TwinBlazar's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dem Alein Gaem]

Alright, you got a game concept here but the way your game design communicate with the player is a bit off.

Although the game's description is "avoiding contact to scientists and monsters.", somehow I feel the game is more fun when the alien grows bigger. It feels rewarding seeing the alien grows bigger and bigger, as it changes. Why? Because right now, he is depicted as the protagonist. We are in a way "controlling" him.

There needs to be some pretext to show the alien as the antagonist instead. Or else I will prefer to absorb everything on my path instead, but that's actually acceptable gameplay-wise as well.

For the bugs, yes, there is a collision bug just like what others mentioned, but again, good job making this game in just 30 hours. :)

CzarSilvestrini responds:

That's interesting, i've never thought about that.
Maybe an animation on the start to try to make the alien doing something bad or even more "despair" in the animations of the humans to make him look more like the antagonist.
But there is still the problem with him being the one we're controlling. Maybe the reason there is few visual rewards for avoiding the humans gives the feeling that you described. We'll have think about it.

Thanks for the feedback!
And sorry for the inconvenience, the collision bugs were fixed.

[Go, Go, Radzilla!]

You got yourself proper visual aesthetics. The audio is simple and already works on its own way. No complain there.

Gameplay-wise, the two buttons with 4 moves are simple and work fine. Remind me of that Simpson game on SNES that Bart becomes a Godzilla a bit.

My only complain though is the game is a bit mundane.

Also, perhaps I didn't play this long enough, where is the "grow" part of Ludum Dare here? I see the game gets faster after a short while, but I don't see anything grows? Correct me if I am wrong.

CrownoO responds:

Thank you for the honest feedback!
It's on the description of the game, but I'll explain with a bit more depth:

About the theme, this LD had 2 themes but you could pick just one as an option.

My original idea consisted in having Razilla growing and evolving, gaining small boosts to his abilities as he consumed more radioactive energy. He would be able to destroy smaller buildings simply by stepping on them, for example. The game even has some unused assets for nuclear plants that you would be able to destroy in order to get more energy (you can see them on the source file).

Truth is, I wasn't feeling too much inspired and wasn't even sure if I would be able to finish the game at all, not to mention that I also work on sundays. So I decided to work on the basic gameplay idea, that was the 2 buttons thing. Then if I had enough time and willpower, I could add the "growing" part . If I didn't, at least I could deliver the game with only 1 theme. And as you can figure out, it ended up being the latter.

So yeah, in general, I had to opt for a simple and safe game in order to be able to accomplish it. On the previous LD I tried to make a game that was waaay too complex for 2 days, so I tried to do the opposite this time around and it worked. Maybe next time I'll try to step up the game a little bit!

Again, thanks for the honest feedback and compliments, I really appreciate it :)

[Hungry Joe]

................................................................................................BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH

OMFGWTFBBQ!! Whoever thought of mixing those fabulous audio + culinary art + Megaman Battle Network deserve a lifetime free International buffet. Have you been smoking some angel dust or something? LMAO!! >o<

Holy shit. You got the freaking guts to pull this off. I really like this uniqueness of the game!!! >_<

Now, some problems:

- just like Megaman Battle Network 1, the gameplay mechanic is there but things are not so obvious and what not. They polish things up and make sure things are more smooth in later Megaman Battle Network. Most of the time, when I choose the attacks, I don't even know which does what. I choose whatever I can choose the most and just use them. But of course, if you know which recipe does what exactly, you can get strategic. But when things aren't so obvious, players will still stuck on "which does what" rather than flowing with the game and go "let's use this then that". It would be helpful if there is a little help text describing which recipe does what in battle.

- telegraphing: it is a bit hard to tell the behavior of some of the enemy attacks. For example, the flour rolling pin goes through me a few times and I still don't even know what it does.

- polish : what this game lacks right now is polishing department. All the idea are in and well, but if you can polish the game and make the gameplay formal and professional and you put it on Steam, I will probably vote for greenlight. Yeah... so polish it a bit, bro.

-----

Oh, well, that's all I wanna say. Now, I gotta go eat sashimi with ketchup with yogurt with rum and a bit of special powder - yeah, that kinda powder. LOLOL~~~

Kwing responds:

I did consider making it so that if you selected a recipe twice a message would pop up and tell you the nature of the attack. That might be something to add, as I'm still updating the game. I'll see what I can do.

Not all of the recipes' effects are immediately apparent. Checking out their function out of battle is really the best way to understand them, which means some will remain enigmas until you obtain them.

As it turns out, this game was a lot less polished before this - for instance, the recipes didn't have letters on them and didn't dim when selected until someone pointed that out very late in development. I did as much as I could to make the game perfect, but ultimately I only got 2-3 people to test this for me despite all of my begging. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of fine tuning that's not accounted for.

[Project Box]

You got the simple visual aesthetics fine but the audio department need serious work and the gameplay needs a bit of fine tuning to be more entertaining and engaging.

Please find some audio and kick things up a bit. Let the rhythm guide the player around your game. It is a must or the game will be very dry.

For the gameplay, so touching an enemy means "game over" and if an enemy escapes to the left, it also means "game over"...

Tell you what. Since this Ludum Dare is "YOU ARE THE MONSTER", give that box the player controlling a meaner look. Give him teeth, cruel eyes, anything. Now, go find some sound of dogs with rabies for this new meaner box and pumpkin squishing sound for gore. Replace those "tum tum" stomping with the new monster and gore sounds. We got a monster!

For the gameplay, if you touch an enemy and you die, that feels inferior. Remove it. Instead, to make things more engaging, I suggest have the enemies try jumping over the player and sneak over the player at faster speed. This way, the game would feel more like you are the monster and will not let anyone escape. Let the game be over only if an enemy escape. With this, you now got yourself a cool cruel cube monster.

Sorry if I speak too much and make you feel bad but... I mean, hey, the theme is "YOU ARE THE MONSTER", so let's kick things up to eleven!

adiokristoffer responds:

hahah thanks for your feedback :) i made this with just 1 day before the submission so i know it's not good XD ill try to port it to mobile and i'll take note of your feedback :D

[Hyper Tunnel]

Got 1220 points in my first try. Damn, my eyes have been open up wide. brrrrrr....

Ok, this game would be good for killing times on smartphone - that is if you wanna take a break from the more casual ones. :P

VascoF responds:

It IS available on Android, in case you didn't notice: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vascof.HyperTunnel

[Strongerman]

Well, well, well, when the explosion of the mine goes off, the music is cut off. Is this intentional? That's nostalgic stuff. :P

This is a good little short game boy jam you got here. While those shots are pain to dodge, this is similar to back in the days a bit, but those games back in the days are a lot harder. Each level here is rather short, so backtracking if you die isn't so painful. (Try die in Dark Souls... oh god......)

Do you want to give it even more game boy feel? Reduce the number of bullets the player and enemy can shoot, and you will feel more like those games back then with limited hardware capabilities. ;)

So far, good job for the jam. ^_^

Gypopothomas responds:

Thanks a lot!
I'd like to say the sound cutting the music off was intentional, but it was a total accident. Haha! It gave my nostalgia button a good pressin'.
Aye, I kept the levels short to encourage replaying for scores. I think wee quick blasts keep people coming back for one more go.
Dark Souls is brilliant! It's punishing, but rewarding. No one appreciates things that come too easy.

[The Intergalactic Bounty Hunter]

At first, when I saw the spaceship shooting turtle speed bullets, I was thinking "uh-oh", this might be bad. But somehow, after I got the 3-way bullet and then... 9-way... bullet? Things start to get entertaining. The laser and the heavy bomb also have their own use in the right situation. I simply use all my heavy bombs in the asteroid fields as the regular shots (since they drain energy) can't destroy those asteroids fast enough. Same goes with the boss, once it stopped shooting, I simply went in right in front of it and spam everything I got and it goes down very quickly. So the game hooked me back after I had an not positive impression. Great job.

You got all the visuals serviceable, but if you want to kick things up a notch, I recommend having some "impact" visual and audio feedback effects for the regular shots, laser and what not. This is to give the player some gratification of destroying things. Also, you can hype things up, perhaps by moving the background faster when fighting the boss and you know shake the screen a bit.

For the font, it is a bit hard to read. You can use the current font for the title logo or a huge text label, but this font is not suitable for reading.

Other than that, great work. :)

TheCez responds:

I'm glad my game was able to hook you back in even after a bad first impression! :D

And thank you for the suggestions! Those are great ideas! I wish I had thought of them while developing my game, haha!

Yeah, you aren't the first to comment about the font. I'll have to be sure to change that as soon as possible.

Thank you so much for the review and the great ideas!

[Barriers]

Hey there. This would be a good game for those who are in relationship and test whether their synergy is truly sweet and go well together.

The game's concept is simple. There is a man and there is a woman, and we simply need to have both meet each other. The premise is simple. Under that, the game proceeds as puzzle levels where both the man and the woman must cooperate. It is a must to have 2 players to play this game for the game to shine brighter than the sun.

However, I believe this is an alpha stage of the game. All the concepts and what not are in. What are left is to polish and ensure that the game experience flows well to the audience.

For example, when the man and the woman meet, we could show both the man and the woman slowly french kissing each other (and add a sound effect for this). This will give the players (or lovers) the gratification of accomplishment together.

Another instance is when one of the lovers hit the laser (?), the stage simply restarts. To ensure the game flows well, there should be a sound indicating one of the players is hit by a laser as well as disabling the movement for that player. After that, the game could splash an image showing an "ouch" image to the lovers, then restart. This will allow the game to flow better, rather than simply restarting. Yet, I do understand that this is your first game, but this game shows that you are now ready to proceed further in crafting richer experience. :)

The puzzle itself is intuitive and you always know what you should do. Nevertheless, a tiny mistake could punish the lovers to repeat the stage over, doing all the things they have done in the past minutes. This disrupts the flow of the game and could irritate the lovers, yet it could be easily fixed with a quick auto-save and allow the lovers to reload to rewind and fix their mistake. Does Unity have such feature?

Other than that, great job. Keep up the good work.

FSt-Germain responds:

I really like your ideas to improve game flow. I would like some reward at the end of each level like a kiss, or maybe a heart pops up and brings you to the next level or something. I will definitely look for a good end to a level like that. Also I like the idea that I could play a sound effect or something when they get hit by a laser. I'll look into it. I want the game to be challenging but I obviously don't want to annoy the players, so I will need to come up with a solution like you said. I'm not sure if you meant a rewind feature, or just the ability to restart a level from any point in the level. I personally think that would make the game less challenging, because there is no failure, but I get what you're saying with it ruining the flow of the game. I will have to think about a better solution to that problem. Thanks for all the feedback!

[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!