Fro's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Errors '09]

Not bad.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I noticed that a lot of the pictures/text were of poor quality. Some might have been a little hard to read for some people too. Very minor problem and I don't know much about uploading pictures into flash so I don't know if it's possible to make the quality of the pictures better or not, but if there is a way I would recommend it.

~ Story/Content ~

A lot of funny errors, but I noticed that the submission got a little dry after awhile. Could it be possible that you had too many things here? Maybe that's just my opinion, but I never review a submission without watching/playing the whole thing and this one seemed to get old kind of fast.

~ Audio ~

Error sounds were well synced and the rest of the sound effects were perfectly fine. Nothing to critique here.

~ Overall ~

I think I've seen this done so many time and in so many ways that it eventually gets dry/boring after awhile. I might actually recommend making there be less errors so it's not so lengthy, but it's up to the viewers on how much they want to read I guess. Overall not too bad.

~ Review Request Club ~

AntoArts-Admin responds:

I see your point, I might try to have the errors use variating layouts and such, I believe that would make it less repetitive.

[NG store ad]

Great ad!

I also saw Tom's newspost. I didn't even think about submitting them here on newgrounds to show off. There is always a website called spamtheweb that you can upload things to and link to the topic. Make sure to link this to the topic so he has a better chance of seeing it too!

When clicking the ad it doesn't go to a working link so I don't know if that was on purpose or by accident.

The Ad itself looks great. I wouldn't mind seeing something like this on newgrounds at all. It contains a little bit more animation than some of the other ads, but it still looks great.

What I really like about it is it catches the eye of the viewer and that's exactly what you want form an ad. When I see it I want to finish watching it just to see what happens.

Good ad all around. Good luck I hope he uses it!

jinxworld70 responds:

well DAYUM.

[The Zombie Quiz]

Wow so wrong in every way possible.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

You couldn't have picked a worst color combination then the one that you had. Let's see... A red background, red letters, and a glowing red animation in the middle of the screen. I never had to strain my eyes more while reading something then I had to for this.

The good was that the letters and buttons were organized very well and it seemed professional other than the very poor color choice.

~ Story/Content ~

It's like you really didn't know much about zombies. Just the generic wrong things that everyone else thinks they know.

When someone first dies their body is capable of running for quite awhile. Then the body breaks down and so doesn't the person. That means if a real zombie outbreak were to occur then zombies could run for awhile, since it's a basic motor skill, and then they would be able to walk.

Zombies want to eat human no matter what part of it may be. They will also eat animal as well no matter what part of it.

I hope that you didn't pick the shotgun as the best weapon because anyone with common sense can tell that's a terrible weapon. Yeah let's pick the heaviest gun there that you have to get extremely close with and have the biggest splash area so the zombies infected blood can get all over you. Great idea.

The virus can be spread through any bodily fluid. That's why it's spread through bites. The saliva and blood in their mouth is what spreads it.

Some of the questions were just terrible. You had things that would get anyone killed as the right answers and the wrong answers were just as bad.

Some questions were decent, but for the most part I would say get a good background knowledge before you make something like this. Half of the people that are reviewing it don't know what they are talking about either.

Perhaps you might have had too many questions. Perhaps taking the useless ones out and replacing it with common sense questions such as athletic ability and body build would be better.

~ Audio ~

Mute button please. Not too bad of a choice for music, but something like this always needs a mute button. Some people don't like to read and listen to music at the same time as they find it distracting.

~ Overall ~

Use colors that work better. Perhaps white font on the red background would be much easier to read.

Look into the zombie survival club here on newgrounds and really learn your facts about zombies. I happen to be one of the leaders in that club.

Mute button for said reasons.

I know I was harsh, but your quiz really didn't contain anything a good quiz should contain.

Ondure responds:

I understand the whole spheal on colors brosef-lax-bro-broski, but for most of the other stuff, it's supposed to be a funny little quiz, not necessarily huge or important.
I AM coming out with a version that has a much better simulator, but the questions will probably stay the same
suuure the zombie might like flesh, but they LUVS brains. What do zombies moan?
"Braaaaiiiiinns"

[Dot Avoider 2]

Your generic avoid game.

~ Bugs ~

I think there was just one and perhaps it's not so much of a bug, but just something that I really didn't like at all. When an "enemy" would first appear they would show up randomly on the screen for a split second. Then they would appear normally by coming off of the screen and then onto it. I don't know if it was suppose to be like that or not, but to me it looks like a glitch.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

Hit detection was on pretty good. No complaints from me there at all. The "enemies" were well drawn and everything. Perhaps a nice background would have added to the submission. Perhaps you could have even made a really trippy background to try and mess with people's eyes while they played so it would be a tad bit harder.

~ Story/Content ~

Here are some things that I think you could have done to make it better. (Note that I know you are a beginner, but these are things you can start working towards in the future)

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.

Just a few ideas.

~ Audio ~

This part is plain and simple. :P You just need a nice catchy song and along with it an option so people can mute it if they want to or not. That's really all that is needed, but if you wanted to do a little more you could add some audio when you get hit by an enemy, which represents dying.

~ Overall ~

Just so generic, but your a beginner so keep it up. I know you don't want harsh ratings, but don't look at the ratings as much as you do the helpfulness of a review.

Laraso responds:

And this review was quite helpful. Thank you for all of the great ideas. I will try to get some of this stuff into future games I make... Thanks again, some of this stuff I would have never have thought of.
(EDIT: I tried to change the glitch where enemys appear for a split second then come in like normal, but it is a glitch with the AI and I can't figure out how to fix it for some reason... The only possible way for me to fix it is if I make them spawn in the middle, but that would be a bad idea...)

[NG Flagging Guide 2]

I think some false information.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I thought your last one was perfectly fine to see. I even preferred the old one a little bit. Extremely easy to read though. Colors fit good. I do have to say that most of the pictures were of very poor quality. I don't know if there was anyway to fix that by maybe changing the file type of the pictures, but if there is something to do then I think you should.

In the beginning where you had your little message of why you were making a new one, I couldn't read the entire thing fast enough. I happen to be a slower reader so that could be my fault. Perhaps a button to click or something might have helped a little there.

~ Story/Content ~

A lot of good information, but I also think perhaps a little bit of false information. The part that you said about linking to outside websites isn't always a 100% of the time thing. I don't know how many times I've linked to tutorials and other things like that, which would help the author. Of course I'm leaving a large review around the link, but I was always told simply doing that was perfectly fine. I'm sure that you meant to imply that, but it wasn't the impression that I got from reading it.

Other than that I don't see anything wrong with what you said. A lot of dry reading, but it's something that needs a lot of writing to and reading to get the point across.

The quiz was a nice addition.

~ Audio ~

Decent music and the mute/unmute button was a good choice. For some reason I thought it was hard to find. I have no clue why since it was right out in the open. I guess I just missed it. :P

~ Overall ~

Giving the 10/10 the 5/5 and the support in my review. Hopefully this helps some people out that need to see it.

Little-Rena responds:

Oh the opening message I put at a pace I could read, I consider myself to be a slow read, so sorry, it's pretty much explained in the author comments, infact in more depth. I could have edited my previous one but I no longer had the fla so I had to make a new one to update it.

The dry reading I'm sorry about, I thought I added enough humour in there to pad it out a little, like in the whistle part, but apparantly not, lol.

Link wise, I would suggest just sticking to Newgrounds Tutorial links to be safe anyway, since there are sone on this site, it's external links that aren't really allowed.

I can always come back and update this in future, I remembered to no overwrite the fla with junk this time, lol ;)

Thanks for the review.

[->The Par Box<-]

Omg was this ever hard to watch/play with.

That's what she said.

Lol, anyway it was so laggy on my slow dial up. D: I played the version before this though and i know that it runs smoothly.

A lot of good things to choose from here. I just don't see a lot of point in the submission though. It's not something that I would want to come back with and ever play again. Seems just like something you'd try once, say, "Kind of cool", and then completely forget about it.

Like I said, if it had some sort of purpose it would probably be better, but I don't see how you could really turn this into a game though.

The more positive side of the review now. I couldn't imagine even having half of the skills of creating something like this. The coding and animating skills to make this are way out of my league so I can't even start to imagine the work and effort that you went into while making this.

FatKidWitAJetPak responds:

Oh yeah man, toonnss of hard work and effort was put into this. the system hasnt updated the wide screen version of the flash yet but it will soon! And it is more of a toy to mess around with like how a kid plays with a fire-truck. It doesn't really have any purpose but to waste time with. Kids would love seeing all these cool objects floating around while adults will appreciate the trippyness of it lol. I appreciate your review.

[Whistle Evaluator]

Interesting

~ Animation/Graphic ~

Great basic setup for the graphics. The choice of two different cursors was nice, but really not needed in a game like this. Some things that do make these types of games cool are adding actual animation to it. Perhaps at the end when you get your results you could have a normal whistle and have an animation of the whistle changing to what the person got. Small things like that would make it a bit better.

~ Story/Content ~

I got a gold whistle.

Even though on my account I have a Deity. I would like to argue about some of the examples.

Your helpful reviews were actually terrible. I wouldn't call any of them really helpful at all. Just telling someone to work harder is probably the most useless thing you can say.

Also, as a flash artist those short reviews such as, "I really liked this" can be very helpful to the authors motivation and make them want to keep making flash or encourage them to work harder.

You're examples for abusive reviews were very good and all abusive. I just don't see where you can mark down someones whistle (Yes I know this is just a game) on what is helpful and what is useless because that is completely opinion. Like I said your examples of helpful reviews seemed very mediocre to me. I wouldn't mark them as helpful or useless because they are somewhere in between. I also mark any short review that is praising my submission as helpful because they motivate me to work harder and keep submitting. That's helpful right?

So I say your submission is very opinionated. Just because someone has a different opinion as you they could get a lower whistle. If you were trying to make it like newgrounds then that's not how the whistle works since you don't get any points for marking as helpful or useless, but if you were just making it like that for the sake of the game it's extremely hard to do because like I said again it's very opinionated.

~ Audio ~

The generic song to use for any quiz type game as the one that you had made here. I even have quiz games like this with the same song being used. That being said it's a great choice no matter what in my opinion. Very relaxing while listening to and just sets up a great quiz atmosphere. Kind of one of those songs that you can't really get bored with.

~ Overall ~

Nice presentation, perhaps a bit opinionated like I stressed several times, good choice of audio.

The biggest thing that I think could improve this submission is by making the end more suspenseful by make the normal whistle change into the new whistle and having some suspenseful music while the change is happening. Then a corresponding sound to represent doing a good job or a bad job depending on the whistle.

coocooletmoi responds:

Thanks for this very helpful review. First, i'll work on the end animation. That's easy. Second, I will make it more stable. Like making Keep it up review in between (I'll add an option). And yes, I will make more reviews, and submit another one. And I will redo the whistle evaluating system. I will make your whistle increase/decrease only on abusive reviews. That was helpful.

[Creating a Hand]

Not bad. A few mistakes.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

The hand itself was obviously animated and drawn very well. Far superior than anything that I could ever create by drawing on the computer. The animation was so detailed with the hand that it was amazing. It almost seemed like a real hand. Great job on that.

The set up for the flash itself wasn't the best though. The words and text that you used just seemed really sloppy and rushed. I thought it could have been much neater and organized than what you did.

So great hand, bad organization of the words and text.

~ Story/Content ~

A great tutorial and I hope it helps many people out. It's not something that I would be interested in for movies, but it really is something that would help artists pay attention to the small details of their flash and that's what really makes good flashes good.

The tutorial was easy to navigate and words were easy to read. Overall the content of the submission was good. Also, the replay button at the end doesn't work.

~ Audio ~

Your audio is messed up. It doesn't play properly until I start the entire thing is over. When it does play over it's pretty good though. What I think you should do with the submission is turn the audio way down so it just plays really quietly in the background. Then you can have a voice over read the text out loud. Some people learn better by listening than they do reading, but if they have the chance to do both then you can reach more people.

~ Overall ~

A few mistakes, but a good tutorial for people. Good work.

~ Review Request Club ~

tomocles responds:

thanks for the detailed review corky. :) As you could tell from the tutorial, I am rather new to design and even flash, so anything other than the fbf itself is due to lack of knowledge. When I do another tutorial, I will try to enlist someone to create the menus for me.

[Avoidance 3]

Now that was fun.

I don't know what people are complaining about. That was an awesome game. I guess they just suck at it.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

You got a great artist for this game. I don't think I've seen too many avoid games with graphics this smooth and clean. You should be paying that guy a bonus with what he created here. :P Great job all around. Perhaps the hit detection was off a little bit, but anyone that is a true gamer can easily get around that fact.

~ Story/Content ~

A original avoidance game. Congrats you finally did it. :)

Classic - This is what you would expect from an avoidance game. What I love is how you added random enemies that had no pattern whatsoever. They would just randomly appear so you would need strategy, talent, and good luck.

Adventure/Story Mode - Great job on this. I really enjoyed that you had a purpose behind this mode. Really fun and I think you should keep creating more like this because it really turned out well. Challenging and fun. Not too easy and not too hard at the same time. Just about perfect.

Also, you can cheat a little by moving your mouse off of the screen, moving it to the other side of the screen, and having your helicopter appear on the other side to get away from danger.

~ Audio ~

Good job with the music, but I do think you need to use a little better sound effects. I wouldn't mind hearing the helicopter blow up when it gets hit or something when you pick the soldiers up. That could improve the sound quality of the submission a little.

~ Overall ~

By far your best. Great job to everyone.

TheSongSalad responds:

thanks for the review, and i'm glad you like it! i also felt this was the best game. i think it could've used some sound effects too, and i think everyone felt the hit detection was off. the helicopter does have rotes though, so i think that may be part of it. greatly appreciate the positive review corky.

[Avoider Flash Tutorial]

I'm sure it works great... I couldn't do it though

I'm going to have to PM you with some help on this later, because I couldn't figure it out at all.

~ Animation/Graphics ~

I really liked how you had the animation/mini game right in the introduction itself. I think it would have looked a little better if all of that appeared behind the text. That way it never covered up any words.

I also think the layout could have looked better. Maybe there is a template that would clean up the style of your flash a little bit or something like that? I also don't know if I liked the colors so much. I always liked a dark color and a light color because it's easier on the eyes to read. Perhaps something like White words on a black background, etc..

~ Story/Content ~

Great all around, even though I think you should have made the text in the flash dynamic. (I think that's what it's called) So people could copy and paste it. I typed it all out by hand, but sadly it didn't work for me.

I have no experience in action script so I didn't know if I was suppose to write that all on one line, press enter where you started a new line, etc.. It was kind of confusing for me.

I do like that you explained how to do the action script though. I see too many times people get the actionscript from the flash forums and they aren't explained why it works the way it does. That doesn't help them at all.

~ Audio ~

I like the music that you picked for this submission though. The only thing that I can suggest to make it any better is to have a mute button. You might also want to think about having a voice read over the instructions too for people who learn better by listening to things.

~ Overall ~

Why did I give you a ten even though I couldn't get it to work? Because I hate giving a biased review. I'm not going to take points away from you because I don't know what I'm doing. This seems like it would be good for someone who has a basic understanding of actionscript, which I do not.

Like I said, I want to mess around with this later so I might PM you to try and figure it out. It looks interesting and I wouldn't mind making my first game ever.

TheSongSalad responds:

i'd be glad to help you work out a game. i'm sorry it didn't work for you, i have a few things i think you might have messed up on. i tried to make this so everyone could follow it, but some of the later things end up with a lot of math and shit that people can have trouble following. i wanted to avoid making the text copy + pasteable because i always see a lot of games flood the portal w/ copy + paste code whenever a tut. comes out. i tried to make it so people understood what was going on so that they could try new things themselves.

long reply, buy yeah, go ahead and pm me if you want some help, and i'm glad you like it.