Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Danger Joe 3D]

If more enemies types and weapons were present and the game had secret passages (you press against a wall to open them; Wolfenstein had them), the game would've been fun. As it stands, it really isn't for a lot of reasons:
- The red stickman enemies clashed with the levels since they looked so poorly designed. Also, it seemed strange that they sometimes were killed with one shot and other times, it required 2 or 3. I will stay that making it so they died more often when you took them by surprise was a nice touch though.
- The boss was just a blob with a face. It was near impossible to avoid getting hit by it; it can hit you from far away and will hit on you on sight so trying to shoot it while peaking around a corner is useless (I can only name a few times where this worked. On my second attempt, I literally stood in front of it and kept firing, left to get health, and repeated until it died.
- It was extremely easy to get lost in the game since artwork was scarce and nearly all of the rooms contained no objects or identifying marks. While it is true that I've gotten lost in Wolfenstein as well, it certainly wasn't to this degree.
- What is the point of having a "secret ratio"? There were no secrets and if there were, there certainly wasn't one in every level.
- Having customizable controls was a good idea.
- The enemies made one sound and that was it. It was a subtle sound so it was sometimes hard to tell how many enemies had seen you when they all play at once.
- This game had nothing new compared to the original Wolfenstein. I'd understand making this game to train yourself to make games, but it wouldn't be a good idea to release it.

I hope you will continue to train yourself in making games and I wish you luck!

IamJonathan responds:

Thank you for the feedback!

I think I didn't make it clear enough in the description, but this game is literally the official JavaScript port of Wolfenstein 3D with new graphics, sounds and levels. That's why it has a secret ratio, because I didn't change that part of the code. That is also where the customizable controls come from. That thing where you sometimes kill enemies in one shot and sometimes in multiple is exactly the same as in the original Wolfenstein 3D.

I didn't make better enemy sprites because I needed a lot of them (50 to be exact) and I didn't want to spend forever drawing them. I got used to them but I can see why other people don't like them.

Anyway, good luck to you too!

[Winterberry]

I like the controls and mechanics of the game though I feel it would have been more fun if it had a story mode and/or ending instead of randomly generated levels. I came across two problems:
- Sometimes you spawn on top of enemies. I had the bad luck of doing this several times in a level and I ended up dying as a result of it.
- You can pick up snow in mid-air. Doing this, you can infinitely jump (I know you can only hold a max of 99 snow, but basically, it feels like you can jump forever).

I wish you luck in your future of game design!

platformalist responds:

Hi Plasmarift!

You're right about spawning on top of enemies - I didn't run into it much during testing, so I didn't put up proper safeguards against it. Being able to grab snow in mid-air is meant to be possible, so you can superjump all around the screen and reach tough areas. In the main mode, jumping forever isn't really possible since you'll run out of snow, but in later levels (once you've built up a stockpile), you can superjump forever!

Thanks so much for playing, and for the feedback. I always appreciate detailed feedback like this! :)

[Pillar of Peril]

After defeating the boss, is something supposed to happen? The boss blows up and all I can do is move around the area? I can't cross the black gap. No ending screen or new path?

I have some thoughts and feedback regarding the game:
- I agree with the others that music and sound would have been great (without it, some might think the game is broken) . If it had music and sound (as well as something happening after the boss), then I'd say this could have been extremely popular, at least on Newgrounds.
- A backstory isn't entirely necessary though it wouldn't hurt (even a quick screen describing what the goal of the game is and why may help set the mood) The idea of a cowboy vs. an evil wizard and going through all of this is pretty cool. The other ending was also pretty touching.
- The dog was probably the best part of the game. The walking animations sometimes make it look like it is walking on its front legs or hind legs while following the player, which is adorable.
- Outside of the boss, the enemies don't pose much of a challenge. I walked passed most of them and any damage the enemies inflict can be regained by finding health in pots so there isn't much challenge or threat to making it to the top floor.
- I'd actually suggest adding more flooring and maybe make it so the player has to make a sacrifice every other floor or every three floors (this way, the player will have used most of their abilities long enough to where, when they lose it, they'll really notice and feel the loss).
- Perhaps have some abilities be extra useful against some enemies (the dash bypasses the rainbow flames without injury, the dual wielded pistols actually push the blobs back from all the force, etc.)
- On Google Chrome, the game screen is shrunken down to close to 1/9 of the size that it should be.
- The art and opening screen were also pretty good.

This is great work for only having 3 days to make it. With a few tweaks, this could be an excellent game! I wish you luck in your future in game design!

[Neverescape]

This game does have problems though the randomly generated floors isn't one of them (if you have bad luck on the first few floors and you die, you can always quickly regain your progress. After the first five floors, you should have enough equipment to deal with whatever comes your way).
- The biggest problem is that you hide a majority of the level in darkness. The reason why this is bad is because, on the upper levels, you run the risk of opening a door and immediately being killed when there are two men with automatics, one with a shotgun, and others waiting by the door, shooting at you the moment you open the door (and this is only around level 20). This has so many problems coupled with it:
--> I've experienced this myself. As soon as you open the door, you can be shot and take damage and you aren't able to move out of the way as there seems to be a short pause as the new room you just opened up is revealed. This means the game forces you to take damage. That isn't right.
--> If you want to play it smart and safe, you have to assume the worst, so you have to have your best guns equiped (and firing as soon as you open the door is your best bet since you are going to take damage from gun wielding guys standing next to the door regardless of how fast you are because shooting as soon as the door open will still end with you getting shot first as they are still faster). If it turns out that it is just a few unarmed cops, then you can either waste your good ammo or quickly equip some lesser guns or bare fists (why conserve ammo? Partly because you put a limit on how much the player can carry so they have to be mindful of it and can't just waste it). This wouldn't be a big deal if this situation only occurred a few times in the game, but you run the risk of this EVERY TIME you open a door, so you always have to do this or take a gamble and hope you won't have to deal with this situation.
--> If there are a lot of guys on the other side of the door with good guns, you are going to take damage no matter what, even if you jump and move backwards, so you're left with two options: use your healing items before opening the door (even if all you have are the gold ones and you have half your health still) to bring your health up to a decent level or take a gamble, open the door, and hope there isn't hell on the other side. Sure, you can probably heal yourself as soon as you take damage, but that is assuming you are quick enough to do so (plus, the button for healing is in a weird spot) and if you actually have healing items to use. If this is the first door of the floor, you won't be able to back up far, making it easy for you to get cornered and die, even if you just healed yourself.
- Another problem is getting shot at and punched the moment you enter a floor. Yes, you could move away as soon as this happens, but you are going to lose health no matter what, which makes this unfair. If I lose a game, I want it to feel like I screwed up, I don't want to feel like I was cheated by the game.
- As for leveling up, why do you make the player wait to die so they can level themselves up? You make it so they have to die for them to reap the benefits that they earned during the actual gameplay. It would make sense for them to get the benefits of the upgrade when they earned it. This wouldn't be such a big deal if dying didn't mean starting from floor one. You could have made it so they could level themselves up in the pause menu and when they die.
- With the number seven gun, if the enemy is too close to you, if goes passed them, doing no damage.
- Bringing all this together into one problem, the problem is you can't play the game fast and smart, no matter how much you level yourself up. You can't blaze through the early levels since you need to conserve your good ammo, you take damage no matter what somtimes (you even put a limit on the number of first aid kits you can carry, one of the few things that could offset some of the problems I mentioned), and the game cheats you by doing damage to you you can't avoid.
- Once the enemies are near you and have shot a few times, sometimes they'll just stand there. Why would they just stand there and not keep shooting? If they are reloading, I would suggest having them start back up to put distance between them and you until they have reloaded as that would be the smart thing to do if the enemy were smart.
- Another commenter was correct; the weapon select menu isn't really that good. It's easily just to push the number key then use it (and why wouldn't you have the left mouse button select the gun and the right mouse button turn on and off the menu?).

My suggestions for the game:
- Make it so you can see how many enemies are on the other side (you don't even need to show them, just show something like a seismic animation to show they are making noise by walking. That way you can time when to enter the room, waiting for some to walk to the other side of the room).
- Get rid of the pauses I mentioned or decrease enemy reaction time in the case of opening doors.
- Add an upgrade menu that can be accessed through a pause menu.
- Add a mute and pause feature.
- Add an option to change the control scheme. Even if not all players use it, they will appreciate having the option to use it (personally, I know I would use it to switch the g and h keys.
- Make it so weapons can be changed by clicking on the weapons at the top of the screen.

As it stands now, I think the game is missing a few elements that would truly make it fair and challenging because right now it is just "shoot fast and survive". For example, there's no duck feature, no way to hide behind cover, the enemies AI aren't really smart. Regardless, I still got enjoyment out of the game and I like the concept. I hope to see more from you in the future.

Neroun responds:

Thank you for your feedback! This is my second game and I'm still gaining experience. So thanks for your advice and for pointing out the disadvantages of my game! I will try to take them into account and make the games better in the future!

[FPS Cube Shooter]

I would have awarded you more points if enemies didn't spawn next to you and behind you. It makes it so the player can't be constantly moving around for fear that an enemy that wasn't in a spot you were looking at before would appear. I found that the best strategy was to stand in the corner, shoot whatever gets close, and then move to another corner if they started closing in on you, but even this only works for so long since, once you play a game session long enough, the screen gets filled with cubes. There are so many cubes that it actually starts causing a few game problems:
- If a cube spawn in an area where another cube already exists, it will stack on top of it (or the old one will stack on top of the new one). Once this happens and they move out from under the cube they were on, they will glide down. It should be noted that it is impossible to shoot them when they are on top of a cube and most of the time while they are gliding. The stacks seem to go up to 3 max.
- I'm not entirely sure how this happens, but I've seen light purple blocks floating up out of the ground at me. My guess is that once the limit of 3 cubes spawning in the same area happens, they start spawning below the map and then work their way up when they have the room.
- The amount of blocks moving and spawning gets so dense that they end up "pushing" themselves toward you instead of just moving, which seems to make them move faster.
Other glitches:
- I somehow managed to push myself off the map by moving into the map's corner. This has happened twice and, since there is no reset button, the player would need to refresh the page to fix this.
- Perhaps this is just a problem with my fps on my computer, but when pressing the fire button, I don't always see the bullet shooting animation.

The reason why I am being so critical of the game is because I did enjoy it and I think an adventure "Cube Shooter" game would be nice, where there is a big level for you to explore and to kill cubes.

My suggestions:
- Alternate controls, such as having the z button being used for firing, the x button for jumping (if the game has jumping). Don't limit controls to just one button.
- Just as you did in this game, list the controls in the description, but make sure ot list all of the controls.
- A pause and reset feature.
- If you do decide to make a "world" out of this game, make sure to include some personality into it. Maybe give enemies different "death sounds" like grunts or screams or something. You can even give them multiple ones, where it randomly plays one out of a short selected list of sounds. If you need voice acting or sound help in that category, you can contact me and I can help you.
- A lot of crummy "3D person shooter" will include one enemy and will just keep spawning that enemy over and over again. You included multiple ones (although they probably weren't too hard to make, it is still important). Maybe include some more diverse cubes, like a cube monster or a cube with cube wings or something.

I'm going to send you some screenshots of the game where it got really crowded because I found them interesting. I wish you luck in your future of game design.

[Super Sneaky Room Escape]

I have played a lot of your games and I usually don't comment on them since, no offense, they seemed kind of low quality in the puzzle solving department plus there wasn't anything inherently wrong with them and they had a charm about them that still made them enjoyable. However, after playing this game I wanted to say that I really enjoyed it. It's differs from your usual escape games as it requires more unconventional thinking and unique solutions to puzzles (for example, SPOILERS, not many escape games have you pick up and use a chest that you just got something out of. It may have taken me longer to find this out if I hadn't clicked on it to see if I could move it to see the number behind it). I even liked the small story that went along with it (I'd like to make some extra money escaping rooms). My only complaints are that it was pretty short and going back into the inventory over and over again to put the coins in places was a pain (maybe have a counter for the coins in the upper right corner of them and have them stay in your hand after placing one?) I look forward even more to your next release. Good luck!

[Bio Evil 4]

I thought I should comment since people keep saying how hard the game is. It isn't extremely hard (I'm not saying it's easy though, but I've played harder ones). I've beaten it on pro at least three times now; the real difficult part is getting through the game without dying at all with all the gold! It can take a while to beat it on pro, but it's just a matter of memorizing when to jump, shoot, and move, and learning how to overcome obstacles like the scythe throwing guy inside the house. I've included a link to a walkthrough I made if you are interested.

https://youtu.be/6VlfdFAz6hM

As for my critique of the game, I liked it. The pixel art was nice and cute at times, the music is exciting and nice to listen to, there were no glitches I could find (except for the one you fixed), the gameplay was smooth, and, most importantly, it was hard in a fair way. A lot of creators try to make their games hard by including unfair mechanics like enemies that can spawn on top of you, surprise traps that are near impossible to avoid unless you knew they were coming, and tedious, long levels that aren't hard to beat, but take a really, really long time to do so, as well as other annoying things. I do have some complaints/suggestions though:
- In Google Chrome, the game screen is shrunken down to near 1/4 the size it should be.
- I was a little disappointed that there were no secret weapons or secret areas in the game.
- It seemed short, but I understand this was made for a game jam so I can't fault you for that. It's like eating a piece of cake and wanting another slice! (and I'm imagining what the fight with the lake monster would have been like).
- During the boss fight, I think it would have been cute and more fitting if you had Ashley actually shout "Leon!" instead of the talk bubble. It could have been muffled and bad quality like you would expect for the time of the old NES games (it could also sound kind of cute and like a cat, kind of like a whine if you know what I mean).
- The boss fight was kind of easy; the boss only has the one attack where he runs up and swings at you. Once you learn how to overcome that, the fight is a piece of cake.

I hope you will make more games in the future. I wish you luck!

Gypopothomas responds:

Brilliant, man! You have mad skills! Did the sound effects sound like that while you were playing!? Holy shit! They don't sound right at all in the video!

I'm gonna shove this video the throats of people complaining about difficulty! Haha!

[VCR]

I felt I needed to comment to balance things out after the last person's comment. The game is good. I didn't find any glitches and it seems obvious you at least took some inspiration from Portal when designing it, which there is nothing wrong with; Portal 2 showed things from the perspective of two humanoid robots while this one seems to be something you'd expect for construction purposes, which makes it neat to think it has a personality. With the inhumanoid robot, things seemed even more desolate inside the facility.

The puzzles were challenging and you made it so rewinding back and forth carelessly could ruin things for you if you didn't take into account that the blocks won't continue their movement through rewinding time if you aren't there to move them in the first place. I did feel like I managed to beat some levels in unconventional ways; you gave the player a lot of power and that can lead to players overcoming obstacles in much easier ways than intended. Also, I would suggest, in the future, not to have a key control to the game next to the reset feature; I've accidentally reset the levels a few times.

Other suggestions:
- At the end of the game, have a game reset feature so players have the option to replay the game instead of having to reload it.
- Trying to maneuver the cube in small passage ways was tough since you made it so the cube would be a set distance from the player so trying to get it over and around the player is difficult when there isn't a lot of space to work with. It's also difficult to jump over the cube without moving it.
- For some reason, I really liked the fact that you could walk on the cube when time was frozen. I'd suggest implementing that into future puzzles if you ever make a sequel or remake it (you could also make some wacky levels, like having to throw the cubes into the air and then freeze time at the specific point to make a staircase somewhere.
- For the ending, I actually liked it though maybe try making the walk on the surface longer. It felt a little short.

I do hope to see more games from you in the future. Good luck. Also, try getting the game on Armorgames and Kongregate.

brendendeveloper responds:

Thank you. I cant help but agree with both of you on the improvements. also can i just say that this game is not a 5 star game and its not a 1 star game its somewhere in between. Its not meant to be a full super long game. its something I made over the summer for fun. and for that I'm happy it gave some people a good experience. know that I'm digesting the criticism from both of you and I'm not ignoring him because he's negative and just as such I'm paying attention to you not just because you are positive but because everyone's opinion should be taken into account.

[RAKUGA FANTASY]

It could be a good game, but it suffers from a serious flaw; even though you do give the player a hint of what the minigames will be, you don't give them time to process how to solve some of them since you require the player to use the directional keys and the z button (I didn't notice the game listed the keys necessary for each game until I read the direction) and some of the minigames aren't intuitive (for example, like the one where you need to fulfill the order. In my head, I figured I needed to select the things above the menu to win, but that didn't work. I'm guessing I need to make sure only those things in the menu are selected, but why are things already selected when the game begins?)

Also, what was the point of the trapped guy asking for help? I kept failing the minigame so I wouldn't have to kill him, but that did nothing.

I would like to say I like the enemies, characters, and items, though I may have to agree with one of the other reviewers in that the dungeon crawler thing probably wasn't the best choice for this. I wish you luck in your future in game development!