Zir0's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Average Stick Guy Bet]

Get fundamentals solid 1st before adding extras

Hey.

Considering that was written in the author comments, I feel you on getting constructive feedback - it's like pulling teeth - you won't get it often. Regarding the beta aspect: people generally prefer finished submissions on Newgrounds, and dueto the blam/protect nature of things, if may have been better to submit to the alpha section of the site (I don't even know if that section is working - it always gives me an error when I try to go there), or to simply upload it somewhere else altogether, like FlashKit.

On to the game, sounds like you have some ambitious ideas, but based on what I've seen so far, here are some suggestions. Since there isn't much gameplay here, most of these are related to user friendliness and user accessibility, both of which I often find overlooked in Flash games.

- Since you are using mouse and keyboard to control the player's actions, and this being a platform game, add the WASD keys for movement. Your current config of arrow keys is nice for left-handed people, and right-handed people will want to move the player's character with WASD keys while moving the mouse.

- Currently, the mouse is only being used to interact with the black box. Unless the mouse will become a crucial part of controlling your character, I'd place that function as a key on the keyboard.

- You should also consider adding the ability for the player to remap the default keys as they like.

- Adding specialized animations for ascending and descending during a jump are nice polish, and I like how you took it a step further by adding more poses for moving jumps to differentiate them from a non-moving jump. However, the character jerks back a little on the moving jumps when it witches from ascending to descending.

- After battling the opponent the first time and dying, each time thereafter, it doesn't refill my health, and the opponent instantly attacks, killing me.

- Clean up the terrain movement, so the player moves smoothly along the hills. When moving down hills, you can see him leaving the ground for a split second at times.

- Once you get to adding audio to your game, please consider adding the ability to mute sounds and music separately.

- Throw a pause function in as well.

- I didn't see the game measuring distance from the ground anywhere. Was this meant to be visible? There is a green text that always reads 250.

- It look like your doing a quick "sweep" to keep the screen scroll focused on the player. Personally, I never liked these "sweep/tween" scrolling methods in platform games. They're fine when resetting your player after a fall (although I'd slow it down a bit), but I don't like it when it sweeps while I'm moving, even if the duration of the sweep is small.

- No ActionScript run-time exceptions were encountered.

- Clean up the engine, get everything solid, then focus on improving your graphics, gameplay, and all the other things you plan on adding.

Oh, and come up with an interesting name for your engine, too. (:

Good luck/skill on your project, soldier.
* salutes *

________________________
- Ziro out.

alexkolozsy responds:

Thanks for an excellent review! I just took into account everything you said, added a pause button, changed it from being so 'twitchy' which I think was VERY true, and also smoothed up movement over the ground. I am working now on changing the movement of the camera, so that it tweens over (relatively) slowly after death, and before game start, and afterwards stays completely focused on the character. Late tonight or early tomorrow I will add acceleration, a 'slide' animation, a duck button, and a crawling, where you duck and move. I smoothed the animations (slightly) but I don't think they look better, and I kind of want the cartoony look. I adjusted the health etc. so that it restarts and you can re-battle. I'm in the process of adding another enemy. Music, I will ask someone about giving me full rights to some good music, maybe for a tip. Removed the green debugging text. Thanks again for the helpful review. Going to get a better name. No storyline yet, but I'll make one. <-- That's the easiest part. Thanks man. Once again. UPDATE: *** Okay I just attempted to display the distance from the ground. It freezes flash player. I also tested it in GC and MF and IE, and it worked on none of those. It overloads the system I guess. I'm troubleshooting it but I think I might just have to not display distance from ground. It DOES allow me, although, to check it every second or so allowing me to tell whether he is about falling distance or jumping distance and return an animation based on that. ***

[Ice Cream Bar]

Nice Game

Hey.

- Customers should be served on a first-come-first-serve basis when more than one customer wants the same type of ice cream. This way, the customers on the right will get there ice cream first, even if a newer customer arrives to the left, asking for the same ice cream. Since the game doesn't allow the player to directly control which ice cream goes to which customer (for example, dragging and drpooing an ice cream to a designated customer), consider going that route.

- I like how you can mute music only, while keeping the sounds.

- Since the game doesn't pause when you're looking at the recipes (hint, hint), at least consider allowing the player to look at the recipes at some point when the game is not in play. Some places include an option on the title screen, or in between levels. Most of the recipes can be figured out simply by looking at the ice cream; however, since you allow the player to look at the recipe (which is good, by the way), give them the option to view it when the clock's not ticking.

One thing I noticed is that you can tab through the various ingredients, showing the focus rect. When you select an incredient using Space bar, it places an order to receive more of that item. not sure if this was by design or not.

Another thing with tabbing; sometimes, I like to try and find ways to break the Flash (: . At the start of the level, when the game's telling you your target profit, you can still tab through the buttons in the background, and select things. Also, on this same dialog, after playing through the game sometimes, a focus rect will show on the seats, where the coins appear. Hitting space presents this error:

TypeError: Error #2007: Parameter child must be non-null.
at flash.display::DisplayObjectContainer /removeChild()
at Game/GotoCheck()

Graphics and sound effects are nice.

________________________
- Ziro out.

In-Finity responds:

Thanks for good detailed answer.

[Snake Arena]

Regarding Offline Mode

Hey.

Regarding offline mode: my first impression of this mode was that computer AI would control the other snakes. Consider changing it so that the number of computer players could be varied. That would make offline mode a little more appealing to the single player.

Also, when my game is overs, when starting a new game, I get this message:

Error #2044: Unhandled IOErrorEvent:. text=Error #2035: URL Not Found.

Other than those, nice game.

______________________
- Ziro out.

[The hardest platformer]

More Like an Skill - Avoider game...

... since it's one-hit kill, and you can't fight back. If you can fight back at some point, then I haven't made it that far.

- The music is a short, annoying loop, and there's no way to turn it while keeping just the sound effects. Graphics could use much improvement, too.

Add some kind of scoring system to the game.

If there's not one already, I'd highly recommend uploading a video or series of videos of you yourself playing and finishing the entire game. This can give players tips on how to pass certain areas, and hopefully trial-and-error and luck are not part of what makes the game hard. Furthermore, this will also let players know that, yes, the game can actually, be finished, and yes, the person who made the game can actually beat it himself.

__________________________
- Ziro out.

paala responds:

Thank you for the review.
I updated with a sort of walkthrough. If you want easier version search for Just Another Platformer.

[Save Bank Money Car]

A little rough around the edges

Hey.

- The clicking is excessive. Change the rifles to fire automatically as you hold down the mouse.
- I can't seem the damage the enemy bikes until they stop and shoot first. I should be able to hit them as they're coming. It's not fair to the player, to see the their health immediately fill back up.
- Don't end the level so abruptly. You can still see the smoke from the last destroyed back as it intrudes over the win screen.
- Should be categorized as Action - Shooter - First person instead of Multidirectional.
- Graphics and sounds are alright.

________________________
- Ziro out.

[Free Pool Game]

Not too Shabby

Hey.

- The collision engine misses sometimes. If the cue is hit too hard, it tunnels (goes though) the other ball. While you could simply hit the ball softer, or reduce the maximum force that can be applied to the ball (also recommended, by the way), those still don't solve the underlying tunneling problem.

- Graphics could be a little better, perhaps make the balls look like they're rolling around.
- Could use sounds too.
- When I scratch, and other balls are still in motion, I shouldn't be able to shoot again until all the other balls have stopped. It works fine though when you don't scratch.
- Consider adding aiming guides, which are lines that show the direction the cue ball is going to travel after being hit by the cue. You could then show another short aim guide that indicates the direction of the rebound if the cue hits an edge of the table first, or if it would hit another ball first, show guides for both the cue ball, and the other ball it would hit.
- I like how you can't place the cue over another ball, and only inside the kitchen.

- Regarding the rules: these may help:
http://www.pool-table-rules.com/bca8b all.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-ba ll

Good skill / luck.

_______________________
- Ziro out.

[Mazeman]

Cool Jazz

Hey.

The songs are really nice, and I like how you're using Jazz to try and set the mood.

I took a look at your Edward engine from your website. It looks impressive, but the game design itself could use some more work.

Graphics need some work, though, especially the backgrounds. Large, single-colored backgrounds, especially white, are quite the turnoff. Consider adding more illustration to the backgrounds, especially in the later levels, where you're on moving platforms, so it looks like you're actually moving.

When you go to the bottom of the screen, the player is cut off at the bottom. At various points in the levels, there are "leaps of faith", where you cannot see where you are jumping. Please bring the target platforms closer into view, or redesign those portions of the level, so that such leaps are not required.

I like how the scroll stays locked onto the player's character, and doesn't slowly sweep behind him.

Change the Textfield objects so that they cannot be selected. Also, allow players to skip the opening storyline.

One thing that stands out is the file size. I've played the first few levels, and from what is presented, including the various cool songs, this doesn't warrant a 10MB SWF. Please consider optimizing assets where possible.

Having infinite lives and the checkpoints are cool, too.

Again, your engine sounds really impressive, just get your game design skills near the same level (or outsource the design). (:

* salutes *

_____________________
- Ziro out.

[Star Forge]

Cool Game

Hey.

An interesting spin on the tower defense genre of games.

Graphics and audio were well done, and I like all the different configurations for the towers.

I feel it takes too long to get a new tower going. You have to wait for the Forge to produce the tower icon, then wait again for it to actually be constructed. Furthermore, once you start losing towers, it's really hard to replace them and get them up to speed. Consider some way of helping the Forge produce units faster, or maybe some ability for it to have more than one queue, or something like that, although I'm sure once you start losing towers, it might still be pretty difficult to replace it. One positive about building and upgrading is that there are no resource costs. I also like how the upgrades restore a piece of health as well.

You should probably add some keyboard shortcuts for all the various Forge abilities; I'm sure some experts out there might appreciate that. Pause and mute of music and sounds (individually I might add) as well as in-game quality settings are all good accessibility options.

I only encountered two Actionscript run-time exceptions.

The first one is thrown when the game finished loading, but before the continue button appears:

Error #2044: Unhandled ioError:. text=Error #2032: Stream Error. URL: http://media-mgmt.armorgames.com/deli very/timber.php?bannerid=14&campaigni d=3&zoneid=1&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-m gmt.armorgames.com%2Fbroker%3Fr%3Dhtt p%253A%252F%252Fuploads%252Eungrounde d%252Enet%252F572000%252F572949%255FS tar%255FForge%252Eswf&cb=55fb636de5
at com.armorgames.display::ABS/log()
at com.armorgames.display::ABS/handleURL LoaderComplete()
at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatc hEventFunction()
at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatc hEvent()
at flash.net::URLLoader/onComplete()

The second one is really weird. I start the game, and once the tutorial is done, I pause, and return to the main menu. Just wait at the title screen for a few minutes, and it will suddenly play the "tower constructed" sound effect, and throws this this exception:

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at _-8B/_-KS()
at _-IS/_-IV()
at _-0q/_-Df()
at _-0q/_-Fy()
at _-0q/Run()
at _-8B/Run()

When I start the next game, a tutorial window is stuck, and I can't get rid of it. And the pause button doesn't seem to work anymore. Using Firefox 4.0.1, and Flash player debug 10.2.

Overall, very nice game, soldier.

* salutes *

_______________________
- Ziro out.

[KJW's Maze Game 1.2]

For Windows Users

Hey.

The anti-cheat functionality and other updates are nice and all, but for Windows users, MouseKeys (accessed from Control Panel -> Accessibility Options -> Mouse tab for Windows XP users) can be used to control the mouse with the keyboard.

_______________________
- Ziro out.

[Zombie Break-in]

Alright Game

Hey.

===============
Gameplay and design
===============
- Overall game play is ok, and as there is no end, it gets a bit monotonous.
- I didn't find the grenades of much use. Perhaps a larger blast radius to offset their lack of accuracy. Early in the game, I found the shotgun was most useful, and later, it was the Lupara II, followed by the M60. Most of the other weapons weren't much use. Melee needs some more upgrades. The sword just doesn't cut it after a while (no pun intended).
- Game felt a but punishing when you die. Player could be in big trouble if they are far in the game then get killed, lose all their stuff, and don't have much money. Consider at least letting the player keep the weapons.
- I do like how the player heals on his own, and there is no need to worrk about picking up health packs.
Needs more enemy types.
- Is the super health and durability items supposed to help you last longer? If so, it doesnt seem like it. :\
- Pause and mute options were a good idea.
- In addition to a manual reload, consider having the player's character reload automatically, when ammo is exhausted.
- You should add a screen that explains what the items do. Some of them are easy to figure out, while others, not so much.
- Consider, adding sounds for item pickup, taking damage, dying, killing zombies, and opening doors. It gets monotonous just listening to guns and clicks.
- Would like to see a speed power-up to increase my character's movement speed.

===============
Graphics and audio
===============
- The background "hum" was a nice, subtle touch. If the game had some tune, I would have suggested that the music and sounds can be muted separately, but the hum is cool. (:
- Regarding the graphics:
1) find free graphics online;
2) if you made these, beef up your drawing skills; or
3) find yourself an artist to collab with (or a better artist)

- The sound of the Browning and M60 is too loud. So loud that it's clipping.

===============
Controls
===============
- Consider adding the arrow keys for movement for left-handed players. I'm right-handed, so WASD keys work better for me, but I'm sure lefties might like using arrow keys.

===============
Other notes
===============
- The HUD elements should not interfere with in-game play. In other words, when I click the Q icon to change quality, my character shouldn't be firing a shot.
- Collision is a bit glitchy. Sometimes, my character gets stuck around the edges of doors / opened passages, where it looks like nothing is blocking him. You can duplicate this by walking diagonally against the first a closed door to the left.

Cool game, just remove the gauntlet-style play, and add some variety and balance the gameplay a little more.

__________________________
- Ziro out.