Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hacked Halloween]

Well, I've found a few problems with the game.
- The score doesn't reset or go down after being killed in a level so you can effectively just keep collecting things, get killed, and repeat to get an extremely high score. Kind of takes away the value from the score mechanic.
- What are green, orange, and yellow things that you can collect? Candies, right? Can you do anything with them? If not, what's the point in collecting them?
- You should put the controls in the description as well.
- Why do you need to use the mouse to activate the next level? Why not use the spacebar or enter key?
- No pause or mute button.

I did like the fact that you have to use your respawn pumpkins in order to advance in some parts of the game. I don't believe I've seen anything like that before (though this does bring up the problem of "Should I use it now to save my progress or am I going to need it later in the level to progress?"). I also like the artwork, especially for the main character. Good luck in your future of game development!

Newdam responds:

Thanks for your comments. Just some answers. Because the game is developed by a single person, and I wanted to publish it on Halloween, the game came out in beta with some details to adjust in future updates. Candy collect will make you able to use some power.
Thanks again!

[The Chains That Bound Me]

I enjoyed the game very much (I played the downloaded game). However, I experienced a number of problems with it:
- On the mac port you made, it won't let me save.
- In the mines, whenever I mine copper, it sometimes doesn't go into my inventory. I found 3 copper and only one registered in my inventory (and this wasn't a one time incident. One or two other times, I only got 2 copper out of the 3 that I mined).
- This next problem might have to do with the fact thatI was using an emulator to play the windows version (this allowed me to save the game) so take it with a grain of salt. After the battle with Richard and the beast, the game would sometimes keep bringing up directional keys to press in the quick time events after the event had already ended and it would keep doing this until I reloaded the game.
- I understand that cutscenes and dialogue are a big part of the game, but after having to replay the game multiple times (I played the browser version that kept bugging out on me, forcing me to restart, add to that the multiple plays I did on the mac port), I really wish you would include a skip button for these cutscenes. Making them go faster by holding down the spacebar is good, but not good enough in my opinion.
- I'm guessing the character and story arcs that were unfulfilled in the demo are going to be finished in the complete game (the green potion, the tax inspector's wife, the abusive husband, the woman who has a crush on the main character, especially the green potion one), correct?
- There are a few things in the game that I feel like should be interact-able, but aren't, like the hole in the floor of the house on the far left of the lower district?
- I threw a miner's body into the pit just before going into the mine and fighting the monster, but I didn't receive any experience points.
- The music you chose for the game is great, but try and mix it up with a few more tracks (because the one that plays near the beginning starts getting repetitive and annoying after a while after listening to it for so long).

I really, really hope you'll continue and finish this game. I wish the best of luck!

yo13ob responds:

Thank you so much for your feedback! Omg, there's quiet a bit of bugs you spotted.

Yeah, those quests will be completed if the game gets finished. To be honest, this is such a huge game and I actually have a kickstarter up but I have a good feeling that the kickstarter might not get funded. I'm not too sure if this game can be completed since it's such a huge game, I'm kinda regretting doing a rpg lol There's a lot of work. I might create a new small game or maybe continue with this game and put TCTBM on hold.

You should definitely join my discord though. It's easier for me to talk to and receive feedback from my fans. Communication is a lot faster

[A Happy Home]

The game suffers from a few different things:
- One major flaw; it takes too long to go through the text. Yes, I know, it is only a few seconds, but this is a big deal since you only give the player a short amount of time to complete the game. Plus, in order to find the correct actions to complete the game, you need to experiment, meaning you have to play through the game multiple times; this means waiting through the text. After multiple tries, the wasted time adds up. There should be a skip button (I've beaten the game, only interacting with everything I had to and yet I had one hour left before bedtime. You really didn't leave any wiggle room, did you?)
- I don't know what the point of the pinata is. If it is a joke, then it's really not funny, especially with the text you have to wait through to find it and the time you wasted spending on it.
- The game also has glitches:
-- I got stuck in the chimney in the room where you have to pick up toys. After disabling the room, I pressed space over the chimney and I got stuck there.
-- In the bathroom, if you move over specific objects in the room, copies of the boy will appear (also, you can leave the room without getting dressed).

Still, I liked the game and I hope to see more from you in the future. Good luck!

BrandyBuizel responds:

Ding ding ding you've found the point of the game! It's supposed to be a chore to get anything done(the theme was "what does home mean to you") and the textbox does in fact get slower each time you see it.

Sad to say we do know about those couple of bugs, can't quite do anything about it since the software was only free for the duration of the jam, but the duplicates are pretty funny.

[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! :)

[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!

[Corrupted CHICKEN Soul (DEMO)]

The game is interesting and pretty good compared to the other games I've played where you play as a chicken (there's been a number of them). However, the game suffers from serious flaws, a few of which makes it undesirable to even finish.
- If you run into certain walls, you'll find yourself teleported to different parts of the level. The only two notable ones I can remember would be the wall to the left of the first door you need a key for. For the cave level, I found myself teleported to a lower position in the level after running into the gate with the weird face (below the switch for the wooden platform).
- During the "cueva" level I believe, the game would periodically freeze for a few seconds. This is extremely annoying. Also, the chicken is now floating in mid-air, flapping its wings right after a freeze happened and I can't move.
- Going off of the last point, there is no reset feature so there is no way for me to restart the level to dispel this floating glitch except to wait for the timer to run out. It is almost always necessary to include a reset feature and a menu screen feature that allows you to go back to the title screen.
- Something is off with the hit box detection. I ended up thinking that snails couldn't be killed because when I tried jumping on them a few times, I ended up getting hurt. This isn't just exclusive to the snails though. It is also tough to activate switches sometimes, like the keyholes and the levers, having to jump around and in front of them until they activate.
- At some points in the game, you expect the player to jump down into areas. Why not have a feature that, when pressing the down button, it allows the player to move the screen downward to check for danger. That way, they aren't diving into holes and stuff blind, especially when one of the first things you teach the player is that pits are bad (and then you subsequently expect the player to jump down a pit to find a key later on).
- You don't explain things in the game. You don't inform the player that they can jump on and kill enemies (it is true that the player can experiment with the game to feature this out, but you only give the player around 3 lives so that doesn't leave much room for exploring the mechanics). You also don't explain that you must hit the enemies in certain areas to kill them (I still haven't found out how to kill spiders, porcupines, and the giant skeleton chicken). You also didn't let the player know they needed a key to open the door; the keyhole next to the door doesn't look like a keyhole, it looks like a red button and I spent some time trying to figure out how to push it. Lastly, most annoyingly, you don't properly explain the "weapon" feature. You include instructions to "pick up" a weapon with the down key when there is no weapon; the player needs to jump and press down to break boxes (it's more accurate to call this a ground pound) and sometimes this doesn't even work correctly, requiring you to do it several times. I only found out how to break boxes by accident. What does the "thug life" thing do (is it just for show)? I'd also recommend putting the instructions for the game in the description for players who decided to jump right into the game.
- Is there no story for this game? The title and environment seems to suggest that there should be, but all I see is a chicken running around killing things. You don't need to "tell" the player the story if you don't want to, but you could try conveying it more through the game, like putting certain things in the environment that relate to the story.

There are good things about the game. The chicken controls well, the levels seem pretty expansive, especially the cave level. I would definitely like to see more of this in the future (with a reset feature and the glitches worked out). I wish you luck in your game developing future.

AlvaroMorenoU responds:

WOW thank tou for your review and your time on it. Well this is my first game, I just watched some tutorials on youtube so I dont know that much about this. and as Im doing the game I forget that people dont know anything about it lol. I just play it by memory, but some others have told me the thing about "looking down", "they didnt find the first key"... so theres a lot of things to have in mind. there are some glitches like the freeze on the cave level that only happens with the game on this page. I also got stuck and thought... hhmm I need a restart button.
"drop your weapon" was reffering like the chicken's ass hitting the ground lol
and for the story i would add that when I finish all stages. i just did the first 7 levels (of 15). so i have a lot of work to do. this is just a hobbie so you will have to wait a lot too :P
but again thank you very much for everything. i will try my best to fix all of these and upload a decent game <3

[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.

[Reincarnation - When death calls]

The art is simple yet good, the plot is interesting, and the gameplay is simple, but still good; my problem is that it has frozen on me twice now on the same part and since there is no save function or skip button, I have to wait through the same cutscenes and play through the same parts again.

It keeps freezing just after I beat the first part of the cat level (note: I beat the game once already; the only difference in the playthroughs is that I went straight for the third toilet instead of playing through the first and second toilet).

Munguia responds:

Thanks for the comment and play, i just check the game i upload a new version with that problem fixed, thanks for the report