Plasmarift's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Minute of Rage]

It really wasn't that rage inducing for me, but it was challenging and a little frustrating (maybe if I was listening to the music, I would find it more frustrating and frantic). I managed to beat it, though I have some concerns/questions/comments:
- Is the rapture medal the one you get when you beat it? Because I didn't receive it. Or do you receive it from reaching 60 seconds in Endless mode? Also, I unlocked all the clothes and didn't get the other medal either (I figured it was for the clothes since the name of the medal means custom fitting clothes.
- It seems like there are some instances that are impossible to avoid death, like when three floor tiles disappear from below you, there is an eye shooting lasers on the left and a ball of energy moving toward you from the right that you'll jump into if you try to avoid death. Still, I found strategy in this game. I typed some of it out here for other players and for you (because if you planned this out, you are smart:
- After the spikes come up, you can walk over them. You just can't jump on them or be standing there when they first arrive. (I didn't figure this out until after I beat the game)
- The spikes take longer to come up than the floor tiles do to disappear, meaning you can move over the soon-to-be spike areas to avoid falling in the pit.
- The tiles only disappear for about three seconds so if you time it right you can dodge something by jumping to where the tiles will reappear (sometimes, they are timed just right).
- There is also the slight chance that on the tile with the eye monster shooting lasers that you can stand on the edge of it and not get injured (I used this to avoid certain once though it is tough).
- For the statues that shoot energy balls, there is a charging function on that that will alert you that they are about to shoot so it shouldn't take you by surprise.

I liked the art, the music was intense, and it was a very good challenge. Very good job on the game. I look forward to your future work and hope you do great in the competition.

Wolod responds:

That's a very detailed review. Thanks for the feedback!
Rapture medal is unlocked for beating the game. Game checks your medal status every time you run it. So they have to unlock eventually. Keep in mind that Adblock (if you use one on Newgrounds) may interrupt medal unlocking.
I have one more tip: I personally love to stand on the border of two blocks. If one of them disappears or if eye monster shoots laser you won't get hurt.

[Dream Eater]

The story is very interesting and the game does definitely place tension and fear on the shoulders of the player, but other than that, the game feels more annoying and a tiny bit empty than scary and this is why:
- The shadow chasing you in the treehouse is indeed scary, but only because it can suddenly appear in front of you when it is chasing you in some instances. Other than that, it becomes more of an obstacle as when you first enter one of the two main rooms, you are essentially backed into a corner and I've been stuck in loops of running from the door to get to the rooms with the clocks, only to be chased back to the original and having to start all over again. I'm still not sure how I managed to get out of these loops other than going into the opposite room and messing around in the hopes that it would stop the loop, such as letting the shadow chase me to the door. (if sneaking and walking is required in any way, I don't see how because it didn't work to stop the shadow from finding me so I don't know why sneaking was included in the game). This shadow mechanic alone makes me not want to play this game again, ever. There needs to be a way to hide from the shadow or protect yourself from it that doesn't involve having to backtrack multiple times until the randomizer for the shadow appearing cuts you a break.
- Repetition. It can certainly had something to a game, especially when the game is horror themed, like helping to drive in a point or making a person feel helpless, but with the problems I described above, the realization that I would not only have to do this again, but have to travel to one of the clock rooms an additional time. Even then, there is no need for everything to be exactly the same. You could have added new visuals in the treehouse section, perhaps had the shelves become dusty and unkept, have more blood splatter after every visit. Repetition alone will drive away player, but when other things are added, it can be impactful and well done.
- The number of inter-actable items is limited. It would have been nice for there to be more to the game than just walking and running around, such as examining the pictures and items in the house, exploring optional doors, solving some small puzzles or experiencing these weird events (these were dreams we were playing through yet they were very much grounded in reality). You could have had spiked pits that came out of nowhere that would force the player to time their progression.
- Lag starts to become a huge issue later on in the game. You say to use Chrome if we are experiencing issues with lag in the treehouse. I was originally using Chrome and the game basically became unplayable onceI reached the treehouse. After that, I switched to Safari yet still had trouble with lag (what is this highscore or scoreboard thing you are referring to in the description).
- I'd highly suggest putting the "probable photosensitive epilepsy" first in everything. I don't get epilepsy, but these flashing lights bothered my eyes.

Still, this is all very promising and I still found the narrative to be interesting enough to push me through the annoyance (though just barely). I wish you luck in your future in game development!

Cagmaster responds:

Excellent and complete review. Thanks a lot!

[Virtual Dungeon]

It's kind of boring, though not because of the education. I felt like the questions were too easy, especially when some of the answers are obviously wrong because they wouldn't make sense. Other problems I had:
- I wasn't able to beat the final boss because once he got down to his last peg of health, he wouldn't die no matter how many times I hit him.
- The movement is too slow, especially for a game that incorporates a maze aspect. It's very annoying to be following a path and find out it's a dead end. Having a run button wouldn't be a bad thing.

Having to wait for the enemy to be vulnerable at a certain time and having a limit on how many times you can use a certain ability is pretty cool, as it prioritizes timing over button-mashing. I wish you luck in your future game making endeavors and let me know if you need any helping with level design, testing, or voice acting.

terlx9 responds:

Yes this game is really buggy indeed, will be making it a lot better in the next version!

Thank you so much for your response and your well wishes! Greatly appreciated. :-)

[The Resurrection of Cthulhu]

I played the game, but I'm having trouble. I followed your instruction, but:
- Where is the big monster I'm supposed to give the ash to? I had gotten the four tentacles up to that point. I put the ash on the black hole on the far right and it feel in. (also, the ward disappeared after I found the one in the dark).
- I put the poop on the seaweed and made it bigger, but I couldn't go up? How am I supposed to do that? I tried clicking on the seaweed and moving the AWSD keys.

A lot of this is not intuitive, like the bottle of water. You're in water, so how could you start a fire underwater to burn a box? Why wouldn't the ocean put the fire out? And why does putting the box out when it is on fire result in a pile of ash? If anything, it should just lead to a burnt box. How would I know to use the rock again after damaging the wall once, considering it doesn't make a sound the second time to indicate I'm getting anywhere? Why can't I continuously hold down the ward when searching in the dark?

I give you four stars because despite the low graphic quality, it could be a fun puzzle. It's just hampered down with a lot of "why" and "how". Also, it doesn't help that it takes a few seconds each time to pick an object up. It makes me almost not want to pick things up.

Still, I wish you luck in your game design. I think this is a great first step for you and that you can make some awesome stuff.

tcmxx responds:

Thanks for playing!

- go further right to the darkness and go down to see the monster.
-You are supposed to go up by w key. The controls are terrible because not enough time to polish, but at some position you should be able to go up.
-The water thing is creepy..the whole story is designed to be nonsense..

Thanks for the four start! Since it is a Game Jam game created in 2 days, I am not satisfied with it at all.but currently we don't have plan to continue with it..sorry for that!

Thanks for playing!

[Pixel Zombie Shooter]

It looks interesting, but whenever I pause the game and unpause it, I can't shoot the gun anymore. Also, you don't explain the controls or how to upgrade your weapons and character (the player can play around with the controls, but they don't have a lot of time to considering there are endless waves of zombies heading their way. I only found out that you can fix the bike by pressing S or the down arrow by messing around near it.

Please list the controls in the description when you get the time.

FidelumGames responds:

Hey, thanks for the review! Sorry about the controls--huge oversight on my part. They're in the description now along with a few strategy tips.

Also, I can't reproduce the "can't shoot" bug you mentioned. If this actually exists, it's a huge issue. However, I can't seem to replicate it. Is it possible that you were just out of ammo? Can you let me know if it happens again? If so, what kind of machine/browser are you using, and how did you make it happen?

Thanks!

[Dead-Alive Episode 1 [Debug Build 0.4]]

I pressed the "..." option and it went back to the title screen so I had to restart. I went out of the stall and got killed then I tried to press the restart button, but it didn't work so I had to quit and restart. I chose the right stall, proceeded, read that there isn't anything else and had to restart to see what the left stall had (a dirty toilet).

Having to sit through the opening animation three times in a row with no option to skip was extremely annoying. You shouldn't have uploaded this if this is all you had (you should also tell the player up front that this isn't finished).

Outside of what I wrote so far, I like the animation style, the storyline, and the choices. Just make sure you implement that skip button and let me know if you need another voice actor, let me know and I can help out.

bb-panzu responds:

the "..." glitch i still haven't figured that one out. and i did program the skip button. I just need to make sure it is visible next time. or maybe i didn't give it a proper hitbox. Oh and I DO need a voice actor. It has a type of man voice.

[Return to Earth]

Definitely a good game though I have some ideas and thoughts on it.
- I've only come across one glitch and it was soon after getting the dash ability. I went to the left through the passage way and dashed upward to find myself stuck in the way. Dashing seemed to only make it worse.
- For the weapons you can buy, the randomization gets annoying, especially when you get a weapon twice that you really don't want (that's 100 coins down the drain). It would be cool if you could collect weapons and use the number keys to select them (or cycle through them with the E and Q keys or something). Maybe have some weapons that you can only get through finding them or pieces of them.
- Speaking of coins, because of this setup, I was considering just skipping opening up the metal boxes until later because they are the only source of health in the game (other than respawning) and leaving them there until I get more coins ensure that they won't be wasted if I happen to die in the game.
- You've added so much great art to the game, but you give the player very little interaction with the world; only a few metal boxes to destroy, some enemies in flowers, and some switches. The world is so cool looking. Try to think of ways to let the player be a part of it or to let them engross themselves in it. Maybe allow the player to examine specific things, have the ground or environment react to the player being near it sometimes (I noticed the rocks that glow when you are near them. That's cool), allow the player to do things with the broken electronics like destroy them or break lights. I know you've included some secret areas, but I'll address this later on.
- I like the puzzle aspect of reversing your position to solve the problem. Perhaps try taking this a little farther as I see more potential there. I wouldn't want the game to become solely about puzzle solving because it seems like exploration is, but a few more would really make the game better in my opinion.
- The enemy designs are cool, especially the bosses (even though the first one doesn't scare me, there is something very intimidating about its open mouth yelling at you). I think you'll need a few more enemy designs to keep the game from falling into monotony later on in the game. you also might want to look into new ways of introducing some enemies rather than having all of them come out of flowers except for the ugly charging one (it's annoying when I can see where the enemy is hiding, but can only attack it by luring it out. Still, I'm not sure how changing this would affect how many other gamers see the game as this could be seen as good by others). One thing in particular I'd like to suggest is to have areas where enemies are coming at you in rapid succession because the dash ability and time reversal would really aid in this being a fun experience for the player, being able to move out of the way of enemy attacks, reflect some attacks, and undo the damage done (for skilled players at least).
- Whenever there is a screen transition, it may look better to make the entire screen black than to leave the right side of the previous level there while it loads.
- Perhaps give the option for players to change the control setup in the menu.
- For me, the map really doesn't help much because it seems over simplified compared to actual game. When I go into a room, it feels like there are paths going off in all directions and it's hard to keep track of where I am at all or where I should be going (since you can't backtrack out of the first boss lair). This was just my experience though. One thing I would suggest would be to add the option to close the map after opening it up.
- The music is really good. Maybe two more tracks for the full version. A mute button might be good.
- So far, I've found two secret areas, minus the vent areas. Do you think you could slightly (like, extremely slightly) change the secret area entrances to make it so the observant player looking for them can find them. It could just be a pixel or two difference between other ones. Otherwise, you just have players placing bombs everywhere and waiting three seconds for them to explode. If that's the case, then the secrets really aren't worth looking for because they take up too much time waiting. It's already annoying enough having to wait for the bomb to go off to open up areas I have to go through (will the new bomb upgrade not only open up the rusty looking block paths, but also be faster?) I get that you don't want the bombs to go off instantly because then people would be spamming it like crazy.

This is a really cool game, especially for only being an alpha. I don't know if you plan on selling it or not, but if you do, can you possibly make it available on macbooks?

Good luck in your developing. This is going to be good!

RitchieRitual responds:

Wow thanks for such in depth feedback, I will take some serious time to go through and analyse all that you said, thanks very much.

[Red Jumping Hood]

The game was definitely fun and I liked the pixel graphic, but it was kind of disappointing to find that collecting the berries didn't do anything at all. I thought maybe if you got enough of them, you'd get an alternate ending or something, but there wasn't one so what was the point to having them in the game?

imperfectgames responds:

Thank you Plasmarift! Sorry to dissapoint you ;) I was a little tight on time, so ultimately the berries served just a purpose of giving the player some extra challenge - without any reward, unfortunately.
Having an alternate ending based on berries count sure is a cool idea (Wario Land anyone? :d) - I will keep that in mind!

[FIST OF AWESOME]

As cool as the art, concept, and story is, I don't understand the appeal of these games. There's no difficulty in fighting any of the enemies (including the bosses), there's only one special move, and half of the time, I'm just waiting for the enemies to get back up so I can do more damage to them (and it gets really annoying). If I could do damage to them while they are on the ground or if they had special attack patterns that required me to attack and dodge at certain times, it would be fun, but, as it stands, I'm just going through the motions as there's no challenge. Even the grab move which keeps them from getting knocked down gets old.

Still, I wish you luck in your game developing career.

ifightbears responds:

Hi Plasmarift, thanks for playing and for the very detailed feedback!

All your criticisms are completely valid (although there is a stomp button - W on keyboard - to damage felled enemies). If I make a sequel I'll definitely be looking to add more variety to the enemies :)

Thanks again for playing, and I wish you luck in your game playing activities!

[Sneak Attack]

Whenever I press and hold the spacebar, the page just suddenly scrolls down (I've clicked on the game to try and center it to prevent this, but it doesn't work. It happens every time). I'd suggest adding a different button to use for the "search" feature or to fix this problem.

endernoobz responds:

Thank you! I will definitely change the search key.