Zir0's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Silentium Universi]

Cool Game

Hey.

I had fun playing this old-school game. (:

Graphics:
- The graphics overall looked pretty good.
- I thought the explosions should have been a more ominous.

Controls:
- Nice, solid controls. It's great that you provided both mouse and keyboard. However, for me, it was keyboard for the win! >-)

Audio:
- I think this area of the game needed the most improvement. There are enough sound effects, and the player shooting and explosion sound gets a bit monotonous. Also, sometimes, I notice that the player shooting sound tens to "double up" if that makes any sense. After a short while, it returns to normal. Not sure if that's intentional or not.
- While I though the music loops sounded awesome, I thought they were a bit short, even for loops. Nonetheless, I really liked the boss song. (I had to look up bebeto, and find that track [loop018.wav, lol]).

Polish / Other:
- Needs more sounds. Things like:
-- collecting power-ups (different power-ups would have different sounds)
-- perhaps changing the player shooting sound as your weapon gets stronger
-- taking damage
-- bad guy deaths - try not to give just one explosion sound to each bad guy
-- boss death should be much more engaging
-- damage effect when you damage bad guys
Just a few ideas.

- I REALLY like how, not only can you remap the controls, but you can also assign more than one key for most actions.

- Would have like to see a better weapon system. Strengthening the existing weapon system is good, but I'd like more types of weapons, and maybe some super weapon you can charge up or something, and maybe a special shield that can reflect projectiles back.

- I like how you can adjust the volume of the music and sound individually.

- I might suggest removing the countdown timer for resuming play for "advanced" players. Maybe have that as an option, too, but perhaps enable it by default.

- Stages were a bit short, and I would have liked to see a few more bad guy types. (:

You and your team did a good job here, soldier.
* salutes *
|-:

(That boss music gonna be in my head all night. Dangit!! lol)

_____________________
- Ziro out.

redjag responds:

Thanks for the well-thought out review, I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. I agree with most/all of your points, too. Sounds are something that I have absolutely no skill with.. when I hear a sound effect I can tell you whether or not it fits but not much else. I found the majority of the sound effects on freesound.org and then played with them in Audacity but again, I have no skillz :P Anyway, thanks again for all the feedback/suggestions - if we do a sequel or level pack I will definitely keep it in mind.

[Cruz]

Nice Old-School Game

Hey.

First off, glad you were able to fix the loading issue I PM'd you about. I don't vote on games (especially voting them down) just because they won't load. Actually, by the time, I read your reply, I had already visited your profile, found the link to your website, and played it there. (:

Nonetheless, on to the review.

- Regarding the fonts: The fancy font is a little had to read.You definitely have the room, so I'd make them a bit bigger, or use a different font altogether. The dialog text (what the player says): Use something other than a "normal" looking text. This being an old-school game, it probably would look better if all the fonts were bitmaps, and blitting was used to render them.

- When you unpause the game and it zooms out, is there a way to undo the zoom without moving your character or using items?

- Sometimes, it's hard to locate your character at the start of a zoomed out level without taking a hit, using whip, etc. Maybe add a bigger visual notification or something like that.

- Unless I missed it, consider adding an option to mute the music, while keeping the sound effects.

- Consider allowing the player to save use a SharedObject instead of a code, or at least add the option in addition to your current saving design. Not that the music sounds bad or anything (it's good), just makes a more user-friendly game (some players still might to mute it for whatever reason, though).

- I like how you can use the mouse to navigate your player. Just curios, what path-finding algorithm did you use? (:

- Would have like to see the screen seamlessly follow the player.

Overall, cool game, soldier. This will definitely keep someone busy for those who are really into this. (:

* salutes *

___________________________
- Ziro out.

Appetite4 responds:

Very helpful, Zir0! This is good feedback, and I'm glad you didn't give up entirely due to the loading issue (resolved within 10 minutes of upload).

Unfortunately, lots of folks sounded off within that first 10 minutes, before your bug report!

I will say, I'm upset the alternate URL wasn't posted anywhere on the NG portal submission guidelines. I had tested cross-domain loads before uploading to NewGrounds, but there was no information that would lead me to believe newgrounds.com wouldn't be the source location. Well, you live and learn.

Path-finding? Well, it's similar to Diablo II, with these exceptions:
1) Player doesn't follow direct line-of-sight shortcuts; usually not a big deal.
2) Two types of traversal assessments: "safe" and "hurried."
3) Gravity considerations in "sideways" levels. This one was tough, having the player know when and where to climb. And admittedly, it needs some work.

The full version of Cruz awaits!

[Retro Invaders]

Needs LOTS of Work

Hey.

I'm guessing you're just starting out. Nonetheless, here are some tips for you.

=========================
Improve your coding skills.
=========================
- Make the shots come from the top center of the player ship, not the left edge.
- As someone else suggested, add audio.
- On the instructions page, make the black area cover the entire stage, so there is no white remaining. Also, the bottom half of the words, "You have a 60 seconds!" is cut off.
- Tab and P keys don't seem to work.
- When you kill something, make the green puff disappear after a while.
- Make it so your player ship can't move off the screen.
- On the game over screen, when I move my mouse over the OK button, I'm getting the text-input I-beam cursor. Please change this so that it either stays as the mouse pointer, or changes to the hand cursor

=========================
Improve your game design skills
=========================
- Use a different font other than Times New Roman (or whatever this standard-looking, word processor font you're using).
- Stop putting "retro" in front of everything. "Retro 'A' key" just sounds silly. Which bring up another point: Why must we press "A" key to continue, anyway? What's so special about the "A" key?
- When restarting the game, cut all the extra scenes, and just get the player back into the game. - Remove the "a" from the phrase: it should say, "You have 60 seconds!".
- Why are the red and green aliens shooting upwards?

Lots of work ahead of you, but keep at it. (-:

_____________________
- Ziro out.

[Alloy Tengu]

Nice Game

Hey.

===========================
Gameplay
===========================
- Overall, it's a nice game. Like your previous game, Fortress of Fantasm, it lies just on the borderline between challenging and frustrating.

- The two transformation modes are a cool. Seems like the ship can fly faster, and doesn't take so much damage, but the humaniod mode can turn quicker, and can move quicker in reverse. However, I spend most of my time in ship mode, because the quick some enemies are really aggressive, and stay on you. Even with the faster turning speed, it seems I can't move out of their line of fire, turn and get a few shots, turn and move away again without getting hit.

- The AI allies are cool, too.

===========================
Graphics
===========================
- The pixel art looks really good.
- The only thing is, the font you used for the title, "Victory", etc. While it looks great, it looks like vector art.

===========================
Controls
===========================
- The modified Asteroids-style controls take some getting used to. (: I still wish I could strafe, though.

===========================
Audio
===========================
- Music sounds good.
- Explosions could be a little louder to make the game more engaging.

===========================
Notes/Polish/Other
===========================
- Are the enemies randomly generated? The highest level I made it to was 24. Some of the levels seem really hard, while other times, when playing the same levels, they are easy.

- When you die, the "you dead" text looks weird, because it's not in the center of the screen. Same with the "victory" text. Not sure if that's by design or not.

Again, cool game ya got there, soldier.
* salutes *

As you were.

_____________________________
- Ziro out.

AcetheSuperVillain responds:

Thanks for extensive review (I'm surprised they allow them that long). Glad you're enjoying it. I'll address some key points:

- Unfortuneately, challenging, frustrating and too easy are not universal concepts. I prefer to air on the side of too hard because I HATE action games that are too easy.

- I'm glad you think the ship (fighter mode) is more useful, since I find myself favoring the humanoid (warrior mode). I was worried because if one mode is too superior, it defeats the purpose of having a transformation system in the first place.

- The freshbot font has been Alloy Tengu's title font since 2005, so sorry, but we're stuck with it. (I think it is a vector now that you mention it) The other fonts and title bg are more retro looking than I would usually use.

- I thought about allowing strafing by holding or toggling Ctrl, but I feel this would be choice overload. In the last game, 2DX, you could drift and auto-target, which were good for many of the same situations, so you might see those return instead.

- The enemy groups are indeed randomly generated. The general quantity increases each round, so you can theoretically keep playing this version forever, but the lag would kill you off before you got too far. Future games will not duplicate this, unless it's an extra mode or something.

Thanks for playing, and thanks again for the feedback.

[Fortress of Fantasm]

Fun, but frustrating

Hey Ace.

==========================
Gameplay
==========================
- Hack'n'slash games are all right, but they tend to have "cheap ai subroutines": doing the same one or two moves repeatedly, often relying on quick animation, high damage, or a large "area of effect". This game kinda of reminds me of the boss fight with Bloody Malth in Ninja Gainden 1: it's basically a slugfest to the death. While the randomness of the game (levels and monster spawning) is a REALLY nice touch, the battle system is one-dimensional. Perhaps that was the idea; I'm just not into that aspect of the game.

- I wish the player characters could jump.

- Too bad monsters don't drop things when you kill them. Maybe just the humanoid guys. I don't think I'd want food from some slime; goodness knows where he might have had it. :P

- Having an AI ally is great, but the AI could be better. I get annoyed having to switch to the ally just to save him/her, or wasting potions just for the ally.

- Some additional equipment as someone pointed out earlier, would have been cool.

- Being able to use mana for things other than offense might have taked out some of the one-dimensionalness of the battle system.

==========================
Audio
==========================
- Your music sounds nice. I just wish there was an easier way to make a seamless loop with MP3s. (Not your fault; I just hate that in Flash.)

- Adding a few different sounds for the hit impact would have been better. The same sound gets monotonous. Also, different sounds when you hit different monsters would have been cool too. For example, when you hit the slimes, it could sound kinda mushy, hitting those armadillo thinges could sound like hitting a pile of rocks or something, lol. (:

- The sound effect for smashing a barrel is considerably louder than the rest of the sounds.

- Give the game characters different death sounds. They all have the same sound. :P

==========================
Controls
==========================
- I don't like how all the attacks are performed with one button. Other than that, its easy to control the characters.

==========================
Graphics
==========================
- I think the pixel art is all right. There are, however, a few inconsistencies, such as the barriers on the doors. I also thought the mana bar could be improved. It should have a consistent look with the health bars (they look good, by the way).

- For the most part, the animation looks good. The walk animations of the player's characters don't look right. They should also have a run animation. Making them move fast with the walk animation really looks weird. :P

==========================
Notes / Polish / Other
==========================
- Noticed that the barrels could be bumped around heh. (-:

- Wish I could save my game somehow.

- There seems to be a glitch with your computer ally. When you first enter a room with monsters, your ally will attack, even if there are no monsters in the the immediate area.

- Screen transition effect doesn't look right. A simple scroll to the next room would have looked better.

- Sometimes, the floating eye will just sit there and not attack. Not sure if that's by design or not.

- When the instructions are open while in-game, you should pause the game. It should be the same as when you pull up your map.

- Sometimes, the ally's movement jerks around when following you. This happens when I run in one direction, then stop running, and just walk in that same direction.

- I like how you can mute music and sounds separately. (:

I really would like to get into this game, but there just isn't enough there. If you ever make another, or improve on this one, let me know. (:

7/10
3/5

* salutes *

_____________________
- Ziro out.

[Codename: Dirk]

Ok, but has some Glitches

Hey.

There are some glitches in this game, among other things:

- When I first move the character, he seems to face the opposite just for a split second. This is most apparent when you tap the movement button (left or right).

- On the first level (of a new game), when I get to the part where the help tip says, "When Sliding on a wall, press Jump to Wall Jump", if I move all the way to the wall there, I fall through the floor, then the game gets stuck. The same thing happens in the Select Level map. If I run all the way to the far right, I fall through the floor.

- There seem to be some focus issues when keeping the player centered on the screen when scrolling. When you are hanging on the ledge of a wall, and you climb it, the screen abruptly jumps to where the player is going, instead of keeping a smooth focus on him.

- Change the font of the text to something more appropriate. It looks like Times New Roman or something. There are a ton of free fonts that you can use out there.

- Change the TextField objects, so that the mouse doesn't change to the I-Beam when you move over them, and that you cannot select the text in the font. However, when I passed the bike level, and reached the map that starts off with, "I gotta get this drive to Johnny...", that looks and functions better.

- Keep the graphics consistent. The background doesn't match with the simple vector art. Stick to one type of art.

- When first starting the game, and I am presented with the four choices, I can enter the Trophy Room or Select Level. Is there any way to exit those maps, because I seem to be stuck. For example, in the Trophy Room, there is a door marked, "Back to Searching", but I can't open it.

- On the level following the dialog with the dud that gets hit by the car, there is an open gap just right of the beginning. If you jump over this game, just on the other side of the gap, there seems to be a glitch in movement.

Fix up the glitches, and make the game a little more presentable. Making platform games can be challenging. Good skill to you in the future. (:

______________________
- Ziro out.

[Sub Hunter]

Reminds me of Atari's Air Sea Battle. (:

========================
Controls
========================
- Here's my main issue of the whole game: I found it quite difficult to actually move enemy projectiles with my fish.

- I would have preferred the controls where I could use W to increase speed, and S to slow down (from the WASD scheme). When neither key is used, your ship would return to normal speed.

========================
Gameplay
========================
- The graphics are fine for a first game. Just get rid of those gradients in your next game, should you decide to do vector art again. :-)

- I like the idea that the fish can move projectiles without setting them off, killing itself, lol.

- It might be interesting to play with the idea of the fish causing a little mischief. Maybe, if the fish touches an enemy projectile, it could move it so that it would hit another enemy sub, and blow that one up, lol! But then, you'd have to get your fish out of the way, so he isn't blown up in the process. (:

- On some levels, perhaps make your ship come from the opposite side (left to right).

- Maybe add some power-ups for your fish. One could increase speed. Another one could make the fish a little bigger. This power-up could also make it easier to move enemy projectiles around, justifying how difficult it currently is to divert them.

========================
Audio
========================
- Consider adding a few different explosion sounds (similar of course), so the game won't sound so monotonous.

- When I use a nuke, and takes effect, the explosion sound plays sound over itself a bunch of times (I'm guessing once for each enemy ship). You should probably just make a unique sound play only once for this effect.

========================
Other
========================
- This on is regarding the help screen. When I bring it up during play, I was unable to dismiss it. Neither the icon, nor the F1 key worked. So, I had to keep restarting the Flash.

- On the "Login to access your MochiCoins wallet" window, when I click the Cancel button, it doesn't do anything.

- Add some bubbles! Everyone likes bubbles! :-D
- Add sound effects for when power-ups appear and when you collect them.
- Add a floating UI that briefly shows how many points you got for blowing up each ship.
- When the level ends, don't abruptly end it. Perhaps add a little beep or something during the last ten seconds (beeps once each second), then when the level ends, add a delay, and add some message. It looks more presentable and user-friendly.

Nice game.

__________________
- Ziro out.

framiq responds:

Thanks a lot for all the feedback! :-) I'll definitely have all that in mind and do a few updates ... and probably I'll even do a version 2 for the changes regarding the game play and fish itself.

By the way, I have just sorted out that bug (yes, my fault) with the help screen: it didn't occur to me that people would hit F1 again to dismiss it and it was putting the game into a bit of a help loop, ups! :-( Now you can dismiss the screen with F1, Esc or the button.
I have also increased a bit the area of influence of the fish when moving torpedoes as people were finding it a bit too difficult.

[Bullets Jigsaw]

Nice Puzzle, a few UI issues

Hey.

The puzzle game itself is fine, just a few other things:

- A second or so after the game starts, the MochiAds interrupt the game.

- Needs sound, at least a couple different sounds when you connect pieces.

- When previewing the solved image, consider dimming the puzzle pieces while preview is visible, and centering the preview. Make the preview easier to see, and centering it, is just better presentation overall.

- The ability to change the background color. Black on dark pieces doesn't look so well.

- Make the stage larger. The puzzle itself, when solved, is not that big, but you should be able to lay out all the pieces when at least a little space between them (non-overlapping), so you can work with them.

Again, the puzzle itself wasn't too hard, just some UI issues.
Take care.

___________________
- Ziro out.

[Level Up!]

Nice Game

Hey.

It's not everyday that a decent platform game comes along. Now, on the the review, shall we?

----------------------
Controls
----------------------
- Overall, it's easy to control the character, although, I wish you could reconfigure the controls.

- Sometimes, the dash tends to inadvertently fire. I'm sure I am double-tapping it, for example when I need to turn around quickly or something. I wish there was the option of double-dash and/or pressing another button to perform this.

- You should be able to cancel the dash instead of simply running until you hit something. Sorry if it's already implemented, and I'm not just doing it right.

- Variable-length jumping was GREAT! I wish more platform games did this. :-D

----------------------
Graphics
----------------------
- Very good, old-school pixel art. The artist did a nice job with it.
- The girl's idle animation looks kinda weird, though.
- I REALLY like the fact that there are NO RIPPED sprites (at least none that I can detect). ;-)

Those of you with Zelda, Mario, and Sonic rips and what not, I'm lookin' at you. >_>

----------------------
Gameplay
----------------------
- You have a nice codex with lots of interesting things to look at and read. :-P

- While I wasn't really into the core concept of the game, your implementation the Flixel engine kept me interested (although I have never used it myself).

- I found 99.3% of the red gems, and all the blue and large gems before I got tired of doing the same things repeatedly. This took me about 7 days or so. Henceforth, I went straight into facing the nightmare boss. I went to day 29, still didn't beat the damn thing, and gave up after that.

- Why do I get overwhelmed in the nightmare when I still have health left? Is there some other criteria for determining when you are defeated?

- I wish the player had some sort of offense. Dude, you got an AWESOME looking dash and double jump somersault - you gotta back that up some BEEF, man! :-) Otherwise, it's just showing off, which doesn't do much for the gameplay.

- The Interactive skill - Couldn't come up with anything to make it more effective at higher levels, huh? Heh! :-P

- The additional idle poses gained when leveling up... lol more showing off. :-P

- And yes, I did get the TIme Waster merit and what not. :-P

- I would prefer if the radar would seek preference in locating gems that you've not already collected, or perhaps add a map to that fancy codex.

----------------------
Audio
----------------------
- Nice subtle music and sound effects. Old-school chip-tunes, triangle waves and noise. :-)

----------------------
Notes / Polish / Other
----------------------
- An ability to adjust volume of music and sounds would have been nice. if it's already there somewhere, then I must have missed it.

- That girl is a bit sarcastic. She sure likes to talk a lot of trash, considering the fact that her bark is worse than her bite. :-P

- There is a "positioning glitch" when first enter the nightmare room.

- The parallax scrolling was a nice touch.

- Sometimes, I receive this ActionScript runtime error when I press the Play button to start the game:

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at com.titch.LevelUp.data::NGFactory/cli ck()

When I click COntinue of the ActionScript run-time error dialog box to resume the game, it's stuck, and I need to refresh the browser.

- Another glitch I noticed:
After coming out of the nightmare, if I try an access the menu, while it's resetting away all the stats and what not, sometimes, the controls will "lock up", and I can't move the girl or access the menu at all.

Again, nice game. Keep up the good work, soldier.

:-|

* salutes *

_______________________
- Ziro out.

[Communist in Space]

Interesting Game, but...

Hey.

Gameplay & Controls - A bit too simple and short for me (especially being a skill game), but it's an interesting game. I would say add more events instead of just two.

Storyline, Graphics & Audio - Nothing spectacular, but not bad, either. (-:

Actionscript run-time errors received:

1). When I reach the bottom after dodging the rockets, I received this message:

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at main_fla::MainTimeline/missile()
at main_fla::MainTimeline/loop2()

2). After I click Continue (I use the Debug version of Flash when evaluating other peoples' games), I immediately get this message:

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at main_fla::MainTimeline/frame9()

3). Finally, on the end screen, if I click the NG logo in the lower-right corner of the screen, I receive this message:

TypeError: Error #1010: A term is undefined and has no properties.
at main_fla::NG_TANKcopy_23/loadNGSite()

When I click Continue, nothing happens.

Other than that, nice game.

________________________
- Ziro out.