Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rooftop Postgirl]

Lesuperchef basically covered things, but here's a few other notes:
- You should include the instructions in the description.
- Having a text box show up after the giraffe leaves is a bad idea because if you are mid-jump, you fall straight down (to your death if there's nothing under you).
- A few of the birds are impossible to avoid unless there is some function of the game that I'm unaware of.
- The "leaps of faith" the game requires you to take is a bad idea since, at time, the player needs to wait for something to happen before jumping, like a platform to start rising. You want to be consistent when it comes to things like that. Either reinforce waiting when there doesn't appear to be a path or make jumping into the unknown the thing to do.

I don't do reviews much anymore since I usually end up pointing out the same things, but your game shows promise. I wish you luck in your future in game design.

PoteComPao responds:

Thank you for the review. I'll try to improve the level design, maybe this game is a little bit too random.

[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!

[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!