AlextheBestCat's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Radiance Hearts]

Ok so, I just want to start this by saying this has some pretty big potential behind it and you have a pretty solid concept for a game. Blob-on-Hero's-Head is an unexplored territory. The particles and music are really professional and they were the only things I feel like didn't have flaws.

However, the rest of the game is a very unpolished thing. I understand this was made for a game jam, so you were under time constraints, but I'll just say what I feel could be improved.

Things that need work done:
- Framerate: While I was playing, the framerate was the single largest issue that brings the whole game down for me. I swear to god it just dips and jumps with any small input and it doesn't even make sense why it would slow down as badly as it was. If you're planning on continuing this game, PLEASE get the framerate dips fixed first and foremost.

- Artstyle: This particular pixel art has a very quick turnaround for getting assets ready— so I understand why you went for that style in the game jam, but it's very boring. No outlines and flat shading isn't the most engaging thing, and could easily make this game blend in with the thousand of other games in this style. I'd recommend changing it in some way. It doesn't even have to be that much of a change from the current style. There's this trend recently of "HD Sprite" games where they use 16bit looking sprites with stupidly good lighting and particle effects. You could try that if you think it works with the style.

- Premise: Really? A Light vs Dark story? C'mon, you can be a little more unique than that! I don't really know what to suggest for this issue, because that's more of a personal thing you should decide, but please try to think it out more. It doesn't have to be convoluted or anything, or have exposition dumps, but just something to be a little fresher than the Light vs Dark trope.

-Controls: Playing this platformer game with a keyboard is hell. I feel as though you made controls work as best as they could given the control format, but gamepad support is a necessity. Also, holding up to do the huge jump AND also making it the hover button gets a little unintuitive.

-Sound design: Many actions in the game just don't have sound effects tied to them. Whether it be from the player, enemies, or the environment. It's weird. That's all I have to say on that.

-The Boss: Oh my god. Why. WHY did you make a boss that 2-SHOTS YOU and has a health pool as large as what it had. Why. Especially as a first boss. Accounting for the platformer keyboard controls, this boss was actual hell. Such a spike in difficulty out of NOWHERE. I will say, I VERY MUCH appreciate the instant respawning after dying to it, and I felt very accomplished when I finally did beat it, but you can't just have something like that after an entire game that was no where near that level of difficulty and required precision. If you're going to have bosses as difficult as that, reflect it in the level they are in. Don't put a rip-your-dick-off boss in the time-to-show-you-the-ropes level. Please. For my sake.

Minor Issues:
- Projectiles from enemies linger even after respawning. Reset enemies and delete all projectiles when the player dies, please.
- The wall enemy has to be stun-locked in order for you to damage him without getting hurt. That's very boring and has no complexity. Just make it so that the wall shots one projectile at an interval from random heads on the wall instead of making them fire all at once and stop when they're being attacked.
- A dynamically zooming camera might be useful for platforming sections. The camera is fairly zoomed in normally, but when doing platforming I feel like it's a little too close for me to judge jumps effectively. If you had the camera zoom out a little bit in more open areas, I think that would make the issue go away.

Again, I do see potential in this! If you keep hammering at it, I could see it being a very nice little experience.

Yword responds:

Thank you so much for playing and providing the detailed feedbacks, I will keep them in mind. (And sorry about the issues mentioned.)

[POOM]

So let me get this straight... You're using an engine, that is mimics the hardware limitations of 80s consoles, and made DOOM run on it? That's pretty crazy! You made a console that doesn't even exist run Doom lol.

Does the engine mimic the software limitations too? Like did you have to do assembly programming? For me it's pretty laggy, but that would be expected of something of this tech lol. Really cool stuff!

freds72 responds:

thanks - pico8 mimics 80’s computer though some aspects are much faster that any hardware ever had.

Laggy? are you playing on a phone? If so, suggest to try a desktop browser.

[TentaCat: The Lost Lineage]

This is a pretty cool concept! I particularly love the pixel art in the intro. I didn't play through much, because I saw A LOT that could be improved upon, that I I wanted to get out of the way (I'm sorry about how much I wrote, try treating it like a novel or something to get through it idk).

1. ART, ANIMATION, AND SOUND

- Shrink the text box size and font size horizontally. You're trying to make it so that the box can fill the WHOLE horizontal part of the screen. The question I have is: Do you need to? It's a pain trying to read the text in this game, especially in fullscreen. For a better use of space, take Newgrounds' design for example! On my 1920x1080 monitor, the actual content only takes up about half the screen, they don't stretch it out to fill the monitor; they only have what's necessary. Why have it so that the player has to scan an entire screen multiple times to read some text, when it can be done with a fraction of the screen space and time used?

Mockup with of Stage Select: i.imgur.com/xp5OCDs(dot)png
Alternate Stage Select: i.imgur.com/i2C9xu8(dot)png

- For me, the best part of the game as far as I got was the pixel art for the intro and shop. I love the Japanese-inspired art style (at least I think that's what it is). I don't know the much about how to make art, but hopefully I can make a helpful judgement in how to improve stuff. If you have the time, try to have more complex shading. Most objects have no lighting and either no shading or 1 shade, which makes things look bland and basic. I think Aqua on the main menu is the best example of how everything should look, but scaled down... if you had the huge amount of time to draw all that! Really, just make the art style consistent with shading and lighting. Below this paragraph, I have an image showing how Binding of Isaac makes sure they have a consistent art style by having all objects follow these rules.

Binding of Issac Art Style: i.imgur.com/kfaFMs8(dot)png (I'm not saying you don't know what lighting is, I'm just trying to show how the shading is the same throughout)

Lighting Issue: i.imgur.com/Y8wDCai(dot)png
Lighting Fix: i.imgur.com/agngNvB(dot)png (only if you really care, that image took me forever to make)

- This isn't really necessary, but can you make his in-game sprite a little rounder, especially in the head, to reflect his look on the title page? It would help make the art style more consistent.

- Stages look a little bland. Right now you have a foreground, where you play, and a background with different levels of parallax. Is it possible to add a mid-ground? Like, it moves with the foreground, but you can't interact with it and it's purely for style purposes. Or, you could make it so it could interact with the foreground. An example would be the mushroom platforms here in Mario Maker: i.ytimg(dot)com/vi/LLfFJ4yChrE/maxresdefault.jpg

- Aqua is a Tentacat! Make him walk like one!(?) The walking animation is, in my opinion, absolutely awful. Aqua only uses 2 of his 8 legs and doesn't even bend them while walking! If you only want him to move 2 legs, try to make him walk more naturally by having his legs bend. Otherwise, try to make him slither across the ground like an octopus instead of walk!

- The sounds in this game vary far too much. Not to say you can't have sounds with impact, but it feels like every other sound effect has a different volume on it. I guess a way you could fix it is to go through your sound effects and make sure the peak volume doesn't go over a certain amount.

2. MENU / SETTINGS / CONTROLLER

- Title screen music shouldn't stop when you go to the settings, as you have no idea how loud you're setting the music when you change that option

- The music and sound are really loud when you start the game, and as I said before the loudness of sound effects are inconsistent throughout. In the settings, when I set the sound effect volume to 20, the selection sound is almost inaudible, but as soon as you leave the settings, the selection sound is much louder on the main menu (or I might just be going insane). This is most obvious at the boat at the beginning of the game. That sound effect is EXTREMELY loud. It has two parts, one where it's still much louder than other sound effects in the game, and the second part is like static hell. I can think of more examples, but I don't want to rant for too long (haha like that's much of an issue at this point, I wrote that sentence like 3 hours ago)

- As stated by other users, the gamepad has issues and I couldn't even get it to work, even though it recognized my Xbox One controller, and was able to bind buttons, but I couldn't get past the menu with it. When you go back to the main menu it says "Press B to Start" or something like that, but that makes the game immediately start instead of going to options like continue and settings. Also, make it so it recognizes the analog stick's "x-axis" and "y-axis" as valid binds, especially for directional movement.

3. GAME DESIGN AND APPEAL (This section is really for if you see this game as more than just an exercise for your programming skills)

- As I said before, I didn't play through much of your game. The reason was I didn't feel very drawn to continue playing and the issues I mentioned above. Try to have more draws for new players who immediately pick up the game, and are like, "This feels really nice to control!", or, "This is a really cool concept!" After all, when someone is picking a game, one of the first few things they think of is, "What makes this game stand out?", and, "How much unique content does this game have to offer and make it worth my time o keep playing?" You have to ask yourself the same questions.

4. FINALLY THE CONCLUSION OH MY GOD THAT TOOK FOREVER

Thanks for listening to my feedback! As far as I understand, you are one guy working on this and I don't know if you want it to even go beyond a browser game, so I don't expect this to be the most polished thing ever or if you want it to be. I don't think I can comprehend how much work is required to make one game, but small steps and changes are what builds a great game. Always look at what you have and see if you can improve it. Make sure things work together and the player feels like everything they do in the game progresses towards some final goal; nothing you do feels time wasting or pointless. If you can, show this to people, friends, and family, and ask them to think of literally ANYTHING they have issues with or see as something to improve while playing. I wish you the best!

PKTORA responds:

Thank you for the detailed review! It's my first game making a game, and it has been a nonstop trial and error process. I like the idea of shrinking the text boxes, and the art style could definitely use some more polish. I recently added the settings section, so it has been a lot of adjusting to get things working correctly. I really appreciate the in-depth look and will use this to make a better game.