Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Deeply Lost]

Aesthetically speaking this game looks fantastic. The visual style is unique and goes with the music to create a consistent theme. Not much more to say on the subject other than that you did a fantastic job.

The gameplay is where I found the game to be the most lacking. I like the level design and puzzle elements, but the intersection between graphics and gameplay is really messy. You say the collision with the player is a box, but since the box is invisible, the player is left guessing as to just where they need to stand in order to avoid enemies. Combined with how much larger the graphics are than their hitbox and certain elements that obscure large sections of the screen and the player is left really struggling to navigate levels that shouldn't be hard to navigate.

There are also instances where the collision just DOESN'T work. I noticed in at least one level, holding the down and left buttons allowed me to skip through a wall, and in another instance, having spikes activate while I was standing on them broke the collision and allowed me to move through walls until I popped out from inside of them. Combined with the aforementioned issue with obstructive graphics it made the entire collision system feel like an "anything goes" kind of deal, which would be fine in a casual platformer but is infuriating when navigating tight spaces and hazards that force you to restart a level.

I can't help but wonder if you either played and tested this game with placeholder graphics and added in the art at the last second, or if you didn't have any beta testers to warn you that this would be a major pain point.

I think the best solution to this would be to make the entirety of the game tile-based. This would preserve the puzzle and timing mechanics the game currently has and allow the graphics to largely remain the same (I suspect the messy graphics are part of your artistic vision so I don't think it makes sense to change them,) but eliminate the issue of being just a few pixels off while trying to avoid hazards.

It's a really solid concept and the integration of story, aesthetics, optional objectives, and solid puzzle mechanics showcase a very high level of effort, but unfortunately all the guesswork that comes with invisible collider boxes gives this a fatal flaw in terms of quality of life.

Alejandro-X-Azul responds:

Thanks for the feedback and the complements, Yes I knew that the collisions and hit boxes were going to be a deal because as you said, most graphics are bigger than their hitbox not way bigger but just bigger, the reason for this is because graphics change a lot and are a little fuzzy and have many shapes that just don’t go well with the structure of the game, see, To make the levels I used a square tile tablet, let’s say 4x6 depending on the level, this helps to settle a structure for the level, each tile is reserved to each object in the level, this is good until I add the drawings which have many shapes which make it confusing, I understand, for example the main character is very tall but his hit box is a perfect square so I placed the hitbox above his feet to make it appear as it is all about where he is standing at so the head and shoulders don’t collide with anything, I couldn’t change the character at much to be smaller for his hitbox because it would just look bad, legs are supposed to be larger then the stomach and lastly the head, I removed his neck to make it smaller but did not help much. Now to solve this issue I created a second character which is the blue guy (you unlock him with 18 stars or someth) this one is smaller and fits better because his head is close to his feet in fact, he is an alien octopus xd. Now, something I did not mention in the description is that the chracters hitbox square has a small circle inside, this circle is the one that interacts with the enemies, the enemies have their own circle as well, this is due because a squares distance from its corners to its center is different than from its sides to the center, so if it was only square to square then standing diagonally towards the enemy will make you collide with it easier than standing close next to him. So only the square is there to collide with the levers and the ground(clouds) but the circle inside is for the enemies
As for the rest, yes there may be certain bugs in some levels where you can pass above the grounds but it would be helpful if you stated which level is it to correct it
Thanks for your time
And also thanks for appreciating the effort it takes to make games on flash, some users don’t understand how limited is flash 8 and how painful it is to make games there

[La Renault Clio V6]

The driving mechanics are functional, but the lack of collision obviously makes it impossible to have win/lose conditions or even a complete game loop. You could probably add a speed penalty for going off-course in about 10 lines of code and counting laps or completion time wouldn't take much more than that and would actually give the player an objective to shoot for.

MebroukTheCat responds:

I just made this game to see if I can make a racing game, but the results were meh...

[Sliding Puzzle]

I can't help but wonder if this is shovelware. The game itself is coded well enough, but feels like a cheap excuse to show off some artwork, most of which doesn't look finished as the scanned/photographed pencil art just doesn't show up that well on a digital screen.

While functional, it's really simple and not very engaging. It's also rather silly that the different images have their own leaderboards when all of the 3x3 and 4x4 puzzles are identical to each other in terms of difficulty.

JG0328 responds:

Thanks for playing. It isn't shovelware, I just like to share what I do and try to learn with each different game.

[Karla's Quest: Spotter Demo]

At first I thought this was going to be an escape room and was a bit disappointed to find it was just an Eye Spy.

The art is solid and does give off the vibe of early 00s Flash games, but what this game is really lacking is content. There are only four items to find, and the only reason they're difficult is to find is that them being blacked out makes it unclear what the objects even are (specifically the phone and wallet.) A greater area to explore (perhaps you can go into different rooms) and maybe some more puzzle elements (or at least more items to find) would make this more interesting.

Vile523 responds:

Understood, thank you for your suggestion. I'll take it into account for the full game.

[Yu Dragoon 2: A flash Game]

The smoothness of the 3D here really can't be understated, it really is completely seamless. While normally a pretty simple thing, the diagonal running animations also are a really important touch that contributes to the fully 3D feel of the game. This seriously looks awesome. If your engine can handle it, I would like to see some kind of platforming or verticality so that the third dimension can actually do something other than be a cool graphical illusion.

Gameplay-wise, there's a lot missing. As others have said, the camera is too zoomed in to have much spatial awareness, and it's also really hard to make out if you can hit an enemy from front or behind (it just makes more sense to run around and attack from the side.) The single attack, lack of dodging, blocking, combos, etc. make this feel almost like Sword of Vermilion in terms of blandness, and as an unfinished game there's obviously nothing in the way of upgrades or progression yet.

Honestly the only thing this game needed in order to succeed was a teammate to take care of some of the boilerplate code needed for a combat and inventory system.

TeamTamago responds:

Thanks, all this feedback is really helpful! I'm already working on a version with these things implemented. Also verticality is going to need some clever tricks and the like but it's totally possible.

[SHITstage SHITsters !SHIT GAME!!!!!!)]

The art is solid, but that's about all that you've got. Even in terms of visuals, the game looks a bit shaky (literally) due to the health bar moving with the player, probably an issue with the dynamic camera that would make it more straightforward to dock a smaller health bar just above the player character, rather than trying to put it in the top left of the screen (alternatively, shove the level, player, and enemies into a Movie Clip and manipulate that for your dynamic camera so the UI in your _root never moves.

Enemies can attack from so far off screen you can take damage without realizing it. Similarly, you can kill enemies from so far away you barely see their death animations.The bullets change direction when the player does (I don't know how you could even get that to happen without intentionally coding that it.)

Past the first like 3 enemies is an infinite loop of a town with nothing in it. You couldn't even tell the player they reached the end of the game?

Ultimately feels like an unfinished Alien Hominid clone.

MoneroBTW responds:

yo man, thanks for the ideas, we are goin got fix everything!

[Portal Defenders: Fast Break!]

Really good looking (and feeling) game. The sound design and animation in particular really make this pop and give it a really exciting energy.

Gameplay-wise, it's fun if you play the way you're intended to, but it's easy to cheese the game. Once you're in the lead, you can essentially stand still and run the timer out. I saw an NPC run up to me and use an attack to steal the ball ONCE, but even if this happens you can generally just run and never shoot. The extra obstacles in each level sometimes mitigate this, but not to the point that this wasn't a dominant strategy toward the end when the AI became really oppressive. If anything, the level gimmicks feel like a desperate attempt to fix underlying balance issues with either the mechanics or bad AI.

The controls felt a bit annoying, it was never clear what it took to block a shot (sometimes my jumps could knock a ball away from the hoop, sometimes they couldn't, despite me jumping with almost identical timing and in the same place.) Having attack be a button combo instead of a fourth button also seemed strange and unnecessary.

The fact that the turbo only replenishes under certain conditions led to some frustrating situations where you literally can't do anything except block, especially with late-game AI players that would jump in and grab the ball at lightning speed, making it nearly impossible to grab the ball without directly attacking. On the other hand, the "on fire" bonus felt really overpowered and like a cheap way to give a struggling player a free win if they just kept playing long enough to get lucky. I think the solution to this would be to make it so that turbo slowly replenishes on its own, and have On Fire only last for a certain amount of time, not until the opponent scores again.

In terms of content, this game feels bloated. Too many levels and too many characters, with the gameplay changing too little across these variables to make it tempting to replay. It feels exceptionally demotivating when you consider that the most reliable way to beat the game is to run back and forth without actually shooting.

Overall this game feels like an overly ambitious project with some fundamental flaws in enemy AI and balance that were hastily covered up with lots of characters and level gimmicks, rather than addressing the underlying issues. The result is something that looks and plays like a great game from the right angle, but has a few gaping holes in it that become obvious upon closer inspection.

BoMToons responds:

Great review, this is why I love NG :-)

[Alister - Monster tamer]

Going into this, the polish and production quality of this game (especially the buttery smooth animation and vibrant particle effects) made me think it was going to be a serious contender to win the whole Jam. Unfortunately this game is either incomplete or just buggy beyond belief.

Defense Cut is the only attack that seems to do a reasonable amount of damage, and even then you can only barely kill the two turtles at the beginning before they kill you. Unless you reload from a save, those turtles are actually still there after you defeat them, making it impossible to progress, and if you DO make it past them, dying puts you back at the start with the turtles respawned, forcing you to load again. Sometimes even winning a fight will do this, which is quite annoying. I was able to trigger the cutscene inside the castle, but that was as far as I got.

Keep going, there's a game here but it's clearly not finished.

Alex303 responds:

thank you for the feedback! I increased the starting level and removed the turtles after you beat them or lose and it saves it. yea sadly didnt have any time to add anymore thanks for playing.

I forgot to mention the reason some attacks do less damage is because of the typechart. there is a working typechat but did not elaborate on it here

[SPERT BALLS]

Have you played Brainsplatters 2? This reminds me a LOT of that game and it's hard not to directly compare the two (which is kind of crazy considering that game is nearly twice your age.) Anyway...

Virtually everything about the aesthetics of this game are pretty flawed. The drawings, voice acting, writing, and gameplay could all stand to get some major improvements. That said, I have a lot of appreciation for the level of detail put into giving this game every little bell and whistle, even if those bells and whistles are themselves flawed.

For instance, the animated intro, animated menu, and voice acting are all inclusions that aren't strictly necessary for a "click stick figures to shoot them" game, but contribute to a really cinematic experience. In a way, this feels more like a concept sketch or animatic of an actual game, given how lacking the assets are but how complete the structure is.

Aside from the rather generic advice of "put more effort into the graphics" something really critical in making this a better game would be ramping up the difficulty. Forcing the player to click the stick figures faster, making the stick figures move, or more complex methods of killing bad guys (similar to having to find the hiding sticks in the last level) would make this more engaging instead of allowing the player to cruise through the entirety of the game in a single attempt.

Ibs571 responds:

I did actually played Brainsplatters 2 about when I was 6 yrs old (8 yrs ago) on stickpage but the main inspiration I took was from a game called Sift Heads I remember playing that game with my brother years ago

Note: Originally I was going to add puzzles and different mechanics but the 2023 flash forward deadline was near and then I rushed it

[Ucogi GO]

There's not much here other than a walking simulator. The graphics and overall production quality are nice, but there's not enough here to really call it a game.

The biggest issue with what you have (and this issue really does stand front and center) is that rolling over the circles to move to them just feels really bizarre and unnecessarily tedious due to how small the circles are. Using arrow keys (even if the arrows have a button overlay on the screen, as many mobile games do) would make this feel so much more accessible. As it is, the awkwardness makes it feel like I'm playing a port even on its intended platform.

Veinom responds:

I wanted this to be a game that you can play with your mouse only, but you are right. I was considering making the blue circles bigger, and I will try adding keyboard controls as an alternative. Thank you.