Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cucco Chase]

The game is okay, but there are some problems.
- Trying to beat the game without a scratch is near impossible because some of the wood spawns near the edge of the screen, where a chicken can easily just charge out and hit you.
- you need to disable the right click option because you can just click and press play or forward to beat a level (how do you think I got the Chuck Norris medal? Still, the chickens start running at you so fast, you only have a second or so to click before taking damage.)
- on the bonus levels, whenever I am hit, I sometimes am unable to move, which leads to me taking more damage. (this might be a result of the chickens actually pushing Link around or something, but it makes staying alive during the bonus very tough once you get caught).
- Having a high score on this game isn't really fair as much of it is based on luck, examples being how close wood appears to you, how close the chickens move to the you in the second part, and to a lesser extent, the rise and fall of chicken appearances that may block your way to a fence post or near impossible to dodge in bonus levels. It only takes one of these variables to keep someone who did just as well as someone else from getting the high score they deserve, but this isn't a very competitive game and none of the medals are based on score (thank you for that) so it is not that important.
- the white text boxes aren't really an appealing part of the game, but I can't think of a better design. It just feels like with a few changes in some places, it'd look more like a game instead of a Powerpoint on menu screens.
- There is some bad text placement, like the yellow text overtop of the fence is hard to read. This is especially the case at the end of the where the "secret" is revealed; it's overtop of a chicken and I couldn't read it though I later found out what it was.

For the good qualities of the game, it definitely provides a challenge in the later levels just to beat it (sometimes in a frustrating way) and the game is a novel idea as the cuckoos have been a pretty big running gag in Zelda parodies for a while. I haven't found any glitches, which is great. I was sad the game was so short. It would've been cool if there was a level where you had to throw the cuckoos had one another to knock them out or use them to fly across gaps to get wood.

Still, this game is good and I hope you'll make more of them in the future. I think you'll get a few fans following you after they play this game.

TheCez responds:

Yes, beating the game without a scratch is nearly impossible, which is why I made the medal worth so much. And I had no idea about the right-click thing! I need to fix that definitely. And, yes, the not moving around for a bit when your hit is part of the difficulty. And yeah, the whole high score was a last minute thing I added by request from Giulliano, which is why I didn't make any medals for that. I honestly just care about the survival records hahaha. I see your points about the text boxes and text placements!
Thank you so much for all of your advice and opinions! I will take them all into considerations, and I'm glad you took the time for all this!

[Sheen's Drug Trip]

The game is pretty good though the joke is a little outdated (had you released this a year or two ago, it may have really hit home with people, especially considering I think Charlie Sheen is doing "okay" now). The graphics weren't extremely good, but I wouldn't expect that from a game using actual people's heads because trying to draw stuff to smoothly blend in with the actual people heads would be very difficult, even for advanced artist. I really like the gameplay and although I did expect to find glitches in the game, I found none so very good job on this. I enjoyed the game and enjoyed the medals though I'd seriously consider putting in a restart button. I look forward to your full game.

TharosTheDragon responds:

Yeah, we actually did release it on sheengame.com but then let the url expire I guess. We actually won't be releasing a full game but I'll consider your restart button suggestion. I figured people could just refresh if they want all the medals.

Update: I added restart buttons at the end. And thanks for the review, btw. I pride myself in making bug-free games (Ame Fury doesn't count).

[B-Lock]

This game is definitely pretty challenging and seems to control well. I did find some problems/things missing from the game.
- if you press space a bunch of times to restart after you have died, a white screen with text will pop up with like an error message (something about Hero). you can x out of it, but things in the level will be messed up (saws will have multiplied on the specific path they take, the time lags, etc.)
- a quick restart feature would be nice.
- The fact it takes a good 3 to 5 seconds for it to go to the game over screen is annoying
- Having the character just disappears after dying is kind of cheap in a way. It takes away from the realness of the game (probably not the best way to phrase it, but it just doesn't look good in my opinion.

curtisscifres responds:

We will look into these things. We expect to update the game in a day or two to fix anything. Thanks.

[Swapblocks]

I must admit that this is a pretty unique puzzle game (minimalist, but unique none the less) which seems pretty hard to do now a days. I managed to beat it and one of my only complaints would be is that I feel that I found ways around the conventional ways of beating the levels (or at least the ways you had planned out as I didn't always need to use all the books you set up). I don't know how I feel about levels in a game like this having more than one way of beating them; it takes away the challenge of finding that difficult "correct answer", but then again, life often presents us with more than one way of solving a problem if we're smart enough so I'm just not sure (I'm probably just not use to this sort of thing). My last complaint is that the game seems to jump around in difficulty, which seems to be caused in some cases by poor level design (I mean no offense). I really like the game and I think that if any puzzle game deserved an award, it is this one. Perhaps try shifting this game to mobile if you haven't already. this appears as it would be a perfect fit for that. Good luck on your next game.

flori9 responds:

Thank you very much for your review! I fully agree with most of the points you mention and will try to improve on my next games. About the multiple solutions: that's partly intentional, but there might be solutions that are too easy that I didn't notice on some levels.
And great job completing the game!

[Jetbak Startroopers]

The game was definitely interesting though I do have complaints (and praise) to write of:
- At the beginning, it is never shown what these objects I need to collect are so I spent a good amount of time ramming into objects hoping they were the things I needed to collect.
- You need to make it perfectly clear what the player can touch and what they can't (for example, I thought the black and yellow striped blocks were safe places to land at one point. Since I was able to sit on the beginning platform, I saw no reason why I couldn't sit on them). I also that the other animals could be interacted with and that the place where you are supposed to put the objects was a place I could enter (since it had an arrow).
- Why is it that only one block appears at a time? Why not have all of them appear and let the player decide which one they want to pick up first? (also, how is a player suppose to know where the next one will appear? There's no indicator so it forces the player to explore parts of the game where there was nothing before to see if something is there now. That's more annoying than fun.
- The game is kind of short.

Now for the good:
- I liked the controls. they were solid and provided for a somewhat challenging games.
- I liked that you added in the warning lights for the different hazards, that way, the player isn't forced to wait for the traps themselves to go off to ensure they would have enough time to cross safely.
- the square piece were fun to pick up. The player can sit on them and move left or right (at times, it looked like the character was doing skateboard tricks with them).

Still, it was a pretty good game. I look forward to your future projects.

Satyre responds:

Thanks for your detailed review. Here are my direct answers.
- I wanted to add a radar or arrows that appear after the spawning and after utilising a part, that's still on my to do list :)
- I have to think about how to realize this, because everything except the collectible parts and the start platform harms the player. Also added to the to do list.
- Blocks only appear after another, because the coding was very complex for the transporting. If all blocks are present, then they will be all attracted in the moment you are transporting one of them. Therefore I prevented this bug, by only letting one spawn at one time. I'll look into this for future updates, but it's time consuming.
- Yeah it's short, but also made in a week ;)
-----
- Thanks, that was the most important part of the gameplay.
- Warning lights were very important to add, to not let the game be too unfair by random obstacles. It's hard enough :D
- Yeah, that's also one of the helping aspects. When you got a piece then it helps you to get to machine faster.