TwinBlazar's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tales of Darkness]

Since you mentioned this is "done for my programming class" and Tales of Eternia is one of the games I have known some decades ago, I will give you several tips:

1. You seem to lock Shadow to not be able to jump when he attacks. Any reason why? If Shadow can jump while in his attacking stance, he will be a lot more fluid.

2. For a more interesting gameplay, I suggest you use the bullet behavior on the spinning blade and make it so that it is to be thrown in the direction the player pressed. Right now, the blade is very short ranged and it is very risky to go in and attack the enemies, especially the bats. But with the bullet behavior in place, this should allow the player to have "HA! IN YOUR FACE!" moment with the bats and other enemies.

3. Programming-aside, right now, the gameplay is designed more like the NES Castlevania in which the player is inferior to the enemies and should have this fear of the more intimidating faster enemies. That's why Simon is a bit slow and sluggish.

This is your choice. Do you want the player to see Shadow inferior or superior to the enemies? If you want Shadow to be cooler like he is in Tales of Eternia, I suggest you make him more superior. How do you want to portray him would be up to your gameplay design choice - how do you want the player to feel toward Shadow?

Anyway, great job. Keep up the good work.

[Through the Mirror]

An interesting platformer gameplay. Although the game is short, the game's message is delivered. This game could actually be extended further along with a little more fine tuning.

Good work.

[Combiner]

The game starts to get interesting after you can blend the two colors together. At that point onward, I start to see some potential.

You may perhaps wish to add an undo feature. This could be done with the save function of C2, to allow the player to simply rewind back and correct their mistake.

This will be something good to play in a long subway ride. Keep up the good work.

angelojlee responds:

Thanks for leaving your feedback! Actually, the undo feature is implemented on full version (available on iOS, Android and Amazon), but, I'll think about adding to this version. Thanks!

[Tiny Treasure]

Great job. This game is simple, elegant and minimalistic. This is something anyone can come in and play. There are not many mechanics to learn, yet such mechanics are expanded nicely into the stage design of the game.

I got a few complains though - one minor and one major:

Minor: I wasn't aware that I have to collect all the coins. After I saw the timer, I was like "Holy shit... OUT NOW!", and went out, collect some coins on the way. I ended up ignoring coins in harder to reach places and thought I have to go back to the beginning. Only to realize nothing happen. Fortunately, there is still time, so I ended up going back to grab the remaining... was it 12 coins? And got 2 mins left. The timer is quite generous there.

Major : MAN! Why do you have to put "'M' to mute" text on bottom right? You got yourself awesome 8 bits music here. Which human being would dare muting the music! That would be a sacrilege! :)

Yep. Keep up the good work. ;)

[THERE IS NO GAME]

That's quite something! Brilliance idea and execution. Short but the execution is compact and just right. Great job.