Fro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Flash Maker 1.0]

Really not your best.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

This is probably the biggest thing that you have to work on in not only this submission, but in most of your submissions. I highly recommend hooking up with an artist. They don't even have to be too good. I recommend something that can do art relatively close to the art in the Stickman RPG game. If you haven't ever watched that submission I recommend going to watch it because it would show you how to do a movie like this much better.

So I really do recommend getting someone to do at least stickman art to include some animations that represent the things your doing in the game. The graphics that you did have weren't too bad. I really think you could work on your layout to make it look more professional because the simple colors and layout that you do have just isn't good enough in my opinion.

~ Story/Content ~

I think there are some things that you need to include to make this better. I'm going to preach the addition of animation again here because this is the only thing that is going to make a submission like this better.

Add an animation for each button that you have. Simply a stickman moving his head back and forth across a book for the reading, a guy jamming to some music for the music part, a guy drawing on a piece of paper for artwork, etc..

I also think you need a back button. Sometimes I would accidentally click on make a flash when I didn't want to make one yet and I couldn't get back from that part. So a back button would be great for people who accidentally clicked like me.

There should be some sort of point to the game instead of just being able to do what you had. I think giving people a time limit in terms of days allowed to make a flash would be good. This way people could see the best flash submission they could create in a certain amount of days. When they actually do make the submission, and depending on the score that they get on it, you should show a small animation to represent theirs. If it's a bad score you could just have a stickman episode and if the score was good you could have a really good animation to represent their flash. This is why it is really important to team up with an animator.

Last, but not least, whenever I would make a flash the score wouldn't make sense at all. First I thought it was going to do something like the Newgrounds scoring system as I got a 1.62 something. That made sense to me because I barely spent any time on it. I spent a hell of a lot of time for my second submission and got like a 8002384.2384 something. That didn't make any sense to me as it had nothing to do with newgrounds.

~ Audio ~

I like the music that you choice for the submission, but I think it was lacking in some way. Perhaps choose music that was just a bit more ambient so you could include some sound effects for all of the animations that I recommended above. You could also have a reward sound or something if they get a decent score on their flash.

~ Overall ~

I think you should keep working hard because you are pretty good with actionscript. I recommend finding an artist. (Hell it could be me if you don't mind sprites :P)

I actually wouldn't mind teaming up with you for a football game like your QB RPG game that you made awhile ago, but I'll PM you about that sometime.

Like I said, keep working hard because you are going to be great some day. You always have my full support.

Voted 5, reviewed 4/10.

TheSongSalad responds:

again, thanks a lot for the review, i always appreciate them. i believe your error with the flash score is a little bug. i think i could fix it in about half an hour, but seeing this games reception, i don't think it would even be worth it. also, i think it would be great to work with you on a flash. the last three games i've made have been while waiting for art pieces to come through for Avoidence 3. i would say for sure pm about that football one, because i like that one a lot more than this one so far. i'm pretty bad at animation still, but improving, and i thank you for taking the time to review me again. i appreciate your support, and fear not, work with an artest is coming soon.

[Key Run]

Good.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I really liked how the screen itself moved instead of just having the entire map on the screen itself. The movement of the circle was quite smooth. You could touch the wall slightly without dying or starting over, but I think it was necessary in this submission as it was kind of hard to get through some tight spots.

~ Story/Concept ~

Not an original idea at all. It was well done though and a lot better done than most of the avoid/maze type games that are submitted on this site. I didn't try to cheat at all as I didn't find it necessary, but I will say the game is quite tricky and frustrating if you don't have the patience to be slow while playing.

I didn't play the entire thing, but for the levels that I did play it was a decent game worth a try. Perhaps in the future have something like enemies, moving walls, upgrades, a money system, a point system, a time system, etc..

~ Audio ~

Decent choice of music in this submission. Pretty good all around. Looks like you used audio of friends, which may be nice, but make sure to take quality over friendship when choosing audio. :P

~ Overall ~

When I saw this underjudment I thought it was going to be terrible, but you proved me wrong. A decent game.

~ Review Request Club ~

MintPaw responds:

Thanks for the well thought review!

[Sirtom93's Adventure!]

Sirtom93 flash #2

I think that I'm going to end up reviewing all of these sirtom submissions as they come through the portal.

Yours was much better graphics wise than the other submission from earlier today and you also had an actual game part to the game instead of just the predictable YOU FAIL part of the submission.

Things that you should have added though are him in prison at the end with a big black man (perhaps slap happy there would do the job ^^) Or a scene where Wade is calling authority figures.

Perhaps make it so you can control sirtom long enough to walk into the school and then get caught so there is just a little bit more interactivity.

Hopefully not too many are submitted at this quality though. They could get quite old quite fast. I wouldn't mind seeing one going into a lot of detail though.

Kevin responds:

Maybe when I have some time, I'll do a better one.

I just threw this together in about one hour.

[Sirtom93 - The Game!]

Ha.

When I first played this I was like... well it could have been so much better. Perhaps doing something such as making it so you could actually move around in the school and what not.

That would still be a decent idea for a game though. Make it so he could move around in the school running away from the cops the entire time. No matter what happens the final scene could be him trying to get everything out of his bag to take the school down and the cops catching him before he has the chance to do it.

A nice large black man in the jail cell would be a nice addition to it. Something that sirtom himself might actually have to deal with here in his life.

Graphic wise it could have been much better. The submission is a joke itself, which is something a lot of people won't understand properly because they are too lazy to go and find it out for themselves.

The concept and the humor of the submission is great though. It deserves a ten all around and I also added it to my favorites just because of the laugh I got out of it. It's always fun to make fun of someone. :P

Overall - Could have been a little bit better, but the laugh I got out of the submission was well worth it.

JaY11 responds:

It was made on a laptop, it's like impossibly frustrating to draw anything :P

Thanks for teh review!

[Maze Raze]

Hmm one major problem.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

The Good Points - Smooth animation and good graphics. The graphics and colors used were great for an avoider/maze type game such as the one you have created here.

The Bad Points - Why does it move so slow? Is there a reason that it takes forever to slide? That really made the game annoying/boring to me. You could double the speed the square moves and at the same time increase the speed that the moving walls move.

~ Story/Content ~

The Good Points - You cleaned up most of the areas that somebody could cheat. Great origination of the menu and everything like that. A decent amount of levels. When collecting the star I got a decent laugh out of it even though I thought it was going to be a trap of some sort.

The Bad Points - Again since the square moves so slow you get really bored with the game. You could also move slightly in almost all of the walls and you didn't manage to clean up all of the areas where somebody can cheat.

The instructions in the menu aren't that clear. I knew what to do to finish the level, but you don't explain the moving walls at all, whether you can touch walls, etc.. I first played and tested out if I could touch a wall because you didn't explain it to us and found out that you could. I figured I could touch the moving walls then as long as I wasn't going to get crushed by them. I got popped right back to the beginning of the level. It's not clear and you should make it so all walls send you back to the beginning to make the game more difficult since it was pretty easy.

It was also quite annoying that you couldn't move diagonally. It seems you wanted it that way though as you created a level purposely for that.

~ Audio ~

The Good Points - Decent music while it lasted... Good sound effect when you get sent back to the beginning of the level.

The Bad Points - The music just stops? You should have it so music plays throughout the entire submission so people aren't getting bored of the empty sound.

~ Overall ~

Increase the speed, make enemies follow you, make it a little bit harder by adding more moving walls. (To all levels almost)

Make it so the music plays through the whole thing and weed out the area that you missed where you can cheat.

Maybe make smart walls that slowly, but surely close in on you no matter where you are in the game so it makes the person keep moving and use more strategy.

Perhaps implement a time limit or some type of scoring system with the time. If you did that you could even use a store to upgrade between levels or something to that effect. Maybe instead of time make it so that you can collect coins or something else like that during the game.

~ Review Request Club ~

uglyslug responds:

Wow, that was probably the best review I ever received.

The game is at 120 frames per seconds for best smooth-ocity. Pain in the neck to animate it though.

Your suggestions were brilliant. I will be sure to use them in my next game.

I didn't think the square moved slowly. It's moving 1 pixel every 1/60th of a second. Oh, well.

Oh, you'd like it to loop? Okay, I fix that.

I don't know how to fix the thing where the player is halfway in a wall.

I'll clean up the instruction a bit. I focused on being aesthetic more than getting to the point, sorry.

I shall excel in my next game, thank you for an amazing review.

You rock!

[The QB RPG]

Potential Potential Potential

~ Animation/Graphics ~

The Good Points - Words were properly sized and easy to read.

The Bad Points - Not very pleasing to the eyes. There wasn't any animation, graphics, etc.. It was the same old font over and over again. What would greatly improve this game is to have something such as animation during certain parts of the game and also backgrounds throughout the game itself.

~ Story/Content ~

The Good Points - This game has so much potential. I love football and have played both high school and semipro football. This is also a pretty original game as it's the first RPG style football game that I have every played on newgrounds. Decent choices in what you could work on.

The Bad Points - This has a weird set up. You can play a game any week that you want, which is a really messed up way to play football. For example you can play one game take 10 weeks off of games if you want and then finish off the season. If your going to make it have so many weeks of practice or whatever make it so the games start at a certain week.

Make sure to spell words right. There isn't anything wrong with spelling a couple words wrong in your author comments, but make sure your accuracy in spelling is... accurate. If you haven't guess the word that you spelled wrong in the game was accuracy. ;)

~ What you could add to make it better ~

1) Add animation scenes for the corresponding workouts. If your going to work on arm strength than have an animation of a guy bench pressing. The next time he does arm strength have him doing bicep curls, the next time do triceps, etc... This way you are getting some nice visuals in that all relate to arm strength and at the same time you aren't getting the viewer too bored watching the same thing over and over.

For accuracy you could have an animation of the quarterback throwing through a tire, throwing to receivers, etc.. Simple things like that.

For speed you could simple have an animation of them running, one of them lifting with their legs, etc..

Awareness could be the quarterback watching game tape, just running plays in practice, or anything of the sort.

2) Add backgrounds. Perhaps slightly animated backgrounds like a huddle or a playbook to the menu screen and the screen where your quarterback has the choice to practice, etc..

3) Instead of just yards separate his statistics into running yards and passing yards. This way stats like speed have a little more purpose and you could also add things like running power and carrying ability so you can add another statistic like fumbles.

4) During game day you should have an animation like the quarterback throwing a touchdown pass, completing a big pass play, running for a touchdown, breaking a big run, and vice versa maybe throw an interception or two during a game that he's not having a good game on.

So basically you could do the programming, since it looks like your not too bad at it, and you could work with an artist/animator to make more visuals to greatly improve the content of this animation.

~ Audio ~

A pretty decent song. I see you do audio too. You know you can request audio reviews from me too. :p

I think that if you really wanted to get into this though you could have some nice sound effects. Like noises of breaking huddles, crowds cheering, crowds booing, weight room noises, crowd chatter, and a different song for a lot of the different situations instead of the same song for the entire thing. That would keep viewers more interested in the submission and stop it from being so repetitive.

~ Overall ~

A decent game. Probably deserves less than a 6, but with so much potential and such a good idea it got a lot of extra points from me.

~ Side Notes ~

Is it only possible to get one college? I had these stats.

2457 Yards, 48 Touchdowns, 6 Interceptions, 393 Odds of Scholoarship, 126 Arm, 130 Accuracy, 37 Speed, and 108 Awareness.

Yet I received a scholarship from the University of You Fail At Life? That's crazy stats for only 12 football games and a high school quarterback.

If you want to improve on this PM me. I will help.

TheSongSalad responds:

thanks a lot for the review, and i think animation would help a lot for this game. the major problem with that is i have flash mx while everyone has at least flash 8. there is a random factor added in at the end for your scholarship status, but i guess it's a little large for you. indeed you would receive a higher scholarship than an imaginary one if you were that good, lol. i think i might try to make something like this with little animations when i get better at animations. thanks, as always for the review, and i'm still working on improving.

[WTF Pong]

Decent Pong game

~ Animation/Graphics ~

The Good Points - Smooth animation and great use of the black and white colors here.

The Bad Points - While I do like the classic black and white colors perhaps there could be more colors used. (Especially in WTF mode, there should be crazy colors flying everywhere in that mode... more on that down farther in my review)

~ Story/Content ~

The Good Points - You had more than the usual pong game when you added the WTF mode. A lot of people just make the simple pong part and end it there.

The Bad Points - I personally thought the menu could have been more pleasing to the eyes. Not only make it a bit more organized, but try adding an animated background or something like that. Perhaps just a movie clip of the two paddles playing pong by themselves or something of that sort.

I didn't know there was a back button because it was just a white section on the bottom of the screen. Perhaps actually putting the word back on it would have made me understand a little better, but a section in the menu where you explained everything probably would have really added to the flash submission too.

~ What you could do to make it better ~

1) Make it so there is an ending to the game. After you get to a certain score or something. If there was an ending then sorry I didn't get that far. If there is an ending add clarification about that in the menu somewhere.

2) WTF MODE! Ha, it was kind of random, but as the name suggests you should really mess things up here.

A) Completely random colors flying around, ball changes color, paddles change colors, etc...

B) Make it so there is a lot of messed up noises. Things like random animal noises perhaps or just a really funny/weird song that you could use.

C) Make the ball switch directions and speeds more often. It would really be WTF Mode if the ball just started heading backgrounds randomly. Even have the ball change shapes. Have it turn from a ball to a square, triangle, etc..

3) Perhaps give people the choice of colors or backgrounds to choose from, while still keeping the traditional black and white as a choice.

Overall though I think WTF Mode is a great idea. It just really needs to be worked on. Perhaps a game that's just WTF Pong in itself would be a good idea for a flash submission.

~ Audio ~

The Good Points - You had a decent song used in the game.

The Bad Points - When you clicked on the back button to get out of the current game the song just continued where it was. I think that could be worked on a little bit where you could have the song fade out or some sort of transition to make things smooth.

WTF Mode needs some completely random music. It at least needs different music from the one that you used for the regular pong game. Perhaps think about using a song for the menu, regular game, and one for the WTF Mode.

~ Overall ~

At first just your average pong game, but you did add an interesting mode to it. I think it could be a great pong game if you really worked on the WTF Mode, which I stressed several times in my review because what makes a good pong game is originality.

Could be organized a bit better and a little easier on the eyes. Also, don't be discouraged that my Bad Points were longer than my Good Points in my review. I just can think of more ways to fix things than I can good on almost every submission.

Ever want another review just leave me a comment like usual and I'll get to reviewing it eventually. Thanks for taking your time to read the review. :)

TheSongSalad responds:

thanks a lot for another review! i really appreciate your reviews because they give me a lot to think about and work on, thanks loads, and i'm glad you like it at least some!

[Avoidance 2]

Much better!

This is by far a great improvement from your last one! I won't go into much detail because a lot of the stuff that I stated in my last review could also cover everything in this review.

Animation/Graphics - The circles and the square looked a lot better in this one than they did in the last one. The color was much better and the animation itself was much cleaner.

Story/Content - I really liked that you had to collect something in this one. I also liked that you had levels. Good job on making it more fun like this. I liked the fact that you had checkpoints. I recommend making the game a little longer though because it barely took me anytime to beat.

The only thing that I can see that is wrong is when you take your mouse of the screen on (for example lets use this side) the left side you can then move your mouse around the screen quickly to the right side and you will instantly appear on that side out of harms way of the green circles. If you want this there than I say keep it because it's a nice strategy if your stuck, but if you don't want that there than I would recommend making it so when they do that the square travels across the screen to get to the other side.

Audio - The music is ok, but if you lose the level and try again the music stops. I recommend fixing this so people can listen to the music during the entire game instead of it stopping.

Overall - You improved a lot from the last one, but there seems to be a lot of things to still work out. Good luck and keep working.

flsh responds:

thanks a lot for the review, i'm working on my flash to make it a lot better before i go ahead and submit something again. once again, thanks for the very constructive and helpful review.

[Avoidence]

Could be much better.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

The Good Points - I thought the hit detection was rather good. There wasn't any time where I got hit when I didn't think I should have got hit. So good job on that.

The Bad Points - The graphics were kind of just plain and boring. I wouldn't have minded some nice backgrounds and better colors to make the game easier on the eyes.

~ Story/Content ~

The Good Points - The difficulty was pretty good. You almost had it perfect where it wasn't really too hard, but it wasn't too easy either. (almost)

The Bad Points - It's not very fun or exciting just to have one plain level like this where you don't have much to choose from or you don't have much content. Just the same old same old. Very unoriginal.

~ Things To Make It Better ~

Levels - I rather see a game like this with levels so you have a certain amount of points you need to gather before the level is over and you can go to the next level.

Upgrades - Both in between levels and during levels would be nice. You could have things such as:

1) Shields - Where you can take a couple of hits from the enemy before you can die. You can have these to buy between levels in a store and/or have random ones pop up during the game.

2) Invisibility - Make it so this only lasts for a certain amount of time, but while it's lasting the circles that follow you will just stop for awhile. Have this primarily pop up randomly during the level.

3) Slow Down - This can make it so the circles are slow for a small amount of time. Only have something like this during the level.

4) Invisibility - Make it so that for a short amount of time no matter what you run into you won't die.

Money system - Of course with a store you would have some sort of money system. This could be done by having random "money" pop up during the level that you could collect if you passed over it.

~ Audio ~

The Good Points - The song was a decent choice and was a good choice for a game that was fast pace with action.

The Bad Points - The only thing I can think of is how it replayed every time that you tried the game again. It would be much better if you took something like this and fixed it, which I noticed you said you did in number 2.

If you added levels and stores - You could add audio for the different levels of the game so you could have a variety of music for the players. Also, a nice relaxing song during the store so people could calm down after the stressful level.

~ Overall ~

It really does need a lot of things to make it better. Perhaps the stuff that I recommended would be too hard for you to program, but without things like this it's just your every day avoid game, which there already is 1,000's of them here. If your going to make one and want to get a good score/rating then you have to do something to make them original in some way.

I hope that my review gave you some ideas on how to make the game better in the future. Good luck and keep working.

flsh responds:

thanks a lot for the review, very constructive. i actually did a few of the things you mentioned in the next game, and i think i'll add some of the things you're talking about in the third one. i'm taking a break from this particular genre at this point, but i'm going to make a better one sometime in the future. great review, very helpful, thanks.

[Mr. Egg's Adventures]

Needs some work.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

Good Points - Some decent drawings here. While the eggs themselves are rather simple you did a good job with their clothing and other drawing on the eggs. Some of the backgrounds were done decently.

Bad Points - While the eggs were done decent they really did need more animation. Things like when the eggs would talk it would just show text. Instead you should add some voices, which would get rid of the text and you would be then be able to animate the mouth. I think that would have made the submission much better in itself. A lot of the background was way too simple. It just needed to go into a little bit more detail.

~ Story/Content ~

Good Points - A decent idea for a game. It's sort of an original idea with the eggs instead of normal people.

Bad Points - I think you needed to add more interactivity to the game. You only had a few spots where you could choose what to do. I think in any future submissions you should add several more spots where you can do things. I also hated when you picked the wrong choice and it sent you back way too far. I guess it wasn't too bad though as you could click rather fast if you wanted to get by the scenes. It wasn't really too original of an idea in terms of the content of the game because there are a lot of point and click games like this that are done much better. It's also lacking things like humor or action. Either one of those would have greatly added to the submission.

~ Audio ~

Good Points - The parts that you used audio sounded pretty good.

Bad Points - I think you could have added a little more sound effects to the submission. Such as when the eggs are on the computer in the background you could hear some ambient typing/chattering between the people. Voices were the biggest thing here. If you would have added voices, animated the mouths, and got rid of the text when someone was talking then the score of the submission would be much better in my opinion.

~ Overall ~

Keep working and improving by adding more animation and this might turn out to be an interesting series. Keep working hard.

~ Review Request Club ~

GokUC responds:

Thank you for your review

PS: I don't speak english very well so I can't add voices to the movie