Yatsufusa's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Örnöga: Idle]

I have a few notes I'd like to share in the hopes that you will find them helpful. Before I do, I'd like to point out that, 'although I suggest several changes', I think that the game is good and it's nice to watch the character go through enemies like a burning chainsaw through a stick of butter after a while... ;)

The graphics were done well and everything looks distinct. I wasn't a fan of the "CRT" effect. (To the best of my knowledge, colored CRT monitors never looked 'that' distorted.)

While there is a fair amount of complexity and strategy to the game, by Level 50 I started focusing on the review and ignored the gameplay entirely.

[Interface]:
- The game is easy to grasp, as long as the player speaks 'some' English, but I think a short "tutorial animation" that could be played from the Menu screen before the game starts would make the beginners' experience smoother.
This could also be used to point out some of the more 'hidden' buttons I'm going to mention in a bit.
- Thank you for including separate volume sliders for BGM and SFX. But the menu is too well hidden. I understand why you went for consistency, but a rectangle with 3 horizontal lines would make for a far more visible menu button.
- The Toggle button for active/inactive play should be more noticeable. Right now it is hard to identify as a clickable button.
- The formatting for the spells' MP-cost is a bit awkward. Instead of "Fireball 3 MP", how about "Fireball (3 MP)"?
- 4-digit coin costs (to upgrade spells) clip outside of the fields.
- The "Drag to cast a spell" 'hint texts' can hide text in the description box (it would be cool if it was "pushed back" by said box).
- The stat screen's 'hint texts' still show when that screen is collapsed.
- Several spells list neither cooldown, nor duration (Doom Dogs, Dagger Toss, Toxic Flask - maybe others).
- Having to drag the healing spell onto the player character seems redundant (unless there are friendly NPCs later on [I noticed the "Mercenaries" option, but it never unlocked for me]).
- Having a semi-collapsed option for the 'spell bar' that doesn't show any tooltips or upgrade buttons would be convenient and free up a lot of visible screen. (A semi-collapsed stat-box could free up screen space as well. Everything below the coin counter is information the player rarely needs.)
- The distance between the sell buttons and the inventory spaces should be increased so players don't start to sweat if they want to use the last 3 spots in their inventory. ;)

[Balancing]:
- The 'Blood Flames' spell steals next to no HP, considering the coin cost, MP cost, area of effect, and cooldown.
- The 'Doom Dogs' spell seem to be overpriced (coin-wise) or underpowered.
- The 'Toxic Flask' spell acts too slowly to be useful.
- In terms of item progression, I found 'Scorched Boots' with +41% Fire damage early on - and then much later a pair with +15% Fire damage. Tying the +% range to the level would be possible way to have the player find "the best item in the game" within 20 minutes.
- In terms of spell-control, having the character select a good target themselves for a single click would be a convenient third option. (Dragging to cast a spell is a bit clunky.)
This can currently already be done by clicking the auto-cast button, but immediately clicking it to un-toggle again sometimes doesn't register - and clicking the big, colorful button is more intuitive.

[Miscellaneous]:
- 'Örnöga' is a recognizable title in a list, but you would have to look it up when talking to friends - Even if you pronounce it "Ornoga". I wouldn't change the title at this point, but I wanted to leave that remark for future projects of yours.
- Spells cannot be aim/cast close to the lower menu bar - which has to be open in order to select spells. Moving th center of the screen to the center of the 'visible' area when the bottom menu is opened would help to make this less of an issue.
- The BGM loop is too short and becomes annoying rather fast.
- It is possible that triggered effects can toggle autocast - but it is also possible that I thought I disabled autocasts again and did not double-check if the click registered.
- Item drops are relatively rare, even with a 'Chance' stat of 25. Finding a gray item is just 'sad'. Either gray items should be left out entirely, be the standard equipment early on, or should be moved on a different loot table that is more likely to drop. (If you do the latter, a 'sell all gray items' button would become mandatory.)
- I died while sorting my inventory. A beeping noise when on low HP ( < 15% ?) would be appreciated.
- There seems to be no way to speed up MP replenishment through Stats. (The only method I have found were 'Ober's Gauntlets which replenish 1 MP per attack.)
- If the spell 'Regeneration' is increased by +Water damage, I'm sure players would appreciate a notice on that spell, making it clearer.
- If there's more to the butterflies that live near the center of the map, I was unable to figure it out.
- I suspect there is a secret to the area outside the wall, but after trying to wait and using area of effect spells, I'm out of ideas. (Walking into the endless darkness to the east got me nowhere.)

[(Suspected) Bugs]:
- At some point while idling, the muted Music went back to full volume, but there was nothing unusual happening on screen. (This occurred twice before I figured out what was going on: The 'Settings' menu reacts, even while collapsed. I had clicked on the 'invisible' volume slider by chance.)
- After a while, certain empty spots in my inventory counted as "full", without having items placed in them.
- When I had a "full" inventory, items dropped to my feet. Even after selling every single item from my inventory I couldn't collect those dropped item (I tried walking over them and clicking them). (Update: Clicking on them works now. The issue might have been fixed by purging my entire inventory, but I can only speculate here.)
- Sometimes, the more translucent burn effect did not get removed and remained stationary on the map indefinitely.
- To the best of my knowledge I never came across a method to increase my 'DMG Reduction'. (It might be an unused leftover from the beta.)
- 'Scorched Boots' were supposed to leave a flame trail. They didn't. ;)
- 'Aqua Belt' was supposed to trigger 'Doom Dogs' (x4) - which happened only when the spell was cast, but not when it was (supposedly) triggered by another item. (I had a 'Ober's Hammer', which triggered 'Regeneration' with a 5% chance). Also: The spell 'Doom Dogs' summons 4 dogs - as does the effect. The "x4" implies 16 doggos. ;)
- 'Aqua Belt': "Waterpulse triggers Waterpulse x3". While it makes 'Waterpulse' significantly more viable, every other item I found had more varied effects that were triggered - not more of the same. I suspect that this might have been unintentional.

[Personal Request]:
Could you please add which tools/engines/etc. you used to make the game? It is rather rare for a game to run in my browser setup without mayor hiccups, so I'm curious.
(The field is called "Edit Equipment?"/"Software" in the project manager [visible after clicking the button "Previews"], but I have no insight on how to fill it 'competently'. I just know how the end result looks on the users' side of things.)

[Lolipop Sim (discontinued)]

As a software developer, being lazy is _good_! It prevents you from doing unnecessary work, will reduce file sizes, and can breed more elegant solutions. But your approach to the Newgrounds medal system is the wrong kind of lazy.
I have never worked with 'TurboWarp Packager' and I haven't published any games this millennium, but I know that you could have looked up how to do medals in TurboWarp. Do you know how I know that? Because I collect "Guides, Tutorials & Other Help" in playlists to help artists. And in in the process I have looked this up myself. That means others already 'did the work for you'. You just had to look it up.
I'm giving you this one for free, but if nothing else I'd ask you to reconsider your approach to game development. Trust me on this: Putting in more effort when starting out will save you _so_ much work and stress later along the line. (Incidentally, this is also general life advice.) Be 'the right kind of lazy'.

Take care.

Newgrounds.io Support in TurboWarp (by @ElRandomGMD)
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1534619
(Chapter 3 deals with medals)

[The Non-Scary Maze Game 3]

Before I really start I have to get some things out of the way: I don't enjoy maze games and might be biased. They are simply not my kind of game, mainly because I get bored by their simple setup. Despite this, I still think your game deserves a review, because it was rather well executed. Okay, let's see now...

You added a mute button. So your game is already superior to 95% of all maze games in existence. Good job! ;) You also spend some thought on the way the movement mechanics work, so players can not cheat their way to the goal. As far as 'true' maze games go, this might be one of the best there are. Overall, the game stands on solid feet. Quality control wise you did a lot of things right such as having a tester and fixing bugs 'before' you publish. Some of the bigger game developing studios could learn from you.
However, I also have some gripes...

Technical bits:
Instructions: The instruction you listed in the Author Comments should also be in the game. Additionally, having "Maze Game" in the title will only tell 'most, but not everybody' what the game is about. It would still be nice if you explained the game mechanics for the inexperienced gamer.
Key Bindings: 0, 1, 2, 3 & 4 aren't really intuitive keys. How about "M" for mute/unmute, "S" (or "H") for show/hide cursor and "R" for the reset option?
Level Select: I don't think the games saves a player's progress. Skilled players 'can' finish it quickly, but a level select on the main menu would spare players that had to close the game for some reason the frustration of having to play everything all over again. Showing the current level number in a corner would help players to tell how far it is to the end and give the whole experience a more professional look. Fancy graphics may be nice, but _effort_ will always show.
'The Bug': Everybody experienced it; everybody knows about it. You added a workaround, but it would still be better for both the players and your personal experience as a developer if you could manage to find a more elegant solution.
Pride: This is only a minor thing to me, but you should show more pride. You made a game and people liked it! You should add credits to the main menu. This would as well be a good place to tell your 'story' and thank your friend that tested the game during the beta phase.

Content:
Level Design: Some levels felt unnecessarily long. Not difficult, just... more 'artificially lengthened' than actually challenging. Speaking of challenge, I noticed that the tunnel bits get reduced to 1 block width rather early on. You worked with different shapes for the most part, but some parts seem to say "I'm just a long tunnel, because the developer had some space left and didn't want the level to be over." The cannons where a good and innovative addition to the level design, but for the most part they only did the same thing, just in different places. It would have been nice if you had invested more innovation in the way you placed them. One setup that immediately comes to mind would be two cannons that alternate shooting down a 2 block hallway that the player has to pass in the direction of the cannons (with a tunnel branching off right before them). The game could also use some other 'obstacles', adding more variety.
Ending: I didn't feel satisfied when I beat the game. Sure, there's a medal, but I don't play games only for the medals, if you can believe that. A single sentence might fit the theme of the game better, but I think I would have preferred something along the lines of "You, <Playername>, are awesome!" than just a notification that the game is done now.
Story: While I can't really blame you for not coming up with a appealing back story for this kind of game, games with even the sketchiest of stories tend to be more rememberable that those without one. Throwing the hero or a princess in a dungeon is often enough to leave 'some' feeling that a player's actions inside the game world matter. And if you let a girl rescue a boy you can score points for originality as well. (Which is still something that is hard for me to wrap my head around: The dark ages are long gone, but still most protagonists in gaming are dudes... What is wrong with you, world?)

Still... All in all you did a pretty good job. It's just that I think some tweaks might have made it 'exceptional'.

Rock On!

[Sci-Fi Runner]

There seems to be no preloader. Newgrounds lets authors download and use their preloaders for free if you can't write one yourself.
The resolution of your game is HUGE, but yet the help texts are so tiny that they are barely noticeable when a player starts the game for the first time. The next few tries he has to focus on the 'new' help text and will most probably die while reading them. Why didn't you just add an "Instructions" button to the menu? You could have easily fitted all those texts on a single screenshot of the game.
There is no indication that your gun needs ammunition. "This is your energy indicator" is open to interpretation - especially since the ammunition is mounted to the lifebar...
Having the 'jump' and 'shoot' buttons on different far ends of the screen means nobody will use the option to click. I'm guessing you have a reason like android application or something, but for a flash game, I don't really see it.
In some other countries the "Z" and "X" keys are not right beside each other. An option to configure the controls would have been nice. (And No: I wouldn't want to use mouse AND keyboard for a game that utilizes only two buttons...)
The player doesn't get any information about the 'other' upgrades (gained from running a certain distance) actually do or that he could get upgrades by covering a certain distance. The screen is HUGE: Why didn't you fill in some headlines and informative texts?
You could have included a highscore board. Newgrounds lets authors use their highscore servers for free.
You forgot to include your story from the author comments in the game itself. Speaking about the story: It seems rather short and you should think about expanding it. Maybe explain where the machines came from or why the character can't stop running...
During gameplay the character isn't recognizable as female (having a ponytail and no beard doesn't make someone female) and there seems to be no screen where the player could have a good look at her face. Thus, describing the character as a "sexy female clone" in the author comments seems like a huge exaggeration.
I needed just a few lousy minutes to make all these observations. I'm guessing making this game took you several days. You should really pay more thought to creating games.

I found no bugs in the gameplay or controls themselves, so that's a plus.

In summary, 'Sci-Fi Runner' is a 'Canabalt' clone where the player can shoot robots and earn upgrades. It has okay controls, average mechanics, decent graphics, a poor tutorial and offers only little long-term motivation. I wouldn't play his again and wouldn't recommend it even to hardcore fans of the genre.

Hazneliel responds:

Your opinion is very constructive, thank you very much explaining the points that I need to fix to make it a better game. I will work soon on fixing it.

About the preloader, when I load it it has a loader screen with the game´s logo, I dont know what preloader you cant see

[Flappy Corgi]

One thing before I really start: I HATE 'Flappy Bird'. Bad controls and needlessly narrow flight corridors ruin that game completely. And don't get me started on that retarded looking blob of a bird.

That being said, 'Flappy Corgi' is NOTHING like 'Flappy Bird'!
You created a game with great BGM, fabulous choice of colors, hilarious setting, progress rewards, unusual controls, introduced a HP-system to the universe of 'Flappy' games that actually makes sense and to put the cherry on the cake: The player controls a flying corgi that shoots hearts and rainbows at cats in UFOs...
Not only did you create an enjoyable experience, but you made it even real fun. You created a 'Flappy Bird clone' that is FUN to play... My mind is blown!

If I was desperately searching for something to improve: A Pause function and a hotkey for mute would make the game even better, but wouldn't be mandatory. Maybe add the story in the game as well. However for this great service to not only the kingdom but the whole world, there can be no other rating: 5/5 and 10/10. Hell, I would even award you 'The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire' if I could!
Great game. Great innovations. Keep up the good work and thank you for making this. I'm just so happy right now...

sournote103 responds:

I can definitely work on adding a pause system and a mute hotkey when I get time. Thanks for the suggestions, and I'm really glad you enjoyed the game!

[Night Lights: After Dark]

'Night Lights: After Dark' is a good game: Solid mechanics, the few controls are easy to learn, the graphic looks nice, the bgm is good, it has a mute button for those who don't agree and a walkthrough for the desperate and the impatient. It really shows that you've put a lot of work into this game.

I really like it, but there's still a little room for improvements...

For level 4 I had to look at the walkthrough. The thing is: It's not that hard or complicated - I just didn't expect the movable blocks to behave different. One box fell through the platform, so I expected the other one to behave and didn't try it out. I shouldn't have 'had to' look the solution up, because I should have learned the necessary techniques and game mechanics in earlier levels. My suggestion would be to drop that broken level 12 and add a level before the current number 4 that teaches the player, about not all boxes being 'solid' when the light hits them. Think about it...

Also there seems to be no background story in the actual game - only in the Newgrounds author comments. When the game started I thought that level 1 was my characters house, but actually quite the opposite was true.

I had a habit of pushing boxes too far towards the next wall, so I had to restart because I couldn't push it out, even though there was still a gap. However, this didn't seem to be a problem with two 'boxes' pushed too close together, as those seem to recognize what you are trying to do and moved when I tried to squeeze into the gap. It would be nice if you could replicate that behavior for the walls scenario as well.

Another thing: Every level earns the player 25 medal points, except Levels 12 and 14, which grant only 5. Wouldn't it be fairer to earn 5 points each for levels 1 to 3 and slowly increase the points from there?

[Drop Off]

I'm sorry, but I would say you created a game of chance rather than a game of skill. Which bar-segment comes next seems to be determined solely by the rng() rather than some sort of formula. Because of that, a player could (for instance) receive 3 bar-segments with the longest possible distance at the start, making it impossible to pass them in time or get 5 identical bar-segments right from the start, giving him or her a huge headstart.
Because of this, I see this submission rather as a exercise in programming, rather than a challenging game.

Also on the game design front, it takes the players forever to reach any 'upgrade' - at least in the game's current development-stage. Making the color-options hard to reach doesn't add to the gameplay-value.

Now for the technical part.
Having the same default color for both ball and bars isn't a good combination. A silvery grey as default color for the ball would have been much nicer.
All functions and menus are mouse-based, but the actual game is keyboard-based. It's not a 'big' deal, but focusing all controls on the keyboard would make it look more integrated.
You implemented a pause function, which is great. But you didn't implement a hotkey for it (like "P", "Space" or both). Since there aren't any other buttons in the 'action' part of the game, simply clicking the screen would have sufficed.
The mute function is hidden in the options and can only be reached from there. "M" as a mute hotkey would have been nice.
There is only one choice for the bgm. Maybe you could add at least two others for players who aren't into such electronic tunes.
The Newgrounds highscore board only seems to update when the player actually presses the corresponding button in the game. Other games update the highscore board every time a higher score is reached. Newgrounds has so much daily traffic, I'm sure they wouldn't mind a few more updates to their highscore database. (While I type this review, only 3 players found, or at least pressed, the button.)
What I really like is that the backgrounds aren't bland and chance randomly every time the player changes the screen. I wouldn't have thought of that and it really makes the game easier on the eyes. Whatever you are going to change, you should keep that. ;)

Overall, you've done a decent implementation of an already existing game concept. But you gave away the chance to make more of it. I came up with those ideas in a few minutes, and I haven't even touched game-changing topics like upgrades, different terrains, different balls, different game modes...

Again: I'm sorry, but because of that, your (possibly) beloved work just makes you look a little lazy in my eyes.

ErLuiSS responds:

Hi!

The game has these bugs because my main objective was publish it for mobile and now i fix this bugs :)

Thanks for the comment :)

[Randy Qurush Saga]

To make a classic LL/CC quote: "wat."

You youngsters... Always with the psychoactive drugs... ;)

I like the extras and the theme very much and I don't even care that I don't recognize the faces you used (although I wonder). Overall it has great (but also somewhat amateur looking) style, the same CC/LL work sometime has. It has a certain class to it - a personality of its own, so to speak. Your effort shows in the solid mechanics, the power-ups and that it's not purely 'smash those blocks over there three times'. The very smooth scaling of object sizes with depth made it feel more real and you made it mouse controlled - like it should be.

But the places where you rushed it show as well. I'll try to structure the points where I see room for improvement:
Instructions – There is no menu and no ingame-instructions. You made a few remarks in the author comments, but until I throw my expectations at the game and start to experiment, I don't know anything about it. "Randy Qurush Saga" -> "Play" -> the game starts. Sure "It's 'Breakout'", but there's always that new player that doesn't know this. It's also unclear that the player can move the 'bar' vertically as well, unless he finds out by chance. Even a 'quick and dirty' game doesn't have to look that way. That goes for Jam games as well.
Story – There's no line about the author or what the story is. Who IS Randy Qurush, anyway? If even the author doesn't think it's important enough to explain, why should I think it's important enough to look it up? A story can add much to the player's experience.
Performance – The game starts to lag once you set things in motion. There are a whole lot of photos used where they don't need to be. The best examples might be the ball and the bar.
Level design – The game is the level and the level is the game. I was able to beat it in just a few minutes (the lag was beneficial in that way), but after that the game is 'done'. If there had been at least 2 levels before this one, with a level select-screen and saved progress, it could have been much 'more'. In its current form most players will forget about it 5 minutes after finishing.

I happen to know you can do much better if you want to, Jack. Loose some of the images, keep most of the crazy, add some text as well as a few levels and this game could be good for 30 to 45 minutes of delightful gaming experience. It's a good, solid game - but it could be so much more and it's a shame that it isn't...

jacklehamster responds:

Yep, I have to admit some parts were rushed. Thanks for the insightful comments

[Â Rectangle Avoider]

I noticed a few things you could iron out: Sometimes the controls freeze, the bgm keeps looping after you die and the highscore-button seems to do nothing. Also the big balls seem to always drop down at the current position, making the game very easy following the same pattern for an unlimited amount of time. The only thing that makes it more difficult over time is the slow increase in speed. I reached 1401 before it got too boring to continue.

Other than that it's a nice game - just a bit too monotonous for my taste. With a little more variation in patterns and soundtrack, it could be a great game.

Your game would have fitted nicely into the Ludum Dare 26 theme "Minimalism". It's a shame you missed that one.