Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Miriam's Mice]

What the game lacks in graphics and art, it attempts to make up for in challenging puzzles. The game certainly offers some interesting and difficult puzzles. However, I feel it is lacking some features (I also have a few things I want to say on it):
- When activated, there's no way to turn off the mouse guide without exiting the level.
- Dialogue plays every time you enter a level and there's no button to press to immediately skip it or shut it off (this gets especially annoying when you need to exit and re-enter to get rid of the mouse guide).
- There's no way to quick reset the level without exiting and re-entering.
- The whole setup with having to undo and redo to get rid of things that you place is tedious and annoying. For example, if you first thing you place turns out to be a bad move, you have to undo everything else just to get rid of it; why not just have it so you can pick up and move things that you place?
- Having something coming off of the mice to see their line of sight might be nice. Without it, the mouse guide seems incomplete (I'm not sure how this would look or if it would even workout, but it's a thought).
- I think some of the difficulty of the game comes from the fact that there is no pause or stop button on it. In Unstable Engineer, you could literally pause the game, allowing the player to evaluate the situation (not just undo the last move). In this case, placing something in the view of a mouse causes it to react immediately. It'd be cool to be able to place the item down and then look at things. Not allowing this seems to create an increase in difficulty that really isn't necessary. It's like not allowing a person to try putting two puzzle pieces together just to see if they fit.
- Some of the later levels and the achievements in them seem a tad extreme or impossible (I don't normally like using this term; I play a lot fo puzzle games so please allow me to explain). On the level "Give me strength" in the bedroom, there is a letter against a corner, two mice (a red fighter and red normal one), and 3 red cheeses and 3 lions. In order for a mouse to get out of a corner, it needs something to attract it out. However, all three cheeses are necessary to lead the normal mouse to its hole (it's in a narrow stretch with a lion at one end and the hole at the other). Unless there is a mechanic that I'm missing, it's impossible.
- Another example "Roll call", it takes place on an 8x8 grid; subtracting the mice, regular cheese, and pellet, that comes out to 57 blank spaces to place the provided cats and cheese. Beating this level is fairly easy, but getting the pellet is another story entirely. With four assets for four mice and a pellet, it requires the player to use some of the assets on multiple mice at once, but there is so much space and combinations to account for. Taking into account the order that the objects can be placed and the fact that most of them will need to be placed in view of the mice (each mouse can see 15 tiles) that comes out to at least 786,240 possible combinations (this is assuming that one mouse is sent into a hole with each asset placement). Keep in mind, this is showing all the possible placement combinations and does not reflect the number of ways the puzzle can be solved (many of the levels seem to have only one way) or the assets to each type of mouse, since some of the objects don't affect certain mice.

You've basically set up the game to make the application of trial and error tedious, as well as making some levels with so many obstacles, possible positions for assets, and a multitude of steps to make visualization aggravatingly difficult to say the least. This critique is only my opinion (I've completed 73 levels); it seems others enjoyed your game, but I find it lacking. I did want to compliment you on a few things, like having a mute option, the tie in with your previous game, and the medal system you implemented, where if the game didn't award you a medal you earned, you can refresh the page and it will award it to you. I look forward to your next creation!

If anyone needs help or wants to discuss solutions for levels in the game, visit this form: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1487916#bbspost27113294_post_text

WigDev responds:

Thanks for this detailed review, you make some interesting points!

I can understand the desire to just drag devices around, but the way that the puzzles work, if a mouse has reacted to an object then you shouldn't be allowed to move it somewhere else after (and you shouldn't be able to move a device that was there from the start), and having the rooms fill up with both movable and unmovable devices actually ended up being more confusing than it was worth. Undo/Redo seemed like the best solution that was consistent with the puzzle logic, but I'm sorry to hear you found it frustrating.

As for seemingly impossible later levels, I accept I've made them more challenging than you'd find in most puzzle games, especially the optional pellets and ace stars. This won't appeal to everyone. (When it comes to 'Give me Strength' specifically, the name of the room is a gentle clue for how to get the normal red mouse to an exit without using all the cheese.)

Thanks again (to you and everyone else) for your feedback, it's always a tricky balance trying to create puzzle games like this, but as long as some people have their brains enjoyably stretched - and nobody is driven to genuine insanity - then I can be happy with that.

[Behold the Egg]

Unfortunately, I think the game falls flat in many respects.
- The character you are controlling is supposed to be doing some kind of security guard job (I guess) yet the only instruction we receive is to make the temperature cooler if the egg starts hatching. There's no indication on what else we should be doing or if we are supposed to just wait until the shift is over (there's no indication that time is even passing; a clock would've really been helpful). The only other things I can interact with is the computer, which has me updating strange things that don't seem to have anything to do with the egg and show no indication when they need to be pressed or if they're even important (once I recall the cleaning robots, I shouldn't have to do it again).
- Unless I'm missing something, the game is just lowering the temperature gauge on the egg incubator when it decides to change (I know you said when responding to someone else that the egg is changing the temperature, but for all the player knows, it's just malfunctioning and it really doesn't matter if that's the only thing the egg can do). After more than 10 minutes of having a war of attrition with the temperature gauge changing itself and pressing the buttons on the computer to make sure everything is updated, I just don't want to play it anymore. Nothing is changing.
- I've done two playthroughs so far. On the first one, I let the egg hatch and the only thing that happened was *spoilers ahead* a giant eye appeared on the posters and a bunch of little eyes were in the now open egg. Nothing else happened: no jumpscare, no "you lose" screen. The only other notable thing that happened was that the "air grievances" button disappeared, but that didn't happen in my second playthrough. I don't know if these are glitches or if I'm just not understanding what's going on.

The concept is good, but it's lacking in a lot of areas. There's no sound or music to really put the player on edge except for the egg cracking sound. It's not stressful or challenging; it's just tedious. It'd be interesting to actual have to do a guard job (reporting incidents, checking on different monitors, etc.) while also keeping an eye on the egg.

I wish you luck in your future projects.

Edit: Most of the stuff I pointed out wasn't a lack of content; it was a lack of direction, instruction, and criticisms of what is there (I only threw in the suggestion at the end as a thought). I'd suggest not giving back-handed statements in your replies, especially to those who are providing you with feedback.

snakaye-online responds:

i appreciate your criticisms in this, i agree that the direction is not very clear. i've tried to make it clear from the subtitle, this is a "night shift game," taking a lot of inspiration from FNaF. in the wake of the Pizzeria Simulator, there were a lot of design choices taken into account from said material. you do not wait for a timer to finish the night. you have to complete all of the tasks, which involves waiting while the loading screen on your computer finishes to win. clicking off makes the timer for the task reset.

the jumpscare does not work very well. this is a problem that is out of my control; the Unity documentation for the video player has a lot of unmentioned bugs that I only discovered after playtesting builds on the website. these are, for the most part, out of my control. i've done my part, but if your web player doesn't support it for some reason, it's between WebGL and Unity at that point.

the "eggs" that appear on the poster and egg are not "eggs", they are eyes. maybe it was not clear.

most of your criticisms regard a lack of content, and i would like to remind you that this was made in six days on very little sleep. most of the extra content and fixes you are suggesting are unachievable currently due to the nature of the game jam, and i can only update it once the judging is over. i'm sure if you wanted, you could make a better version of the game yourself!

[Voiceless (Legacy version)]

As nice as the artwork and concept is, I don't think it is executed very well.
- Aside from the thing on the bottom, there's nothing that indicates when to press the action buttons so you are constantly looking at the bottom of the screen instead of focusing on the actual platforming.
- For rhythm games, I figured the music would help keep you on pace, but the music doesn't match up or isn't prominent enough to keep you on track. It would also help if other things in the environment match up with the music to further help keep players on beat.
- I think the appearing and disappearing boxes should have some type of indicator on when they appear and disappear.
- I came across a few glitches. The player will sometimes respawn as invisible. Also, sometimes the beat will stop coming, allowing me to just jump and dash as much as I want (keep in mind, this happened when I came down to type this and then went back up to play for a little bit).

Even if you fix all these things, I don't know how well this formula will work out. You're asking players to play in time to a beat, in a world that doesn't encourage this (the world in the game is just like a standard game world; there's nothing wrong with this, it just doesn't match the mechanic). It's more of a hinderance than a quirky mechanic of the game. While challenge is great, you never want to cross the line to where it becomes a burden you can't manage.

I still think the concept is interesting and perhaps with some experimenting, it can work. I wish you luck in your future creations.

[20Time]

I like the game (it's extremely good for your time making one). The player character controls very good (very tight controls) and the graphics and sprites are good (though try adding more sprite animation to the player character). Here's some advice:
- When the player beats the game and reaches the "Thank you for playing" screen, offer a way for them to go back to the menu so they can play it again.
- In the menu and pause screens, I'd recommend adding a sound control option, mute option (when your game has sound), a "return to menu" button, a "restart level" button (this helps if a player runs into a game breaking bug), a credits page, and if possible, an option to reconfigure the controls. Different countries have different keyboard layout so offering the player the ability to reconfigure their controls can help a lot (also this helps people with different dominant hands). Even if you can't offer control reconfiguration, be sure to have multiple buttons for the same function (in a lot of games, creators will map the jump button to keys like z, x, spacebar, j, k, w, and the up arrow). Mapping the dash button to the 1 or 9 key may not have been a good idea unless you were trying to frustrate the player with bad control key choices.
- This game would be perfect for secrets hidden in the levels. Secrets encourage exploration in games (and there were a lot of areas in the game that had the potential to be secret locations.
- As others have pointed out, include music and sound effects. You can find royalty free sounds on places like Freesound.com and you can find plenty of royalty free music online (Kevin Macleod makes a lot of good royalty free music, but don't just limit yourself to his stuff). You can also look through the Newgrounds audio portal and reach out to some of the music creator and ask if you could use their stuff. I think a lot of them would be honored to have their music used in a game.
- There are a number of times where I fell off the map and didn't respond. That's because the spikes you have hidden off screen to make the player respond don't cover all the areas where the player can fall. When you are designing a game (or at least when you are in the final stage of it), you need to examine it in a way that asks "okay, how can I break this game?" because that's what some players will do, whether they were searching for secrets or just accidentally did it. You need to place the map respawning locations in relation to how far a player can travel using the tools you've provided them; in this case, the double jump and dash functions make it so you can get pretty far.
- One thing of note about your game is that it had the potential to get really hard, but none of the levels really pushed the envelope so to speak. Game creator will often takes the mechanics of their game and design levels that push them to the limit, trying to get as much creativity and outside the box thinking as possible.
- If you were looking for some classic games on Newgrounds to draw inspiration from, just let me know and I'll happily provide you with some
- Don't put too much pressure on yourself to add all this stuff in at once. If you can, that's great, but it's a learning process so anything that's confusing now can be cleared up the longer you keep creating and learning.

I wish you luck in your future creations.

[Gray Death]

I definitely like the game. The title screen is very cool. The retro pixel artwork looks cool and even with the retro look, it still manages to be a little scary, but it has some major flaws:
- Some of the levels require extremely precise jumping (often times in quick succession) to the point where I've ended up restarting the same levels multiple times not because of enemy deaths (well, sometimes they'd get me), but due to falling into a pit because I didn't reach the platform or rope I was trying to get to. A game can have precise jumping and be well designed and fun, but I don't think your game is designed for preciseness. I've fallen off ledges when I know I pressed the jump button before falling, I've gotten stuck on a ladder (on the edge of some platforms bordering the ladders while trying to go down one) while trying to go down to avoid a fire ball or zombie. I don't know exactly how you would go about fixing this except for maybe slightly extending the hit boxes of either Gray or the platforms so he doesn't fall prematurely.
- In the later levels, having to wait for the earthquakes to subside becomes extremely annoying, especially when you have to replay them multiple times in a row due to the issue I mentioned before. Trying to go out from under cover during an earthquake is risky since the falling boulders are randomized and the player has a limited range of sight; you could end up jumping into a falling boulder or a boulder can simply fall on you before you have time to react.
- During the worm boss battle, I had multiple instances where I jumped to another rope, pressed the up button when I got in close, and the character didn't grab onto the rope.
- Due to the limited sight of the character in the game, there are times where you require the player to take a leap of faith, which can easily lead to them falling in a pit or landing on an enemy.
- Why are you forcing full screen mode on the player? Yes, you can exit out of full screen mode, but I think the game put you right back into it if you beat a level. Also, if you aren't in fullscreen mode, you can't use the up or down arrow keys without also moving the screen up or down; perhaps fix it so that, when the game has been clicked into, the arrow keys won't do this.
- I ended the game with at least 10 clips in my inventory. I was kind of hoping they'd be used for something.
Some suggestions:
- In the next part, maybe have some more complex enemies like humans. Maybe you have to sneak up on them to take them out to prevent them from shooting you.
- It seems like you made platforming the main mechanic of the game so I think it's really important to get the kinks worked out of the platforming.

I wish you luck in your future projects.

saltandpixel responds:

Hey thank you.. Many months later. This feedback is really good.

[Caliber]

It's pretty cool. It's challenging enough to where it is very easy to die if you aren't careful. The art is good and the music/sound effects are fitting. While there are limitations like no jumping or melee attack, it's still fun (I've played other such games with a similar setup that just weren't fun to play so this isn't something that can be easily pulled off). Though I came across some problems/feedback:
- On the level before the final boss, the bazooka and assault rifle switch places in the keyboard setup (the assault rifle was assigned to 3 and the bazooka to 4 on all the other levels that came before it, but on this level, they are reversed). Also, on this level, the bazooka ammo is set back to 0 (is this intentional since you don't want the player to go into the final boss with enough bazooka to take it out fast?). Lastly, there is bazooka ammo in this level on lava that you can't reach.
- I'd recommend adding a skip function at the beginning of the game. The prologue isn't very long, but after playing through the beginning three times, you just want to get past it to the action.
- A pause, mute, and restart function would also be good.

It's been pointed out that there isn't regen health, but I don't see this as a problem; just a difference. The game requires you to basically "get good" and learn from your past mistakes. I beat the game once by the skin of my teeth, but then beat it again, finishing with a lot more health. Also, thank you for letting the health go over 100%; that's awesome!

You did very well on the design of the game and I look forward to seeing more stuff from you!

GreenLarry responds:

Thanks for such great feedback man.

I set a strict deadline on when I had to finish and publish the game so I missed the bugs you mentioned, if I have time this weekend I might go back and fix them and add in some extra polish like a pause button like you mentioned.

Its making my day that someone actually enjoyed my game enough to play through it more then once, thanks for the kind words!

[Castle Crashing the Beard HD]

The graphics are classical arcade and done well, the music is good, and the gameplay is good as well. I have some feedback on the game:
- I'm using a keyboard and there is no way to get off of the credits screen (I've pressed all the buttons).
- The hitboxes might need to be adjusted. Some fireballs that look like they should go over your head actually hit you instead (it doesn't happen too often though).
- While it's certainly not a deal breaker, the fact that it defaults to fullscreen upon clicking the screen is annoying. I get that you want people to see the graphics, but forcing it on the player is something else entirely.
- The skeletons' spear attack is extremely annoying. The only way I found to "mostly" avoid getting hit is to jump behind them and then attack.
- The main criticism I had was with the invulnerability frames for Tom. You can basically keep hitting Tom until the game decides "okay, that's enough. Time to move onto the next part" and it makes him temporarily invincible. You can't hit Tom while he's attacking and summoning bugs and skeletons. I'm having trouble putting it into words, but these kinds of things really take me out of the fight. It seems like instead of making the Tom head a more formable boss, it's like you just gave him invincibility frames at different sections of the game to give the illusion of difficulty. I replayed the original, which I enjoyed very much, and it was difficult in that you couldn't mess around due to the low amount of life you had and you couldn't stay in one spot for too long.
- This updated version offers a lot the previous didn't like 2 Player gameplay and little powerups to choose from once you unlock them (and with this, A LOT of replay value). I have to say I still prefer the original, but this is basically an entirely new game so it'd be like comparing apples and oranges. Great job on the game!

BoMToons responds:

I think your criticisms are valid, esp. the bit about Tom "deciding" to be invulnerable sometimes. I think, if I were to do it again, I'd maybe have him start smoking and turning red when that's happening, or pull into the background more so it's more apparent when you can and can't land your hits (maybe some kind of "ghost" mode or armor or something...). It was tough to balance the fun of being able to stun lock with combos (ie: combos feeling super powerful) and not ruining the fun of the boss phases progressing. Not sure I solved it as well as it could be (as you pointed out).

- Skeletons are tough, and yeah, the intention was to force you to sneak up on them from behind. We wanted some new mechanic for those "special" enemies since they're near the end of the game and difficulty should ramp up a bit.

- I'm looking into the credits screen keyboard skip issue

Thanks for your thorough feedback!

[Binary Quest]

There are some problems with the game:
- If you interact with the daughter while holding the cake, you will always give it to her whether or not you say yes or no.
- When you have the cake and you talk to the sword guy and he asks "are you going to save the princess?" and you answer yes, he says to take the sword, but he doesn't actually give it to you.
- Why are you give the sword by the sword guy if you say yes to "I can't believe I met No-e the hero" (note: you only get the sword this way when you aren't holding the cake)
- Can you make it so you can skip passed the ending story text by pressing spacebar to get back to the game? There's a lot of trial and error sometimes and you can end up seeing the same ending multiple times.

It's a pretty good game overall except for the problems I listed. The music is also very nice and fitting. I look forward to your next project.

being-brin responds:

thanks! I'll try to squash these bugs over the weekend :)

[Fateless]

While I liked the adventure and the retro-ness of it, the game has many problems:
- The English in the game, medals, and description is bad and it really takes you out of the story of the game (I can usually understand what the characters are trying to say, but it comes across as if either a little kid or a person where English isn't their primary language wrote it ). You can always ask someone to help with the writing. There are plenty of people on Newgrounds who would be glad to help, including me.
- The stealth parts of the game are cool, but there's a problem. There are at least two occasions where you want the player to jump over a patrolling cultist and on one of these occasions, you can't wait and see where the cultist turns around, putting the player in a situation where they are forced to guess when the cultist will turn around. It's too easy to get caught in these situations.
- Although you have a tutorial, you never explained in it that you can save your game by going to the pause menu (I thought the game autosaved and erased this data upon completing the game. I had thought the "Continue" feature in the menu was for players who closed the game before finishing and could pick back up where they left off). I did appreciate the save feature.
- You also didn't inform the player in any way that going into water with the cultist robes would make them disappear.
- No mute button.
- You make the player wait through cutscenes before they can pause and load a save (which gets annoying in parts where it is easy to mess up).
- In one part of the game, when it asks you whether to go left or right, you have it from the perspective of the character instead of the player (You have the "right" option to the left and the "left" option to the right). I thought it was a trick and picked the one from my perspective and ended up dying.
- In the scene that follows this, where Alex, Kevin, and Michael are escaping, it says "you are controlling Kevin" when you aren't (or at least not completely). I've played through that scene twice and in each instance, both Michael and Kevin fall into the water and don't leave yet the game's dialogue shows that Kevin got away while Michael didn't. I learned from the Choices Map that you would need the bow and arrow to help Michael escape and it really didn't appear that way in the scene.
- I was hoping that the Choices Map would let you jump to any scene in the game so I was a bit disappointed when it only showed you a layout of all the choices. The game has a lot of portions that become very annoying when you have to repeat them (like waiting for the water to rise completely so Alex can escape or pushing crates to switches so you can get a bow and arrow). Still, I was impressed with how many paths there actually were (I hadn't expected this and hadn't come across a lot of these other paths).
- The ending and cutscenes are unskipable, which becomes annoying in a game with multiple paths and only one save slot.

As much as I'd like to play through the game more to get the medals, it's just too tedious to do so multiple times. I still enjoyed the premise of the game (it's a pixel version of telltales and such games like that, which you don't see pixelated). I wish you luck in your next project!