrong at.
thanks for reviewing :D

I don't like ignorance.

Let's see the options when submitting on newgrounds.

Option 1 - Movie
Option 2 - Game/Interactive Movie

Which one is this? The Game/Interactive Movie. Hey look! The author isn't being ignorant at all! In fact, it's the people calling him ignorant that are! Who would have thought that there would be a bunch of people on the internet thinking they knew what they were talking about?

~ Animation/Graphics ~

Perhaps add a menu that has some sort of animation in it. It's really not necessary, but it's just something to think about in the future. It's like a dress up game in ways. There are the normal ones that have a bunch of items to choose from and then there are the ones that include a couple of small animated items. Sometimes just a little bit here and there can really add to a piece.

I didn't like the background for the game. I feel that you should have had someone create one or at least find one that was big enough that it wouldn't get pixelated when you stretched it out. I would also suggest making the screen a little bigger and making the letters of the usernames bigger as well. I know they aren't the point of focus, but I think it would look better.

~ Story/Content ~

I love that you always do these things for charity. I've seen you run a lot of these charities and I'm sure all the money you've earned for them has helped out even though I can't see you making a crazy amount of money out of these submissions. (Probably more than I'll ever make from newgrounds though)

Like in every single one of these types of submissions there are the good and the bad art pieces. Sadly the lower quality do seem to out number the great ones, but there are some really good ones in there. Perhaps in the future you should be a little more strict on what you allow in, but I can understand that these things don't always get a good turnout and you might need to accept the ones that you wouldn't normally.

~ Audio ~

The audio playing during the submission itself was pretty good, but I think that you could have picked a slightly better song for the credits. It wasn't a bad song, but I'm sure there were better choices out there. Your a voice actor right? (I know you are, no reason to answer that) Implement some voices in here every now and then. Anything to break up the boring look at picture 1, click, picture 2, click, etc... with the same song playing over and over.

~ Overall ~

Keep up the charity work, decent job, and thanks for not being ignorant by putting this in the movie section. It's clearly not a movie and it's interactive, therefor in the right section. It's nice to have submitters be able to read and use logic!

Be safe overseas! Respond when you get the time.

ForNoReason responds:

I really appreciate the thorough review! You bring up a lot of good ideas and I will defiantly utilize them in the final collab! I appreciate the support as well! I agree that some of the art isnt great, and plan on being a little more strict in the next outing. Also, the tips about screen size and resolution will definitely be used! Thanks so much!

Maybe you could do some of my ideas?

It's really been done like a 100 times so it's not original at all. There have been radios done that are much better than this, but I still think you could come back to this and make it better in some ways.

The background is really nice, but perhaps you could help out some artists by taking some random pictures from the art portal and using them as backgrounds. I'm sure as long as you credit them and ask them for permission that they wouldn't mind!

I agree that the cube was kind of nice, but useless. Why not have a bunch of mini-games in it? People could play the mini-games while they have the radio going on in the background. This would be much better than just a cube that really doesn't do anything fun.

I also think that the text on the buttons are way to simple and boring. Perhaps go to one of those websites where you can download a cool font and put it to use in this submission. It really does take a little bit away from the visuals of the submission.

So if you don't want a minigame section of the radio you could perhaps include something that would be very simple. Include something where the person could draw a picture to go along with the song or something like that. Like they could visualize what the song would look like and they could draw it right in the game.

Anyway, I think that there is just so little you can do with AS2 with a submission like this. I think it may be time for you to upgrade to a newer version of flash so you can use some AS3. I bet you could create some amazing things with it and you would have so many opportunities to improve this submission itself.

I don't know if it's possible, but is there a way that they can narrow their searches down? For example, they could search for songs, loops, heavy-metal, ambient, hip-hop, classical, etc... This way they can narrow down what they are looking for and they'll enjoy their experience much more.

Anyways, I'll make sure that some more people get to view this. I'll advertise it on the front page in two weeks when I can make another front page newspost and I'll show a few friends. Keep on programming and I'll keep on checking your stuff out.

Way too easy!

~ Comments ~

I don't see how people are complaining about what happens when they die or anything like that. The only time I've died is on survival and the only reason I died on survival is because I got pretty bored for playing so long and I died on purpose. If you have any decent gaming skills this game is extremely easy. It's all about avoiding the incoming shots first and being accurate second. In fact, you'll eventually hit the enemy. Just hold down the shoot button and avoid the the bullets. Anyone with any reaction skills should blow by this game really quickly.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

There's a lot going on and almost no lag on my computer. I'm impressed with that! Usually games where there's this much action I can't seem to avoid the major lag issues. The graphics were good enough. I kind of liked the art style.

~ Story/Content ~

A cool type of Halloween game. You took an old type of style and added a few new things to it. I agree that being able to go up and down would help, but it's not necessary as the game was easy enough without it. I would have also liked to see more weapon upgrades than the ones that you had. Perhaps two or three different things. Also, upgrades or other things appearing would have been nice for those who seem to be lacking in the game. :P

The medals were actually fun to get. The hardest medal to get is the 10,000 kills one in my opinion. It's not really a hard medal to get, but it just takes longer than the other ones. The high score system along with the medals makes this a fun game to come back to.

~ Audio ~

The music was very fitting and the sound effects were pretty good. I liked that the shooting sound effect was present, but wasn't over powering to the rest of the noise going on in the submission. All in all a good job there.

~ Overall ~

For some reason people are complaining about this being hard, but I found it to be way too easy. In fact, I didn't even know there was a health power up until I read your author comments and read some of the reviews because I never had one appear on the screen.

I liked that you had to different modes with survival and arcade. Perhaps implementing a cheat system or just working on an advanced upgrade system in general can improve this game or make a better future game.

I don't think it's a perfect 10, but I'm taking in consideration of how much fun I had playing this game so it does get a 10 from me.

NipponMonkey responds:

@Fro, thanks for the great review - I think I agree with you on almost every point.

I'm a bit surprised people are finding it so hard, you've worked out the game-play perfectly.

It's about dodging the bullets, especially the bigger bullets, and shooting down the enemies quickly and in a logical way.

It's designed so the best players can complete the Arcade Mode without losing a life. It is quite hard to complete without being killed, but it is possible. The hardest parts are the 4th Bat Boss (it has a quick and powerful weapon), and the final boss (it is surrounded with evil purple pumpkins - you should try to kill them off early before concentrating on the boss itself).

I didn't have time to add loads of extra upgrades and things, I just wanted to get loads of action on the screen at the same time with loads of explosions - and good game-play of course.

Hm, I thought great at first.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

Did you create these sprites yourself or were they something that you found? Either way they were really fitting and if you made them yourself then they were professional looking sprites. The animation was smooth, but it did tend to create a lot of lag for some reason. I'm assuming that problem was simply with my computer and not with your game.

I really enjoyed how fluent and realistic the shadows were. At first I didn't really notice it, but they were actually very well done. When they were almost vertical they still had a 3-D look to them, which I liked a lot.

~ Story/Content ~

You get an A for the idea of the game as it's very original. The beginning of the game was really creepy and I fully enjoyed the atmosphere that you created there. I found the game to get a little difficult and I'm saddened to say that I couldn't complete it. It wasn't that it got too hard, but I didn't find that the story kept me interested enough to keep me in the game trying over parts where I had once failed. All and all the game play got boring for me. :(

~ Audio ~

This had very good music all around and the sound effects were very fitting. I like that you had text instead of a voice actor just because these games don't seem to be very fitting with voices.

~ Overall ~

I believe that I can't give this a fully honest review because I haven't finished it, but I also have the excuse that the story wasn't interesting enough in my opinion to keep me into it. All in all it's a very original idea for a game and if I had more patience tonight I'd probably be able to make my way through it.

~ Review Request Club ~

lithander responds:

I made the sprites myself and seeing my abilities improve was great. The lava pit and the altar were the last sprites I did and I'm really happy with them. Pitty a lot players seem to not like pixel graphics!

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