Zir0's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Brawler Whirled]

Game Seems Stuck

Hey.

Unable to rate the game, because it seems to not proceed past the Whirled loading logo.

___________________
-Ziro out.

Whirled responds:

Hi Ziro! It may take awhile to load. Please try again!

[Angry Smiles Attack]

It's an Okay Game

Hey.

A bit too simple for my tastes, and it gets quite monotonous and annoying after a while. Here are a few things to polish it up a bit:

1). Nice touch making the Angry Smiles different sizes, but consider 4 or 5 different-looking Angry Smilies.

2). Add some sound effects.

3). Add some power-ups. Some simple ideas would be power-ups that:

a). Add a few seconds back to the timer;

b). Make you invulnerable to the Angry Smiles for a few seconds. You'd still have to avoid the walls and moving barriers, however.

c). Make you invulnerable to the moving barriers for a few seconds. The ability to pass through them or not is optional. You'd still have to avoid the Angry Smiles and stationary walls, however.

d). Freeze or slow down the Angry Smiles and/or moving barriers for a few seconds. With this one, I suspect you'd have to time it right, so that when you grab the power-up, you don't freeze the barriers so that they are blocking you. :-P

e). Stop new Angry Smiles from appearing for a few seconds.

Those are just some ideas. Perhaps make them into "Happy Smiles", and they could have different appearances for different effects, and maybe a ?_? looking one, that gives a random effect.

Also, should you add power-ups, also include UI detail that denoted which power-ups you have active, and how long they will last.

4). This one is very annoying. When you die, add a small grace period of invulnerability, so that you don't get instantly killed as soon as you reappear again. Do the same when you clear a level.

5). Display the current level that the player is on.

6). Your music is very short and gets annoying quickly. Since it's so short, I recommend adding several short songs, that switch every few minutes.

7). Change the background up a bit. Perhaps on some levels, make it nightime, dusk, or dawn.

8). If you really want to mix it up a bit, especially in the some of the later levels, here are some suggestions:

a). Put the player on the right side, and the door on the left;

b). Make the Angry Smiles appear from different sides, instead of the top;

c). Make some of the moving barriers stationary until you get close, then they move, so you have to "psyche them out" to get past. ;-)

Just some suggestions. Good skill, soldier.

__________________
-Ziro out.

[Glow Scramble]

Nothing too new or interesting, and needs polish

Hey.

It's your typical "mouse-collecting/avoiding" game, which I have seen many times.

Graphics
- Glowing balls could have been better. They look like some kind of pillow shading.

- The game needs some background art, instead of just a boring black background.

Audio
- Please... please... PLEASE... get rid of the Techno music! It's been done to death! Seems like every other Flash game has some kind of Techno song in it. >_> Use a different genre of music.

- Sound effects would have been nice. Add sound effects when collecting orbs, getting hit by red orbs, and collecting power-ups. Of course, it would also be a good idea to use 2 or three sounds for each event, each with subtle differences, so it doesn't get to monotonous.

Control
- Controls is fine. No issue with controlling the basket.

Polish/Other
- Add some special particle effects, for example, when you collect the glow balls. A very small, subtle effect would do nicely, as it shouldn't slow down the game, plus it's MUCH better than simply making the balls suddenly disappear.

- Consider adding UI elements that indicate which power-ups are active, and how long they will last.

- Consider adding a twist to the game. Many of these kind of games drop the objects from the top. Nice touch with the bouncing balls, and the ones that pop up from the bottom, but consider making the main stream of balls come from either side or the bottom, and switch/rotate your basket accordingly.

Mix it up a bit, to throw the player for a few loops to keep him/her on his/her toes. ;-)

Other than all those... it's alright.

___________________
-Ziro out.

[Ninja+]

Nice Game

Hey.

Interesting ninja game. Let's get started. (-:

Contols:
- No issue with controlling the character.However, in the options screen, you can set multiple actions to the same key. Consider preventing the player from doing that, or if they chose a key that's already in use by another action, swap the the two keys.

Audio:
- The music is all right.
- The sound effects get too monotonous after a while, especially when your character gets hits. Perhaps consider using two different hit sounds. Same with the steps sound. Other than those, they're all right.

Graphics:
- No issues with graphics. They look all right.

Polish/Glitches/Other:
- While running around, I encountered solid dark-gray rectangles going across the screen. Are these by design? I seem to only encounter these gray areas if I go back to an area that I've already explored.

- Nice reiterating the controls in-game.

- Sometimes, when I stop running, the character stops advancing, but his running animations keeps going, thus teh character is running in place. (-:

- When the game is paused, consider dimming the screen a bit, and/or displaying the word "Paused" or something like that.

- Nice having the ability to mute music and sounds individually. However, I noticed that, for example, if I must the music then restart the level, the music starts up again, however, the icon still indicated that the music is muted (it's still dimmed).

- Also, I noticed that if I mute the audio, then restart the entire game (Esc), and check the options, that particular audio level is set to 0 volume. When I start another game, and unmute the audio, I still don't hear anything. I am presuming that the previous audio level before that game was ended was not preserved?

Again, nice game, soldier.

______________________
-Ziro out.

[Shopping Madness]

Nice Game

Hey.

Interesting game you have here. Well, let's get started, shall we? :-)

Gameplay:
- Solid concept. Running around in the shop in a race against time, collecting things.

Graphics:
- Very nice and retro looking 16-bit. Seems like there was a lot of time to draw all the pixel art for each of those directions that the characters can move in.

Audio:
- The song seemed to fit very well.
- One major issue is, there aren't any sounds (unless I missed something). DEFINITELY needs some sound effects to make the game more engaging.

Control:
- Actually, I found it the other way around. Pro are much easier than Basic (at least for me anyway), as I'm more used to left and right to turn anyway. Nevertheless, it's good to see that you have various control configurations.

Regarding the game engine:
- Sweet tile-based engine (at least it seems to be a tile-based engine; please confirm).
- Smooth scrolling, at least as much as can be expected for a Flash game. Lots of tearing, although I know you really don't have control over that, as we can't synch with vertical tracing and all.
- Just curious: How are you updating your screen? Are you using some double-buffering system, or just moving movieclips/bitmaps/sprites around?

- One issue I found is with the actions taken when your character collides with other objects. When I run into things, sometimes, I would get turned in weird directions, sometimes, completely opposite direction, or would get pushed around, even if I ran into stationary objects. Point is, the collision actions didn't seem to make sense. I'm not sure if this by design or not, however, I'd consider changing that to simple, "sliding" along the colliding object, until the player either changes direction to move away from it, or simply is cleared of it. Hope that makes sense. if not, load up my game, Blast Force, and run along the walls and tiles to see what I mean.

Overall, good game. Again, it just needs some sounds, and perhaps clean up the collision detection action.

* salutes *

__________________________
-Ziro out.

[Hold The Line]

Alright Game

Hey.

Gameplay:
- Nice game, although, I'd add more enemy types to keep it interesting. I only saw the guys with the knives and then guys with the rifles, so I don't know if there are any more types. (I'll give the benefit of the doubt, and presume that there are, especially with those high-end-looking wepaons. ;-))

- I'm not sure if your game does this, but consider adding a little bonuses for quickly killing enemies. Or, perhaps, consider the bonus for accuracy; if you kill so many enemies with a single shot to the head.

Audio:
- Tone down the gunshot audio sounds. They are a little too loud.

- Add at least two similar sounding sounds for the following:
a). when shots are fired;
b). when enemies are killed.
The game sounds are very monotonous, and it gets annoying very quickly. Putting that monotonous sound in your intro When the three guys get killed by the logo, was a quick turn-off, and from that point on, I knew the audio was going to get annoying.

Graphics:
- No issues with graphics.

Polish:
- Consider adding the number of guys left to kill to reach the end of the stage, or if it's time based, then display that.

- Use some sort of transition when clearing a level. Don't just abruptly end it. Also, I'd actually end the level once all the enemies are killed. (It always suddenly ends with me engaged in combat; doesn't seem right. :-\)

- The shells are a nice touch, but consider cleaning them up at the end of each level, every other level, or something like that.

- On some levels, perhaps have your character and barricades on the left side of the screen, with enemies coming from the right. IMHO, this would keep teh game fresh a little more.

Other than those, not too shabby, soldier.

_________________
-Ziro out.

[Green Moon Lab]

Nice Concept

Hey.

Gameplay was pretty solid.

Audio quality was pretty good. Although the game could use a little more detail in the graphics, and maybe add a few more sound effects, but what is currently available is alright.

Just couldn't get the purple gravity manipulator, which you're aware of at this point. :-P

The purple text in the instructions screen is hard to read.

The game is littered with typos. Maybe you're not too good with English? If you'd like, I'd be happy to help you correct all of them. :-)

Other than those, nice game.

_________________
-Ziro out.

FXcorporation responds:

First, thanks for the review

Secondly, the PGFM is fixed... try refreshing the page

thirdly, I speak french not english, I hope I didn't made too many mistake... if you want to correct them go for it

[Corporate Bloodbath]

Interesting Twist on Rock-Paper-Scissors

Hey.

Was a bit hard to figure out some of the details, since the instructions are not working. I am aware the title says it's still in beta, however, when I try to view the instructions, I get this error message:

TypeError: Error #2007: Parameter child must be non-null.
at flash.display::DisplayObjectContainer /addChild()
at sevenlights.cbb.ui.modules::Instructi onsModule/drawInstructions()
at sevenlights.cbb.ui.modules::Instructi onsModule/drawModule()
at sevenlights.cbb.ui.modules::Instructi onsModule()
at sevenlights.cbb.ui.screens::Instructi onsScreen/drawScreen()
at sevenlights.cbb.ui.screens::Instructi onsScreen/TransitionIn()
at sevenlights.ui.screens::ScreenManager /drawNextScreen()
at sevenlights.ui.screens::ScreenManager /queueScreenChange()
at sevenlights.ui.screens::ScreenManager /screenTransitionOutComplete()
at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatc hEventFunction()

Then, the game freezes. I can look at the options, but I have to restart the game.

Also, while I was reading the descriptions for Jurrasic Technologist, where it says, "gold old days" - should that be "good old days"?

Interesting game. Nice artwork. Needs a few more sounds, nothing too much though, as I do like it being quiet, but not so quite. (-:

You're quite the story writer. :-P

____________________
-Ziro out.

[Dot Devour]

Good Game

Hey.

Nice game. The fonts are a little hard to read, however.
The music got dull quickly, so I just muted it. I do like how you can mute music OR sounds, an ability which I think is often overlooked.

Just get rid of that ripped assets (yes, I can tell), and the game will be a little better.

___________________
-Ziro out.

OliverKO responds:

What ripped assets?

[CyberRace multiplayer]

Needs much more Work

Hey.

It's not too interesting as it is. It needs a lot more work.

First off, I got a bunch of ActionScript run-time errors when the game was loading:

Error 1: ReferenceError: Error #1065: Variable swf is not defined.

Error 2: ReferenceError: Error #1065: Variable Sharepoint__ is not defined.

Error 3: TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference. at MainGame$/RilevaMouseMove()"

Graphics:
- Graphics are fine, but drop the multicolored text, and take some of the thickness out of the fonts. They are too hard to read.

Audio:
- Are there sounds in the game? If so, how do I enable them?

Control:
- Ease to control the car, but maybe add a brake control.

Gameplay and Performance:
Lots of things to be done here. Perhaps consider the following:
Things to consider to make it more interesting
- Add powerups, like short speed boosts
- Add hazards in the tracks.
- Add computer components to race against in single player mode.
- The name entry is a nice touch from console games, but get rid of that. It's much easier to type. Just let the player use the keyboard.
- Perhaps, make so you can win money after races, and use it to upgrade your car.
- Add some sort of arrows or guides when the track is about to make sharp turns.
- I went to your site and loaded the hi-res, and you really need to optimize that. Just from fading out the title screen, it's painfully slow. There's no reason why that should be running this slowly.

Again, this has potential of becoming a good game, but it looks more like a customized tutorial rip.

Lots of work to do. I'm assuming you're still working on this one, and just wanted some initial feedback?