Kwing's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ruffy the Shelline - Prototype version]

It's surprising this is where you chose to stop, because most of the game (collision and physics) are already there. Even the menu has some nice polish to it and the graphics are really cute. This game could still be solid even without coding in enemies or new mechanics, a simple timer and actual level design could have made this a fun game to speedrun. I look forward to seeing the final product.

MebroukTheCat responds:

I'm working on the full game, with my friends on Discord.
Hopefully, You're gonna like it more than the prototype version

[Blocky's Funny Doings Interactive]

The animations are okay but rely too heavily on tweens and easing. The buttons have seriously messed up hitboxes. More animations or even just a higher quality of the ones already present would be appreciated.

SuperGibaLogan responds:

the reason why the animations are a little wonky is because i wanted to finish the game as fast as possible
also the hitboxes are messed up because i used masks to make the symbols

[SMILEY clicker :)]

This was way more engaged than I thought it would be and I nearly quit before unlocking the actual game at 50 clicks. By the end it's not exactly *hard* but damn does it get tiring beating away all three enemies at once!

For a first Flash game (in 2024!) this is impressive as well as surprisingly engaging.

As far as criticism, the crude brushstroke art works in some places, but in other places it genuinely looks bad. It wouldn't take much effort for the graphics to still be simple but at least have an acceptable level of simplicity. I also think it would be nice if the gameplay had some kind of an ebb and flow so it's not just a constant barrage of attacks form the enemies. As it is, it's both physically and mentally tiring to fight an uphill battle the whole time with no breaks.

It's a shame it looks like there are no other features before 50 clicks because I'm sure a lot of the low scoring votes are coming from people that never saw the actual game.

DrDevGuy responds:

thanks! i really appreciate the criticism! although i dont really see where the crude artwork doesnt work (i might just be blind or something) i'll see if i could do anything about it (if i can also still update the game after the whole flash forward thing lol).

and also yea i think most people probably didnt get to 50 clicks which sucks cuz there obviously was a bit more to the game, i guess bait n switch (or whatever its called idk) doesnt work well with clicker games or i might've just done something wrong in general with the start of the game lol

[Windowz XP 2012 Professional]

I came into this expecting a Windows parody, and by those standards, this is pretty lacking. After reading the description, I see that this is really an archive of old animations. Some of them are good, some of them aren't so good. Most of the things that were funny in 2012 were pretty boring, but the nostalgia factor is definitely there. If Dom Fera still visits Newgrounds I'm sure he'd appreciate all the lazer references.

A couple animations are surprisingly well-done, most aren't. Overall I think this is a good format to deliver a collaboration like this.

Kolumbo responds:

thank you! to address some of your points:

i'd say most of the animations aren't good - even included a medal referencing that! that's the point, though, we were all kids at the time & we had no idea what we were doing!

have to disagree with the 2012 thing - that stuff's hilarious

[Sound Maker]

So for a gadget like this the obvious tradeoff is going to be whether you want to lean toward useability (especially if you're only expecting the user to tinker around with your gadget for a few minutes) versus diversity of features. I think you largely struck the right balance here but there are still a handful of really important features that are missing.

First of all, what even is the scale you're using here? It's not diatonic or chromatic. Several times I went to add a note only to realize the scale you implemented skipped over the one I wanted. A single 12 note chromatic scale across one octave would have made this a lot more useable in terms of making it easy to put down the notes you want. You could also label the actual notes (and maybe tint them light or dark depending on if they're white/black keys on a piano) instead of just having colors.

Second, the scrolling is annoying if you want anything of significant length. You have to add notes bit by bit, and there's no way to copy and paste repeated sections or zoom out. For anything longer than a few measures this would be a real hassle to use. I would guess zoom would be a bit harder to do but just an input box that allows you to choose how many measures to add would be a huge QoL improvement.

Last, I don't think it would be too hard to have a couple different instruments you could choose between. Synth, guitar, and piano would probably be enough for a small scale gadget like this.

Really cool idea and the export/import feature is especially cool, but with the lack of QoL features I wouldn't want to use this long enough to create something worth exporting.

mtv129 responds:

I plan to transfer all this to Action Script 3 where everything will be much better, to be honest, I wanted to add a server but it didn’t work out

[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.