Fro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[GunsVSCars]

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I think an instant way to improve the score here is to work on the artwork and graphics. The first thing that sticks out is on the opening menu. You open up to the green grass that looks like it's been copied and pasted next to itself over and over. While this does create a nice little section where you know you can place a tower, it isn't evident enough to create a clear tile/path way. It would have been nicer to see this set up more like a highway where there were several clear lanes. This would be better graphically and would also set clear expectations for people so they would know ahead of time where to set towers and where the cars could drive through.

From the top to the bottom of the menu.... What's the graphic between the first gun and the car supposed to represent? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the game. It's not a tower you get to choose and I honestly have no clue what it is. The guns themselves were alright, but would have turned out much better with clean solid lines. The car also needs a bit of work. It's a bit large and boxy. A slightly more realistic drawing at a smaller scale would have looked much better in my opinion.

The lettering on top looks nice, but I would have used a different color pallet. They are all so similar that the letters run together. Also, the dark color of the S blends in the dark color of the car too much. I would have gone color 1 for Guns, color 2 for VS, and then back to color 1 for Cars again. The lettering in the middle of the screen could have been a little better. You went with a nice bubbly lettering on top that I think would have looked a lot better here as well, just using much smaller sizes.

While we were on the topic of instructions I would probably reword it. It's a bit wordy. Perhaps something along the lines of:

How to play: Place the weapon on the field. When a vehicle is in range of a weapon it will shoot. If a vehicle manages to collide with a weapon the weapon will be destroyed. If the vehicle reaches the red line the game is over.

The logo on the top right, which I assume is your icon or tag, is poorly edited. There's a lot of white space around it and this could be cleaned up a lot! A lot of the same exact things can be said about the game over screen.

Lastly, just a small amount of attention to detail could help out. Maybe add some dirt, exhaust, or a little bounce to the vehicle. These small things can sometimes go a far way when increasing the quality of a submission.

~ Gameplay ~

Errors: Sometimes the screen turns black and nothing can change this other than refreshing the page. I've had it happen after a stage has started or after clicking the back to menu button after starting losing a round. I've also had a stage start and everything is running smoothly besides the fact that I cannot select a weapon or the shovel no matter how hard I try. It's either refresh the page or lose again to make it work.

There's a lot of things that could have made this better. I feel that because of the size of the map and vehicles that there wasn't much gameplay here. I'm sure everyone loses around the same time in the game because it doesn't matter what weapon set up you have it just doesn't take very long, as slow as they do move, for the vehicles to get to your second or third level of guns when there are 3-4 of them back to back.

Using the shovel on a weapon should give you a little bit of money back so it can be used more strategically when you have several cars coming at one tower and not much you can do other than watch yourself lose.

There's a huge lack of content here. A simple thing that could make the game better immediately would be to add a description of what the weapons or shovel does when you hover your mouse over it. We just assume that the second weapon is better than the first, but without playing them with some trial and error we don't really know what the difference will be. If I hadn't read your author comments I would have never guessed that other item was a shovel. I thought it was some sort of sign that could block the cars temporarily.

You could also do things such as add upgrades to weapons. Maybe it would be more beneficial for someone to upgrade a weapon to level 2 instead of buying another gun. The main thing that would make this really fun is adding a variety of weapons and enemies. When I think of playing games like this I think strategy. Not just gun one shoots this fast and gun two shoots faster. Guns that explode and have splash damage, ones that spread into multiple lanes, ones that freeze or jump from one target to another, etc...

Have the game start off super easy. Old junky cars, move onto nicer cars, police vehicles, vans, suv's, trucks, etc... All having their own little characteristics and strategies for defeating them. Things that make people think quickly and can change the way they are playing at any moment. Those things could make this simple not so great game into an awesome game that gives people a reason to return or to continue playing.

A health bar for weapons and also vehicles would be awesome here too. It's almost necessary in games like this. I've seen games where people can toggle the health bar on and off as well. After doing some of those things you could add scores or achievements to make it even more motivating for people to return.

~ Audio ~

The audio was straight forward and clean. There was no background music though? I don't have much to say here other than it would be nice to have some ambient music playing in the background and then give people a mute option if they so choose to not listen to music. You could also have a separate or the mute button to include the sound effects of the weapons as well. It would also be nice to add a little bit of sound to the vehicles. It's kind of bland and boring without these things.

~ Overall ~

An extremely basic gameplay that could be really fun to play if a lot of things were added and cleaned up. Make sure to pay attention to detail in your games when doing art and audio to help improve the overall quality.

Good luck on any future games you create and send a message if you ever want a review.

AndrewBedni228 responds:

Thanks for your review!

[Fidget Spinner Tycoon]

~ Animation/Graphics ~

Pretty straight forward and basic. Everything is clean and looks good. There is a good variety of spinners with more advanced looks. They do look like they are more expensive or higher quality as you progress and buy more. I can't really say too much more about the visuals to this game.

~ Story/Plot/Gameplay ~

As other people have mentioned the arrow pops up to select the 2nd spinner before you can actually do so. Perhaps this could be reprogrammed to be correct. With the lack of instruction, detail, and that error I thought I was doing something wrong. I almost quit playing the game at that point and wouldn't doubt if that's where most people shut this game off and moved on.

The most annoying thing to me is how the ads show up every now and then. They no only show up at the beginning of the game, but every time you purchase a new spinner and every so often as time passes by. I didn't count how long it takes, but it really makes the game not enjoyable because of this. I could deal with at the beginning and after purchasing a spinner, but the every so many minutes thing also makes this not playable as a true idle game. Of course where we have to click on the spinner is where the ad pops up as well. If we are clicking away we most likely open an ad by accident.

(At this point in the review I realize the points do continue to add up even while the ad is going on. This makes it not such a big deal, but still an inconvenience)

I wrote the next section before I realized there was a way to see how many points you get. The statement about making this more clear and my idea how to do so still stands though.

The thing that would make this game a world better is to allow someone to be able to see what the requirements are for the next spinner. It could be done with a mouse by hovering over and giving a brief description. (Score 500 points to unlock) We basically have no clue when we are going to unlock the next one. We could potentially waste a large amount of time clicking on a less efficient spinner because of this.

It was actually unclear to me that you do get some points for having more spinners because of how slowly they add up. I think more instruction in the game all around would be the most beneficial for the score to increase.

The first two talents that you can unlock make the game much easier. I would have never continued if they hadn't existed. (I could write some review while they refreshed and use them again so I could write more review) While playing longer I realized how nice it could be for this computer version to have shortcuts or hotkeys for the talents. If I don't want to waste the time that it takes to click to select a X2 or X4 talent than this would be extremely useful.

It doesn't have much replay value. It would be nice to have individual upgrades for each spinner and achievements for each spinner. This could keep people playing longer and trying harder. They would also need to come back to finish up some of the achievements on older spinners.

~ Audio ~

It may be nice to have a selection of music to go through. Even better yet just a simple mute music, mute sound effects, and/or mute both would be nice. I know you can just turn your volume up, down, or off, but it would be nice for people who wanted to hear the satisfaction of the pop noises when they click, but don't want to hear the music and vice versa.

It may have been fun to change up the clicking noise to a different pop or even have specific noises for each spinner. A voice or other sound effect would have been cool when you manage to purchase another spinner.

~ Overall ~

At this point in the review I've made it to the UFO spinner. I really didn't enjoy the game and really want to end it here. It's kind of boring and lacks content and doesn't give any reason for a person to come back and play again. I generally enjoy idle games, but this one just doesn't quite do it for me. Not knowing how far I needed to make it to get the next talent to unlock was a downer.

[Madness Zombie Survival]

I would have been pumped if this was a full game. It was a very simple concept, but with the addition of more weapons and levels this would be great.

~ Errors/Glitches ~

Maybe I did something wrong on my end, but when I had enough points I purchased the shotgun in the store. No matter what I did I couldn't change my weapon to the shotgun even though it was clearly unlocked on the screen. Was it maybe an error caused by me purchasing a weapon out of order? Because of this I can't truly give an honest review about the gameplay (see down below) because I don't know how those weapons helped/didn't help.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I thought the graphics on the title screen were really well done and the character design was nice. I thought the level graphics was a bit basic, but it would make a really nice simple level one. It may be neat to have the zombies look like they're getting a little destroyed as you shoot them. Pieces falling off, etc... Maybe even the addition of some blood splatter on the ground and whatnot.

It would have been nice to have an animated health bar on the screen so we know exactly how many hits it's going to require before we die. Also, this would give us some physical sense of whether we are being hit by the enemy other than the screen shaking. It can be hard to detect a shaking of the screen if you are in mid jump.

Other than that the mechanics were really smooth and everything looked good.

~ Story/Gameplay ~

I have no clue what was going to be in your final version, but this has so much potential that I could talk and talk about it. I won't write that much this time because it doesn't seem to be something you're going to finish.

I think the addition of more weapons would be awesome. I had a glitch when trying to switch weapons so I don't know if the more powerful ones had any downfalls. Since the handgun had unlimited ammo, if the other weapons also had unlimited ammo the game would probably be way too easy. I got really far with just the handgun itself, I can't imagine blasting people with a shotgun while jumping around. Because of this error I can't comment on the weapons, power, difficulty, etc...

Maybe I didn't make it far enough, but different enemies and bosses would be awesome. If these were included please let me know and I'll try again so I can how they were. Also, after several waves it would be great if we went to a new map with a different background/obstacles.

Sometimes the enemies just spawn where you are standing. If you don't want to have them come from the sides you could try to have them crawl up from the ground or kind of get "teleported" in with a slight delay so we aren't caught off guard with a little bit of unfairness.

~ Audio ~

I usually comment on audio, but I'm being bad and taking a break at work.... well a mini lunch of sorts... I won't judge on audio this time around... sorry about that it kind of leaves a mediocre review, but I don't want to wait until I get home because I may forget what I was going to say.

~ Overall ~

If you do ever make this a complete functional game I'll be there to play it. With more variety in enemies, backgrounds, levels, and weapons along with the inclusion of newgrounds medals, I would think we have a winner here.

larrynachos responds:

This is an incredibly inspiring review :) I almost want to get started on the new version right away ^^ Thank you so much for the honest and helpful feedback!

[Axllet]

Get in your settings and change the description of the Run Mode medal. In the description you've spelled run as rum. I was hoping there was a rum drinking level, but sadly there was no rum involved.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

It's very basic in every manner. The whole circles and squares shoot at other circles and squares has been overdone and over used. I highly recommend taking the time to make the shapes something more. If you're going to go with shapes change it up a little bit. Circles, triangles, squares, etc... It's just basic/boring to the viewer and we want more! :P

I had no problem with any controls and everything seemed to work very smoothly.

~ Story/Gameplay ~

The basic gameplay was a little fun, but without a real challenge here there was no reason for me to keep playing. The only mode that is difficult is the endless mode and there's no reason to keep playing it in my opinion because you don't have any medals tied to it.

Medal Ideas that would have kept me playing:

Last for 1 minute on endless mode
Last for 2 minutes on endless mode
Upgrade your fire rate 5 times
Upgrade everything to max level, etc....

I would have also liked to see different modes.

Mode ideas:

Stationary mode (Where the circle stays in the middle of the screen and can't move
Vs. Mode (Two players can battle each other)

The biggest downfall of this game was the lack of explanation and how basic the menus were. I never quite knew what an upgrade looked like before I started, what the modes really stood for without making educated guesses, and how to unlock other levels because there was no detail or description anywhere. It would have been a lot better if there was a how to and more descriptions when someone hovered their mouse over a button.

After unlocking the first two levels I couldn't get into anything without clicking the blue button and getting to the main menu? Glitch?

~ Audio ~

Probably the best thing about this game. Nice background music during the gameplay and nice menu music. I also liked all of the sound effects that you used during the game. (gun shots, deaths, collection) Good attention to detail here!

~ Overall ~

Way too easy, not enough content, and really no reason to come back and play the game again. That being said it's not a bad game by any means, but there is a ton that could make this game a lot better.

BASSAM18 responds:

thanks, your comment really explain the whole game you must really spend your time checking everything in the game really thank you Fro i will save your comment to check what it really needs , but one thing i dont think the game is easy like you said many people told me it was even too hard
but thanks for your comment Fro it really define the game .

[Nightmare Runner 2]

So it's good, but I'm terrible at it. I didn't let that influence my vote, but damn... I couldn't make it past the easy stage.... it never had anything to do with any of the monsters. I always died because of jumping. I played for over 30 minutes before I realized that I was getting really frustrated so I quit. Refreshed the page and realized I never got a single medal. That made me feel like such a waste so I opened the game back up and through my first run I at least got the kill three bosses in one game medal. At least I wasn't a complete failure... just mostly... Ok, on to the review...

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I loved the simplistic, yet high quality shadow type characters. I never unlocked any of the other characters to run with, but it was an awesome style all around. The background could have used a little bit of variety, but the fact that you put in a few details in the background at all shows a lot of effort as most basic games skip over small details like that.

It would be really neat to see the monsters in the background battling with airships or something of the sort. It wouldn't have to happen a lot, but just every so many minutes to change things up a little bit.

~ Story/Gameplay ~

So way too hard for me, but I never was good at jumping games. You should see me rage quit on Mario. As soon as I got use to jumping and thought the game was getting easier.. I found out that the higher jump skills that I unlocked made the game harder for me. I could barely judge the timing on jumps and 100% of the time I died on the side of a cliff or down through a hole.

The game would have been more fun for someone like me if it was a basic straight runner. Maybe some jumps here and there, but not the dreaded holes that you can fall down. I also hated that just barely touching the side of the cliff was death when I had a second jump available. At first I was alright with it because it is more realistic, but then I remembered there was a 2nd jump available mid air so we weren't really going for reality here...

Like I was saying, a straight running shooter were the main focus would have been on tougher bosses/enemies would have been a better fit for me. I'm sure that others disagree though and liked the style of the game the way that it is.

It would have been nice to see more than a shotgun upgrade. Perhaps addition of a couple of different weapons? Also, when a player recieved more than one shotgun upgrade before it expired it would have been neat to increase the spread in addition to the already instated benefit of adding more time to the shotgun.

I liked the different enemies, but the game was kind of boring because of how repetitive it was. I think the level was a little too long and could have benefited from shorter distances. (Of course the guy who couldn't make it to the end would say that... he sucked at the game haha)

I'm not sure if I ever saw the benefit of the the faster shooting. It didn't seem to help at all, but maybe it made a bigger difference in the harder levels. Something I never tried because I couldn't make it past the easy level.

Did you read to this point? Good... forget half of what I just said... I just completed it on easy. HARD MODE IS INTENSE AND FUN. I may have to keep coming back just to try and finish up getting all of the hard level medals. If anything hopefully that series of sentences I put in shows you the levels of frustrations a player may go through. (I always start my reviews during gameplay because sometimes they get lengthy)

~Audio ~

I really liked the background music and the noises the monsters made as you killed them. I would have liked to hear a quiet gun noise, but I completely understand why you didn't. The gun shoots so rapid that it could have become annoying quite quickly.

Just a few more grunt, groans, moans, screams, and other sound effects would have been nice though.

~ Overall ~

A game that starts off difficult in my opinion, but with enough practice it can be completed. Hard mode is the intensity that makes the game interesting while easy mode, while being hard, can also be boring because of the length of the level. Perhaps additional levels in the future would be good and a little bit of additional details here and there.

ClockworkMonster responds:

------- Update -------

Hard mode is now unlocked and easy mode is now shorter.

Thanks a lot for your help!

--------------------------

WoW, nice feedback!

I must admit that the game shines in hard level. I designed it so you continually feel the pressure of enemies closing in. I think I´ll make the easy level 20% shorter.

I am planning to add more variety in backgrounds, with nice monsters showing and stuff (next game), and also extra weapons and game levels/ modes.
Even a "dark mode" that looks pretty interesting in my prototype (Play my previous game "land of Darkness" to get a glimpse...). But that will be in the sequel, using Unity3D.

Thanks a lot for your feedback!!!

[The 1v1 Paintball game]

If you face right up against a wall and shoot right between two dark boxes you will shoot a L shape pattern into the blocks, creating two splattered surfaces at a time, but any additional splatter will take away the one splatter that is in between the two blocks. Unless it gets shot by another player then it covers in the same L shape.

If you hold down a shoot button it shoots at a good rate, but it only makes the original sounds of the shot. Perhaps there's a way to attach the sound to every time a bullet shows up on the screen and not just every time the button is pushed.

I thought everything was pretty basic, but it works for what the game is to a point. More detail would be nice. I think that walking with the combination of up/right, etc... should move in a diagonal direction to make things smoother. I'd like to see the paint ball bullets a little faster, but I guess it kind of works this way because it gives someone an opportunity to dodge them.

There's this weird white spot behind the blue score area that looks like you just missed. Sticks out like a sore thumb. I also think it would look really cool if you made a blue/red splatter mix for when both players hit the same wall. This opens you up to some mini games and just would look like a more finished product.

The game is alright, but it lacks any real content. I couldn't imagine myself asking my buddy if they wanted to come hang out so we could play that cool paintball game that we found online. Perhaps if the controls were a little more smooth and you added something more it could be though. For example, it's great that there is a score, but wouldn't it be much better if there was a time limit to each level? You could even have different mini games where the point is to paint as much surface with your color before the time runs out while the other person can cover yours up to make it theirs, etc...

The addition of a single player mode would be the best and easiest way to improve this submission. Perhaps adding some levels and enemies that move around randomly until you are in their sites or are always slowly moving towards you. They could even have different patterns like in pacman where one ghost always moves towards you, one always stays behind, one moves random, etc.. etc...

Overall, this whole submission really seemed unfinished. Paying attention to adding small details as simple as a cleaner more functional menu with in game instructions could improve them game greatly. Add some music in the background and some more content and watch how your scores improve from here on out.

~ Review Request Club ~

Gurken responds:

Okay

[madness scene maker v2.0]

Very basic. There are a lot of advanced things that I would recommend doing such as having an item be unlimited so you can have less copies in the selection area, but use as many as you want in the creation area. Even if you wanted to do something more simple you could have made multiple copies like 100's of each and placed them over top of each other. That way when someone dragged one into position there was just another one waiting for them.

You should have every item facing left and right equally. You have an over abundance of facing to the left, but hardly anything facing to the right. The selection area is way too big and the creation area is way too small. The white areas in between the sections gives it an unfinished and unpolished look.

It would have been better with some background music or even a selection menu for choosing background music. Think of your common Madness video/game songs and go from there.

dragonslya responds:

That would have been excellent advice.... 11 years ago!

[Asterash]

EDIT - I now got all of the medals like a year later besides the one where you have to get the top score ever.

Grrr... this game makes me so angry! I keep dying right when I think I'm getting better at it. I got most of the medals, but I'm not sure if I have the patients to keep going. The artwork is awesome, but with the background, vibrations of the ships, and other things going on my eyes get crossed and I have a hard time telling what's an incoming enemy projectile of death or if it's something else. Oh well, it really looks great and plays amazing. This is the type of shooting game we need for PYROSCAPE 4! (I swear to god I'm working on it this week and I'll talk to you about it in a little bit on facebook)

Is there some cheats or hints you can throw my way so I can get the rest of the medals? There's no way that I can survive two minutes in this game.

MonoFlauta responds:

Thanks for playing! About the messy screen (with all the shakes and stuff coming to you). Yes, maybe we went a bit too far in feedback haha. But well, I guess it ended up well! First place of the day finally haha.
About the medals, sorry, but we wanted this game to be the dark souls of Newgrounds! haha.
Thanks a lot for playing and looking foward to do Pyroscape 4!

[Echo the Dolphin]

The game itself play alright, but it's just really... boring and not that fun. There isn't any real motivation to keep playing multiple levels. After winning about the first five I really got bored and couldn't keep going.

The background and art work is nice, but there were some things that need to be improved on. The green sides of the background were really out of place. I don't recommend that their there and it would have been much better if you just kept the water background across the entirety of the back screen.

Also, some of the fish just swim to the end of the screen and just disappear. They should swim off of the screen to make things more fluid. At the end of the day, other than the fish theme this really really has nothing to do with dolphins and/or fish and it's a huge stretch. I would have worked out a better theme for this game.

Like your other game, there is no restart button. Not that I needed one because of the simplicity and ease of the game, but I let this play while writing a review and realized that if someone does lose they have to refresh the entire screen to play again.

The audio was alright, but needs to be toned down and their needs to be some ambient background music to go along with everything.

[Building Bloxx]

The first thing that I notice right away is that the start button is difficult to see. There should be a different outline or maybe even a simple gray or black rectangular background that would make it more evident. Also, when you are done with a game there isn't any replay button. You actually have to refresh the page to get another shot of the game... kind of takes the fun out of playing it and would be much better if it had one.

Other than that the artwork and animation is really well done. I really like the style and it all in all looks amazing. The small attention to detail such as the clouds moving in the background are great. I do recommend making the airplane more of a background feature. It looks good, but if it were more infrequent and farther away it would be better.

To add a little bit of a challenge I recommend having the blocks start from different sides of the screen at random. I don't agree that physics should be included in this game because it would be impossible to get much more than 10-20 blocks while I was getting over 100 this way. I think it would kind of take away from the fun of the game if the levels only lasted a minute. I do like that the higher you get the more the tower sways.

The sound effects were a little overbearing. They should be toned down a little and there should be some sort of background music. The mute button was a nice touch though. If the airplane were moved back you could even add in some distance sound effects for that.